Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
LAURENCE STERNE was born in 1713 at Clonmel, Ireland, the son of an army
ensign. From 1723 until his father’s death in 1731 he was sent to school in
Halifax, Yorkshire, and in 1733 he entered as a sizar at Jesus College,
Cambridge, receiving his BA in 1737. With the help of his uncle Jaques,
precentor and canon at York, Sterne procured his livings. He took holy
orders and in 1738 obtained the living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, near York,
and a prebend in the cathedral. In 1741 he received the neighbouring
benefice of Stillington and he was married, although his marriage was
generally unhappy. Sterne wrote forty-five sermons, of which four volumes
were published during his lifetime and three were published posthumously
in 1769. His literary career began late and he wrote his first pamphlet, A
Political Romance, in 1759, but it was suppressed because of its
controversial satirical content. In the same year he began his masterpiece,
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. The first two volumes made him
a celebrity and he visited London, where he was lavishly feted. Between
1761 and 1767 he brought out a further seven volumes. Sterne was dogged
by ill-health for much of his life and during his later years he alternated
bouts of being lionized in London with recuperative continental travels and
trips back to York, where he always returned to write his next instalment. A
Sentimental Journey represents Sterne’s observations and experiences of
two tours of the continent and is largely based on his time spent in France.
The book was published in February 1768, barely three weeks before his
death in London on 18 March 1768.
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by
way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Contents
Chronology
Further Reading
Notes
Chronology
by Christopher Ricks
Tristram Shandy is the greatest shaggy-dog story in the language. Like all
the best shaggy-dog stories, it is somewhat bawdy, preposterously comic,
brazenly exasperating and very shrewd in its understanding of human
responses. Laurence Sterne himself has a concluding friendly jibe at his
readers by insisting that they have been spending their time on a cock-and-
bull story. Since Sterne’s world is one of delightful topsyturvydom, it is
hardly surprising that a good starting-point should be the novel’s closing
words. We have been told how Uncle Toby’s amours have faded into
unconsummated nothingness, and now we hear that the parish bull is not up
to its work – you could say that the bull breeds nothing but disappointment.
At which the novel ends, with one of the characters voicing just that
mingled irritation and affection which Sterne has dexterously created in his
readers:
L––d! said my mother, what is all this story about?——
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick——And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard.
The shaggy-dog story and the cock-and-bull story are cousins of the
‘Irish bull’, and Sterne was brought up in Ireland. So it is not surprising that
one of Sterne’s earliest commentators, John Ferriar, should have been put in
mind of the ‘Irish bull’. Ferriar mentioned the famous opening paragraph of
Swift’s first Drapier’s Letter: ‘Read this Paper with the utmost Attention, or
get it read to you by others’; and he went on to speak of ‘the old story in the
jest books, where a templar leaves a note in the key-hole, directing the
finder, if he cannot read it, to carry it to the stationer at the gate, who will
read it for him’. That comic illogicality, expanded and varied in a thousand
ways, is – as Ferriar saw – the stuff of Tristram Shandy.
From the moment of publication, Tristram Shandy had its enemies. Its
fame in the 1760s might sweep England, and make the author famous and
rich, fêted in London and Paris. But there were voices saying that the book
was obscene, or pointless, or deficient in everything that a novel ought to
provide. The fact that pointlessness was one of Sterne’s points, that he was
out to flout and taunt humdrum expectations – this meant little. By 1776 the
greatest critic of the age, Dr Johnson, could asseverate that ‘Nothing odd
will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.’ A Cambridge don in 1765 had
been as massively confident about the fate of this nonsensical book:
Mark my words, and remember what I say to you; however much it may be talked about
at present, yet, depend upon it, in the course of twenty years, should any one wish to
refer to the book in question, he will be obliged to go to an antiquary to inquire for it.
The don it was that died. Tristram Shandy goes marching on – or, in
Sterne’s mockingly seedy words, it has managed to ‘swim down the gutter
of Time’.
Sterne inveigles us into a predicament, and so neatly that we cannot help
joining in his laughter at us. Just what the predicament is can be seen from a
standard work of reference, the Oxford Companion to English Literature. It
sets out to summarize Tristram Shandy for us:
In spite of the title, the book gives us very little of the life, and nothing of the opinions,
of the nominal hero, who gets born only in vol. iv, and breeched in vol. vi, and then
disappears from the story. Instead we have a group of humorous figures: Walter Shandy
of Shandy Hall, Tristram’s father, peevish but frank and generous, full of paradoxical
notions, which he defends with great show of learning; ‘my uncle Toby’, his brother,
wounded in the groin at the siege of Namur, whose hobby is the science of attacking
fortified towns, which he studies by means of miniature scarps, ravelins, and bastions
on his bowling-green, a man ‘of unparalleled modesty’ and amiability; Corporal Trim,
his servant, wounded in the knee at Landen, devoted to his master and sharing his
enthusiasm for the military art, voluble but respectful. Behind these three major figures,
the minor characters, Yorick the parson, Dr Slop, Mrs Shandy, and the widow Wadman,
play a more elusive part…
Sterne would have relished the fact that such a summary, useful though it is,
suggests a man throwing up his hands or throwing in the sponge.
That Sterne was a creative genius was not evident till he was in his forty-
seventh year. It was then, in 1759, that he published the first two books of
Tristram Shandy. Till then he had been merely a Yorkshire priest who
dabbled in writing. A few sermons; a satirical squib called A Political
Romance (later The History of a Good Warm Watch Coat), attacking
ecclesiastical chicanery in York – these are not evidence of genius, and they
had not brought him fame.
He was born on 24 November 1713, in Clonmel in Ireland, the son of an
ensign in the army. (His memories of military life may have influenced the
characterization of Uncle Toby.) His father died in 1731, and his mother
stayed in Ireland. His opportunity to attend Jesus College, Cambridge, was
provided by a generous cousin. Sterne did not prove a distinguished student,
but he read widely – and he made a lifelong friend, John Hall (later Hall-
Stevenson), rich, eccentric, dissolute, and the future patron of a revelling set
which Sterne attended, ‘the Demoniacs’. Already, while still at the
university, Sterne suffered a haemorrhage of the lungs; ill-health was to dog
him, and to produce some of the most courageously humorous passages in
Tristram Shandy. With the help of uncle Jaques, precentor and canon of
York, Sterne earned his livings. He took holy orders, became a priest in
1738 and was presented to the vicarage of Sutton-on-the-Forest near York.
His experiences during twenty years were to furnish or at least suggest
those of Parson Yorick, a veiled self-portrait, mocking but not self-
lacerating. He progressed to a prebendal stall at York, and then to a richer
one, and in 1741 he married Elizabeth Lumley, whom he had courted for
two years. It was not to be the happiest of marriages.
His life was unobtrusive and cultivated. An amateur painter and
musician (these other arts are wittily invoked in Tristram Shandy), he was
also something of a writer. But it was not until 1759 – immediately
following the suppression of The Good Warm Watch-Coat, which had
offended local susceptibilities – that he began The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. His marriage was crumbling, and his wife was
temporarily insane. It was against this grim background that he flung
himself into a work of exuberant humour. After six weeks he had reached
Chapter XVIII; after six months, the first two volumes were completed. His
offer to the publisher Dodsley was at first rejected. But a small edition was
put out, and Sterne found himself famous. Acclaimed by men as different as
David Garrick and Bishop Warburton, Sterne had hospitality and flattery
lavished on him. He was commissioned to supply fresh volumes. He was
invited to Windsor. His portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ‘I
wrote, not to be fed but to be famous,’ he said.
The Sermons of Mr. Yorick were rushed out in 1760, scandalizing many
people, not by their substance, but by their title. Yet Sterne delighted in
scandalizing people, and scandal is a form of fame. He did not relax;
Volumes III and IV of Tristram Shandy were finished by the end of 1760,
and Volumes V and VI by the end of 1761. The strain can hardly have
helped his health, and he was sent to the south of France to recuperate. The
recuperation included being idolized by Parisian society. Mrs Sterne and the
daughter Lydia were sent for, and Sterne spent more than a year in
Toulouse. (His foreign travel was adapted for Volume VII of Tristram
Shandy.) The family moved about France, and in 1764 Sterne was ‘heartily
tired’ of it. He returned to England, leaving his family at their request. He
had been away for more than two and a half years. But Tristram Shandy had
by no means been neglected in England, though increasingly deplored,
vilified, and sniffed at. Volumes VII and VIII were published in 1765. Still
in ill-health, Sterne took a trip of seven months in France and Italy, from
which he was to create A Sentimental Journey, a traveller’s tale of great
charm, which he planned after the completion of Volume IX of Tristram
Shandy in 1766.
Visiting London in 1766, he met Mrs Eliza Draper, then in her twenties.
With her he engaged in a sentimental and flowery love-affair, broken after a
few months by her return to her middle-aged husband in Bombay. (Sterne’s
mawkish Journal to Eliza was not published until 1904.) The homecoming
of Mrs Sterne did not improve matters, but she was persuaded to return to
France. A Sentimental Journey was completed, and published in February
1768. A month later, Sterne was fatally ill; influenza became pleurisy, and
he died on 18 March 1768. His brief but hectic writing life was over, and he
left debts of £1,100 and assets of £400. Fortunately he had also left a comic
masterpiece.
The tradition of ‘learned wit’ came down to Sterne from Rabelais and from
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. D. W. Jefferson has written excellently on
what such a tradition meant to Sterne, with its mockery of mustiness, its
half-loving ridicule of learning run mad, its profane zest for theological
speculation. Hence Sterne’s delighted proffering of documentation: the
legal argument about where Tristram’s mother would have to lie in; the
medical-cum-theological arguments about whether or not a child can be
baptized before it is born; the gigantic curse of Bishop Ernulphus. All this,
with a battery of learning (real and fake), with translations on facing pages,
and with contemptuous gusto.
Another tradition – the book as a physical object, with all the
conventions and paraphernalia of printing – has been well commented on
by Hugh Kenner. It is Jonathan Swift who stands behind the brilliant
versatility and trickery of Sterne’s juggling with the book itself. As Kenner
has pointed out, you can’t say a footnote. Sterne exploits just this gulf, so
that, although his style is superbly conversational, a reader is continually
being teased into realizing that writing is not, after all, the same as
conversation. When Dr Slop crosses himself, a cross ( ) suddenly pops up
in print – how do you speak that? Or indicate by an inflection of the
speaking voice that such-and-such is in square brackets? Sterne took all
such jokes and precisions as far as they can go: his black page when Yorick
dies; his squiggly graphs to show the narrative line which he had
accomplished; the blank page for a chapter torn out, and the blank page
(very different) upon which the reader may inscribe his own description of
Widow Wadman’s beauty; the chapters misplaced but turning up in the end
– all this is a serious reminder of the difference between literature and life;
but it is first and foremost superbly funny. We are never allowed to forget
that a book, among other things, is a solid object:
WE’LL not stop two moments, my dear Sir,—only, as we have got thro’ these five
volumes, (do, Sir, sit down upon a set——they are better than nothing) …
It was Sterne who saw the possibilities of combining ‘learned wit’ and
book-making with the ordinary novelistic pleasures, often thwarted in
Tristram Shandy but not invariably.
Not that it is easy to define Sterne’s originality. Wayne C. Booth, in a
very important study, has shown that the novels of the 1750s made many
attempts at self-conscious narration, with a comically intrusive writer
preoccupied by the problems of writing. Just as Wordsworth’s Lyrical
Ballads were not in fact revolutionary but rather a late indemnifying of
some feeble predecessors, so Tristram Shandy is the culmination of a
decade of such experiment.
Sterne was fascinated by the problems which have come to dominate our
recent art, especially the problems about deception in a work of art, about
what kind of credence we are to place in art itself. He would have been
amused at a recent development, the paintings of Jim Dine, who – as John
Richardson has said –
is obsessed with problems of art and illusion, shadow and substance, image and reality.
In his earlier pictures he contrasted different kinds of reality. He would take an actual
shoe and set it off against its painted image and its name – SHOE … And to give this
assemblage an extra degree of reality Dine has embedded a real light-switch in the
canvas and plugged a real lamp into it.
For any critic confronted with such heterogeneous material it is natural
to murmur ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ But then, that, Sterne insisted,
was exactly the problem, whether in writing or in anything else: where do
you begin? And at once we come up against the central paradox about his
novel: that it hugely widened the potentialities of the novel-form and yet
that, unlike most novels, it is concerned explicitly with reminding us that
there are things which you cannot expect a novel to do. The greatness of
Sterne is that, with humour and sensitivity, he insists all the time that novels
cannot save us. In other words he never used his gifts without recalling to
our attention the limitations of all such gifts. He has, for example, a
wonderful gift for characterization – one thinks of Walter Shandy, with his
bizarre theories on names and on noses, or of Uncle Toby, who combines
the most gentle of temperaments with an unceasing preoccupation with war.
Certainly Sterne is able to let us know a very great deal about these people,
but his unusual strength lies in the fact that at the same time he insists –
without getting either mystical or servile about it – that in the end
everybody is unknowable.
Certainly the rise of the novel was a great achievement, but Sterne
seems to have been one of the first to realize that a novelist, just because he
was indeed creating, might be tempted to think himself endued with godlike
powers of scrutiny. So instead of the omniscient, omnipotent narrator
humorously deployed by Fielding, Sterne substitutes the vague half-
knowledge and frustrated impotence of Tristram. Of course the result is
very funny and not at all despairing; the book has an unquenchable
optimism and vitality, despite all the sufferings of Sterne’s own life. But all
the same the limits of a novelist’s (and indeed any man’s) knowledge and
power are wittily, and resolutely, insisted on. The novelist, like the rest of
us, is committed to the idea of getting to know people, but he must not get
too confident about his ability to know what makes so-and-so tick. Sterne
(‘Alas, poor Yorick!’) returned again and again to echoes of Hamlet; he
may have remembered Hamlet’s remonstrance when Guildenstern treats
him as a simple musical instrument: ‘Why looke you now, how unworthy a
thing you make of me: you would play upon mee; you would seem to know
my stops: you would pluck out the heart of my Mysterie.’ That is any man
to any man – and particularly any character to his creator. These days,
Sterne is often reproached for immorality, but he seems to me triumphant in
this most basic morality of all. He neither despairs nor anatomizes. In
Tristram Shandy we hear Sterne’s voice behind Tristram’s in the discussion
of ‘Momus’s glass in the human breast’, by which we should be able to gaze
into people:
had the said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to
have taken a man’s character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to
a dioptrical bee-hive, and look’d in.
And of course this is a good joke. But it is more than a joke, since it doesn’t
merely mock a novelist’s pretensions. What it does is insist on setting limits
to a novelist’s optimism. The novel may have been for Sterne and his
contemporaries an excitingly new form, but Sterne manages to bring home
to the reader what a novel could not do as well as what it could. Which is
why the best criticism of Sterne’s characters is that which brings out, very
simply, how real and how incomprehensible they are. Particularly
Coleridge’s account of Walter Shandy’s character,
the essence of which is a craving for sympathy in exact proportion to the oddity and
unsympathizability of what he proposes; – this coupled with an instinctive desire to be
at least disputed with, or rather, both in one, to dispute and yet to agree.
Sterne achieves what this kind of novel can achieve, and insists on the
limits of such an achievement. And this was noted, in a way, by even as
unsympathetic a critic as the Victorian, Walter Bagehot. Bagehot complains
of Sterne’s characters that they are ‘unintelligibilities, foreign to the realm
of true art. But’ – he goes on, contrasting other characters – ‘as soon as they
can be explained to us…’ Yet that is exactly the point of view which Sterne
writes against: that the novel can simply ‘explain’ people to us, that it has
no truck with unintelligibilities, that there is such a thing as what Bagehot
here called ‘the optional world of literature, which we can make as we
please’. Walter Shandy and Uncle Toby, like all people, imaginary or
otherwise, are in some ways intelligible (Sterne shows us that), and also
ultimately unintelligible (he shows us that too).
There is a similar dilemma in literature itself. From one point of view, to
the writer nothing matters more than writing. From another, writing is
ultimately as nothing compared to living. Sterne belonged to an age which
was increasingly tempted to look upon literature as an ultimate good, and he
was writing in a form – the novel – which quite rightly thought that it was
fitted to accomplish literary tasks in some ways more profound, more true
and more complete than any literature that had preceded it. But Sterne, with
a comedy that is a million miles from preaching or sententiousness,
manages to bring out, simultaneously, that we must hold to two opposing
points of view.
Yeats said that ‘words alone are certain good’, and there is a sense in
which every writer would have to agree. But Sterne’s brilliant tactic was to
bring out all the time how severe the limits of words are. The potential
arrogance of literature – in its relations to the other arts, to the sciences, to
religion, to life – is put wittily before us, and by a man who writes so well
that he can hardly be suspected of denigrating a skill which he himself
lacks.
It is this which is the serious reason for the wonderfully comic pages
that are given to the other intellectual disciplines: the pages about the law,
science (particularly medicine), religion, history, psychology, even
psychiatry. All of these are presented to us in the book, and in every case
we cannot help reflecting that despite their excesses or absurdities they do
embody truthful and essential ways of dealing with life that are not the way
of literature. Law, history, psychology, science – they are in their turn
judged by literature, and their limits, the potentialities and even the
actuality of their arrogance, are all the time insisted on. The juxtaposition of
literature with all those other ways of understanding humanity performs the
two-fold task: it shows that literature can never be the be-all and end-all of
human existence, and it shows that there is no substitute for literature.
And despite the affectionate ridicule of the absurdities of them all, there
is no suggestion in Tristram Shandy that we can dismiss them as a waste of
time. In this Sterne is very different from a writer to whom he owed a great
deal: Jonathan Swift. To Swift the scientific experiments of the Royal
Society, the cogitations of philosophers and theologians, were more or less
a waste of time. To Sterne, they are for one thing more genially comic; for
another, they are shown to minister to permanent human needs. There is a
magnificent saying of St Augustine, one which a modern writer influenced
by Sterne, Samuel Beckett, has quoted with particular relish and sadness:
‘Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved; do not presume, one of the
thieves was damned.’ Admittedly those words speak of a world very
different from Sterne’s, and if Beckett were not an important heir of Sterne
it would be altogether far-fetched to quote them. And yet there is a sense in
which Sterne’s great comic novel urged his exasperated readers: ‘Do not
despair, do not presume’ – and that at the moment in history when
literature, particularly the novel, was becoming much tempted to presume.
Hence Sterne’s delighted use of the other arts in his novel. The theatre is
present in the repeated stage directions, and in the vocabulary which speaks
all the time of the ‘stage’, of ‘lifting the curtain’ and so on. Often with
invocations to Sterne’s friend, the greatest actor of his day, David Garrick.
Once again, though, the effect is many-sided. By speaking of the drama,
Sterne not only reminds us of the essential limitations of the novelist’s
method – even one who takes as many liberties as he does. We cannot help
being reminded that if the intention really is to set figures unmistakably
before us in the flesh, then the novel just cannot do it as well as the drama.
Even when Sterne lavishes all his skill on a minute description of Trim’s
physical posture. On stage, Trim would simply stand there. But conversely,
the inherent limitations of the drama are not forgotten in Tristram Shandy –
as soon as Sterne modestly invokes the dramatist’s art, we are reminded of
how superbly the novelist, and the novelist alone, can make us aware of the
faintly tenuous and hesitating currents of internal thought and emotion.
There is a similar reminder in Sterne’s incorporation of the pictorial arts.
He himself painted, and it is not surprising that again and again he resorted
to the vocabulary of drawing, sketching, and so on. His allusions to
Hogarth, to Raphael, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, are all deliciously comic –
there is a fetching lunacy about trying to rival the brush with the pen. Sterne
played the violin and the cello, and that vocabulary too he employed
continuously. Throughout the novel there is a consistent use of musical
metaphor and of music, and in particular there is Uncle Toby’s habit of
whistling Lillabullero whenever something particularly tries his temper or
understanding. Of course, like the painting analogies, all this has a broadly
comic effect – it allows Sterne to show off outrageously, and it makes his
novel delightfully encyclopedic. But basically there is the same concern to
praise literature for what it alone can do, and to insist at the same time that
literature is only one among many arts.
But let me get back to the idea ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ Tristram
is setting out to record ‘the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy’. But
where ought he to start? At birth? No, because much of his life was shaped
before then. For one thing, Tristram shares his father’s notion (widely held
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) that the moment of conception
affects the embryo. So we need to know about Mr Shandy and his notions.
For another thing, Tristram’s whole life has been affected by the fact that
his nose was crushed at birth by Dr Slop’s forceps. So we need to know
how this came about. That is why the famous and unforgettable first chapter
of Tristram Shandy begins and ends like this:
I Wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both
equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they
duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing; …
Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?——Good G
—! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the
same time,——Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with
such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?——Nothing.
And there we are – Mr Shandy’s animal spirits dispersed just at the vital
moment. Such was the price he paid for his habit of winding the family
clock on the first Sunday night of each month, and taking care of ‘some
other little family concernments’ at the same time. Already on the first
page, Sterne’s themes are fairly before us. Association of ideas as the cause
of folly and peril; the comic frustrations caused by time (it would be a
clock); our unwary habit of thinking that communication means speaking
(‘Pray, what was your father saying?——Nothing’). That mention of the
creation of the world, and the oath (‘Good G—’), bring already into focus
Sterne’s curious interpenetration of the sacred and the profane. But then Mr
Shandy, in his way, was creating a world – and later in the novel we hear,
again with the same double entendre, that the first Sunday of the month was
always ‘a sacrament day’.
Sterne’s first page, in fact, alerts us to almost all his concerns, and it
does so with a technical audacity that matches its subject-matter. Plus the
fact that it is also, at the same time, about writing a novel (or
autobiography). This witty trick has now gone stale on us, simply because it
has been so often done. I, for one, groan when I find Alexander Trocchi’s
novel Cain’s Book is about a man who is writing a novel called Cain’s
Book, and that Nathalie Sarraute’s novel The Golden Fruits is about a novel
called The Golden Fruits. But we cannot blame Sterne, we must not visit on
the father the sins of the children. Sterne tells us these anecdotes, and he
tells us about telling them, which is why the opening is perfectly apt. The
conception of Tristram is the conception of the book, and when Mr Shandy
mentions the creation of the world, we are indeed in at the creation of a
world: the creation of Tristram leads to the creation by Tristram of the
world of Tristram Shandy. Indeed, as Sterne brings out at one point by a sly
emphasis on a Latin quotation (‘Quod omne animal post coitum est triste’),
Tristram’s name is to be connected with the idea that ‘After coition every
animal is sad.’ The joke is that poor Tristram is sad for the rest of his life,
not because of his own but because of his parents’ coition.
For Tristram (as for us), the concatenation of circumstances, the pressure
of a million imponderables, is such that life is a gigantically tangled skein.
The problem of where his life and opinions really begin continues to dog
him; after about three hundred pages, he decides that it really begins with
the death of his brother:
FROM this moment I am to be considered as heir-apparent to the Shandy family—and it
is from this point properly, that the story of my Life and my Opinions sets out; with all
my hurry and precipitation I have but been clearing the ground to raise the building—
and such a building do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was
executed since Adam.
And there we are, back at the first page and ‘the creation of the world’. It is,
after all, a time-honoured analogy that sees God as the great architect or the
author of our being (Tristram himself refers to ‘the Supreme Maker and
Designer’), and which therefore sees a human creator as sharing in the great
act of creation. Sterne thought that authors might get above themselves.
Coleridge, in all solemnity, was to speak of the Imagination as ‘a repetition
in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM’.
Sterne was already aware of the novelist’s predicament – one which
touched all artists but pressed particularly on those who claimed with more
emphasis that they showed life in all its circumstantiality. As Henry James
said in his preface to Roderick Hudson:
Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is
eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall
happily appear to do so. He is in the perpetual predicament that the continuity of things
is the whole matter, for him, of comedy and tragedy; that this continuity is never, by the
space of an instant or an inch, broken, and that, to do anything at all, he has at once
intensely to consult and intensely to ignore it.
A fine comic stroke, and of course the flourish shows that ‘a man is free’,
because to incorporate such a diagram is in itself an act of unexpected
freedom by the writer.
Even Sterne’s notorious habits of obscenity and sentimentality often
have the same foundation in a sense of the limits of language. Most of the
time his obscenity seems to me wonderfully comic, and it could be argued
that one of his most important innovations was that he made bawdy jokes at
home in the novel. But in any case a remark by Mr Shandy makes explicit
the connection between the subject of sex and the scepticism about
language. More than on any other subject, the vocabulary of sex is
impoverished, inadequate, or laughable:
for what reason is it, that all the parts thereof—the congredients—the preparations—the
instruments, and whatever serves thereto, are so held as to be conveyed to a cleanly
mind by no language, translation, or periphrasis whatever?
Of course Sterne also took pleasure in obscene puns for their own sake. But
their sake often coincided with the sake of his novel. And so did his
sentimentality, which is perfectly at one with the capacious generosity of
his novel’s structure:
Here,——but why here,——rather than in any other part of my story,––—I am not able
to tell;——but here it is,——my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle Toby,
once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.
This is beautifully done, with all Sterne’s perceptiveness about the way in
which an ordinary gesture (laying down a pipe) can be charged with feeling
and with character (and with innuendo). Notice, too, the comic but touching
modulation by which we pass from the sexual innocence of ‘Was I her
brother’, to ‘Let us go to my brother Shandy’s, said he’. Toby does not reel
at the shock, he simply becomes even more gently courteous than ever, so
that one remembers Hazlitt’s praise of Toby’s characterization as ‘one of the
finest compliments ever paid to human nature’. But this mention of the
spider’s web does even more than that – more than catch delicately a
physical gesture, an innuendo, a man’s character, and a fine-spun illusion.
The unravellings of a spider’s web: that applies, too, to the incident itself.
Trim has unravelled for Toby the web of female solicitude, and so Toby
escapes from Widow Wadman’s invitation to come into her parlour. It is not
an accident that one of the most famous moments in the book shows us that
Toby would not hurt a fly; he lets one out of the window exclaiming ‘This
world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.’
Sterne’s greatness is not simply that he wrote a novel about writing a
novel; his triumph is due to the fact that (unlike most of his imitators) he
gave as much of his genius to his invented world (the characters of Mr
Shandy and Toby) as to the theme of inventing it. Wheels within wheels –
but each as well-made as the others, and none buckled. So that the final
threads of that wonderfully suggestive ‘spider’s web’ touch the writing of
the book itself. Trim unravels the web of Toby’s amours, and it is this
unravelling itself which unravels the whole novel and brings it – a few
pages later – to an end. The dénouement – that is, literally, the unravelling.
To think, or to write, is both to spin and to unravel. As Tristram says of his
father’s book, the Tristrapaedia, ‘My father spun his, every thread of it, out
of his own brain, – or reeled and cross-twisted what all other spinners and
spinsters had spun before him.’
All the implications of Uncle Toby’s spider’s web, then, are delightfully
apt, and handled with a correct self-consciousness that never becomes
inhibiting. Sterne’s whole attempt was to create a web as beautifully
wrought, as strong, and as delicate – one which, in catching the
consciousness of the characters, would at the same time express the
consciousness of their creator. He is fascinated by the fluctuating and
undulating impulses of thought and feeling. In The Art of Fiction, Henry
James said:
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind
of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of
consciousness and catching every airborne particle in its tissue.
But the joke – as John Ferriar pointed out one hundred and fifty years ago –
is that Sterne has himself lifted all this from Burton’s Anatomy of
Melancholy. Sterne plagiarizes in order to speak against plagiarism – and in
any case Burton himself, it seems, had borrowed most of it. There could
hardly be a more witty, or more telling, illustration of the point which
Sterne was so concerned to make: that, at every moment, an infinite
regression lies in wait for the unwary. Such vertiginous regressions, mirrors
reflected in mirrors, are a characteristic anxiety of modern literature. There
is William Empson’s poem ‘Dissatisfaction with Metaphysics’:
Two mirrors with Infinity to dine
Drink him below the table when they please.
There are the Chinese-boxes of guilt and self-reproach which trap Patrick
Standish, the hero of Kingsley Amis’s Take a Girl Like You:
But I’m not trying to get credit with you by saying I know I’m a bastard. Nor by saying
I’m not trying to get credit. Nor by saying I’m not trying to by saying … trying … you
know what I mean. Nor by saying that. Nor by saying that.
Sterne’s courageous humour keeps these wheels as circles of the happy, but
it would not take much change of perspective to see them as circles of the
damned – as they become in Samuel Beckett. What Beckett calls ‘the
poisonous ingenuity of Time in the science of affliction’ might be viewed
by Sterne as the delicious ingenuity of Time in the science of entertainment.
This is why Tristram Shandy is full of incidents or images which relate,
at one and the same time, to the characters and to the novel itself. When Dr
Slop’s obstetrical bag has been trussed with a dozen knots so that it won’t
rattle, and then poor Dr Slop has to wrestle hurriedly with them (the baby is
being born), we are aware not only of Dr Slop, but of the fact that Tristram
has created – as part of the novel – exactly this ‘multiplicity of round-
abouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or
point where the strings met’. The incident within the novel (for Dr Slop)
acts just as it does in the novel (for the reader). The greatness of Sterne is in
his doing justice to both, with equal fidelity and awareness. It is not that he
pretends to gaze on them both but is really interested only in the knots of
his novel-writing; no, his gaze is genuinely bifocal even if that often means
a comic squint. When Corporal Trim hands Toby a book, a sermon drops
out of it – in exactly the same way as it drops out of the book Tristram
Shandy itself. (A further spin is given to the wheels by the fact that it was a
sermon which Laurence Sterne had already published.) The neatest triumph
comes for both Tristram and Sterne when Tristram exclaims, ‘For in talking
of my digression——I declare before heaven I have made it!’ And a similar
point is made by the mysterious appearance, from time to time, of an editor
of the book, whose footnotes correct Tristram and open up yet another vista
of regression.
When we hear how ‘the learned Peireskius’ walked five hundred miles
to see a sailing chariot, the book itself trudges off as valiantly and absurdly
as did Peireskius. When we are told that the parson Yorick (i.e. Sterne) once
wrote the word ‘Bravo’ at the foot of one of his sermons, but in a later ink
crossed the word out – then we see in a flash that the word ‘Bravo!’ is in
effect being written at the foot of the telling of this anecdote: and then
retracted? When Corporal Trim tries, again and again, to tell Toby the story
of the King of Bohemia, only to be foiled and finally left to a series of false
starts – we think too of Tristram Shandy itself, a book which promised us
his life and opinions and which finally back-pedals so that it concludes four
years before Tristram was born. The frustrating of the story of the King of
Bohemia – like that of Tristram Shandy – is incomparably comic. But here
too it is easy to be reminded of the pain and even madness which Sterne’s
humour fends off. When Sterne’s wife temporarily went out of her mind,
she believed that she was the Queen of Bohemia.
Goethe praised Sterne’s ‘contentedness’ – a quality which we are now
likely to regard with some suspicion. Surely the writer’s business is not to
be contented, but to rouse us to discontent? But this is another place where
modern literature has tended to throw all its weight on one arm of the
paradox about literature, dangerously one-sided. Yes, from one point of
view, we do ask that literature will make us more aware, more sensitive
about the suffering of the world. But if thoughtlessness, lack of imagination,
callousness – if these are an enemy of literature and of life, they are not the
only enemy. What about madness? What about being so sensitive to the
suffering of the world that you in effect opt out of the world? No, Sterne’s
‘contentedness’ may be attacked as complacency, but it is something very
different: a necessary resilience. When Mr Shandy hears of the death of his
son Bobby, it is not long before the exhilaration of making a flowing speech
on death has allowed him to forget the actual death. Sterne does not snicker
at the ability of the human mind to behave in such a way – on the contrary,
he finds it something to admire and to be grateful for. And if Sterne’s
writing seems unthinkably far from the world of madness, we have only to
think of how Uncle Toby behaves – and of how Sterne’s wife went mad. Dr
Johnson thought Sterne a sordid writer, but Sterne’s work bears out
Johnson’s magnificent judgement that ‘The only end of writing is to enable
the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.’ Tristram Shandy
enables us to do both.
1967
Editor’s Introduction
by Melvyn New
Thirty years have passed – a generation – since Christopher Ricks wrote his
fine introduction to the first Penguin edition of Tristram Shandy (1967), and
it is a mark of its worthiness that it can be reprinted without apology. As
Sterne himself well knew (‘Of all the cants which are canted in this canting
world… the cant of criticism is the most tormenting’ [III.xii]), criticism,
whether of literature or painting, music or dramatic performance, can only
rarely hope to survive its hour. Thirty years is a lifetime for almost all
artistic endeavours, ample time to be born and to die; for critical
endeavours, and especially in this present age of frenzied academic
commentary, thirty years might well seem an eternity.
The enduring masterpieces of literature, the classics of any tradition,
find their power not in some mystical transcendence of the fugacity of
critical commentary, but, quite the contrary, in their capacity to relish the
rapid succession of ideas about themselves, much as a fire feeds upon –
even as it destroys – whatever fuels its existence. The smaller but no less
difficult accomplishment of literary criticism is to survive long enough to
be a moment – to change my metaphor – in the collective train of witnesses
to that endurance, even while succumbing to those changes in times, tastes
and temperaments that announce a commentary’s individual demise.
It is no coincidence, then, that in the list of Further Reading following
this Introduction only four of thirty titles are dated earlier than 1967. Unlike
some who would despair over this evidence of criticism’s short life-span, I
see in the currency of my list no cause for complaint. Indeed, one might
rather suggest a small celebration is in order, for the list assures us that the
critical conversation accompanying Tristram into the twenty-first century is
spirited and plentiful: a ‘classic’ ought not to hope for a better
complement/compliment from its commentary. More than either complaint
or celebration, however, this fecundity of commentary calls for our need to
acknowledge the unending process of change by which one generation’s
insights become another generation’s blindness.
It will be useful to begin this acknowledgement with two contributions
to Sterne scholarship since 1967 that may have somewhat longer ‘shelf-
lives’ than most commentaries. The first is Arthur H. Cash’s monumental
two-volume biography of Sterne (Methuen, 1975, 1986), replacing the
biography by Wilbur Cross, first written in 1909, revised in 1925, and again
in 1929. Biography, too, is subject to tastes and times; questions we ask
about a writer’s life today are different in many respects from those asked
by Cross. Still, as one reads Cash’s account of Sterne’s life, so carefully and
minutely chronicled as to event and environment, there develops a strong
sense that additional information and new perspectives will not alter greatly
the biographical information we have now accumulated about Laurence
Sterne. The story will be retold for future generations, but these retellings
will, without doubt, rely heavily upon the work of Cash; and while new
materials may continue to appear – as, for example, political and other
ephemeral writings possibly by Sterne, as suggested by Kenneth Monkman
in issues of The Shandean: An Annual Volume Devoted to Laurence Sterne
and his Works from 1989 to 1992 – they will almost certainly not change in
significant ways the broad outlines of Sterne’s life story. One simply
expects Cash’s splendid biography to suffice for much of the next century.
I must be far more careful in my claims concerning the second
commentary; as Sterne warns us, quoting Bishop Joseph Hall, ‘it is an
abominable thing for a man to commend himself’. Let it simply be noted
that the text of Tristram Shandy in this edition is taken from the Florida
Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne (Vols. I and II, 1978), the result of
an extensive study of the textual history of the work; this Penguin edition is
the first trade edition to make a fully acknowledged use of the information
garnered by that study. It is, as well, the first trade edition able to rely on the
500 pages of annotations that comprise the third volume of the Florida
Tristram Shandy (1984).
Since James A. Work’s valuable textbook edition published in 1940,
subsequent annotators, prior to the Florida Edition, have in large measure
merely duplicated his work (often with inadequate credit), scattering a new
finding here and there, but, presumably for reasons of space, skimping
elsewhere. Work’s annotations, another instance of a more enduring
scholarly effort, in themselves or their reappearance in other textbook
editions, have served Tristram readers for more than half a century; indeed,
as the Florida annotators (myself, Richard A. Davies and W. G. Day)
pointed out, few if any eighteenth-century fiction writers have been better
served in being made available to a general reading audience than Sterne.
Without doubt, Work’s influence continues to be felt throughout the Florida
Notes, and hence again in these new Penguin annotations. Still, Work’s
primary efforts were historical and pedagogical: he identified historical and
contemporary personages mentioned by Sterne, defined ‘difficult’ and
foreign words and phrases, and elucidated allusions that a modern audience
could not be expected to grasp. The Florida Notes serves several additional
purposes.
Most important, perhaps, the Florida Notes provides the full text of
passages from which Sterne borrowed, so that comparisons can
conveniently be made, without recourse to sources available only in the
largest libraries. Sterne’s manipulation of the borrowed materials that
constitute so significant a portion of Tristram’s texture is one key to
understanding the work. Although it was impossible to proffer all of the
Florida materials in this edition, significant and sufficient examples are
provided, so that general readers may explore for themselves this important
aspect of Sterne’s creative process.
The Florida Notes also expands the list of Sterne’s borrowings, helped
immensely by generations of scholars, from the first serious inquirer into
Sterne’s borrowings, John Ferriar in 1798, to Theodore Baird, who in 1936
uncovered Sterne’s source for most of his historical and military details
(Nicolas Tindal’s translation and continuation of Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s
Histoire d’Angleterre, a source surprisingly ignored by Work, and hence by
subsequent editors as well), to the important discovery of Sterne’s use of
Pierre Charron’s De la Sagesse (Of Wisdome) by Françoise Pellan in 1972.
As in the Florida Notes, every effort has been made in my notes herein to
acknowledge previous scholarship, although limitations of space may
perhaps have led to some unfortunate lapses. In that I opened this
Introduction with a discussion of criticism’s evanescence, let me note here
that one may also argue that nothing written about a classic work ever
completely disappears. Certainly from the annotator’s viewpoint, an
awareness that one is building on the work of others, named or unnamed, is
paramount. All annotated editions, in this regard, are variorums, celebrating
the enterprise of commentary almost as much as the work on which they
comment; every annotator, in brief, is a ‘dwarf’, standing on the shoulders
of the ‘giant’ of accumulated commentary.
The Florida Notes also offers many ‘parallel’ passages from sources
contemporary to Sterne, where no single source could be identified, but
where it was felt to be unwise to label an image, topic, method, or
discussion as ‘uniquely’ Shandean. Here annotation serves not so much to
elucidate a text as to put in question readings that claim a work is sui
generis, a label that bespeaks a reader’s lack of knowledge more frequently
than it records the true status of the work. Readers for whom any critical
restraint is an unfair imposition on the career of their hobby-horses will find
all annotation irksome, and these ‘parallels’ particularly so; on the other
hand, the old-fashioned study of ‘analogues’ can often forestall inept
commentary, particularly of the sort that insists an author’s sole significance
comes from being uniquely out of joint with his or her own time or place,
and hence, uniquely, one of ‘us’ and not one of ‘them’.
Two illustrations will suffice. In Volume IV, chapter xvii, Sterne writes:
‘But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries—the most
obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest
sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted
understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost
every cranny of nature’s works…’ Perhaps no other passage in Tristram
Shandy has been more often invoked by critics over the past twenty-five
years, as they have applied various postmodern theories of indeterminacy to
Sterne’s eighteenth-century novel. The typical argument moves in this
direction: Fielding and Richardson lived in an essentialist world of
certainty, dominated by Christian absolutes; Sterne, on the other hand, lived
in the modern solipsistic world where there are no absolutes, where all
value is created by the human being. His world is, in short, a confusion of
‘riddles and mysteries’, akin to our own indeterminate and undecidable
universe. What then, the annotator may ask, are we to make of the fact that
the ‘riddles and mysteries’ passage very closely echoes two of Sterne’s
sermons, in both of which the context clearly suggests Sterne is restating a
commonplace Christian belief in the limitations of the postlapsarian human
mind? One year after the Florida Notes appeared, it was pointed out that a
passage in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (IV.3.22)
underlies all three passages; and more recently, while annotating the
sermons, I located Sterne’s actual verbatim source in the theologian John
Norris of Bemerton, a passage in his Practical Discourses upon Several
Divine Subjects, Volume Two (1691). In each instance, from Locke to Norris
to Sterne, the context of the passage is not postmodern angst, but 1
Corinthians 13:12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’
Perhaps there has never been a period in history in which the human mind
has not confronted the limitations of knowledge; perhaps – as twentieth-
century intellectuals – we are unique only in believing we are unique.
A second illustration comes from the final chapter of Tristram Shandy,
Walter’s lament over human sexuality. In annotating the passage, I have
quoted Sterne’s source, Pierre Charron’s Of Wisdome, at length, because
both the passage and its source seem of great importance for our
understanding of Sterne. Professor Ricks also singles out Walter’s lament,
as have numerous modern commentators, most of whom – even after 1972
and Pellan’s recovery of the debt to Charron – still do not account for the
fact that the words are not Sterne’s but Charron’s, who was, in turn,
rephrasing Montaigne, his mentor. Professor Ricks’s intuitive linking of the
passage with ‘scepticism’ takes on important new life when the source is
known. That one can comment on the passage brilliantly without knowing
of Charron’s influence is not to be gainsaid (though ‘brilliant’ commentary
is, indeed, a very rare occurrence). However, since we now know of
Charron’s influence on the passage, a reading without acknowledging his
presence is equivalent to reading an ‘abridged’ version; good readers, I
believe, always prefer the ‘complete’ text – with the understanding, of
course, that ‘completion’ is always a grace beyond the reach of criticism.
Finally, the present notes follow the Florida Notes in providing
illustrative passages from Sterne’s other writings, A Sentimental Journey,
the forty-five sermons, the correspondence and the minor works, when they
seem to contribute usefully to our understanding of Tristram Shandy. Here,
too, one is deeply indebted to previous scholarly work, especially Gardner
D. Stout’s 1967 edition of the Journey (California), and Lewis Perry
Curtis’s 1935 edition of the Letters (Oxford). The sermons are also now
available in a scholarly edition (the Florida Edition, Vols. IV and V [1996])
that was not available to the Florida Tristram Shandy editors. Some
materials from its 400 pages of annotations have contributed to the present
annotations, but the sermons remain a relatively untapped source of insight
into Sterne’s fiction. Indeed, one hope in annotating the sermons so
extensively – a hidden agenda, except that the purpose is self-evident – was
to raise Sterne’s clerical career in the consciousness of literary
commentators who have heretofore largely ignored this aspect of his life;
the outcome of this endeavour awaits the passage of time.
If the Florida Sermons has a not-so-hidden agenda, the annotations to
Tristram Shandy should also come under suspicion, for few if any ‘novels’
in the short history of the novel (a genre that emerged in western literature
only in Sterne’s day and may already be in rapid retreat) require this kind of
extensive annotation. When fictional emphasis is on the understanding of
character and relationships through the orderly (sequential) enactment of
narrated events, when these events establish their own internal context for
comprehension, indeed, when authors are guided, consciously or
unconsciously, by the drive for the ‘novelty’ buried in their genre’s name,
and therefore separate their work from, rather than connect it to, sources of
meaning outside its self-creating ‘real’ world, annotation takes on a sparse
form. As in modern scholarly editions of Fielding or Smollett, novels
require that historical figures be identified and that commonplaces
unfamiliar to our age, but not to the author’s, be explained; good narratives
eschew additional annotation, and in the best narratives one would actually
resent being driven away from the story to a footnote for an explanation.
The annotations to the Wesleyan edition of Tom Jones provide a good
example, especially because of the disproportionate number of notes
required for Fielding’s famous introductory chapters – which have a certain
kinship with the self-conscious narration of Tristram Shandy – while the
narrative itself is by and large self-explanatory. Maugham’s infamous
abridgement of Tom Jones, where he cut the introductory chapters in order
to highlight the narrative, comes to mind.
Sterne’s writing, like Fielding’s introductory chapters, demands a
different mode of annotation, one arising from its embeddedness (often
masked) in a literary past, the literary existence of its narrator (Tristram’s
primary occupation as an adult is to write his book), and its digressive
texture, so often consisting of borrowed documents and pseudo-documents,
counter-narratives and parodies. Professor Ricks points to the ways in
which this structure might serve as a riposte to the developing history of the
novel and that is certainly the way many (if not most) readers encounter
Tristram Shandy today, that is, as students in a course in the eighteenth-
century novel, in which Sterne comes after Defoe, Richardson and Fielding,
and before Smollett, sharing with them a chronological time-line and the
length of their books – and little else, except by way of contrast.
Interestingly, Sterne never mentions Defoe, Richardson or Fielding
anywhere in his canon, and mentions Smollett only as a miserable tourist,
the Smelfungus of A Sentimental Journey. The authors he does frequently
cite as his forebears come from another tradition, and Sterne invokes that
tradition often enough to put the notion that he was writing a novel or even
writing ‘against’ the novel into some question – assuming that we mean
something more than ‘a long work in prose’ when we use the generic term.
Sterne’s major sources, Rabelais, Montaigne, Burton, Cervantes and Swift,
when taken together, reflect a tradition of prose writing I prefer to label
satire, especially in so far as these immensely variegated sources indicate
that satire is not a mode of writing practised only by cynics and
misanthropes. Satire and comedy often march hand in hand, as in the
Restoration comedies of Wycherley and Congreve, for example, and in Don
Quixote; and satire has also shared a comfortable bed with gentle, though
telling, wit and urbanity, as in Horace and Montaigne.
Sterne consistently singles out Swift among his English-writing
predecessors; and when he decided to include a sermon in Volume II, it is
important to recognize that he chose one in which significant portions are
borrowed from a very similar sermon on the subject of conscience by Swift.
Critics intent on separating Sterne from Swift in order to pursue a reading
of Tristram Shandy within the novel tradition (or as part of the emerging
secularism that the novel heralds) have found it necessary to paint Swift
very darkly; his satire – and the author – are painted as the psychological
aberrations of a black misanthrope. I find this portrait absurd, if only
because Swift – like Sterne – so often makes me laugh at human absurdity
(rather, say, than gnash my teeth). More to the point, however one reads A
Tale of a Tub, it seems to me a work absolutely central, as both literary and
religious satire, to any meaningful reading of Tristram Shandy. As is the
case with Tristram Shandy and Charron, I would similarly argue that
reading Tristram without Swift’s Tale in mind is equivalent to reading an
abridged version. Whatever shape the tree finally took over the nine years
of its growth, it is necessary to recognize, I believe, that the seed of
Tristram Shandy was embedded in the Augustan satirists of the age
preceding Sterne’s own, and not in the mid-century novelists with whom he
is too often thoughtlessly contextualized.
Even before questions of literary influence can be raised, however, a
good reader of Tristram Shandy must confront Sterne’s twenty-two-year
career as a village vicar. His primary writing during this period, and perhaps
his primary reading as well, was of sermons, the predominant reading of
much of the mid-century population. In his forty-five sermons which have
survived, Sterne demonstrates a commitment to Christian belief as defined
by the centrist Anglicanism of his age and taught in the Cambridge of the
1730s, when he was in residence. His sermons are typically balanced
appeals to reason and emotion, the head and the heart, and to religion (the
institution) and revelation (Scripture). He is rarely if ever innovative,
certainly not about doctrine or truth, nor would he have wanted to stray
from established positions. He attacks Roman Catholics and enthusiasts
(Methodists) with some meanness, but little fire; he celebrates the
congregation’s virtues when he seeks charitable contributions, and
highlights their vices when he prepares them for Communion. Above all, he
denies the possibility of happiness or morality without religion, and asserts
again and again the Providential design of the world (and the special
Providence accorded England), from the first Adam’s fall to the second
Adam’s (Christ’s) redemptive sacrifice. That this preaching follows the lead
of the great Restoration preachers, most particularly John Tillotson, in its
embrace of plainness, simplicity, practical moral teaching, and a quiet yet
sincere emotionalism, has deceived some readers of Sterne (and of Tillotson
for that matter) into equating this mode of Anglicanism with socinianism,
deism, even secularism, but nothing could be further from its own sense of
itself as the continuation of Christ’s original Church, now flourishing under
His guidance and after a century of bloody Christian warfare, in the
growing prosperity and religious peace of eighteenth-century England.
Had Sterne died in 1758, his forty-fifth year, he would have done so
unnoticed by the world then – and certainly unrecognized by it today. But
when a silly dispute over Church prerogatives broke out in the York
establishment at the end of that year, Sterne was inspired to join the quarrel
with a little pamphlet he entitled A Political Romance. It is a reductive
satire and echoes two other writers, Rabelais and Swift, who satirized the
Church not to bring it down but to reform it. The guiding spirit, however,
was a third satirist, Horace, who is given pride of place on the title-page:
‘Ridiculum acri / Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat Res’ (Ridicule
often cuts hard knots more forcefully and effectively than gravity). A link is
thus forged between Sterne’s long clerical career and the onset of his nine-
year career as a writer.
The same link is evident in his next creative attempt, his ‘Fragment in
the Manner of Rabelais’, two chapters of an aborted parodic work on how
to write sermons, modelled, it seems clear, on Pope’s manual of instruction
in bad writing, Peri Bathous; or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry. Again, the
recourse to Pope seems no stray gesture, but an indication that Sterne’s
literary interests were rooted in the same age from which he took his
theological direction–and, perhaps, for many of the same reasons. To my
mind, these reasons, enormously complex by any measure, may be reduced
(and I emphasize that this is a ‘reduction’) to one particular observation
about reading Tristram Shandy. The real community of the Shandy world is
not, as is so often maintained by the ‘novelistic’ school of criticism, the
Shandy brothers or the Shandy household; rather, community in Tristram
Shandy is represented by all the authors and books summoned by Sterne, all
the documents and cultures and artifacts from which he erects his edifice, in
short, all that illustrates to us what it means to live in a world written by
God, and hence always approximated – but never finalized – by the same
human endeavour. At times the documents are necessarily ludicrous, as is
so much human effort in the face of the infinite, but at other times they are
useful and perhaps even profound, as human effort can also be. Sterne
keeps us aware of both possibilities, and aware above all that while every
attempt to create a world of certainty and truth will fail, the attempt is what
ties us to the community of humanity, what offers us the equivalent of
communion with our legacy. This legacy produces neither God’s world (the
theocracies of the seventeenth century) nor a world in which we are God
(the novels of the nineteenth century); rather, in its mass of fragments, we
confront the world of human endeavours towards truth and certainty (God),
we weigh them, and we find them always wanting, at times comically
wanting, at times tragically. In thus measuring our legacy (as good a
definition of satire as any other), we are inextricably linked to the past, but
we are also taught much about the limitations of our future. Birth and death
are indeed important subjects in Tristram Shandy, but as markers of the
human condition, rather than frames of narration.
Reading and writing seem to have been activities Sterne delighted in, not
as epistemological experiences, but ontological ones. He was not, that is to
say, as concerned as we are today with knowledge and ignorance, certainty
and indeterminacy, because truth (the Truth, the Word, the Logos) was
already known (revealed). The human problem he confronted was that our
path to this Truth is littered with fictions and follies, and that, far from
allowing these scatterings to discourage us, we must accept that they are the
sole contents of truth’s discourse in the human condition – beginning with
the scattering of ‘animal spirits’ that announces Tristram’s begetting. The
point of validation by which this babel of competing visions and visionary
constructs is to be evaluated is found within Sterne’s Christian faith, which
explained for him the origins of human folly and failure, the fragmentary
and unfulfilled nature of all human endeavour; and which offered, by the
sacrifices of redeeming charity and love, a plan of human reconciliation
with the divine, but never here and never now: ‘Hope springs eternal in the
human breast / Man never Is, but always To be blest.’
Tristram Shandy is neither parable nor allegory, but it shares with these
older (and enduring) modes of fiction a belief that fictions can ultimately
represent elements of Truth, and not merely other fictions. As a satire,
however, another older (and equally enduring) mode of narrative, Tristram
rides athwart this belief, much as Don Quixote tilts at windmills, and
Pantagruelians set forth for the oracle of the bottle: reality – precious and
beautiful precisely because it is not autonomous, not indeterminate, not
existential – is found in the impossible journey of postlapsarian humanity
towards truth.
The questions we ask about a text are rarely if ever generated solely by
the text itself; indeed, before we read the first page, we are enmeshed in a
web of preconceptions and preconditions from which our questions emerge.
The length of the work, the appearance of the printed page, the date, the
author’s name and the information we associate with it, the publisher, the
prefatory materials such as Professor Ricks and I are supplying all play a
part in weaving that web, as do the conditions under which we read, the
book(s) we read just prior to this one, and, of course, such personal factors
as age, education, disposition, experience. Finally, and overarching all these
considerations, is the era in which we live. One hundred years ago, for
example, questions about the indecency of Sterne’s fiction were uppermost
in readers’ minds; today, we actually compel students – for educational
purposes – to read Tristram Shandy.
Prefacers can hope to influence the construction of this web, but they
weave only one strand of many. Surely, however, the important point is for
readers to learn to recognize the pretextual nature of their questions; and,
equally important, to reject the most fundamental pretext of literary
commentary, that a text generates its own valid questioning. Good reading,
it might be suggested, is as much an examination of origins as of
conclusions; in this light, the origins of an author, of a work of art, and of a
critic’s questions are intricately intertwined, and asking ourselves about the
origins of an author’s preconceptions leads us to the origins of our own.
Hence, when we contemplate the possibility of Tristram Shandy’s origins in
Sterne’s clerical career and his invocations of Horace and Rabelais, Swift
and Pope, we may find ourselves in a better position than heretofore to
investigate our own origins as readers. As twentieth-century readers, for
example, it is difficult to escape the fact that many of our critical questions
originate in our secular outlook, which, in academic circles at least, often
takes a strong anti-clerical hue, an implicit belief that intelligent people
cannot sincerely hold to an organized religious faith. Or, from a different
tack, we might come to recognize what Northrop Frye has labelled our
mistaken novel-centred view of the fictional universe, that we tend to define
our expectations for any long prose work by its relationship to Dickens,
Flaubert, Henry James. In both instances, we can immediately note in our
‘origins’ the makings of some significant conflicts with Sterne’s.
The most interesting readings of Sterne in the past quarter-century, to
my mind, are readings against the grain of these two dominant
preconceptions of many twentieth-century readers. In recent years, the
approaches of criticism, whether new historicist or feminist, Marxist or
postmodernist, have all encouraged reading against the formerly prevailing
tendencies, ‘suspicious’ or ‘anti-authoritarian’ or ‘revolutionary’ readings
that tend to discover a complicity in repression among all previous writers
and critics alike. The readings produced by this viewpoint are in many ways
numbingly similar: works of art are all culpably less ‘radical’ than the
commentator, with radicalism (anti-establishmentarianism, not quite to
revive an old shibboleth) taken as the sine qua non of achievement. But
precisely because Sterne in earlier criticism was the ‘radical’ – the disrupter
of the ‘novel form’, the lewd cleric, the promoter of theories of life,
language and narrative that connected him to the most avant-garde thought
and practice of western culture – to read Sterne against the grain at the end
of this century means to read him in alternative contexts, and the best
criticism in recent years has done just that. Put another way, the universal
scepticism undergirding criticism in the past quarter-century has
everywhere challenged ‘received wisdom’, and since the received wisdom
about Tristram Shandy had to do with its radicalness, the ‘new’ wisdom
argues the traditional nature of Sterne’s enterprise, his embeddedness in his
own time and place. It is a paradox he might have enjoyed.
None of this is to deny, of course, that among eighteenth-century English
fiction writers, Sterne is perhaps the most important figure in terms of
influence on modern writers. When James Joyce wanted to explain
Finnegans Wake, his most experimental fiction, he invoked Sterne:
Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book. Yet the elements
are exactly what every novelist might use: man and woman, birth, childhood, night,
sleep, marriage, prayer, death. There is nothing paradoxical about this. Only I am trying
to build as many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose. Did you ever read
Laurence Sterne?
And when Thomas Mann tried to explain the achievement of his great
Joseph saga, he also invoked Sterne:
There is a symptom for the innate character of a work, for the category toward which it
strives… : that is the reading matter which the author prefers and which he considers
helpful while working on it… Well then, such strengthening reading during the last
Joseph years was provided by two books: Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’ and
Goethe’s ‘Faust’… and in this connection it was a pleasure for me to know that Goethe
had held Sterne in very high esteem.
Cash, Arthur H., ‘The Birth of Tristram Shandy: Sterne and Dr.
Burton’, in Studies in the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. F. Brissenden
(Australian National University Press, 1968), 133–54.
Loscocco, Paula, ‘Can’t Live Without ’em: Walter Shandy and the
Woman Within’, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 32
(1991), 166–79.
Schulze, Fritz W., ‘In the Margin of the Florida Edition of Sterne’, in
Wege Amerikanischer Kultur, ed. Renate von Bardeleben (Peter
Lang, 1989), 47–68.
The text herein is based on the Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence
Sterne: Tristram Shandy: The Text, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New, 2 vols.
(University Press of Florida, 1978).
Tristram Shandy was first published serially between 1759 and 1767 as
follows:
December 1759 Vols. I and II – in York by Ann Ward
January 1761 Vols. III and IV – in London by Dodsley
January 1762 Vols. V and VI – in London by Becket and DeHondt
January 1765 Vols. VII and VIII – in London by Becket and DeHondt
January 1767 Vol. IX – in London by Becket and DeHondt
Mr. P I T T.1
SIR,
NEVER poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I
have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner2 of the kingdom, and
in a retired thatch’d house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence
against the infirmities of ill health,3 and other evils of life, by mirth; being
firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when
he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.
I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book by taking it——(not
under your Protection,——it must protect itself, but)—into the country with
you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile, or can conceive it has
beguiled you of one moment’s pain——I shall think myself as happy as a
minister of state;——perhaps much happier than any one (one only
excepted) that I have ever read or heard of.
I am, great Sir,
(and what is more to your Honour,)
I am, good Sir,
Your Well-wisher,
and most humble Fellow-Subject,
THE AUTHOR.
THE
LIFE and OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.
CHAP. I.
I Wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were
in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when
they begot me;1 had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what
they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was
concern’d in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature2 of
his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught
they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take
their turn from the humours3 and dispositions which were then uppermost:
——Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded
accordingly,——I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different
figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.—
Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you
may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits,4 as how
they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that
purpose:—Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s
sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend
upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put
them into; so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong,
’tis not a halfpenny matter,--away they go cluttering like hey-go-mad; and
by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road
of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once
used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.
Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the
clock?——Good G—! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking
care to moderate his voice at the same time,——Did ever woman, since the
creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what
was your father saying?——Nothing.
CHAP. II.
——Then, positively, there is nothing in the question, that I can see, either
good or bad.——Then let me tell you, Sir, it was a very unseasonable
question at least,—because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits,
whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand-in-hand with the
HOMUNCULUS, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his
reception.1
The HOMUNCULUS, Sir, in how-ever low and ludicrous a light he may
appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;—to the eye of
reason in scientifick research, he stands confess’d—a BEING guarded and
circumscribed with rights:——The minutest philosophers,2 who, by the
bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely as
their enquiries) shew us incontestably, That the HOMUNCULUS is created by
the same hand,—engender’d in the same course of nature,—endowed with
the same loco-motive powers and faculties with us:——That he consists, as
we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartileges,
bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and articulations;3——is
a Being of as much activity,——and, in all senses of the word, as much and
as truly our fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor4 of England.—He may
be benefited, he may be injured,—he may obtain redress;—in a word, he
has all the claims and rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorff,5 or the
best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation.
Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone?
——or that, thro’ terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, my little
gentleman had got to his journey’s end miserably spent;——his muscular
strength and virility worn down to a thread;—his own animal spirits ruffled
beyond description,—and that in this sad disorder’d state of nerves, he had
laid down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy dreams and
fancies for nine long, long months together.——I tremble to think what a
foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind,
which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards
have set thoroughly to rights.
CHAP. III.
TO my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding
anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher,
and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and
heavily, complain’d of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle
Toby well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity,
(as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the
principles upon which I had done it,—the old gentleman shook his head,
and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach,—he said his
heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a
thousand other observations he had made upon me, That I should neither
think nor act like any other man’s child:——But alas! continued he,
shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling
down his cheeks, My Tristram’s misfortunes began nine months before ever
he came into the world.
——My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up,—but she knew no more
than her backside what my father meant,--but my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy,
who had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well.
CHAP. IV.
I Know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in
it, who are no readers at all,—who find themselves ill at ease, unless they
are let into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which concerns
you.
It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a
backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have
been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are likely to make
some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks,
professions, and denominations of men whatever,—be no less read than the
Pilgrim’s Progress1 itself---and, in the end, prove the very thing which
Montaigne2 dreaded his essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-
window;—I find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and
therefore must beg pardon for going on a little further in the same way: For
which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the
way I have done; and that I am able to go on tracing every thing in it, as
Horace says, ab Ovo.3
Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that
gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;—(I forget which)
—besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace’s pardon;—for in
writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor
to any man’s rules that ever lived.
To such, however, as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I
can give no better advice, than that they skip over the remaining part of this
Chapter; for I declare before hand, ’tis wrote only for the curious and
inquisitive.
—————Shut the door.—————
I was begot in the night, betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the
month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
eighteen. I am positive I was.––But how I came to be so very particular in
my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to
another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made
public4 for the better clearing up this point.
My father, you must know, who was originally a Turky merchant,5 but
had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his
paternal estate in the county of––——, was, I believe, one of the most
regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or
matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme
exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave,—he had made it a rule for
many years of his life,—on the first Sunday night of every month
throughout the whole year,—as certain as ever the Sunday night came,——
to wind up a large house-clock which we had standing upon the back-stairs
head, with his own hands:—And being somewhere between fifty and sixty
years of age, at the time I have been speaking of,—he had likewise
gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period,
in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the
way at one time, and be no more plagued and pester’d with them the rest of
the month.
It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell
upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my
grave; namely, that, from an unhappy association of ideas which have no
connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could
never hear the said clock wound up,—but the thoughts of some other things
unavoidably popp’d into her head,—& vice versâ:—which strange
combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke,6 who certainly understood the
nature of these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more
wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.
But this by the bye.
Now it appears, by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which
now lies upon the table, “That on Lady-Day,7 which was on the 25th of the
same month in which I date my geniture,—my father set out upon his
journey to London with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster
school;”8 and, as it appears from the same authority, “That he did not get
down to his wife and family till the second week in May following,”—it
brings the thing almost to a certainty. However, what follows in the
beginning of the next chapter puts it beyond all possibility of doubt.
———But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December,—
January, and February?——Why, Madam,—he was all that time afflicted
with a Sciatica.9
CHAP. V.
ON the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as near
nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,1—was
I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and
disasterous2 world of ours.—I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any
of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could bear cold
weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (tho’
I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—
which o’ my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up
of the shreds and clippings of the rest;——not but the planet is well
enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great
estate; or could any how contrive to be called up to publick charges, and
employments of dignity or power;—but that is not my case;----and
therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;
—for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that
ever was made;---for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my
breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got
in scating against the wind in Flanders;--I have been the continual sport of
what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying,
She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil;---yet with
all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, That in every stage of my
life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the
ungracious Duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and
cross accidents3 as ever small HERO sustained.
CHAP. VI.
IN the beginning of the last chapter, I inform’d you exactly when I was
born;—but I did not inform you, how. No; that particular was reserved
entirely for a chapter by itself;—besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner
perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let
you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.—You must
have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life,
but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my
character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a
better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight
acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity;
and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.——O
diem præclarum!1——then nothing which has touched me will be thought
trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. Therefore, my dear friend and
companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on
my first setting out,—bear with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story
my own way:——or if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,
——or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment
or two as we pass along,--don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me
credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we
jogg on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,——only
keep your temper.
CHAP. VII.
IN the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a
thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife,1 who, with the
help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment in her
business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a
great deal to those of dame nature,—had acquired, in her way, no small
degree of reputation in the world;—by which word world, need I in this
place inform your worship, that I would be understood to mean no more of
it, than a small circle described upon the circle of the great world, of four
English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage where the good
old woman lived, is supposed to be the centre.——She had been left, it
seems, a widow in great distress, with three or four small children, in her
forty-seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent carriage,
—grave deportment,——a woman moreover of few words, and with all an
object of compassion, whose distress and silence under it call’d out the
louder for a friendly lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touch’d
with pity; and having often lamented an inconvenience, to which her
husband’s flock had for many years been exposed, inasmuch, as there was
no such thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree to be got at, let the case
have been never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding;
which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to fourteen;
and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at all; it came
into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole
parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little instructed in some of
the plain principles of the business, in order to set her up in it. As no
woman thereabouts was better qualified to execute the plan she had formed
than herself, the Gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and having
great influence over the female part of the parish, she found no difficulty in
effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth, the parson join’d his
interest with his wife’s in the whole affair; and in order to do things as they
should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law to practise, as his
wife had given by institution,——he chearfully paid the fees for the
ordinaries licence himself, amounting, in the whole, to the sum of eighteen
shillings and fourpence; so that, betwixt them both, the good woman was
fully invested in the real and corporal possession of her office, together with
all its rights, members, and appurtenances whatsoever.2
These last words, you must know, were not according to the old form in
which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, which in like cases
had heretofore been granted to the sisterhood. But it was according to a neat
Formula of Didius3 his own devising, who having a particular turn for
taking to pieces, and new framing over again, all kind of instruments in that
way, not only hit upon this dainty amendment, but coax’d many of the old
licensed matrons in the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in
order to have this whim-wham4 of his inserted.
I own I never could envy Didius in these kinds of fancies of his:—But
every man to his own taste.—Did not Dr. Kunastrokius,5 that great man, at
his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses
tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers
always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of
men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself,—have they not had their
HOBBY-HORSES;6—their running horses,7—their coins and their cockle-
shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,8——their
maggots9 and their butterflies?—and so long as a man rides his HOBBY-
HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King’s high-way, and neither
compels you or me to get up behind him,——pray, Sir, what have either
you or I to do with it?
CHAP. VIII.
—De gustibus non est disputandum;1—that is, there is no disputing
against HOBBY-HORSES; and, for my part, I seldom do; nor could I with any
sort of grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; for happening, at
certain intervals and changes of the Moon, to be both fiddler and painter,2
according as the fly stings:---Be it known to you, that I keep a couple of
pads3 myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care who knows it) I
frequently ride out and take the air;—tho’ some-times, to my shame be it
spoken, I take somewhat longer journies than what a wise man would think
altogether right.----But the truth is,---I am not a wise man;——and besides
am a mortal of so little consequence in the world, it is not much matter what
I do; so I seldom fret or fume at all about it: Nor does it much disturb my
rest when I see such great Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow;---
such, for instance, as my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P,
Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several horses;--some with
large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace;----others on the
contrary, tuck’d up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths,
scouring and scampering it away like so many little party-colour’d devils
astride a mortgage,——and as if some of them were resolved to break their
necks.—So much the better––say I to myself;—for in case the worst should
happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well without them;—
and for the rest,----why,----God speed them,----e’en let them ride on without
any opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed this very night,
——’tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse mounted by one
half before to-morrow morning.
Not one of these instances therefore can be said to break in upon my
rest.—But there is an instance, which I own puts me off my guard, and that
is, when I see one born for great actions, and, what is still more for his
honour, whose nature ever inclines him to good ones;----when I behold such
a one, my Lord, like yourself, whose principles and conduct are as generous
and noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason, a corrupt world cannot
spare one moment;—when I see such a one, my Lord, mounted, though it is
but for a minute beyond the time which my love to my country has
prescribed to him, and my zeal for his glory wishes,—then, my Lord, I
cease to be a philosopher, and in the first transport of an honest impatience,
I wish the Hobby-Horse, with all his fraternity, at the Devil.
My Lord,
“I Maintain this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its singularity in the
three great essentials of matter, form, and place: I beg, therefore, you will
accept it as such, and that you will permit me to lay it, with the most
respectful humility, at your Lordship’s feet,--when you are upon them,--
which you can be when you please;----and that is, my Lord, when ever there
is occasion for it, and I will add, to the best purposes too. I have the honour
to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s most obedient,
and most devoted,
and most humble servant,
TRISTRAM SHANDY.”
CHAP. IX.
I Solemnly declare to all mankind, that the above dedication was made for
no one Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate,––Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount,
or Baron of this, or any other Realm in Christendom;-----nor has it yet been
hawk’d about, or offered publickly or privately, directly or indirectly, to any
one person or personage, great or small; but is honestly a true Virgin-
Dedication untried on, upon any soul living.
I labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any offence or
objection which might arise against it, from the manner in which I propose
to make the most of it;---which is the putting it up fairly to publick sale;
which I now do.
——Every author has a way of his own, in bringing his points to bear;--
for my own part, as I hate chaffering and higgling for a few guineas in a
dark entry;---I resolved within myself, from the very beginning, to deal
squarely and openly with your Great Folks in this affair, and try whether I
should not come off the better by it.
If therefore there is any one Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, in
these his Majesty’s dominions, who stands in need of a tight, genteel
dedication, and whom the above will suit, (for by the bye, unless it suits in
some degree, I will not part with it)——it is much at his service for fifty
guineas;——which I am positive is twenty guineas less than it ought to be
afforded for, by any man of genius.
My Lord, if you examine it over again, it is far from being a gross piece
of daubing,1 as some dedications are. The design, your Lordship sees, is
good, the colouring transparent,—the drawing not amiss;—or to speak more
like a man of science,––and measure my piece in the painter’s scale,2
divided into 20,––I believe, my Lord, the out-lines will turn out as 12,—the
composition as 9,—the colouring as 6,—the expression 13 and a half,—and
the design,—if I may be allowed, my Lord, to understand my own design,
and supposing absolute perfection in designing, to be as 20,—I think it
cannot well fall short of 19. Besides all this,—there is keeping in it, and the
dark strokes in the Hobby-Horse, (which is a secondary figure, and a kind
of back-ground to the whole) give great force to the principal lights in your
own figure, and make it come off wonderfully;——and besides, there is an
air of originality in the tout ensemble.3
Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid into the hands of
Mr. Dodsley,4 for the benefit of the author; and in the next edition care shall
be taken that this chapter be expunged, and your Lordship’s titles,
distinctions, arms and good actions, be placed at the front of the preceding
chapter: All which, from the words, De gustibus non est disputandum, and
whatever else in this book relates to HOBBY-HORSES, but no more, shall
stand dedicated to your Lordship.---The rest I dedicate to the Moon, who,
by the bye, of all the Patrons or Matrons I can think of, has most power to
set my book a-going, and make the world run mad after it.
Bright Goddess,
If thou art not too busy with CANDID and Miss CUNEGUND's affairs,5--
take Tristram Shandy’s under thy protection also.
CHAP. X.
WHatever degree of small merit, the act of benignity in favour of the
midwife, might justly claim, or in whom that claim truly rested,—at first
sight seems not very material to this history;——certain however it was,
that the gentlewoman, the parson’s wife, did run away at that time with the
whole of it: And yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking but that the parson
himself, tho’ he had not the good fortune to hit upon the design first,—yet,
as he heartily concurred in it the moment it was laid before him, and as
heartily parted with his money to carry it into execution, had a claim to
some share of it,—if not to a full half of whatever honour was due to it.
The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise.
Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to give a probable
guess at the grounds of this procedure.
Be it known then, that, for about five years before the date of the
midwife’s licence, of which you have had so circumstantial an account,—
the parson we have to do with, had made himself a country-talk by a breach
of all decorum, which he had committed against himself, his station, and his
office;——and that was, in never appearing better, or otherwise mounted,
than upon a lean, sorry, jack-ass of a horse, value about one pound fifteen
shillings; who, to shorten all description of him, was full brother to
Rosinante,1 as far as similitude congenial could make him; for he answered
his description to a hair-breadth in every thing,—except that I do not
remember ’tis any where said, that Rosinante was broken winded; and that,
moreover, Rosinante, as is the happiness of most Spanish horses, fat or lean,
—was undoubtedly a horse at all points.
I know very well that the HERO’s horse was a horse of chaste
deportment,2 which may have given grounds for a contrary opinion: But it
is as certain at the same time, that Rosinante’s continency (as may be
demonstrated from the adventure of the Yanguesian carriers) proceeded
from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the temperance and
orderly current of his blood.—And let me tell you, Madam, there is a great
deal of very good chastity in the world, in behalf of which you could not
say more for your life.
Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice to every
creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work,––I could not stifle
this distinction in favour of Don Quixote’s horse;——in all other points the
parson’s horse, I say, was just such another,——for he was as lean, and as
lank, and as sorry a jade, as HUMILITY herself could have bestrided.
In the estimation of here and there a man of weak judgment, it was
greatly in the parson’s power to have helped the figure of this horse of his,
—for he was master of a very handsome demi-peak’d3 saddle, quilted on
the seat with green plush, garnished with a double row of silver-headed
studs, and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a housing altogether
suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging of black lace, terminating
in a deep, black, silk fringe, poudrè d’or,4—all which he had purchased in
the pride and prime of his life, together with a grand embossed bridle,
ornamented at all points as it should be.——But not caring to banter his
beast, he had hung all these up behind his study door;—and, in lieu of them,
had seriously befitted him with just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the
figure and value of such a steed might well and truly deserve.
In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring visits to
the gentry who lived around him,——you will easily comprehend, that the
parson, so appointed, would both hear and see enough to keep his
philosophy from rusting. To speak the truth, he never could enter a village,
but he caught the attention of both old and young.----Labour stood still as
he pass’d,---the bucket hung suspended in the middle of the well,——the
spinning-wheel forgot its round,———even chuck-farthing and shuffle-
cap5 themselves stood gaping till he had got out of sight; and as his
movement was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his
hands to make his observations,--to hear the groans of the serious,——and
the laughter of the light-hearted;—all which he bore with excellent
tranquility.—His character was,——he loved a jest in his heart—and as he
saw himself in the true point of ridicule,6 he would say, he could not be
angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which he so strongly saw
himself: So that to his friends, who knew his foible was not the love of
money, and who therefore made the less scruple in bantering the
extravagance of his humour,—instead of giving the true cause,——he chose
rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as he never carried one
single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether as spare a figure
as his beast,—he would sometimes insist upon it, that the horse was as good
as the rider deserved;––that they were, centaur-like,---both of a piece. At
other times, and in other moods, when his spirits were above the temptation
of false wit,—he would say, he found himself going off fast in a
consumption; and, with great gravity, would pretend, he could not bear the
sight of a fat horse without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in
his pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not
only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits.
At different times he would give fifty humourous and opposite reasons
for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to one
of mettle;—for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as
delightfully de vanitate mundi et fugâ sæculi,7 as with the advantage of a
death’s head8 before him;—that, in all other exercitations, he could spend
his time, as he rode slowly along,——to as much account as in his study;—
that he could draw up an argument in his sermon,—or a hole in his
breeches, as steadily on the one as in the other;—that brisk trotting and
slow argumentation, like wit and judgment,9 were two incompatible
movements.--But that, upon his steed––he could unite and reconcile every
thing,—he could compose his sermon,—he could compose his cough,10
——and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise compose
himself to sleep.—In short, the parson upon such encounters would assign
any cause, but the true cause,—and he with-held the true one, only out of a
nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to him.
But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this
gentleman’s life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle were
purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will,
——to run into the opposite extream.—In the language of the county where
he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and generally had one of
the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling;
and as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village
than seven miles, and in a vile country,——it so fell out that the poor
gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous
application for his beast; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and
every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last,—as much
as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of
which was generally this, that his horse was either clapp’d, or spavin’d, or
greaz’d;—or he was twitter-bon’d, or broken-winded,11 or something, in
short, or other had befallen him which would let him carry no flesh;—so
that he had every nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,—and a good
horse to purchase in his stead.
What the loss in such a balance might amount to, communibus annis,12 I
would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffic, to determine;
—but let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it for many years
without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he
found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and upon weighing
the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only
disproportion’d to his other expences, but with all so heavy an article in
itself, as to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish:
Besides this he considered, that, with half the sum thus galloped away, he
could do ten times as much good;——and what still weighed more with
him than all other considerations put together, was this, that it confined all
his charity into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the
least wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his
parish; reserving nothing for the impotent,---nothing for the aged,---nothing
for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, where
poverty, and sickness, and affliction dwelt together.
For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and there
appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it;—and
these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his steed
upon any application whatever,––or else be content to ride the last poor
devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and infirmities, to the
very end of the chapter.
As he dreaded his own constancy in the first,——he very chearfully
betook himself to the second; and tho’ he could very well have explain’d it,
as I said, to his honour,—yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit above it;
choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter of his
friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story, which might seem a
panygeric upon himself.
I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this
reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think
comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of La
Mancha,13 whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would
actually have gone further to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero of
antiquity.
But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in view was to
shew the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.––For you must
know, that so long as this explanation would have done the parson credit,—
the devil a soul could find it out,—I suppose his enemies would not, and
that his friends could not.——But no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf
of the midwife, and pay the expences of the ordinary’s licence to set her
up,––but the whole secret came out; every horse he had lost, and two horses
more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their destruction,
were known and distinctly remembered.––The story ran like wild-fire.
—“The parson had a returning fit of pride which had just seized him; and
he was going to be well mounted once again in his life; and if it was so,
’twas plain as the sun at noon-day, he would pocket the expence of the
licence, ten times told the very first year:——so that every body was left to
judge what were his views in this act of charity.”
What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,—or
rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people
concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too
often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep.
About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made
entirely easy upon that score,——it being just so long since he left his
parish,——and the whole world at the same time behind him,--and stands
accountable to a judge of whom he will have no cause to complain.
But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men:14 Order them as
they will, they pass thro’ a certain medium which so twists and refracts
them from their true directions———that, with all the titles to praise which
a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless forced to
live and die without it.
Of the truth of which this gentleman was a painful example.——But to
know by what means this came to pass,----and to make that knowledge of
use to you, I insist upon it that you read the two following chapters, which
contain such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its moral
along with it.--When this is done, if nothing stops us in our way, we will go
on with the midwife.
CHAP. XI.
YORICK1 was this parson’s name, and, what is very remarkable in it, (as
appears from a most antient account of the family, wrote upon strong
vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for
near,——I was within an ace of saying nine hundred years;——but I would
not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however indisputable in
itself;——and therefore I shall content myself with only saying,---It had
been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or transposition of a single
letter, for I do not know how long; which is more than I would venture to
say of one half of the best surnames in the kingdom; which, in a course of
years, have generally undergone as many chops and changes as their
owners.—Has this been owing to the pride, or to the shame of the
respective proprietors?—In honest truth, I think, sometimes to the one, and
sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. But a villainous
affair it is, and will one day so blend and confound us all together, that no
one shall be able to stand up and swear, “That his own great grand father
was the man who did either this or that.”
This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of the
Yorick’s family, and their religious preservation of these records I quote,
which do further inform us, That the family was originally of Danish
extraction, and had been transplanted into England as early as in the reign
of Horwendillus,2 king of Denmark, in whose court it seems, an ancestor of
this Mr. Yorick’s, and from whom he was lineally descended, held a
considerable post to the day of his death. Of what nature this considerable
post was, this record saith not;—it only adds, That, for near two centuries, it
had been totally abolished as altogether unnecessary, not only in that court,
but in every other court of the Christian world.
It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than that
of the king’s chief Jester;---and that Hamlet’s Yorick, in our Shakespear,
many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon authenticated facts,--
was certainly the very man.
I have not the time to look into Saxo-Grammaticus’s Danish history, to
know the certainty of this;—but if you have leisure, and can easily get at the
book, you may do it full as well yourself.
I had just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr. Noddy’s3 eldest
son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as governor, riding along with
him at a prodigious rate thro’ most parts of Europe, and of which original
journey perform’d by us two, a most delectable narrative4 will be given in
the progress of this work. I had just time, I say, and that was all, to prove
the truth of an observation made by a long sojourner in that country;----
namely, “That nature was neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in her
gifts of genius and capacity to its inhabitants;--but, like a discreet parent,
was moderately kind to them all; observing such an equal tenor in the
distribution of her favours, as to bring them, in those points, pretty near to a
level with each other; so that you will meet with few instances in that
kingdom of refin’d parts; but a great deal of good plain houshold
understanding amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a
share;” which is, I think, very right.
With us, you see, the case is quite different;—we are all ups and downs
in this matter;—you are a great genius;--or ’tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a
great dunce and a blockhead;---not that there is a total want of intermediate
steps,—no,—we are not so irregular as that comes to;—but the two
extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island,
where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical
and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her
goods and chattels5 than she.
This is all that ever stagger’d my faith in regard to Yorick’s extraction,
who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts I could ever
get of him, seem’d not to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his
whole crasis;6 in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run out:----I
will not philosophize one moment with you about it; for happen how it
would, the fact was this:—That instead of that cold phlegm and exact
regularity of sense and humours, you would have look’d for, in one so
extracted;---he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a
composition,----as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions;7-----with as
much life and whim, and gaité de cœur8 about him, as the kindliest climate
could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick
carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world;
and, at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his
course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon his
first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him
foul ten times in a day of some body’s tackling; and as the grave and more
slow-paced were oftenest in his way,-----you may likewise imagine, ’twas
with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled. For aught I
know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom of such
Fracas:---For, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and
opposition in his nature to gravity;----not to gravity as such;----for where
gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of mortal men
for days and weeks together;---but he was an enemy to the affectation of it,
and declared open war against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance,
or for folly; and then, whenever it fell in his way, however sheltered and
protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, That gravity was
an errant scoundrel; and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind too,----
because a sly one; and that, he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning
people were bubbled9 out of their goods and money by it in one
twelvemonth, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the
naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say, There was no
danger,--but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and
consequently deceit;---’twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for
more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its
pretensions,---it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit10
had long ago defined it,---viz. A mysterious carriage of the body to cover
the defects of the mind;—which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great
imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.
But, in plain truth,11 he was a man unhackneyed12 and unpractised in the
world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other subject of
discourse where policy is wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no
impression but one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed
spoken of; which impression he would usually translate into plain English
without any periphrasis,——and too oft without much distinction of either
personage, time, or place;---so that when mention was made of a pitiful or
an ungenerous proceeding,---he never gave himself a moment’s time to
reflect who was the Hero of the piece,----what his station,----or how far he
had power to hurt him hereafter;---but if it was a dirty action,-----without
more ado,-----The man was a dirty fellow,---and so on:---And as his
comments had usually the ill fate to be terminated either in a bon mot,13 or
to be enliven’d throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it
gave wings to Yorick’s indiscretion. In a word, tho’ he never sought, yet, at
the same time, as he seldom shun’d occasions of saying what came
uppermost, and without much ceremony;----he had but too many
temptations in life, of scattering his wit and his humour,—his gibes and his
jests14 about him.----They were not lost for want of gathering.
What were the consequences, and what was Yorick’s catastrophe
thereupon, you will read in the next chapter.
CHAP. XII.
THE Mortgager and Mortgageé differ the one from the other, not more in
length of purse, than the Jester and Jesteé do, in that of memory. But in this
the comparison between them runs, as the scholiasts call it, upon all-four;1
which, by the bye, is upon one or two legs more, than some of the best of
Homer’s can pretend to;—namely, That the one raises a sum and the other a
laugh at your expence, and think no more about it. Interest, however, still
runs on in both cases;----the periodical or accidental payments of it, just
serving to keep the memory of the affair alive; till, at length, in some evil
hour,----pop comes the creditor upon each, and by demanding principal
upon the spot, together with full interest to the very day, makes them both
feel the full extent of their obligations.
As the reader (for I hate your ifs) has a thorough knowledge of human
nature, I need not say more to satisfy him, that my Hero could not go on at
this rate without some slight experience of these incidental mementos. To
speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a multitude of small
book-debts2 of this stamp, which, notwithstanding Eugenius’s3 frequent
advice, he too much disregarded; thinking, that as not one of them was
contracted thro’ any malignancy;---but, on the contrary, from an honesty of
mind, and a mere jocundity of humour, they would all of them be cross’d
out in course.
Eugenius would never admit this; and would often tell him, that one day
or other he would certainly be reckoned with; and he would often add, in an
accent of sorrowful apprehension,---to the uttermost mite. To which Yorick,
with his usual carelesness of heart, would as often answer with a pshaw!---
and if the subject was started in the fields,---with a hop, skip, and a jump, at
the end of it; but if close pent up in the social chimney corner, where the
culprit was barricado’d in, with a table and a couple of arm chairs, and
could not so readily fly off in a tangent,----Eugenius would then go on with
his lecture upon discretion, in words to this purpose, though somewhat
better put together.
Trust me, dear Yorick, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or
later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit can extricate
thee out of.——In these sallies, too oft, I see, it happens, that a person
laugh’d at, considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all the
rights of such a situation belonging to him; and when thou viewest him in
that light too, and reckons up his friends, his family, his kindred, and allies,-
---and musters up with them the many recruits which will list under him
from a sense of common danger;---’tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that
for every ten jokes,---thou hast got a hundred enemies; and till thou hast
gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thy ears, and art half stung to
death by them, thou will never be convinced it is so.
I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least spur
from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies.——I believe and
know them to be truly honest and sportive:---But consider, my dear lad, that
fools cannot distinguish this,--and that knaves will not; and thou knowest
not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make merry with the other,--
whenever they associate for mutual defence, depend upon it, they will carry
on the war in such a manner against thee, my dear friend, as to make thee
heartily sick of it, and of thy life too.
REVENGE from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at
thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set right.
——The fortunes of thy house shall totter,---thy character, which led the
way to them, shall bleed on every side of it,--thy faith questioned,--thy
works belied,--thy wit forgotten,--thy learning trampled on. To wind up the
last scene of thy tragedy, CRUELTY and COWARDICE, twin ruffians, hired and
set on by MALICE in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities and
mistakes:---the best of us, my dear lad, lye open there,---and trust me,----
trust me, Yorick, When to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon,
that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy
matter to pick up sticks enew from any thicket where it has strayed, to make
a fire to offer it up with.4
Yorick scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his destiny read over to
him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory look attending
it, that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride his tit5 with more
sobriety.—But, alas, too late!---a grand confederacy, with * * * * * and
* * * * * at the head of it, was form’d before the first prediction of it.----
The whole plan of the attack, just as Eugenius had foreboded, was put in
execution all at once,-----with so little mercy on the side of the allies,---and
so little suspicion in Yorick, of what was carrying on against him,---that
when he thought, good easy man! full surely preferment was o’ripening,--
they had smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen
before him.6
Yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some
time; till, over-power’d by numbers, and worn out at length by the
calamities of the war,----but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which it
was carried on,---he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his
spirits in appearance to the last,----he died, nevertheless, as was generally
thought, quite broken hearted.
What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion, was as follows:
A few hours before Yorick breath’d his last, Eugenius stept in with an
intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him: Upon his drawing
Yorick’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick, looking up in his
face, took hold of his hand,----and, after thanking him for the many tokens
of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet
hereafter,---he would thank him again and again.—He told him, he was
within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever.-----I hope not,
answered Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the
tenderest tone that ever man spoke,---I hope not, Yorick, said he.--Yorick
replied, with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius’s hand, and that
was all,--but it cut Eugenius to his heart.--Come,--come, Yorick, quoth
Eugenius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within him, my dear
lad, be comforted,---let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this
crisis when thou most wants them;——who knows what resourses are in
store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee?——Yorick laid his
hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head;---for my part, continued
Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,—I declare I know not,
Yorick, how to part with thee,——and would gladly flatter my hopes, added
Eugenius, chearing up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee to
make a bishop,---and that I may live to see it.——I beseech thee, Eugenius,
quoth Yorick, taking off his night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,
——his right being still grasped close in that of Eugenius,——I beseech
thee to take a view of my head.----I see nothing that ails it, replied
Eugenius. Then, alas! my friend, said Yorick, let me tell you, that ’tis so
bruised and misshapen’d with the blows which * * * * * and * * * * *,
and some others have so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might
say with Sancho Pança,7 that should I recover, and “Mitres thereupon be
suffer’d to rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of ’em would fit
it.”———Yorick’s last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready to
depart as he uttered this;---yet still it was utter’d with something of a
cervantick tone;8--and as he spoke it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of
lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;----faint picture of those
flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakespear said of his ancestor) were wont
to set the table in a roar!9
Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was
broke; he squeez’d his hand,——and then walk’d softly out of the room,
weeping as he walk’d. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door,--
--he then closed them,—and never opened them more.
He lies buried in a corner of his church-yard, in the parish of———,
under a plain marble slabb, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his
executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of
inscription serving both for his epitaph and elegy.
Ten times in a day has Yorick’s ghost the consolation to hear his
monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as
denote a general pity and esteem for him;——a foot-way crossing the
church-yard close by the side of his grave,—not a passenger goes by
without stopping to cast a look upon it,——and sighing as he walks on,
RÉPONSE.
The SERMON.4
The SERMON.
LONDON:
Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall.
M.DCC.LXI.
CAP. XXXV.
EXCOMMUNICATIO.
EX auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et
sanctorum canonum, sanctæque et intemeratæ Virginis Dei genetricis
Mariæ,
“By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and
of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour, and of
all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers,
cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all
the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the sight of
the holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song, of the holy martyrs
and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all
confessorum, et sanctarum virginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum Dei,—
Excommunicamus, et anathematizamus huncvel os1 furems, vel huncvel os malefactorems, N.N. et a
liminibus sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ sequestramus ut æternis suppliciis excruciandusvel i, mancipeturn, cum
Dathan et Abiram, et cum his qui dixerunt Domino Deo, Recede à nobis, scientiam viarum tuarum
nolumus: et sicut aquâ ignis extinguitur, sic extinguatur lucerna ejusvel eorum in secula seculorum nisi
resipuerit, et ad satisfactionem veneritn. Amen.
Maledicat illumos Deus Pater qui hominem creavit. Maledicat illumos Dei Filius qui pro homine
passus est. Maledicat illumos Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo effusus est. Maledicat illumos sancta
crux, quam Christus pro nostrâ salute hostem triumphans, ascendit.
Maledicat illumos sancta Dei genetrix et perpetua Virgo Maria. Maledicat illumos sanctus Michael,
animarum susceptor sacrarum. Maledicant illumos omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et
potestates, omnisque militia cœlestis.
Maledicat illumos patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis numerus. Maledicat illumos sanctus
Johannes præcursor et Baptista Christi, et sanctus Petrus, et sanctus Paulus, atque sanctus Andreas,
omnesque Christi apostoli, simul et cæteri discipuli, quatuor quoque evangelistæ, qui sua
prædicatione mundum universum converterunt. Maledicat illumos cuneus martyrum et confessorum
mirificus, qui Deo bonis operibus placitus inventus est.
the saints together, with the holy and elect of God.——May he,” (Obadiah)
“be damn’d,” (for tying these knots.)——“We excommunicate, and
anathematise him, and from the thresholds of the holy church of God
Almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented, disposed and
delivered over with Dathan and Abiram,2 and with those who say unto the
Lord God, Depart from us, we desire none of thy ways. And as fire is
quenched with water, so let the light of him be put out for evermore, unless
it shall repent him” (Obadiah, of the knots which he has tied) “and make
satisfaction” (for them). Amen.
“May the Father who created man, curse him.—May the Son who
suffered for us, curse him.—May the Holy Ghost who was given to us in
baptism, curse him (Obadiah).—May the holy cross which Christ for our
salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended,—curse him.
“May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him.—May
St. Michael the advocate of holy souls, curse him.––May all the angels and
archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies,3 curse
him.” [Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,—but
nothing to this.—For my own part, I could not have a heart to curse my dog
so.]
“May St. John the præ-cursor, and St. John the Baptist,4 and St. Peter and
St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ’s apostles, together curse him.
And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their
preaching converted the universal world,—and may the holy and wonderful
company of martyrs and confessors, who by their holy works are found
pleasing to God Almighty, curse him (Obadiah).
Maledicant illumos sacrarum virginum chori, quæ mundi vana causa honoris Christi respuenda
contempserunt. Maledicant illumos omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo dilecti
inveniuntur.
Maledicant illumos cœli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis manentia.
Maledictus sitn ubicunque fueritn, sive in domo, sive in agro, sive in viâ, sive in semitâ, sive in
silvâ, sive in aquâ, sive in ecclesiâ.
Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando,
ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, flebotomando.
Maledictusi sitn in totis viribus corporis.
Maledictus sit intus et exterius.
Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus sit in cerebro. Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in
fronte, in auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus
sive molaribus, in labiis, in gutture, in humeris, in harmis, in brachiis, in manibus, in digitis, in
pectore, in corde, et in omnibus interioribus stomacho tenus, in renibus, in inguinibus, in femore, in
genitalibus, in coxis, in genubus, in cruribus, in pedibus, et in unguibus.
“May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ
have despised the things of the world, damn him.––May all the saints who
from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved
of God, damn him.––May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things
remaining therein, damn him,” (Obadiah) “or her,” (or whoever else had a
hand in tying these knots.)
“May he (Obadiah) be damn’d where-ever he be,—whether in the house
or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in
the wood, or in the water, or in the church.—May he be cursed in living, in
dying.” [Here my uncle Toby taking the advantage of a minim5 in the
second barr of his tune, kept whistling one continual note to the end of the
sentence——Dr. Slop with his division of curses moving under him, like a
running bass all the way.]
“May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being
thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in
sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-
letting.”
Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suæ majestatis imperio
“May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of his members, from
the top of his head to the soal of his foot, may there be no soundness in him.
“May the Son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty”—–
[Here my uncle Toby throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud
Whew—w—w——something betwixt the interjectional whistle of Hey
day! and the word itself.——
—By the golden beard of Jupiter—and of Juno, (if her majesty wore
one), and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the
bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods,
and gods aerial and aquatick,—to say nothing of the beards of town-gods
and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the
infernal goddesses your whores and concubines, (that is in case they wore
’em)——all which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour,
when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective
beards upon the pagan establishment;6——every beard of which claimed
the rights and privileges of being stroked and sworn by,—by all these
beards together then,——I vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I
am worth in the world, I would have given the better of them, as freely as
ever Cid Hamet7 offered his,––—only to have stood by, and heard my uncle
Toby’s accompanyment.]
——“Curse him,”——continued Dr. Slop,——“and may
quæ in eo moventur ad damnandum eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Fiat, fiat.
Amen.
heaven with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse
and damn him (Obadiah) unless he repent and make satisfaction. Amen. So
be it,—so be it. Amen.”
I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil
himself with so much bitterness.——He is the father of curses, replied Dr.
Slop.——So am not I, replied my uncle.——But he is cursed, and damn’d
already, to all eternity,8——replied Dr. Slop.
I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby.
Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was just beginning to return my uncle
Toby the compliment of his Whu—u—u——or interjectional whistle,——
when the door hastily opening in the next chapter but one——put an end to
the affair.
CHAP. XII.
NOW don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths
we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because
we have the spirit to swear them,——imagine that we have had the wit to
invent them too.
I’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to
a connoisseur;——though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in
swearing,—as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the whole
set of ’em are so hung round and befetish’d1 with the bobs and trinkets of
criticism,––—or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity,——for I
have fetch’d it as far as from the coast of Guinea;——their heads, Sir, are
stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to
apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the
devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em.
——And how did Garrick2 speak the soliloquy last night?––Oh, against
all rule, my Lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the
adjective, which should agree together in number, case and gender, he
made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;——and
betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the
verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds
and three fifths by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time.———Admirable
grammarian!———But in suspending his voice——was the sense
suspended likewise? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the
chasm?—Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look?—I look’d only at the
stop-watch, my Lord.––—Excellent observer!
And what of this new book3 the whole world makes such a rout about?
—Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my Lord,——quite an irregular thing!—not one
of the angles at the four corners was a right angle.——I had my rule and
compasses, &c. my Lord, in my pocket.———Excellent critic!
—And for the epick poem, your lordship bid me look at;––upon taking
the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an
exact scale of Bossu’s,4—’tis out, my Lord, in every one of its dimensions.
———Admirable connoisseur!
—And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture, in your way
back?——’Tis a melancholy daub!5 my Lord; not one principle of the
pyramid in any one group!6——and what a price!——for there is nothing
of the colouring of Titian,——the expression of Rubens,—the grace of
Raphael,——the purity of Dominichino,—the corregiescity of Corregio,—
the learning of Poussin,—the airs of Guido,—the taste of the Carrachi’s,—
or the grand contour of Angelo.7———Grant me patience, just heaven!
——Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,——though the
cant of hypocrites may be the worst,—the cant of criticism is the most
tormenting!
I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to
kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his
imagination into his author’s hands,––—be pleased he knows not why, and
cares not wherefore.8
Great Apollo!9 if thou art in a giving humour,——give me,––—I ask no
more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire
along with it,——and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he
can be spared, with my compliments to——no matter.
Now to any one else, I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and
imprecations, which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two
hundred and fifty years last past, as originals,——except St. Paul’s thumb,
——God’s flesh and God’s fish,10 which were oaths monarchical, and,
considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, ’tis not
much matter whether they were fish or flesh;——else, I say, there is not an
oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and
over again out of Ernulphus, a thousand times: but, like all other copies,
how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!——It is thought
to be no bad oath,——and by itself passes very well——“G---d damn
you.”——Set it beside Ernulphus’s——“God Almighty the Father damn
you,—God the Son damn you,—God the Holy Ghost damn you,”——you
see ’tis nothing.——There is an orientality11 in his, we cannot rise up to:
besides, he is more copious in his invention,——possess’d more of the
excellencies of a swearer,——had such a thorough knowledge of the human
frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and
articulations,—that when Ernulphus cursed,—no part escaped him.—’Tis
true, there is something of a hardness in his manner,—and, as in Michael
Angelo, a want of grace,——but then there is such a greatness of gusto!—
My father, who generally look’d upon every thing in a light very
different from all mankind,——would, after all, never allow this to be an
original.——He consider’d rather Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of
swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some
milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with
great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;——for the
same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his
chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one
code or digest,12—lest through the rust of time,—and the fatality of all
things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever.
For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath,
from the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror, (By the
splendour of God)13 down to the lowest oath of a scavenger, (Damn your
eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus.——In short, he would add,
—I defy a man to swear out of it.
The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious too;
——nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own.
CHAP. XIII.
—–BLESS my soul!——my poor mistress is ready to faint,——and her
pains are gone,——and the drops are done,——and the bottle of julap1 is
broke,——and the nurse has cut her arm,——(and I, my thumb, cried Dr.
Slop) and the child is where it was, continued Susannah,——and the
midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her
hip as black as your hat.——I’ll look at it, quoth Dr. Slop.——There is no
need of that, replied Susannah,——you had better look at my mistress,——
but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so
desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment.
Human nature is the same in all professions.
The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop’s head.––He had not
digested it.—No, replied Dr. Slop, ’twould be full as proper, if the midwife
came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby,—and but
for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become of
the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.2———Nor,
replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby’s hobby-horsical reflection,
though full as hobby-horsically himself)—do I know, Captain Shandy, what
might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and
confusion I find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of
fingers and thumbs to ******––—the application of which, Sir, under this
accident of mine, comes in so a propos, that without it, the cut upon my
thumb might have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy
family had a name.
CHAP. XIV.
LET us go back to the ******––—in the last chapter.
It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence
flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear
mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about
you, in petto,1 ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an
axe, a sword, a pink’d-doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-
ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot,——but above all, a tender
infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long
as Tully’s second Philippick,2——it must certainly have beshit the orator’s
mantle.——And then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldy and
incommodious to his action,—so as to make him lose by his child almost as
much as he could gain by it.—Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the
precise age to a minute,—hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly
that no mortal could smell it,—and produced it so critically, that no soul
could say, it came in by head and shoulders,3——Oh, Sirs! it has done
wonders.——It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the
principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation.
These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times,
I say, where orators wore mantles,—and pretty large ones too, my brethren,
with some twenty or five and twenty yards of good purple, superfine,
marketable cloth in them,——with large flowing folds and doubles, and in
a great stile of design.———All which plainly shews, may it please your
worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at
present, both within, and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the
world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.4———We can conceal
nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.
CHAP. XV.
DR. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation:
for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to
parody my uncle Toby,——’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to
him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his
new invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them
ready to clap in, where your reverences took so much notice of the ******,
which had he managed,—my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the
sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like
the two lines which form the salient angle of a raveline,—Dr. Slop would
never have given them up;——and my uncle Toby would as soon thought of
flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling
them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil
(for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his
forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.
When a proposition can be taken in two senses,——’tis a law in
disputation That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases,
or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of the
argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.——“Good God!” cried my uncle
Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”
CHAP. XVI.
——UPON my honour Sir you have tore every bit of the skin quite off the
back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby,—and you
have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them, to a jelly. ’Tis
your own fault, said Dr. Slop,——you should have clinch’d your two fists
together into the form of a child’s head, as I told you, and sat firm.——I did
so, answered my uncle Toby.——Then the points of my forceps have not
been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut on my
thumb has made me a little aukward,——or possibly——’Tis well, quoth
my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities,——that the experiment
was not first made upon my child’s head piece.——It would not have been
a cherry stone the worse, answered Dr. Slop. I maintain it, said my uncle
Toby, it would have broke the cerebellum, (unless indeed the skull had been
as hard as a granado) and turned it all into a perfect posset. Pshaw! replied
Dr. Slop, a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;——the
sutures give way,——and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.
——Not you, said she.—I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my
father.
Pray do, added my uncle Toby.
CHAP. XVII.
——AND pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may
not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?——’Tis most certainly
the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop, (turning to my
father) as positive as these old ladies generally are,——’tis a point very
difficult to know,1—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——
because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head,––there is a possibility (if it
is a boy) that the forceps ***************************.
——What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father,
and then to my uncle Toby.——There is no such danger, continued he, with
the head.—No, in truth, quoth my father,——but when your possibility has
taken place at the hip,––—you may as well take off the head too.
——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this,——’tis
enough Dr. Slop understood it;——so taking the green bays bag in his hand,
with the help of Obadiah’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his
size, across the room to the door,——and from the door was shewn the
way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartment.
CHAP. XVIII.
IT is two hours, and ten minutes,—and no more,——cried my father,
looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived,——and I know
not how it happens, brother Toby,——but to my imagination it seems
almost an age.
——Here——pray, Sir, take hold of my cap,—nay, take the bell along
with it, and my pantoufles1 too.——
Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of
’em, on condition, you give me all your attention to this chapter.
Though my father said, “he knew not how it happen’d,”——yet he knew
very well, how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-
determined in his mind, to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter
by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and its simple
modes,2 in order to shew my uncle Toby, by what mechanism and
mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession3 of their
ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to
another, since Dr. Slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short
a period, to so inconceivable an extent.——“I know not how it happens,
——cried my father,——“but it seems an age.”
—’Tis owing, entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our
ideas.
My father, who had an itch in common with all philosophers, of
reasoning upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it too,——
proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succession of ideas, and
had not the least apprehension of having it snatch’d out of his hands by my
uncle Toby, who (honest man!) generally took every thing as it happened;
——and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with
abstruse thinking;—the ideas of time and space,——or how we came by
those ideas,——or of what stuff they were made,—or whether they were
born with us,4——or we pick’d them up afterwards as we went along,—or
whether we did it in frocks,––or not till we had got into breeches,—with a
thousand other inquiries and disputes about INFINITY, PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY,
NECESSITY,5 and so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theories,
so many fine heads have been turned and crack’d,—never did my uncle
Toby’s the least injury at all; my father knew it,——and was no less
surprised, than he was disappointed with my uncle’s fortuitous solution.
Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.
Not I, quoth my uncle.
——But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about.
——
No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.
Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two
hands together,——there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby,
—’twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.———But I’ll tell
thee.——
To understand what time is aright, without which we never can
comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other,——we
ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is, we have of
duration, so as to give a satisfactory account, how we came by it.—What is
that to any body? quoth my uncle Toby.*For if you will turn your eyes
inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you
will perceive, brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and
thinking and smoaking our pipes: or whilst we receive successively ideas in
our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or
the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else
commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of
ourselves, or any such other thing co-existing with our thinking,——and so
according to that preconceived6——You puzzle me to death, cried my
uncle Toby.—
——’Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of
time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months,——and of
clocks (I wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their
several portions to us, and to those who belong to us,——that ’twill be well,
if in time to come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service to us
at all.7
Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound
man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which
follow each other in train just like––—A train of artillery? said my uncle
Toby.—A train of a fiddle stick!—quoth my father,—which follow and
succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images
in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.8––I declare,
quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoak-jack.9——Then, brother
Toby, I have nothing more to say to you upon the subject, said my father.
CHAP. XIX.
——WHAT a conjuncture was here lost!——My father in one of his best
explanatory moods,—in eager pursuit of a metaphysic point into the very
regions where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it
about;——my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the
world;—his head like a smoak-jack;——the funnel unswept, and the ideas
whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with
fuliginous matter!——By the tomb stone of Lucian——if it is in being,
——if not, why then, by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and
dearer Cervantes,1——my father and my uncle Toby’s discourse upon TIME
and ETERNITY,—was a discourse devoutly to be wished for!2 and the
petulancy of my father’s humour in putting a stop to it, as he did, was a
robbery of the Ontologic3 treasury, of such a jewel, as no coalition of great
occasions and great men, are ever likely to restore to it again.
CHAP. XX.
THO’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse,—yet he could
not get my uncle Toby’s smoak-jack out of his head,—piqued as he was at
first with it;——there was something in the comparison at the bottom,
which hit his fancy; for which purpose resting his elbow upon the table, and
reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand,––—but
looking first stedfastly in the fire,——he began to commune with himself
and philosophize about it: but his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of
investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon that
variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse,——the idea
of the smoak-jack soon turned all his ideas upside down,——so that he fell
asleep almost before he knew what he was about.
As for my uncle Toby, his smoak-jack had not made a dozen revolutions,
before he fell asleep also.——Peace be with them both.——Dr. Slop is
engaged with the midwife, and my mother above stairs.—Trim is busy in
turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars to be employed in
the siege of Messina1 next summer,——and is this instant boring the touch
holes with the point of a hot poker.——All my heroes are off my hands;
——’tis the first time I have had a moment to spare,––and I’ll make use of
it, and write my preface.
THE
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
NO, I’ll not say a word about it,—here it is;——in publishing it,——I have
appealed to the world,——and to the world I leave it;——it must speak for
itself.
All I know of the matter is,——when I sat down, my intent was to write
a good book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold out,
—a wise, aye, and a discreet,––—taking care only, as I went along, to put
into it all the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great
author and bestower of them had thought fit originally to give me,——so
that, as your worships see,—’tis just as God pleases.
Now, Agelastes2 (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be
some wit in it, for aught he knows,——but no judgment at all. And
Triptolemus3 and Phutatorius4 agreeing thereto, ask, How is it possible
there should? for that wit and judgment5 in this world never go together;
inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as
east is from west.—So, says Locke,—so are farting and hickuping, say I.
But in answer to this, Didius the great church lawyer, in his code de
fartandi et illustrandi fallaciis,6 doth maintain and make fully appear, That
an illustration is no argument,—nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-
glass clean, to be a syllogism;––—but you all, may it please your worships,
see the better for it,——so that the main good these things do, is only to
clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself,
in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular7 matter, which
if left swiming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.
Now, my dear Anti-Shandeans, and thrice able critics,8 and fellow-
labourers, (for to you I write this Preface)——and to you, most subtle
statesmen and discreet doctors (do—pull off your beards) renowned for
gravity and wisdom;—Monopolos, my politician,—Didius, my counsel;
Kysarcius, my friend;—Phutatorius, my guide;—Gastripheres, the
preserver of my life; Somnolentius,9 the balm and repose of it,—not
forgetting all others as well sleeping as waking,—ecclesiastical as civil,
whom for brevity, but out of no resentment to you, I lump all together.––
——Believe me, right worthy,
My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own
too, in case the thing is not done already for us,——is, that the great gifts
and endowments both of wit and judgment, with every thing which usually
goes along with them,———such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence,
quick parts, and what not, may this precious moment without stint or
measure, let or hinderance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear
it,—scum and sediment an’ all; (for I would not have a drop lost) into the
several receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and
spare places of our brains,—in such sort, that they might continue to be
injected and tunn’d into, according to the true intent and meaning of my
wish, until every vessel of them, both great and small, be so replenished,
saturated and fill’d up therewith, that no more, would it save a man’s life,
could possibly be got either in or out.10
Bless us!—what noble work we should make!—–how should I tickle it
off!——and what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing away for
such readers!—and you,—just heaven!——with what raptures would you
sit and read,——but oh!——’tis too much,——I am sick,——I faint away
deliciously at the thoughts of it!——’tis more than nature can bear!——lay
hold of me,—I am giddy,—I am stone blind,——I’m dying,——I am gone.
——Help! Help! Help!—–But hold,—I grow something better again, for I
am beginning to foresee, when this is over, that as we shall all of us
continue to be great wits,—we should never agree amongst ourselves, one
day to an end:——there would be so much satire and sarcasm,11——
scoffing and flouting, with raillying and reparteeing of it,——thrusting and
parrying in one corner or another,——there would be nothing but mischief
amongst us.—Chaste stars! what biting and scratching, and what a racket
and a clatter we should make, what with breaking of heads, and rapping of
knuckles, and hitting of sore places,—–there would be no such thing as
living for us.
But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we
should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and though we
should abominate each other, ten times worse than so many devils or
devilesses, we should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and
kindness,——milk and honey,12——’twould be a second land of promise,
——a paradise upon earth, if there was such a thing to be had,—so that
upon the whole we should have done well enough.
All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present,
is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships well know, that
of these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so
bountifully wished both for your worships and myself,—there is but a
certain quantum stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole
race of mankind; and such small modicums of ’em are only sent forth into
this wide world, circulating here and there in one by corner or another,—
and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from each
other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could be sufficient for the
wants and emergencies of so many great states, and populous empires.
Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North
Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more
directly under the artick and antartick circles,——where the whole province
of a man’s concernments lies for near nine months together, within the
narrow compass of his cave,13——where the spirits are compressed almost
to nothing,——and where the passions of a man, with every thing which
belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone itself;14—there the least quantity
of judgment imaginable does the business,—and of wit,—there is a total and
an absolute saving,—for as not one spark is wanted,—–so not one spark is
given. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!15 What a dismal thing
would it have been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or
made a treaty, or run a match,16 or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a
provincial chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about
us! for mercy’s sake! let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as
we can southwards into Norway,——crossing over Swedeland, if you
please, through the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of
Bothnia; coasting along it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia,
and so on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far
side of the Gulf of Finland, and the north east of the Baltick, up to
Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria;———then stretching over
directly from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire—leaving
Siberia a little upon the left hand till we get into the very heart of Russian
and Asiatick Tartary.17
Now throughout this long tour which I have led you, you observe the
good people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have
just left:—for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very
attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit,
with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment, which
taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift
with,—and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the
proper ballance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want
occasions to put them to use.
Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more
luxuriant island,18 where you perceive the spring tide of our blood and
humours runs high,—where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy,
and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and
subject to reason,—the height of our wit and the depth of our judgment, you
see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities,19
—and accordingly, we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing
kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to
complain.
It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and
cold,——wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and
settled way;——so that sometimes for near half a century together, there
shall be very little wit or judgment, either to be seen or heard of amongst
us:——the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up,—then all of a
sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury,
—–you would think they would never stop:——and then it is, that in
writing and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world
before us.
It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind
of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction,20—that I
draw and set up this position as most true and veritable:
That of these two luminaries, so much of their irradiations are suffered
from time to time to shine down upon us; as he, whose infinite wisdom
which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just
serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your
reverences and worships21 now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my
power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with
which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d’ye22 of a
caressing prefacer stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy
mistress into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as
easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many
thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least)
must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives,
—running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without
ever getting to their journies end;——some falling with their noses
perpendicularly into stinks,—others horizontally with their tails into
kennels.23 Here one half of a learned profession tilting full butt24 against the
other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt
like hogs.25——Here the brethren, of another profession, who should have
run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild
geese, all in a row the same way.––What confusion!—what mistakes!—
fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears,—admirable!—trusting
to the passions excited in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart,—–
instead of measuring them by a quadrant.
In the foreground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel,
like a brute, the wrong way round—against the stream of corruption,—by
heaven!—instead of with it.
In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against
predestination; perhaps worse,—feeling his patient’s pulse, instead of his
apothecary’s—a brother of the faculty in the back ground upon his knees in
tears,—drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;—
offering a fee,––instead of taking one.26
In that spacious HALL, a coalition of the gown,27 from all the barrs of it,
driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might
and main, the wrong way;——kicking it out of the great doors, instead of,
in,——and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in
their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the
peace and preservation of mankind:—perhaps a more enormous mistake
committed by them still,—a litigated point fairly hung up;——for instance,
Whether John o’Nokes his nose, could stand in Tom o’Stiles28 his face,
without a trespass, or not,—rashly determined by them in five and twenty
minutes, which, with the cautious pro’s and con’s required in so intricate a
proceeding, might have taken up as many months,—and if carried on upon
a military plan, as your honours know, an ACTION should be, with all the
stratagems practicable therein,—such as feints,—forced marches,—
surprizes,—ambuscades,—mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of
generalship which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides,——
might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment
all that term for a centumvirate29 of the profession.
As for the clergy———No—–If I say a word against them, I’ll be shot.
—I have no desire,—and besides, if I had,——I durst not for my soul touch
upon the subject,——with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the
condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth, to
deject and contrist30 myself with so bad and melancholy an account,—–and
therefore, ’tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I
can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up,——and
that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be
men of most judgment.——But mark,—I say, reported to be,——for it is
no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which like twenty others taken up
every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the
bargain.
This by the help of the observations already premised, and I hope
already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall
forthwith make appear.
I hate set dissertations,——and above all things in the world, ’tis one of
the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a
number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt
your own and your readers conception,——when in all likelihood, if you
had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up,
which would have cleared the point at once,—“for what hinderance, hurt or
harm, doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from
a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a
goldsmith’s crucible, an oyl bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair,”31—–I
am this moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this
affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it,
——they are fasten’d on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two
gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let
you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if
every point and particle of it was made up of sun beams.
I enter now directly upon the point.
——Here stands wit,——and there stands judgment, close beside it, just
like the two knobbs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this self same chair
on which I am sitting.
——You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its
frame,——as wit and judgment are of ours,——and like them too,
indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order as we say in all
such cases of duplicated embellishments,––—to answer one another.32
Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this
matter,—let us for a moment, take off one of these two curious ornaments (I
care not which) from the point or pinacle of the chair it now stands on;——
nay, don’t laugh at it.——But did you ever see in the whole course of your
lives such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?——Why, ’tis as
miserable a sight as a sow with one ear;33 and there is just as much sense
and symmetry in the one, as in the other:—do,––pray, get off your seats,
only to take a view of it.——Now would any man who valued his character
a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?
——nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question,
Whether this one single knobb which now stands here like a blockhead by
itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want
of the other;——and let me further ask, in case the chair was your own, if
you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it
would be ten times better without any knobb at all.
Now these two knobs——or top ornaments of the mind of man, which
crown the whole entablature,—being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of
all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful,—the most priz’d,——
the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at,
——for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal amongst us, so
destitute of a love of good fame or feeding,34——or so ignorant of what
will do him good therein,—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his
own mind, to be, or to be thought at least master of the one or the other, and
indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be
brought to pass.
Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at
the one,—unless they laid hold of the other,——pray what do you think
would become of them?—Why, Sirs, in spight of all their gravities, they
must e’en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked:—this
was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the
case we are upon,——so that no one could well have been angry with them,
had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and
secreted under their cloaks and great perrywigs, had they not raised a hue
and cry at the same time against the lawful owners.
I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning
and artifice,—that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false
sounds,——was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep
and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and
other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor
wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it,—it was
his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;35
——but this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down cooly, as
such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact
before he philosophised upon it;—–on the contrary, he took the fact for
granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the
rest.
This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since,—but
your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the
title to it is not worth a groat;——which by the bye is one of the many and
vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.
As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my
mind too freely,——I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly
said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration——That I
have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or
long beards,––—any further than when I see they are bespoke and let grow
on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture—–for any purpose,—peace
be with them;— mark only,—I write not for them.
CHAP. XXI.
EVERY day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have it
mended,——’tis not mended yet;——no family but ours would have borne
with it an hour,—and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in
the world upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-
hinges.——And yet at the same time, he was certainly one of the greatest
bubbles to them, I think, that history can produce: his rhetoric and conduct
were at perpetual handy-cuffs.1——Never did the parlour-door open—but
his philosophy or his principles fell a victim to it;——three drops of oyl
with a feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his honour for
ever.
——Inconsistent soul that man is!2—languishing under wounds, which
he has the power to heal!—his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge!
—his reason, that precious gift of God to him—(instead of pouring in oyl)3
serving but to sharpen his sensibilities,——to multiply his pains and render
him more melancholy and uneasy under them!—poor unhappy creature,
that he should do so!——are not the necessary causes of misery in this life
enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow;—–struggle
against evils which cannot be avoided, and submit to others, which a tenth
part of the trouble they create him, would remove from his heart for ever?
By all that is good and virtuous! if there are three drops of oyl to be got,
and a hammer to be found within ten miles of Shandy-Hall,—the parlour-
door hinge shall be mended this reign.
CHAP. XXII.
WHEN corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted
with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would
be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of
carrying them directly into the parlour.
Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of
hinges, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this.
Had the parlour-door open’d and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door should
do———
—Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon
its hinges,1——(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your
worship,—otherwise I give up my simile)—in this case, I say, there had
been no danger either to master or man, in corporal Trim’s peeping in: the
moment, he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast asleep,——the
respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as
death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had
found them: but the thing was morally speaking so very impracticable, that
for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and
amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its account,––
this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but
the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should
open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly
step’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob
him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it.
“When things move upon bad hinges, an’ please your lordships, how can
it be otherwise?”
Pray what’s the matter? Who is there? cried my father, waking, the
moment the door began to creak.——I wish the smith would give a peep at
that confounded hinge.——’Tis nothing, an’ please your honour, said Trim,
but two mortars I am bringing in.——They shan’t make a clatter with them
here, cried my father hastily.——If Dr. Slop has any drugs to pound, let him
do it in the kitchen.——May it please your honour, cried Trim,—they are
two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I have been making out
of a pair of jack-boots,2 which Obadiah told me your honour had left off
wearing.——By heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he
swore,—I have not one appointment belonging to me, which I set so much
store by, as I do by these jack-boots,——they were our great-grandfather’s,
brother Toby,——they were hereditary. Then I fear, quoth my uncle Toby,
Trim has cut off the entail.3——I have only cut off the tops, an’ please your
honour, cried Trim.——I hate perpetuities as much as any man alive, cried
my father,——but these jack-boots, continued he, (smiling, though very
angry at the same time) have been in the family, brother, ever since the civil
wars;——Sir Roger Shandy wore them at the battle of Marston-Moor.4—I
declare I would not have taken ten pounds for them.——I’ll pay you the
money, brother Shandy, quoth my uncle Toby, looking at the two mortars
with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his breeches-pocket, as he
viewed them.——I’ll pay you the ten pounds this moment with all my heart
and soul.——
Brother Toby, replied my father, altering his tone, you care not what
money you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, ’tis but upon
a SIEGE.—Have I not a hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half-
pay? cried my uncle Toby.——What is that, replied my father, hastily,—to
ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots?——twelve guineas for your pontoons;
——half as much for your Dutch-draw-bridge;—to say nothing of the train
of little brass-artillery you bespoke last week, with twenty other
preparations for the siege of Messina; believe me, dear brother Toby,
continued my father, taking him kindly by the hand,—these military
operations of yours are above your strength;—you mean well, brother,—but
they carry you into greater expences than you were first aware of,—–and
take my word,——dear Toby, they will in the end quite ruin your fortune,
and make a beggar of you.——What signifies it if they do, brother, replied
my uncle Toby, so long as we know ’tis for the good of the nation.—
My father could not help smiling for his soul;—his anger at the worst
was never more than a spark,—and the zeal and simplicity of Trim,——and
the generous (tho’ hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby, brought him
into perfect good humour with them in an instant.
Generous souls!—God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too,
quoth my father to himself.
CHAP. XXIII.
ALL is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs, I hear not one
foot stirring.——Prithee, Trim, who is in the kitchen? There is no one soul
in the kitchen, answered Trim, making a low bow as he spoke, except Dr.
Slop.—–Confusion! cried my father, (getting up upon his legs a second
time)——not one single thing has gone right this day! had I faith in
astrology, brother, (which by the bye, my father had) I would have sworn
some retrograde planet1 was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine,
and turning every individual thing in it out of its place.——Why, I thought
Dr. Slop had been above stairs with my wife, and so said you.—What can
the fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen?——He is busy, an’ please your
honour, replied Trim, in making a bridge.—–’Tis very obliging in him,
quoth my uncle Toby;——pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim,
and tell him I thank him heartily.
You must know, my uncle Toby mistook the bridge as widely as my
father mistook the mortars;——but to understand how my uncle Toby could
mistake the bridge,—I fear I must give you an exact account of the road
which led to it;——or to drop my metaphor, (for there is nothing more
dishonest in an historian, than the use of one,)——in order to conceive the
probability of this error in my uncle Toby aright, I must give you some
account of an adventure of Trim’s, though much against my will. I say much
against my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out of its
place here; for by right it should come in, either amongst the anecdotes of
my uncle Toby’s amours with widow Wadman, in which corporal Trim was
no mean actor,—or else in the middle of his and my uncle Toby’s campaigns
on the bowling green,——for it will do very well in either place;——but
then if I reserve it for either of those parts of my story,—I ruin the story I’m
upon,—and if I tell it here—I anticipate matters, and ruin it there.
—What would your worships have me to do in this case?
—Tell it, Mr. Shandy, by all means.——You are a fool, Tristram, if you
do.
O ye POWERS! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)—which enable
mortal man to tell a story worth the hearing,—that kindly shew him, where
he is to begin it,—and where he is to end it,—what he is to put into it,—and
what he is to leave out,—how much of it he is to cast into shade,—and
whereabouts he is to throw his light!——Ye, who preside over this vast
empire of biographical freebooters, and see how many scrapes and plunges
your subjects hourly fall into;—will you do one thing?
I beg and beseech you, (in case you will do nothing better for us) that
where-ever, in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several
roads meet in one point, as they have done just here,—that at least you set
up a guide-post, in the center of them, in mere charity to direct an uncertain
devil, which of the three he is to take.
CHAP. XXIV.
THO’ the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition of
Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman, had fixed him in a resolution,
never more to think of the sex,––—or of aught which belonged to it;—yet
corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed in my uncle
Toby’s case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of
circumstances which insensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and
strong citadel.——In Trim’s case there was a concurrence of nothing in the
world, but of him and Bridget1 in the kitchen;—–though in truth, the love
and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating
him in all he did, that had my uncle Toby employed his time and genius in
tagging of points,2——I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid
down his arms, and followed his example with pleasure. When therefore my
uncle Toby sat down before the mistress,—corporal Trim incontinently took
ground before the maid.
Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much cause to esteem and
honour,—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no matter)—can it escape your
penetration,—I defy it,—that so many playwrights, and opificers3 of chit
chat have ever since been working upon Trim’s and my uncle Toby’s
pattern.—I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, or Ricaboni4 say,
—(though I never read one of them)——there is not a greater difference
between a single-horse chair and madam Pompadour’s vis a vis,5 than
betwixt a single amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon
all four, prancing throughout a grand drama.—Sir, a simple, single, silly
affair of that kind,——is quite lost in five acts,——but that is neither here
or there.
After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my
uncle Toby’s quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which
shall be given in its proper place, my uncle Toby, honest man! found it
necessary to draw off his forces, and raise the siege somewhat indignantly.
Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself
——or with any one else,—–the fidelity however of his heart not suffering
him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust,——he
contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;——that
is, he kept others off,—for though he never after went to the house, yet he
never met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile,
or look kindly at her,—or (as circumstances directed), he would shake her
by the hand,——or ask her lovingly how she did,—–or would give her a
ribban,——and now and then, though never but when it could be done with
decorum, would give Bridget a———
Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years; that is,
from the demolition of Dunkirk in the year 13, to the latter end of my uncle
Toby’s campaign in the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks before
the time I’m speaking of.––When Trim, as his custom was, after he had put
my uncle Toby to bed, going down one moon-shiny night to see that every
thing was right at his fortifications,——in the lane separated from the
bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly,—he espied his Bridget.
As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth
shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle Toby had made, Trim
courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: this was not
done so privately, but that the foul-mouth’d trumpet of Fame6 carried it
from ear to ear, till at length it reached my father’s, with this untoward
circumstance along with it, that my uncle Toby’s curious draw-bridge,
constructed and painted after the Dutch fashion, and which went quite
across the ditch,—was broke down, and somehow or other crush’d all to
pieces that very night.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle
Toby’s hobby-horse,—he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever
gentleman mounted, and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it,
could never think of it once, without smiling at it,——so that it never could
get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination
beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than
any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of
entertainment to him.——Well,—–but dear Toby! my father would say, do
tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——How can you
teaze me so much about it? my uncle Toby would reply,—I have told it you
twenty times, word for word as Trim told it me.—Prithee, how was it then,
corporal? my father would cry, turning to Trim.—It was a mere misfortune,
an’ please your honour,——I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications,
and in going too near the edge of the fosse, I unfortunately slip’d in.——
Very well Trim! my father would cry,—(smiling mysteriously, and giving a
nod,——but without interrupting him)———and being link’d fast, an’
please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me,
by means of which she fell backwards soss7 against the bridge,——and
Trim’s foot, (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth)
getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a
thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not
break his leg.8—Ay truly! my father would say,——a limb is soon broke,
brother Toby, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the
bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down
betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle
Toby’s hobby-horse,—he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever
gentleman mounted, and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it,
could never think of it once, without smiling at it,——so that it never could
get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination
beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than
any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of
entertainment to him.——Well,—–but dear Toby! my father would say, do
tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——How can you
teaze me so much about it? my uncle Toby would reply,—I have told it you
twenty times, word for word as Trim told it me.—Prithee, how was it then,
corporal? my father would cry, turning to Trim.—It was a mere misfortune,
an’ please your honour,——I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications,
and in going too near the edge of the fossè, I unfortunately slip’d in.——
Very well Trim! my father would cry,—(smiling mysteriously, and giving a
nod,——but without interrupting him)———and being link’d fast, an’
please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me,
by means of which she fell backwards soss7 against the bridge,——and
Trim’s foot, (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth)
getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a
thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not
break his leg.8—Ay truly! my father would say,——a limb is soon broke,
brother Toby, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the
bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down
betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle
Toby’s hobby-horse,—he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever
gentleman mounted, and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it,
could never think of it once, without smiling at it,——so that it never could
get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination
beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than
any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of
entertainment to him.——Well,—–but dear Toby! my father would say, do
tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——How can you
teaze me so much about it? my uncle Toby would reply,—I have told it you
twenty times, word for word as Trim told it me.—Prithee, how was it then,
corporal? my father would cry, turning to Trim.—It was a mere misfortune,
an’ please your honour,——I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications,
and in going too near the edge of the fossè, I unfortunately slip’d in.——
Very well Trim! my father would cry,—(smiling mysteriously, and giving a
nod,——but without interrupting him)———and being link’d fast, an’
please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me,
by means of which she fell backwards soss7 against the bridge,——and
Trim’s foot, (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth)
getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a
thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not
break his leg.8—Ay truly! my father would say,——a limb is soon broke,
brother Toby, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the
bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down
betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle
Toby’s hobby-horse,—he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever
gentleman mounted, and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it,
could never think of it once, without smiling at it,——so that it never could
get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination
beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than
any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of
entertainment to him.——Well,—–but dear Toby! my father would say, do
tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——How can you
teaze me so much about it? my uncle Toby would reply,—I have told it you
twenty times, word for word as Trim told it me.—Prithee, how was it then,
corporal? my father would cry, turning to Trim.—It was a mere misfortune,
an’ please your honour,——I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications,
and in going too near the edge of the fossè, I unfortunately slip’d in.——
Very well Trim! my father would cry,—(smiling mysteriously, and giving a
nod,——but without interrupting him)———and being link’d fast, an’
please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me,
by means of which she fell backwards soss7 against the bridge,——and
Trim’s foot, (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth)
getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a
thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not
break his leg.8—Ay truly! my father would say,——a limb is soon broke,
brother Toby, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the
bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down
betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle
Toby’s hobby-horse,—he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever
gentleman mounted, and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it,
could never think of it once, without smiling at it,——so that it never could
get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination
beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than
any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of
entertainment to him.——Well,—–but dear Toby! my father would say, do
tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——How can you
teaze me so much about it? my uncle Toby would reply,—I have told it you
twenty times, word for word as Trim told it me.—Prithee, how was it then,
corporal? my father would cry, turning to Trim.—It was a mere misfortune,
an’ please your honour,——I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications,
and in going too near the edge of the fossè, I unfortunately slip’d in.——
Very well Trim! my father would cry,—(smiling mysteriously, and giving a
nod,——but without interrupting him)———and being link’d fast, an’
please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me,
by means of which she fell backwards soss7 against the bridge,——and
Trim’s foot, (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth)
getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a
thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not
break his leg.8—Ay truly! my father would say,——a limb is soon broke,
brother Toby, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the
bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down
betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate as
to say a syllable about cannons, bombs or petards,—–my father would
exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a
panegyric upon the BATTERING-RAMS9 of the ancients,—the VINEA which
Alexander made use of at the siege of Tyre.——He would tell my uncle
Toby of the CATAPULTÆ of the Syrians which threw such monstrous stones so
many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very
foundation;—he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the
BALLISTA, which Marcellinus makes so much rout about,—the terrible
effects of the PYRABOLI,—which cast fire,——the danger of the TEREBRA
and SCORPIO, which cast javelins.—But what are these, he would say, to the
destructive machinery of corporal Trim?—Believe me, brother Toby, no
bridge, or bastion, or sally port10 that ever was constructed in this world,
can hold out against such artillery.
My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this
ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in
doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set
my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent
coughing: my uncle Toby leap’d up without feeling the pain upon his groin,
—and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother’s chair, tapping his back
with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and from time to time,
wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pull’d out of
his pocket.——The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle
Toby did these little offices,—–cut my father thro’ his reins, for the pain he
had just been giving him.——May my brains be knock’d out with a
battering ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to himself,
——if ever I insult this worthy soul more.
CHAP. XXV.
THE draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered directly to set
about another,——but not upon the same model; for cardinal Alberoni’s
intrigues1 at that time being discovered, and my uncle Toby rightly
foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt Spain and the
Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all
likelihood be either in Naples or Scicily,——he determined upon an Italian
bridge,—(my uncle Toby, by the bye, was not far out in his conjectures)
——but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the
lead as far of my uncle Toby in the cabinet, as my uncle Toby took it of him
in the field,—convinced him, that if the King of Spain and the Emperor
went together by the ears, that England and France and Holland must, by
force of their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;——and if so, he
would say, the combatants, brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to
it again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of Flanders;——then
what will you do with your Italian bridge?
——We will go on with it then, upon the old model, cried my uncle
Toby.
When corporal Trim had about half finished it in that stile,––—my uncle
Toby found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly
considered before. It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it,
opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse,
and the other, to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing
the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle
Toby to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one
hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare,
—but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable,——
for by this means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my
enemy’s possession,——and pray of what use is the other?
The natural remedy for this, was no doubt to have his bridge fast only at
one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, and stand
bolt upright,——but that was rejected for the reason given above.
For a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one of
that particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, to
hinder a passage; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage,——of
which sorts your worships might have seen three famous ones at Spires
before its destruction,—and one now at Brisac, if I mistake not;——but my
father advising my uncle Toby, with great earnestness, to have nothing more
to do with thrusting bridges,—and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it
would but perpetuate the memory of the corporal’s misfortune,—–he
changed his mind, for that of the marquis d’Hôpital’s invention, which the
younger Bernouilli has so well and learnedly described, as your worships
may see,—Act. Erud. Lips. an. 1695,—to these a lead weight is an eternal
ballance, and keeps watch as well as a couple of centinels, inasmuch as the
construction of them was a curve-line approximating to a cycloid,——if not
a cycloid itself.2
My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in
England,—but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;—he talked
however about it every day;——the bridge went not forwards.——We’ll
ask somebody about it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim.
CHAP. XXVI.
WHEN Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen,
and busy in making a bridge,—my uncle Toby,—–the affair of the jack-
boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain,—–took it
instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis
d’Hôpital’s bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby;
——pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank
him heartily.
Had my uncle Toby’s head been a Savoyard’s box,1 and my father
peeping in all the time at one end of it,——it could not have given him a
more distinct conception of the operations in my uncle Toby’s imagination,
than what he had; so notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and
his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph———
When Trim’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and
twisted it to pieces.
CHAP. XXVII.
——THIS unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father—God bless
your honour, cried Trim, ’tis a bridge for master’s nose.——In bringing him
into the world with his vile instruments, he has crush’d his nose, Susannah
says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge with a
piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah’s stays, to
raise it up.
———Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.
CHAP. XXVIII.
FROM the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of the
world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly been
gathering over my father.——A tide of little evils and distresses has been
setting in against him.——Not one thing, as he observed himself, has gone
right: and now is the storm thicken’d, and going to break, and pour down
full upon his head.
I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy
frame of mind, that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.———My
nerves relax as I tell it.———Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the
quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day
of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should not.——
And this moment that I last dipp’d my pen into my ink, I could not help
taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity there
appear’d in my manner of doing it.––—Lord! how different from the rash
jerks, and hare-brain’d squirts thou art wont, Tristram! to transact it with in
other humours,——dropping thy pen,—spurting thy ink about thy table and
thy books,——as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and thy furniture cost
thee nothing.
CHAP. XXIX.
——I WON’T go about to argue the point with you,—’tis so,—and I am
persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, “That both man and woman
bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a
horizontal position.”
The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself
prostrate across his bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the same
time, in the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows,
that ever the eye of pity dropp’d a tear for.——The palm of his right hand,
as he fell upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and covering the greatest
part of both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way
backwards) till his nose touch’d the quilt;——his left arm hung insensible
over the side of the bed, his knuckles reclining upon the handle of the
chamber pot, which peep’d out beyond the valance,—his right leg (his left
being drawn up towards his body) hung half over the side of the bed, the
edge of it pressing upon his shin-bone.——He felt it not. A fix’d, inflexible
sorrow took possession of every line of his face.—He sigh’d once,—–
heaved his breast often,—but utter’d not a word.
An old set-stitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around with party-
colour’d worsted bobs, stood at the bed’s head, opposite to the side where
my father’s head reclined.——My uncle Toby sat him down in it.
Before an affliction is digested,——consolation ever comes too soon;
——and after it is digested,—–it comes too late: so that you see, madam,
there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a
comforter to take aim at: my uncle Toby was always either on this side, or
on that of it, and would often say, He believed in his heart, he could as soon
hit the longitude;1 for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he drew
the curtain a little forwards, and having a tear at every one’s service,—he
pull’d out a cambrick handkerchief,——gave a low sigh,——but held his
peace.
CHAP. XXX.
——“ALL is not gain that is got into the purse.”——So that
notwithstanding my father had the happiness of reading the oddest books in
the universe, and had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking, that
ever man in it was bless’d with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all,
——that it laid him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical
distresses; of which this particular one which he sunk under at present is as
strong an example as can be given.
No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child’s nose, by the edge
of a pair of forceps,—–however scientifically applied,——would vex any
man in the world, who was at so much pains in begetting a child, as my
father was,——yet it will not account for the extravagance of his affliction,
or will it justify the unchristian manner he abandoned and surrender’d
himself up to it.
To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour,——and
my good uncle Toby in his old fringed chair sitting beside him.
CHAP. XXXI.
——I THINK it a very unreasonable demand,——cried my great grandfather,
twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table.——By this account,
madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a shilling more,
——and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it.
——
—“Because,” replied my great grandmother, “you have little or no nose,
Sir.”———
Now, before I venture to make use of the word Nose1 a second time,—–
to avoid all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of
my story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with
all possible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be understood
to mean by the term: being of opinion, that ’tis owing to the negligence and
perverseness of writers, in despising this precaution, and to nothing else,
——That all the polemical writings in divinity, are not as clear and
demonstrative as those upon a Will o’ the Wisp, or any other sound part of
philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do,
before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of
judgment,———but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of
the main word you have most occasion for,––changing it, Sir, as you would
a guinea, into small coin?—which done,—let the father of confusion puzzle
you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your reader’s
head, if he knows how.
In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as this I am
engaged in,—the neglect is inexcusable; and heaven is witness, how the
world has revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to
equivocal strictures,—and for depending so much as I have done, all along,
upon the cleanliness of my reader’s imaginations.
———Here are two senses, cried Eugenius, as we walk’d along,
pointing with the fore finger of his right hand to the word Crevice, in the
fifty-second page of the second volume* of this book of books,—here are
two senses,——quoth he.——And here are two roads, replied I, turning
short upon him,——a dirty and a clean one,——which shall we take?——
The clean,—by all means, replied Eugenius. Eugenius, said I, stepping
before him, and laying my hand upon his breast,——to define—–is to
distrust.—–Thus I triumph’d over Eugenius; but I triumph’d over him as I
always do, like a fool.——’Tis my comfort however, I am not an obstinate
one; therefore
I define a nose, as follows,——intreating only beforehand, and
beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion,
and condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard
against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no
art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my
definition.——For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of
noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs,––I
declare, by that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less.
CHAP. XXXII.
——“BECAUSE,” quoth my great grandmother, repeating the words again,
—–“you have little or no nose, Sir”——
S’death! cried my great grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose,
—’tis not so small as that comes to;—’tis a full inch longer than my
father’s.——Now, my great grandfather’s nose was for all the world like
unto the noses of all the men, women, and children, whom Pantagruel
found dwelling upon the island of ENNASIN.1——By the way, if you would
know the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people,——
you must read the book;—find it out yourself, you never can.——
——’Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.
——’Tis a full inch, continued my great grandfather, pressing up the
ridge of his nose with his finger and thumb; and repeating his assertion,
——’tis a full inch longer, madam, than my father’s—. You must mean
your uncle’s, replied my great grandmother.
——My great grandfather was convinced.—He untwisted the paper, and
signed the article.
CHAP. XXXIII.
——WHAT an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small
estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.
My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving
the mark,1 than there is upon the back of my hand.——
——Now, you must know, that my great grandmother outlived my
grandfather twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a
hundred and fifty pounds half yearly—–(on Michaelmas and Lady day)2—
during all that time.
No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my
father.———And as far as the hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon
the table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome,
which generous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down
money: but as soon as ever he enter’d upon the odd fifty,—he generally
gave a loud Hem!—rubb’d the side of his nose leisurely with the flat part of
his fore finger,—–inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the
cawl3 of his wig,—look’d at both sides of every guinea, as he parted with it,
—and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out
his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.
Defend me, gracious heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make
no allowances for these workings within us.––Never,—O never may I lay
down in their tents,4 who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force
of education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors!
For three generations at least, this tenet in favour of long noses had
gradually been taking root in our family.——TRADITION was all along on its
side, and INTEREST was every half year stepping in to strengthen it; so that
the whimsicality of my father’s brain was far from having the whole honour
of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.—For in a great
measure he might be said to have suck’d this in, with his mother’s milk.5
He did his part however.——If education planted the mistake, (in case it
was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.
He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that
he did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out
against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.—And for
the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the
greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly
noses following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it up into
the best vacancies in the kingdom.——He would often boast that the
Shandy family rank’d very high in king Harry the VIIIth’s time, but owed
its rise to no state engine,—he would say,—but to that only;—–but that, like
other families, he would add,—it had felt the turn of the wheel, and had
never recovered the blow of my great grandfather’s nose.——It was an ace
of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head,——and as vile a one for an
unfortunate family, as ever turn’d up trumps.6
——Fair and softly, gentle reader!——where is thy fancy carrying thee?
——If there is truth in man, by my great grandfather’s nose, I mean the
external organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in
his face,—and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-
proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third,—that is, measuring
downwards from the setting on of the hair.——
——What a life of it has an author, at this pass!
CHAP. XXXIV.
IT is a singular blessing, that nature has form’d the mind of man with the
same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is
observed in old dogs,——“of not learning new tricks.”
What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever
existed, be whisk’d into at once, did he read such books, and observe such
facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change
sides!
Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all this.––He pick’d up
an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.—It becomes
his own,—and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give
it up.——
I am aware, that Didius the great civilian, will contest this point; and cry
out against me, Whence comes this man’s right to this apple? ex confesso,1
he will say,——things were in a state of nature.—The apple, as much
Frank’s apple, as John’s. Pray, Mr. Shandy, what patent has he to shew for
it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he set his heart upon it? or
when he gather’d it? or when he chew’d it? or when he roasted it? or when
he peel’d? or when he brought it home? or when he digested?——or when
he———?——. For ’tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made
it not his,——that no subsequent act could.2
Brother Didius, Tribonius3 will answer,—(now Tribonius the civilian
and church lawyer’s beard being three inches and a half and three eighths
longer than Didius his beard,—I’m glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so I
give myself no further trouble about the answer.)—Brother Didius,
Tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the fragments
of Gregorius and Hermogenes’s codes, and in all the codes from Justinian’s
down to the codes of Louis and Des Eaux,4—That the sweat of a man’s
brows, and the exsudations5 of a man’s brains, are as much a man’s own
property, as the breeches upon his backside;––—which said exsudations,
&c. being dropp’d upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and
picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wafted,6 and as indissolubly
annex’d by the picker up, to the thing pick’d up, carried home, roasted,
peel’d, eaten, digested, and so on;——’tis evident that the gatherer of the
apple, in so doing, has mix’d up something which was his own, with the
apple which was not his own, by which means he has acquired a property;
—or, in other words, the apple is John’s apple.
By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his
opinions: he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they lay
out of the common way, the better still was his title.——No mortal claim’d
them: they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting
as in the case above, so that they might well and truely be said to be his
own goods and chattles.——Accordingly he held fast by ’em, both by teeth
and claws,——would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on,——and in
a word, would intrench and fortify them round with as many
circumvallations and breast-works, as my uncle Toby would a citadel.
There was one plaguy rub in the way of this,——the scarcity of
materials to make any thing of a defence with, in case of a smart attack;
inasmuch as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing
books upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the
thing is incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding when I am
considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been
wasted upon worse subjects,——and how many millions of books in all
languages, and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon
points not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world.
What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by; and though my
father would oft-times sport with my uncle Toby’s library,——which, by the
bye, was ridiculous enough,—yet at the very same time he did it, he
collected every book and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon
noses, with as much care as my honest uncle Toby had done those up on
military architecture.——’Tis true, a much less table would have held them,
—but that was not thy transgression, my dear uncle.——
Here,——but why here,——rather than in any other part of my story,
——I am not able to tell;——but here it is,——my heart stops me to pay to
thee, my dear uncle Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.—–
Here let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I
am pouring forth the warmest sentiments of love for thee, and veneration
for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a
nephew’s bosom.———Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy
head!—Thou envied’st no man’s comforts,––—insulted’st no man’s
opinions.——Thou blackened’st no man’s character,———devoured’st no
man’s bread: gently with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round
the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way;——for
each one’s service,7 thou hadst a tear,——for each man’s need, thou hadst a
shilling.
Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder,——thy path from thy door to
thy bowling green shall never be grown up.——Whilst there is a rood and a
half of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby,
shall never be demolish’d.
CHAP. XXXV.
MY father’s collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curious;
and consequently, he was some time in making it; he had the great good
fortune however to set off well, in getting Bruscambille’s prologue1 upon
long noses, almost for nothing,—for he gave no more for Bruscambille than
three half crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man
saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.—–
There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom,––—said the stall-man,
except what are chain’d up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung
down the money as quick as lightening,—took Bruscambille into his
bosom,——hyed home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street2 with it, as he
would have hyed home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off
from Bruscambille all the way.
To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille is,——
inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either,
——’twill be no objection against the simile,––to say, That when my father
got home, he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner, in which,
’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress,3——
that is, from morning even unto night: which by the bye, how delightful
soever it may prove to the inamorato,—is of little, or no entertainment at
all, to by-standers,—Take notice, I go no farther with the simile,—my
father’s eye was greater than his appetite,—his zeal greater than his
knowledge,—–he cool’d—–his affections became divided,——he got hold
of Prignitz,—purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paræus, Bouchet’s Evening
Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of
which, as I shall have much to say by and bye,——I will say nothing now.
CHAP. XXXVI.
OF all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support
of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel
disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue1 between
Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable
Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.
——Now don’t let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of
any one spot of rising-ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can
any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on,——let me beg of you,
like an unback’d filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound
it,—and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till like Tickletoby’s
mare,2 you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.––
——You need not kill him.——
——And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare?—’tis just as discreditable
and unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb.
con.)3 the second Punic war broke out.––Who was Tickletoby’s mare!—
Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read,4—or by the knowledge
of the great saint Paraleipomenon5—I tell you before-hand, you had better
throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your
reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to
penetrate the moral6 of the next marbled page (motly7 emblem of my
work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the
many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under
the dark veil of the black one.
CHAP. XXXVII.
“NIHIL me pœnitet hujus nasi,” quoth Pamphagus;—that is,——“My nose
has been the making of me.”——“Nec est cur pœniteat,” replies Cocles;
that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”1
The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished
it, with the utmost plainness; but my father’s disappointment was, in finding
nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that
speculative subtilty or ambidexterity2 of argumentation upon it, which
heaven had bestow’d upon man on purpose to investigate truth and fight for
her on all sides.——My father pish’d and pugh’d at first most terribly,—’tis
worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my
father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great
application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro’ and thro’ in
its most strict and literal interpretation,—he could still make nothing of it,
that way. Mayhaps there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.
—Learned men, brother Toby, don’t write dialogues upon long noses for
nothing.——I’ll study the mystic and the allegoric sense,——here is some
room to turn a man’s self in, brother.
My father read on.———
Now, I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that
besides the many nautical uses3 of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the
dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences
also, for that in a case of distress,—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will
do excellently well, ad excitandum focum, (to stir up the fire.)
Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and
had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done
the seeds of all other knowledge,––so that he had got out his penknife, and
was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch
some better sense into it.—I’ve got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried
my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.—You are near enough, brother,
replied my uncle, in all conscience.———Pshaw! cried my father,
scratching on,—I might as well be seven miles off.—I’ve done it,——said
my father, snapping his fingers.—See, my dear brother Toby, how I have
mended the sense.—But you have marr’d a word, replied my uncle Toby.––
My father put on his spectacles,—bit his lip,—and tore out the leaf in a
passion.
CHAP. XXXVIII.
O Slawkenbergius! thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrázias,1——thou sad
foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns, which in one stage or
other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose,
and no other cause, that I am conscious of.——Tell me, Slawkenbergius!
what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how
did it sound in thy ears?—art thou sure thou heard’st it?—which first cried
out to thee,—go,—go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life,—–
neglect thy pastimes,—call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature,
——macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand FOLIO for
them, upon the subject of their noses.
How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius’s
sensorium,——so that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch’d
the key,——and whose hand it was that blew the bellows,——as Hafen
Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten
years,——we can only raise conjectures.
Slawkenbergius was play’d upon, for aught I know, like one of
Whitfield’s disciples,2——that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of
which of the two masters it was, that had been practising upon his
instrument,——as to make all reasoning upon it needless.
——For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of
his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his
life upon this one work—towards the end of his prologomena, which by the
bye should have come first,––—but the bookbinder has most injudiciously
placed it betwixt the analitical contents of the book, and the book itself,
——he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of
discernment, and was able to sit down coolly, and consider within himself
the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design
of his being;——or,——to shorten my translation, for Slawkenbergius’s
book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this passage,——ever since I
understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing,——or rather what was what,
—–and could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely
handled by all who had gone before;——have I, Slawkenbergius, felt a
strong impulse, with a mighty and an unresistible call within me, to gird up
myself3 to this undertaking.
And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a
stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it, than any one man who
had ever entered it before him,——and indeed, in many respects, deserves
to be en-nich’d as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least,
to model their books by,——for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject,––
examined every part of it, dialectically,—then brought it into full day;
dilucidating4 it with all the light which either the collision of his own
natural parts could strike,——or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences
had impowered him to cast upon it,——collating, collecting and compiling,
—begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been
wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: so
that Slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a
model,—but as a thorough-stitch’d DIGEST and regular institute of noses;
comprehending in it, all that is, or can be needful to be known about them.
For this cause it is, that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise)
valuable books and treatises of my father’s collecting, wrote either, plump
upon noses,—or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as
Prignitz, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning,
and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four
thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel houses in Silesia,5
which he had rummaged,—has informed us, that the mensuration and
configuration of the osseous or boney parts of human noses, in any given
tract of country, except Crim Tartary,6 where they are all crush’d down by
the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them,——are much
nearer alike, than the world imagines;——the difference amongst them,
being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking notice of,——but that the size
and jollity of every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above
another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilagenous and
muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses the blood and animal
spirits being impell’d, and driven by the warmth and force of the
imagination, which is but a step from it, (bating the case of ideots, whom
Prignitz, who had lived many years in Turky, supposes under the more
immediate tutelage of heaven)7——it so happens, and ever must, says
Prignitz, that the excellency of the nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion
to the excellency of the wearer’s fancy.
It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in
Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus (Andrea) who all
the world knows, set himself to oppugn Prignitz with great violence,——
proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a series of stubborn
facts, “That so far was Prignitz from the truth, in affirming that the fancy
begat the nose, that on the contrary,—the nose begat the fancy.”
—The learned suspected Scroderus, of an indecent sophism in this,—–
and Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scroderus had shifted the
idea upon him,—but Scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis.——
My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he
should take in this affair; when Ambrose Paræus8 decided it in a moment,
and by overthrowing the systems, both of Prignitz and Scroderus, drove my
father out of both sides of the controversy at once.
Be witness——
I don’t acquaint the learned reader,—in saying it, I mention it only to
shew the learned, I know the fact myself.——
That this Ambrose Paræus was chief surgeon and nose-mender to
Francis the ninth of France, and in high credit with him and the two
preceding, or succeeding kings (I know not which)—and that except in the
slip he made in his story of Taliacotius’s noses, and his manner of setting
them on,——was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time,
as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken
them in hand.
Now Ambrose Paræus convinced my father, that the true and efficient
cause9 of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon
which Prignitz and Scroderus had wasted so much learning and fine parts,
—was neither this nor that,––—but that the length and goodness of the nose
was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse’s breast,——as
the flatness and shortness of puisne10 noses was, to the firmness and elastic
repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively,—which, tho’
happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose
was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as
never to arrive ad mensuram suam legitimam;11——but that in case of the
flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother’s breast,—by sinking into it,
quoth Paræus, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d,
plump’d up, refresh’d, refocillated,12 and set a growing for ever.
I have but two things to observe of Paræus; first, that he proves and
explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression:—for
which may his soul for ever rest in peace!
And, secondly, that besides the systems of Prignitz and Scroderus,
which Ambrose Paræus his hypothesis effectually overthrew,—–it
overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family;
and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my father
and my mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and every thing in it,
except my uncle Toby, quite upside down.
Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never
surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-door.
My mother, you must know,——but I have fifty things more necessary
to let you know first,—I have a hundred difficulties which I have promised
to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domestic misadventures crouding
in upon me thick and three-fold, one upon the neck of another,——a cow
broke in (to-morrow morning) to my uncle Toby’s fortifications, and eat up
two ratios13 and half of dried grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced
his horn-work and covered way.—Trim insists upon being tried by a court-
martial,—the cow to be shot,—Slop to be crucifix’d,14—myself to be
tristram’d, and at my very baptism made a martyr of;——poor unhappy
devils that we all are!—I want swaddling,——but there is no time to be lost
in exclamations.——I have left my father lying across his bed, and my
uncle Toby in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would
go back to them in half an hour, and five and thirty minutes are laps’d
already.——Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in,—–this
certainly is the greatest, for I have Hafen Slawkenbergius’s folio, Sir, to
finish——a dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the
solution of Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Ponocrates and
Grangousier15 to relate,—a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate, and all
this in five minutes less, than no time at all;––such a head!—would to
heaven! my enemies only saw the inside of it.
CHAP. XXXIX.
THERE was not any one scene more entertaining in our family,—–and to do
it justice in this point;——and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the
table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the
world concerning this one article, the more solemn,——that I believe in my
soul, (unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the
hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of all things, never made or
put a family together, (in that period at least of it, which I have sat down to
write the story of)——where the characters of it were cast or contrasted
with so dramatic a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the
capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting
them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and intrusted with so
unlimited a confidence, as in the SHANDY-FAMILY.
Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre
of ours,—than what frequently arose out of this self-same chapter of long
noses,——especially when my father’s imagination was heated with the
enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle Toby’s too.
My uncle Toby would give my father all possible fair play in this
attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoaking his pipe for whole
hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying
every accessible avenue to drive Prignitz and Scroderus’s solutions into it.
Whether they were above my uncle Toby’s reason,——or contrary to it,
——or that his brain was like damp tinder, and no spark could possibly take
hold,—–or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such
military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus’s
doctrines,—I say not,—let school-men—scullions, anatomists, and
engineers, fight for it amongst themselves.——
’Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father
had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle Toby, and
render out of Slawkenbergius’s Latin, of which, as he was no great master,
his translation was not always of the purest,—and generally least so where
’twas most wanted,—–this naturally open’d a door to a second misfortune;
—–that in the warmer paroxisms of his zeal to open my uncle Toby’s eyes
——my father’s ideas run on, as much faster than the translation, as the
translation outmoved my uncle Toby’s;——neither the one or the other
added much to the perspicuity of my father’s lecture.
CHAP. XL.
THE gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms,—I mean in man,—for in
superior classes of beings, such as angels and spirits,—’tis all done, may it
please your worships, as they tell me, by INTUITION;—and beings inferior, as
your worships all know,——syllogize by their noses:1 though there is an
island swiming in the sea, though not altogether at its ease, whose
inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully gifted,
as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out
too:——but that’s neither here nor there––—
The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us,—or the great and
principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out
the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the
intervention of a third; (called the medius terminus) just as a man, as Locke
well observes, by a yard, finds two men's nine-pin-alleys to be of the same
length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by
juxta-position.2
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his
systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby’s deportment,—what great
attention he gave to every word,––and as oft as he took his pipe from his
mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it,—
surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb,—
then foreright,—then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions
and foreshortenings,——he would have concluded my uncle Toby had got
hold of the medius terminus; and was syllogizing and measuring with it the
truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order as my father laid them
before him. This by the bye, was more than my father wanted,—his aim in
all the pains he was at in these philosophic lectures,––was to enable my
uncle Toby not to discuss,——but comprehend——to hold the grains and
scruples of learning,—not to weigh them.—My uncle Toby, as you will read
in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other.
CHAP. XLI.
’TIS a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours painful
translation of Slawkenbergius,—’tis a pity, cried my father, putting my
mother’s thread-paper into the book for a mark, as he spoke——that truth,
brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be
so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.
——
Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle
Toby’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of Prignitz to him,
——having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-
green;——his body might as well have taken a turn there too,——so that
with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the medius
terminus,——my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture,
and all its pro’s and con’s, as if my father had been translating Hafen
Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokeè. But the word
siege, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my
uncle Toby’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch,—he open’d his
ears,––and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and
shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit,—my father
with great pleasure began his sentence again,––—changing only the plan,
and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers
my father apprehended from it.
’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother
Toby,—considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in
their solutions of noses.——Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle
Toby.
—–My father thrust back his chair,——rose up,—–put on his hat,——
took four long strides to the door,—jerked it open,—thrust his head half
way out,—shut the door again,––took no notice of the bad hinge,—returned
to the table,––pluck’d my mother’s thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius’s
book,—went hastily to his bureau,—walk’d slowly back, twisting my
mother’s thread-paper about his thumb,—unbutton’d his waistcoat,——
threw my mother’s thread-paper into the fire,—bit her sattin pin-cushion in
two, fill’d his mouth with bran,—confounded it;—but mark!—the oath of
confusion was levell’d at my uncle Toby’s brain,——which was e’en
confused enough already,——the curse came charged only with the bran,—
the bran, may it please your honours,—was no more than powder to the
ball.
’Twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for so long as they did
last, they led him a busy life on’t, and it is one of the most unaccountable
problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that
nothing should prove my father’s mettle so much, or make his passions go
off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from
the quaint simplicity of my uncle Toby’s questions.—– Had ten dozen of
hornets stung him behind in so many different places all at one time,—he
could not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds,—or
started half so much, as with one single quære1 of three words unseasonably
popping in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career.
’Twas all one to my uncle Toby,—he smoaked his pipe on, with unvaried
composure,—his heart never intended offence to his brother,—and as his
head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay,——he always gave my
father the credit of cooling by himself.——He was five minutes and thirty-
five seconds about it in the present case.
By all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and
taking the oath out of Ernulphus’s digest of curses,—(though to do my
father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. Slop in the affair of Ernulphus)
which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth.)——By all that’s
good and great! brother Toby, said my father, if it was not for the aids of
philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do,—you would put a man
beside all temper.—Why, by the solutions of noses, of which I was telling
you, I meant as you might have known, had you favoured me with one
grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different
kinds of knowledge have given the world, of the causes of short and long
noses.—There is no cause but one, replied my uncle Toby,––why one man’s
nose is longer than another’s, but because that God pleases to have it so.—
That is Grangousier’s solution,2 said my father.—’Tis he, continued my
uncle Toby, looking up, and not regarding my father’s interruption, who
makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and
proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom.
——’Tis a pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical,—there is
more religion in it than sound science. ’Twas no inconsistent part of my
uncle Toby’s character,——that he feared God, and reverenced religion.
——So the moment my father finished his remark,—my uncle Toby fell a
whistling Lillabullero, with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.
——
What is become of my wife’s thread-paper?
CHAP. XLII.
NO matter,——as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be
of some consequence to my mother,—of none to my father, as a mark in
Slawkenbergius. Slawkenbergius in every page of him was a rich treasury of
inexhaustible knowledge to my father,—he could not open him amiss; and
he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the
world, with the books which treated of them, were lost,––—should the
wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever
happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote, or caused to be
written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should
they be forgot also,—and Slawkenbergius only left,—there would be
enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going
again. A treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was
necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else,——at matin, noon,
and vespers was Hafen Slawkenbergius his recreation and delight: ’twas for
ever in his hands,—you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon’s
prayer-book,—so worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited1 was it with
fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other.
I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius, as my father;—there is a fund
in him, no doubt; but in my opinion, the best, I don’t say the most
profitable, but the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his tales,
—–and, considering he was a German, many of them told not without
fancy:——these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his
folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten
tales.––—Philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore ’twas certainly
wrong in Slawkenbergius to send them into the world by that name;—there
are a few of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem
rather playful and sportive, than speculative,—but in general they are to be
looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many independent facts, all of
them turning round somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject,
and collected by him with great fidelity, and added to his work as so many
illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.
As we have leisure enough upon our hands,—if you give me leave,
madam, I’ll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad.
THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
THE
LIFE
AND
OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN.
Militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret, dixit, se apud Nasorum promontorium fuisse,
Francofurtum proficisci, et Argentoratum, transitu ad fines Sarmatiæ mensis intervallo, reversurum.
Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit—Di boni, nova forma nasi!
At multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, carpum amento extrahens, e quo pependit acinaces:
Loculo manum inseruit; & magnâ cum urbanitate, pilei parte anteriore tactâ manu sinistrâ, ut
extendit dextram, militi florinum dedit et processit.
Dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam nanum et valgum alloquens, virum adeo urbanum vaginam
perdidisse; itinerari haud poterit nudâ acinaci, neque vaginam toto Argentorato, habilem inveniet.—
Nullam unquam habui, respondit peregrinus respiciens,—seque comiter inclinans—hoc more gesto,
nudam acinacem elevans, mulo lentò progrediente, ut nasum tueri possim.
SLAWKENBERGIUS’s
TALE.
IT was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very sultry day, in the
latter end of the month of August, when a stranger, mounted upon a dark
mule, with a small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of
shoes, and a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, entered the town of Strasburg.2
He told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the gates, that he
had been at the promontory of NOSES—was going on to Frankfort—and
should be back again at Strasburg that day month, in his way to the borders
of Crim-Tartary.
The centinel looked up into the stranger’s face—never saw such a nose
in his life!
—I have made a very good venture of it, quoth the stranger––so slipping
his wrist out of the loop of a black ribban, to which a short scymetar was
hung: He put his hand into his pocket, and with great courtesy touching the
forepart of his cap with his left-hand, as he extended his right—he put a
florin into the centinel’s hand, and passed on.
It grieves me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish bandy-leg’d
drummer, that so courteous a soul should have lost his scabbard3—he
cannot travel without one to his scymetar, and will not be able to get a
scabbard to fit it in all Strasburg.––—I never had one, replied the stranger,
looking back to the centinel, and putting his hand up to his cap as he spoke
——I carry it, continued he, thus—holding up his naked scymetar, his mule
moving on slowly all the time, on purpose to defend my nose.
Non immerito, benigne peregrine, respondit miles.
Nihili æstimo, ait ille tympanista, e pergamenâ factitius est.
Prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus ille, ni sexties major sit, meo esset conformis.
Crepitare4 audivi ait tympanista.
Mehercule! sanguinem emisit, respondit miles.
Miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non ambo tetigimus!
Eodem temporis puncto, quo hæc res argumentata fuit inter militem et tympanistam,
disceptabatur ibidem tubicine & uxore suâ, qui tunc accesserunt, et peregrino prætereunte,
restiterunt.
Peregrinus illi non respondit. Votum faciebat tunc temporis sancto Nicolao, quo facto, sinum
dextram inserens, e quâ negligenter pependit acinaces, lento gradu processit per plateam Argentorati
latam quæ ad diversorium templo ex adversum ducit.
It is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel.
—’Tis not worth a single stiver, said the bandy-leg’d drummer—’tis a
nose of parchment.
As I am a true catholic—except that it is six times as big—’tis a nose,
said the centinel, like my own.
—I heard it crackle, said the drummer.
By dunder, said the centinel, I saw it bleed.
What a pity, cried the bandy-legg’d drummer, we did not both touch it!
At the very time that this dispute was maintaining by the centinel and
the drummer—was the same point debating betwixt a trumpeter and a
trumpeter’s wife, who were just then coming up, and had stopped to see the
stranger pass by.
Benedicity!6——What a nose! ’tis as long, said the trumpeter’s wife, as
a trumpet.
And of the same mettle, said the trumpeter, as you hear by its sneezing.
—’Tis as soft as a flute, said she.
—’Tis brass, said the trumpeter.
—’Tis a pudding’s end—said his wife.
I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, ’tis a brazen nose.
I’ll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter’s wife, for I will touch it
with my finger before I sleep.
The stranger’s mule moved on at so slow a rate, that he heard every
word of the dispute, not only betwixt the centinel and the drummer; but
betwixt the trumpeter and the trumpeter’s wife.
No! said he, dropping his reins upon his mule’s neck, and laying both his
hands upon his breast, the one over the other in a saint-like position (his
mule going on easily all the time) No! said he, looking up,—I am not such a
debtor to the world––slandered and disappointed as I have been——as to
give it that conviction—no! said he, my nose shall never be touched whilst
heaven gives me strength—To do what? said a burgomaster’s wife.
The stranger took no notice of the burgomaster’s wife––he was making a
vow to saint Nicolas;7 which done, having uncrossed his arms with the
same solemnity with which he crossed them, he took up the reins of his
bridle with his left-hand,
Peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo includi, & manticam inferri jussit: quâ apertâ et coccineis
sericis femoralibus extractis cum argénteo laciniato Περιζοματὲ,8 his sese induit, statimque, acinaci
in manu, ad forum deambulavit.
Quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxorem tubicinis obviam euntem aspicit; illico cursum
flectit, metuens ne nasus suus exploraretur, atque ad diversorium regressus est—exuit se vestibus;
braccas coccineas sericas manticæ imposuit mulumque educi jussit.
Longa via est! respondit hospes, nisi plurimum esset negoti.––—Enimvero ait peregrinus a
nasorum promontorio redij, et nasum speciosissimum, egregiosissimumque quem unquam quisquam
sortitus est, acquisivi!
Dum peregrinus hanc miram rationem, de seipso reddit, hospes et uxor ejus, oculis intentis,
peregrini nasum contemplantur—Per sanctos, sanctasque omnes, ait hospitis uxor, nasis duodecim
maximis, in toto Argentorato major est!—estne ait illa mariti in aurem insusurrans, nonne est nasus
prægrandis?
Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum intactum fore usque ad—Quodnam
tempus? illico respondit illa.
Minime tangetur,10 inquit ille (manibus in pectus compositis) usque ad illam horam—Quam
horam? ait illa.—Nullam, respondit peregrinus, donec pervenio, ad—Quem locum,––obsecro? ait
illa—Peregrinus nil respondens mulo conscenso discessit.
’Tis a true nose, said his wife.—
’Tis made of fir-tree, said he,—I smell the turpentine.11—
There’s a pimple on it, said she.
’Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper.
’Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself, said the inn-keeper’s wife, I
will touch it.
I have made a vow to saint Nicolas this day, said the stranger, that my
nose shall not be touched till—Here the stranger, suspending his voice,
looked up—Till when? said she hastily.
It never shall be touched, said he, clasping his hands and bringing them
close to his breast, till that hour——What hour? cried the inn-keeper’s wife.
——Never!—never! said the stranger, never till I am got—For heaven sake
into what place? said she.—The stranger rode away without saying a word.
The stranger had not got half a league on his way towards Frankfort,
before all the city of Strasburg was in an uproar about his nose. The
Compline-bells were just ringing to call the Strasburgers to their devotions,
and shut up the duties of the day in prayer:——no soul in all Strasburg
heard ’em—the city was like a swarm of bees——men, women, and
children (the Compline-bells tinkling all the time) flying here and there—in
at one door, out at another—this way and that way—long ways and cross
ways—up one street, down another street—in at this ally, out at that——did
you see it? did you see it? did you see it? O! did you see it?—who saw it?
who did see it? for mercy’s sake, who saw it?
Alack o’day! I was at vespers!——I was washing, I was starching, I was
scouring, I was quilting—GOD help me! I never saw it—I never touch’d it!
——would I had been a centinel, a bandy-leg’d drummer, a trumpeter, a
trumpeter’s wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street and
corner of Strasburg.
Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the great
city of Strasburg, was the courteous stranger going on as gently upon his
mule in his way to Frankfort, as if he had had no concern at all in the affair
—talking all the way he rode in broken sentences, sometimes to his mule—
sometimes to himself––—sometimes to his Julia.
O Julia, my lovely Julia!—nay I cannot stop to let thee bite that thistle—
that ever the suspected tongue of a rival should have robbed me of
enjoyment when I was upon the point of tasting it.—
—Pugh!—’tis nothing but a thistle—never mind it—thou shalt have a
better supper at night.—
——Banish’d from my country—my friends—from thee.—
Poor devil, thou’rt sadly tired with thy journey!—come—get on a little
faster—there’s nothing in my cloak-bag but two shirts—a crimson-sattin
pair of breeches, and a fringed—Dear Julia!
—But why to Frankfort?—is it that there is a hand unfelt, which secretly
is conducting me through these meanders and unsuspected tracts?—
—Stumbling! by saint Nicolas! every step——why at this rate we shall
be all night in getting in———
—To happiness—or am I to be the sport of fortune and slander—
destined to be driven forth unconvicted—unheard––untouched——if so,
why did I not stay at Strasburg, where justice——but I had sworn!—Come,
thou shalt drink—to St. Nicolas—O Julia!——What dost thou prick up thy
ears at?—’tis nothing but a man, &c.––——
The stranger rode on communing in this manner with his mule and Julia
—till he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he arrived, he alighted—saw
his mule, as he had promised it, taken good care of——took off his cloak-
bag, with his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in it——called for an omelet to
his supper, went to his bed about twelve o’clock, and in five minutes fell
fast asleep.
It was about the same hour when the tumult in Strasburg being abated
for that night,——the Strasburgers had all got quietly into their beds—but
not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen
Mab,12 like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger’s nose, and without
reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and dividing
it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there were heads in
Strasburg to hold them. The abbess of Quedlingberg,13 who, with the four
great dignitaries of her chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress,
and senior canoness, had that week come to Strasburg to consult the
university upon a case of conscience relating to their placket holes14—was
ill all the night.
The courteous stranger’s nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal
gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four
great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole
night thro’ for it——there was no keeping a limb still amongst them—in
short, they got up like so many ghosts.
The penitentiaries of the third order of saint Francis15——the nuns of
mount Calvary16—the Præmonstratenses17——the Clunienses*18—the
Carthusians,19 and all the severer orders of nuns who lay that night in
blankets or hair-cloth, were still in a worse condition than the abbess of
Quedlingberg—by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling from
one side of their beds to the other the whole night long—the several
sisterhoods had scratch’d and mawl’d themselves all to death—they got out
of their beds almost flead20 alive—every body thought saint Antony had
visited them for probation with his fire21——they had never once, in short,
shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins.
The nuns of saint Ursula22 acted the wisest—they never attempted to go
to bed at all.
The dean of Strasburg, the prebendaries, the capitulars23 and
domiciliars24 (capitularly assembled in the morning to consider the case of
butter’d buns)25 all wished they had followed the nuns of saint Ursula’s
example.——In the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the night
before, the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven—there were no butter’d
buns to be had for breakfast in all Strasburg—the whole close of the
cathedral was in one eternal commotion—such a cause of restlessness and
disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into the cause of that restlessness,
had never happened in Strasburg, since Martin Luther, with his doctrines,
had turned the city up-side down.
If the stranger’s nose took this liberty of thrusting itself thus into the
dishes* of religious orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose make of it, in
those of the laity!—’tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has
power to describe; tho’ I acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius, with more
gaiety of thought than I could have expected from him) that there is many a
good simile now subsisting in the world which might give my countrymen
some idea of it; but at the close of such a folio as this, wrote for their sakes,
and in which I have spent the greatest part of my life—tho’ I own to them
the simile is in being, yet would it not be unreasonable in them to expect I
should have either time or inclination to search for it? Let it suffice to say,
that the riot and disorder it occasioned in the Strasburgers fantacies was so
general—such an overpowering mastership had it got of all the faculties of
the Strasburgers minds—so many strange things, with equal confidence on
all sides, and with equal eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to
concerning it, that turned the whole stream of all discourse and wonder
towards it—every soul, good and bad—rich and poor—learned and
unlearned—doctor and student—mistress and maid—gentle and simple—
nun’s flesh and woman’s flesh in Strasburg spent their time in hearing
tidings about it—every eye in Strasburg languished to see it——every
finger—every thumb in Strasburg burned to touch it.
Now what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to add to so
vehement a desire—was this, that the centinel, the bandy-legg’d drummer,
the trumpeter, the trumpeter’s wife, the burgomaster’s widow, the master of
the inn, and the master of the inn’s wife, how widely soever they all differed
every one from another in their testimonies and descriptions of the
stranger’s nose—they all agreed together in two points—namely, that he
was gone to Frankfort, and would not return to Strasburg till that day
month; and secondly, whether his nose was true or false, that the stranger
himself was one of the most perfect paragons of beauty—the finest made
man!—the most genteel!—the most generous of his purse—the most
courteous in his carriage that had ever entered the gates of Strasburg—that
as he rode, with his scymetar slung loosely to his wrist, thro’ the streets—
and walked with his crimson-sattin breeches across the parade—’twas with
so sweet an air of careless modesty, and so manly withal—as would have
put the heart in jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin
who had cast her eyes upon him.
I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and yearnings
of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of Quedlingberg, the prioress,
the deaness and subchantress for sending at noon-day for the trumpeter’s
wife: she went through the streets of Strasburg with her husband’s trumpet
in her hand;—the best apparatus the straitness of the time would allow her,
for the illustration of her theory—she staid no longer than three days.
The centinel and the bandy-legg’d drummer!—nothing on this side of
old Athens could equal them! they read their lectures under the city gates to
comers and goers, with all the pomp of a Chrysippus and a Crantor26 in
their porticos.
The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand, read his also in
the same stile,—under the portico or gateway of his stable-yard—his wife,
hers more privately in a back room: all flocked to their lectures; not
promiscuously—but to this or that, as is ever the way, as faith and credulity
marshal’d them—in a word, each Strasburger came crouding for
intelligence—and every Strasburger had the intelligence he wanted.
’Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators in natural
philosophy, &c. that as soon as the trumpeter’s wife had finished the abbess
of Quedlinberg’s private lecture, and had begun to read in public, which she
did upon a stool in the middle of the great parade—she incommoded the
other demonstrators mainly, by gaining incontinently the most fashionable
part of the city of Strasburg for her auditory—But when a demonstrator in
philosophy (cries Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an apparatus, pray
what rival in science can pretend to be heard besides him?
Whilst the unlearned, thro’ these conduits of intelligence, were all
busied in getting down to the bottom of the well,27 where TRUTH keeps her
little court—were the learned in their way as busy in pumping her up thro’
the conduits of dialect induction—they concerned themselves not with facts
—they reasoned—
Not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than the
faculty28—had not all their disputes about it run into the affair of Wens and
œdematous swellings, they could not keep clear of them for their bloods
and souls—the stranger’s nose had nothing to do either with wens or
œdematous swellings.
It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous
mass of heterogenious matter could not be congested and conglomerated to
the nose, whilst the infant was in Utero, without destroying the statical
balance of the fœtus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months
before the time.29——
—The opponents granted the theory—they denied the consequences.
And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said they, was not laid
in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in the very first stamina30 and
rudiments of its formation before it came into the world (bating the case of
Wens) it could not regularly grow and be sustained afterwards.
This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the effect
which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the increase and
prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest growth and expansion
imaginable—In the triumph of which theory, they went so far as to affirm,
that there was no cause in nature, why a nose might not grow to the size of
the man himself.
The respondents satisfied the world this event could never happen to
them so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs—For the
stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception of food,
and turning it into chyle,––and the lungs the only engine of sanguification
—it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite brought it: or
admitting the possibility of a man’s overloading his stomach, nature had set
bounds however to his lungs—the engine was of a determined size and
strength, and could elaborate but a certain quantity in a given time—that is,
it could produce just as much blood as was sufficient for one single man,
and no more; so that, if there was as much nose as man—they proved a
mortification must necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a
support for both, that the nose must either fall off from the man, or the man
inevitably fall off from his nose.
Nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried the opponents
—else what do you say to the case of a whole stomach—a whole pair of
lungs, and but half a man, when both his legs have been unfortunately shot
off?—
He dies of a plethora, said they—or must spit blood, and in a fortnight or
three weeks go off in a consumption—
—It happens otherways—replied the opponents.——
It ought not, said they.
The more curious and intimate inquirers after nature and her doings,
though they went hand in hand a good way together, yet they all divided
about the nose at last, almost as much as the faculty itself.
They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and geometrical
arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the human frame to its
several destinations, offices, and functions, which could not be transgressed
but within certain limits––that nature, though she sported—she sported
within a certain circle;—and they could not agree about the diameter of it.
The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than any of the
classes of the literati;—they began and ended with the word nose; and had it
not been for a petitio principii,31 which one of the ablest of them ran his
head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole controversy had
been settled at once.
A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood––and not only
blood—but blood circulating in it to supply the phænomenon with a
succession of drops—(a stream being but a quicker succession of drops,
that is included, said he)—Now death, continued the logician, being nothing
but the stagnation of the blood32—
I deny the definition—Death is the separation of the soul from the body,
said his antagonist—Then we don’t agree about our weapon, said the
logician—Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist.
The civilians33 were still more concise; what they offered being more in
the nature of a decree—than a dispute.
—Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could not
possibly have been suffered in civil society—and if false—to impose upon
society with such false signs and tokens, was a still greater violation of its
rights, and must have had still less mercy shewn it.
The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved the
stranger’s nose was neither true nor false.
This left room for the controversy to go on. It was maintained by the
advocates of the ecclesiastic court, that there was nothing to inhibit a
decree, since the stranger ex mero motu34 had confessed he had been at the
Promontory of Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. &c.––To this it
was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place as the
Promontory of Noses, and the learned be ignorant where it lay. The
commissary of the bishop of Strasburg undertook the advocates, explained
this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, shewing them, that the
Promontory of Noses was a mere allegoric expression, importing no more
than that nature had given him a long nose: in proof of which, with great
learning, he cited the underwritten authorities*, which had decided the point
incontestably, had it not appeared that a dispute about some franchises of
dean and chapter-lands had been determined by it nineteen years before.
It happened—I must not say unluckily for Truth, because they were
giving her a lift another way in so doing; that the two universities36 of
Strasburg—the Lutheran, founded in the year 1538 by Jacobus Sturmius,
counsellor of the senate,—and the Popish, founded by Leopold, arch-duke
of Austria, were, during all this time, employing the whole depth of their
knowledge (except just what the affair of the abbess of Quedlinburg’s
placket-holes required)—in determining the point of Martin Luther’s
damnation.37
The Popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate a priori; that from
the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of October
1483——when the moon was in the twelfth house—Jupiter, Mars, and
Venus in the third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury all got together in the
fourth––that he must in course, and unavoidably be a damn’d man––and
that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damn’d doctrines too.
By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all
at once with scorpio* (in reading this my father would always shake his
head) in the ninth house which the Arabians allotted to religion—it
appeared that Martin Luther did not care one stiver about the matter—and
that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of Mars—they made it
plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming—with the blast of
which his soul (being steep’d in guilt) sailed before the wind, into the lake
of hell fire.
The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this, was, that it must
certainly be the soul of another man, born Oct. 22, 1483, which was forced
to sail down before the wind in that manner—inasmuch as it appeared from
the register of Islaben in the county of Mansfelt, that Luther was not born in
the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the 22d day of October, but on the 10th
of November, the eve of Martinmas-day, from whence he had the name of
Martin.
[—I must break off my translation for a moment; for if I did not, I know
I should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the abbess of
Quedlinburg—It is to tell the reader, that my father never read this passage
of Slawkenbergius to my uncle Toby but with triumph—not over my uncle
Toby, for he never opposed him in it—but over the whole world.
—Now you see, brother Toby, he would say, looking up, “that christian
names are not such indifferent things;”—had Luther here been called by
any other name but Martin, he would have been damned to all eternity—
Not that I look upon Martin, he would add, as a good name—far from it
—’tis something better than a neutral, and but a little—yet little as it is, you
see it was of some service to him.
My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as
the best logician could shew him—yet so strange is the weakness of man at
the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of
it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in
Hafen Slawkenbergius’s Decads full as entertaining as this I am translating,
yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over with half the
delight—it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses together—his NAMES
and his NOSES—I will be bold to say, he might have read all the books in
the Alexandrian library,38 had not fate taken other care of them, and not
have met with a book or a passage in one, which hit two such nails as these
upon the head at one stroke.]
The two universities of Strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of
Luther’s navigation. The Protestant doctors had demonstrated, that he had
not sailed right before the wind, as the Popish doctors had pretended; and as
every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it,—they were going
to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points he was off; whether Martin
had doubled the cape,39 or had fallen upon a lee-shore; and no doubt, as it
was an enquiry of much edification, at least to those who understood this
sort of NAVIGATION, they had gone on with it in spite of the size of the
stranger’s nose, had not the size of the stranger’s nose drawn off the
attention of the world from what they were about—it was their business to
follow.——
The abbess of Quedlinburg and her four dignitaries was no stop; for the
enormity of the stranger’s nose running full as much in their fancies as their
case of conscience—The affair of their placket-holes kept cold—In a word,
the printers were ordered to distribute their types40—all controversies
dropp’d.
’Twas a square cap41 with a silk tassel upon the crown of it––to a nut
shell—to have guessed on which side of the nose the two universities would
split.
’Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.
’Tis below reason, cried the others.
’Tis faith, cried the one.
’Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.
’Tis possible, cried the one.
’Tis impossible, said the other.
God’s power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do any thing.
He can do nothing, replied the Antinosarians, which implies
contradictions.42
He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.
As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow’s ear, replied the
Antinosarians.
He can make two and two five,43 replied the Popish doctors.—’Tis false,
said their opponents.—
Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the
reality of the nose.——It extends only to all possible things, replied the
Lutherans.
By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he
thinks fit, as big as the steeple of Strasburg.44
Now the steeple of Strasburg being the biggest and the tallest church-
steeple to be seen in the whole world, the Antinosarians denied that a nose
of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least by a middle-siz’d
man—The Popish doctors swore it could—The Lutheran doctors said No;
—it could not.
This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way upon
the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of God—That
controversy led them naturally into Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Aquinas
to the devil.
The stranger’s nose was no more heard of in the dispute––it just served
as a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity,—and then they
all sailed before the wind.
Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.
The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the
contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate
degree—The less they understood of the matter, the greater was their
wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied—
saw their doctors, the Parchmentarians,45 the Brassarians, the
Turpentarians, on one side—the Popish doctors on the other, like
Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle, all
embarked and out of sight.46
——The poor Strasburgers left upon the beach!
—What was to be done?—No delay—the uproar increased––every one
in disorder—the city gates set open.—
Unfortunate Strasburgers! was there in the store-house of nature—was
there in the lumber-rooms of learning—was there in the great arsenal of
chance, one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and
stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of fate to play upon
your hearts?––I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of
yourselves—’tis to write your panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated
with expectation—who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or
hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature for seven and twenty days
together, who could have held out one day longer.
On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to
Strasburg.
Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly have made
some mistake in his numerical characters) 7000 coaches––15000 single
horse chairs——20000 waggons, crouded as full as they could all hold with
senators, counsellors, syndicks––beguines,47 widows, wives, virgins,
canons, concubines, all in their coaches—The abbess of Quedlinburg, with
the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress leading the procession in one
coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the four great dignitaries of his
chapter on her left-hand—the rest following higglety-pigglety as they
could; some on horseback——some on foot—some led—some driven—
some down the Rhine—some this way—some that—all set out at sun-rise to
meet the courteous stranger on the road.
Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale—I say Catastrophe
(cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not
only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a DRAMA, but
rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it—it has its
Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing one out
of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them48––without which
a tale had better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius, but be kept to a
man’s self.
In all my ten tales, in all my ten decads, have I, Slawkenbergius, tied
down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the
stranger and his nose.
—From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of
Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the
Protasis or first entrance——where the characters of the Personæ Dramatis
are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.
The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and
heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the Catastasis, and
which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy
period of my tale, betwixt the first night’s uproar about the nose, to the
conclusion of the trumpeter’s wife’s lectures upon it in the middle of the
grand parade; and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute––to
the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the Strasburgers upon the
beach in distress, is the Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and
passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act.
This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers in the
Frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the
hero out of a state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and
quietness.49
This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the catastrophe or
peripeitia of my tale—and that is the part of it I am going to relate.
We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep—he enters now upon the
stage.
—What dost thou prick up thy ears at?—’tis nothing but a man upon a
horse—was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. It was not proper
then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master’s word for it; and
without any more ifs or ands, let the traveller and his horse pass by.
The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to Strasburg that
night——What a fool am I, said the traveller to himself, when he had rode
about a league farther, to think of getting into Strasburg this night—
Strasburg!—the great Strasburg!—Strasburg, the capital of all Alsatia!
Strasburg, an imperial city! Strasburg, a sovereign state! Strasburg,
garrisoned with five thousand of the best troops in all the world!—Alas! if I
was at the gates of Strasburg this moment, I could not gain admittance into
it for a ducat,—nay a ducat and half—’tis too much––better go back to the
last inn I have passed—than lie I know not where—or give I know not
what. The traveller, as he made these reflections in his mind, turned his
horse’s head about, and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted
into his chamber, he arrived at the same inn.
—We have bacon in the house, said the host, and bread——and till
eleven o’clock this night had three eggs in it—but a stranger, who arrived
an hour ago, has had them dressed into an omlet, and we have nothing.
———
—Alas! said the traveller, harrassed as I am, I want nothing but a bed—I
have one as soft as is in Alsatia, said the host.
—The stranger, continued he, should have slept in it, for ’tis my best
bed, but upon the score of his nose—He has got a defluxion, said the
traveller—Not that I know, cried the host––But ’tis a camp-bed, and
Jacinta, said he, looking towards the maid, imagined there was not room in
it to turn his nose in––Why so? cried the traveller starting back—It is so
long a nose, replied the host—The traveller fixed his eyes upon Jacinta,
then upon the ground—kneeled upon his right knee—had just got his hand
laid upon his breast—Trifle not with my anxiety, said he, rising up again
—’Tis no trifle, said Jacinta, ’tis the most glorious nose!—The traveller fell
upon his knee again—laid his hand upon his breast—then said he, looking
up to heaven! thou hast conducted me to the end of my pilgrimage——’Tis
Diego!
The traveller was the brother of the Julia, so often invoked that night by
the stranger as he rode from Strasburg upon his mule; and was come, on her
part, in quest of him. He had accompanied his sister from Valadolid50 across
the Pyrenean mountains thro’ France, and had many an entangled skein to
wind off in pursuit of him thro’ the many meanders and abrupt turnings of a
lover’s thorny tracks.
—Julia had sunk under it—and had not been able to go a step farther
than to Lyons, where, with the many disquietudes of a tender heart, which
all talk of—but few feel—she sicken’d, but had just strength to write a
letter to Diego; and having conjured her brother never to see her face till he
had found him out, and put the letter into his hands, Julia took to her bed.
Fernandez (for that was her brother’s name)—tho’ the camp-bed was as
soft as any one in Alsace, yet he could not shut his eyes in it.—As soon as it
was day he rose, and hearing Diego was risen too, he enter’d his chamber,
and discharged his sister’s commission.
The letter was as follows:
Seig. DIEGO.
“In what manner Julia has resented this—my brother, when he puts
this letter into your hands, will tell you: He will tell you in how few
moments she repented of the rash message she had sent you—in what
frantic haste she flew to her lattice, and how many days and nights
together she leaned immoveably upon her elbow, looking thro’ it
towards the way which Diego was wont to come.
“He will tell you, when she heard of your departure—how her spirits
deserted her—how her heart sicken’d—how piteously she mourn’d—
how low she hung her head. O Diego! how many weary steps has my
brother’s pity led me by the hand languishing to trace out yours! how
far has desire carried me beyond strength—and how oft have I fainted
by the way, and sunk into his arms, with only power to cry out—O
my Diego!
“If the gentleness of your carriage has not belied your heart, you will
fly to me, almost as fast as you fled from me—haste as you will, you
will arrive but to see me expire.—’Tis a bitter draught, Diego, but oh!
’tis embitter’d still more by dying un——.”51
She could proceed no farther.
Slawkenbergius supposes the word intended was unconvinced, but her
strength would not enable her to finish her letter.
The heart of the courteous Diego overflowed as he read the letter—he
ordered his mule forthwith and Fernandez’s horse to be saddled; and as no
vent in prose is equal to that of poetry in such conflicts—chance, which as
often directs us to remedies as to diseases, having thrown a piece of
charcoal into the window—Diego availed himself of it, and whilst the ostler
was getting ready his mule, he eased his mind52 against the wall as follows.
ODE.
Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love,
Unless my Julia strikes the key,
Her hand alone can touch the part,
Whose dulcet move-
ment charms the heart,
And governs all the man with sympathetic sway.
2d.
O Julia!
The lines were very natural—for they were nothing at all to the purpose,
says Slawkenbergius, and ’tis a pity there were no more of them; but
whether it was that Seig. Diego was slow in composing verses—or the
ostler quick in saddling mules—is not averred; certain it was, that Diego’s
mule and Fernandez’s horse were ready at the door of the inn, before Diego
was ready for his second stanza; so without staying to finish his ode, they
both mounted, sallied forth, passed the Rhine, traversed Alsace, shaped their
course towards Lyons, and before the Strasburgers and the abbess of
Quedlinberg had set out on their cavalcade, had Fernandez, Diego, and his
Julia, crossed the Pyrenean mountains, and got safe to Valadolid.
’Tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when Diego was in
Spain, it was not possible to meet the courteous stranger in the Frankfort
road; it is enough to say, that of all restless desires, curiosity being the
strongest—the Strasburgers felt the full force of it; and that for three days
and nights they were tossed to and fro in the Frankfort road, with the
tempestuous fury of this passion, before they could submit to return home
—When alas! an event was prepared for them, of all others the most
grievous that could befal a free people.
As this revolution of the Strasburgers affairs is often spoken of, and
little understood, I will, in ten words, says Slawkenbergius, give the world
an explanation of it, and with it put an end to my tale.53
Every body knows of the grand system of Universal Monarchy,54 wrote
by order of Mons. Colbert, and put in manuscript into the hands of Lewis
the fourteenth, in the year 1664.
’Tis as well known, that one branch out of many of that system, was the
getting possession of Strasburg, to favour an entrance at all times into
Suabia, in order to disturb the quiet of Germany—and that in consequence
of this plan, Strasburg unhappily fell at length into their hands.
It is the lot of few to trace out the true springs of this and such like
revolutions—The vulgar look too high for them––Statesmen look too low—
Truth (for once) lies in the middle.
What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one historian
—The Strasburgers deemed it a diminution of their freedom to receive an
imperial garrison—and so fell a prey to a French one.
The fate, says another, of the Strasburgers, may be a warning to all free
people to save their money—They anticipated their revenues—brought
themselves under taxes, exhausted their strength, and in the end became so
weak a people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so the
French pushed them open.
Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, ’twas not the French—’twas CURIOSITY
pushed them open—The French indeed, who are ever upon the catch, when
they saw the Strasburgers, men, women, and children, all marched out to
follow the stranger’s nose—each man followed his own, and marched in.
Trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down ever
since—but not from any cause which commercial heads have assigned; for
it is owing to this only, that Noses have ever so run in their heads, that the
Strasburgers could not follow their business.
Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, making an exclamation—it is not the
first—and I fear will not be the last fortress that has been either won——or
lost by NOSES.
The END of
Slawkenbergius’s TALE.
CHAP. I.
WITH all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father’s fancy
—with so many family prejudices—and ten decads of such tales running on
for ever along with them––how was it possible with such exquisite—was it
a true nose?––That a man with such exquisite feelings as my father had,
could bear the shock at all below stairs—or indeed above stairs, in any
other posture, but the very posture I have described.
—Throw yourself down upon the bed, a dozen times—taking care only
to place a looking-glass first in a chair on one side of it, before you do it
——But was the stranger’s nose a true nose––or was it a false one?
To tell that before-hand, madam, would be to do injury to one of the best
tales in the christian world; and that is the tenth of the tenth decad which
immediately follows this.
This tale, crieth Slawkenbergius somewhat exultingly, has been reserved
by me for the concluding tale of my whole work; knowing right well, that
when I shall have told it, and my reader shall have read it thro’—’twould be
even high time for both of us to shut up the book; inasmuch, continues
Slawkenbergius, as I know of no tale which could possibly ever go down
after it.
––’Tis a tale indeed!
This sets out with the first interview in the inn at Lyons, when
Fernandez left the courteous stranger and his sister Julia alone in her
chamber, and is overwritten,
The I N T R I C A C I E S
of
Diego and Julia.
My FATHER’s LAMENTATION.
VOL. V.
LONDON.
Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. DEHONDT,
in the Strand. M DCC LXVII.
I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s
Most devoted,
And most humble Servant,
LAUR. STERNE.
THE
LIFE and OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.
CHAP. I.
IF it had not been for those two mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a
postilion, who drove them from Stilton to Stamford,1 the thought had never
entered my head. He flew like lightning——there was a slope of three miles
and a half——we scarce touched the ground——the motion was most rapid
—most impetuous—’twas communicated to my brain—my heart partook of
it——By the great God of day, said I, looking towards the sun, and
thrusting my arm out of the fore-window of the chaise, as I made my vow,
“I will lock up my study door the moment I get home, and throw the key of
it ninety feet below the surface of the earth, into the draw-well at the back
of my house.”
The London waggon confirmed me in my resolution: it hung tottering
upon the hill, scarce progressive, drag’d—drag’d up by eight heavy beasts
——“by main strength!—quoth I, nodding––but your betters draw the same
way—and something of every bodies!——O rare!”
Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the bulk—so
little to the stock?
Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures,
by pouring only out of one vessel into another?
Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? for ever in
the same track—for ever at the same pace?2
Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as
working-days, to be shewing the relicks of learning, as monks do the relicks
of their saints—without working one—one single miracle with them?
Who made MAN, with powers which dart him from earth to heaven in a
moment—that great, that most excellent, and most noble creature of the
world—the miracle of nature, as Zoroaster in his book περὶ φύσεως called
him—the SHEKINAH of the divine presence, as Chrysostom—the image of
God, as Moses—the ray of divinity, as Plato—the marvel of marvels, as
Aristotle3——to go sneaking on at this pitiful—pimping—pettifogging
rate?
I scorn to be as abusive as Horace upon the occasion4——but if there is
no catachresis in the wish, and no sin in it, I wish from my soul, that every
imitator in Great Britain, France, and Ireland, had the farcy5 for his pains;
and that there was a good farcical house, large enough to hold—aye—and
sublimate them, shag-rag and bob-tail,6 male and female, all together: and
this leads me to the affair of Whiskers——but, by what chain of ideas—I
leave as a legacy in mort main7 to Prudes and Tartufs,8 to enjoy and make
the most of.
Upon Whiskers.
I’m sorry I made it——’twas as inconsiderate a promise as ever entered
a man’s head——A chapter upon whiskers! alas! the world will not bear it
——’tis a delicate world—but I knew not of what mettle it was made—nor
had I ever seen the underwritten fragment; otherwise, as surely as noses are
noses, and whiskers are whiskers still; (let the world say what it will to the
contrary) so surely would I have steered clear of this dangerous chapter.
The Fragment.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* *——You are half asleep, my good lady, said the old gentleman,
taking hold of the old lady’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze, as he
pronounced the word Whiskers——shall we change the subject? By no
means, replied the old lady—I like your account of these matters: so
throwing a thin gauze handkerchief over her head, and leaning it back upon
the chair with her face turned towards him, and advancing her two feet as
she reclined herself—I desire, continued she, you will go on.
The old gentleman went on as follows.———Whiskers! cried the queen
of Navarre,9 dropping her knotting-ball, as La Fosseuse uttered the word
——Whiskers; madam, said La Fosseuse, pinning the ball to the queen’s
apron, and making a courtesy as she repeated it.
La Fosseuse’s voice was naturally soft and low, yet ’twas an articulate
voice: and every letter of the word whiskers fell distinctly upon the queen of
Navarre’s ear—Whiskers! cried the queen, laying a greater stress upon the
word, and as if she had still distrusted her ears—Whiskers; replied La
Fosseuse, repeating the word a third time—There is not a cavalier, madam,
of his age in Navarre, continued the maid of honour, pressing the page’s
interest upon the queen, that has so gallant a pair—Of what? cried
Margaret, smiling——Of whiskers, said La Fosseuse, with infinite
modesty.
The word whiskers still stood its ground, and continued to be made use
of in most of the best companies throughout the little kingdom of Navarre,
notwithstanding the indiscreet use which La Fosseuse had made of it: the
truth was, La Fosseuse had pronounced the word, not only before the
queen, but upon sundry other occasions at court, with an accent which
always implied something of a mystery——And as the court of Margaret,
as all the world knows, was at that time a mixture of gallantry and devotion
——and whiskers being as applicable to the one, as the other, the word
naturally stood its ground—it gain’d full as much as it lost; that is, the
clergy were for it—the laity were against it—and for the women,——they
were divided.——
The excellency of the figure and mien of the young Sieur de Croix, was
at that time beginning to draw the attention of the maids of honour towards
the terras before the palace gate, where the guard was mounted. The Lady
de Baussiere fell deeply in love with him,—La Battarelle did the same—it
was the finest weather for it, that ever was remembered in Navarre—La
Guyol, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, fell in love with the Sieur de Croix also
—La Rebours and La Fosseuse knew better—De Croix had failed in an
attempt to recommend himself to La Rebours; and La Rebours and La
Fosseuse were inseparable.
The queen of Navarre was sitting with her ladies in the painted bow-
window, facing the gate of the second court, as De Croix passed through it
—He is handsome, said the Lady Baussiere.—He has a good mien, said La
Battarelle.—He is finely shaped, said La Guyol.—I never saw an officer of
the horse-guards in my life, said La Maronette, with two such legs—Or
who stood so well upon them, said La Sabatiere——But he has no
whiskers, cried La Fosseuse—Not a pile, said La Rebours.
The queen went directly to her oratory, musing all the way, as she
walked through the gallery, upon the subject; turning it this way and that
way in her fancy——Ave Maria —what can La Fosseuse mean? said she,
kneeling down upon the cushion.
La Guyol, La Battarelle, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, retired instantly to
their chambers—Whiskers! said all four of them to themselves, as they
bolted their doors on the inside.
The Lady Carnavallette was counting her beads with both hands,
unsuspected under her farthingal—from St. Antony down to St. Ursula
inclusive, not a saint passed through her fingers without whiskers; St.
Francis, St. Dominick, St. Bennet, St. Basil, St. Bridget,10 had all whiskers.
The Lady Baussiere had got into a wilderness of conceits, with
moralizing too intricately upon La Fosseuse’s text—She mounted her
palfry, her page followed her—the host passed by—the lady Baussiere rode
on.11
One denier, cried the order of mercy12—one single denier, in behalf of a
thousand patient captives, whose eyes look towards heaven and you for
their redemption.
—The Lady Baussiere rode on.
Pity the unhappy, said a devout, venerable, hoary-headed man, meekly
holding up a box, begirt with iron, in his withered hands——I beg for the
unfortunate—good, my lady, ’tis for a prison—for an hospital—’tis for an
old man—a poor man undone by shipwreck, by suretyship, by fire——I
call God and all his angels to witness—’tis to cloath the naked—to feed the
hungry—’tis to comfort the sick and the broken hearted.
—The Lady Baussiere rode on.
A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground.
—The Lady Baussiere rode on.
He ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfry, conjuring her by
the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c.——Cousin,
aunt, sister, mother—for virtue’s sake, for your own, for mine, for Christ’s
sake remember me—pity me.
—The Lady Baussiere rode on.
Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady Baussiere——The page took
hold of her palfry. She dismounted at the end of the terrace.
There are some trains of certain ideas which leave prints of themselves
about our eyes and eye-brows; and there is a consciousness of it,
somewhere about the heart, which serves but to make these etchings the
stronger—we see, spell, and put them together without a dictionary.
Ha, ha! hee, hee! cried La Guyol and La Sabatiere, looking close at each
others prints——Ho, ho! cried La Battarelle and Maronette, doing the
same:—Whist! cried one–st, st,—said a second,—hush, quoth a third——
poo, poo, replied a fourth—gramercy! cried the Lady Carnavallette;—’twas
she who bewhisker’d St. Bridget.
La Fosseuse drew her bodkin from the knot of her hair, and having
traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt end of it, upon one side
of her upper lip, put it into La Rebours’s hand—La Rebours shook her head.
The Lady Baussiere cough’d thrice into the inside of her muff—La
Guyol smiled—Fy, said the Lady Baussiere. The queen of Navarre touched
her eye with the tip of her fore finger—as much as to say, I understand you
all.
’Twas plain to the whole court the word was ruined: La Fosseuse had
given it a wound, and it was not the better for passing through all these
defiles——It made a faint stand, however, for a few months; by the
expiration of which, the Sieur de Croix, finding it high time to leave
Navarre for want of whiskers—the word in course became indecent, and
(after a few efforts) absolutely unfit for use.
The best word, in the best language of the best world, must have
suffered under such combinations.13—The curate of d’Estella14 wrote a
book against them, setting forth the dangers of accessory ideas, and warning
the Navarois against them.
Does not all the world know, said the curate d’Estella at the conclusion
of his work, that Noses ran the same fate some centuries ago in most parts
of Europe, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom of Navarre—
The evil indeed spread no further then—, but have not beds and bolsters,
and nightcaps and chamber-pots stood upon the brink of destruction ever
since? Are not trouse,15 and placket-holes, and pump-handles—and spigots
and faucets, in danger still, from the same association?—Chastity, by nature
the gentlest of all affections—give it but its head—’tis like a ramping and a
roaring lion.
The drift of the curate d’Estella’s argument was not understood.—They
ran the scent the wrong way.—The world bridled his ass at the tail.—And
when the extreams of DELICACY, and the beginnings of CONCUPISCENCE, hold
their next provincial chapter together, they may decree that bawdy also.
CHAP. II.
WHEN my father received the letter which brought him the melancholy
account of my brother Bobby’s death, he was busy calculating the expence
of his riding post from Calais to Paris, and so on to Lyons.
’Twas a most inauspicious journey; my father having had every foot of it
to travel over again, and his calculation to begin afresh, when he had almost
got to the end of it, by Obadiah’s opening the door to acquaint him the
family was out of yeast—and to ask whether he might not take the great
coach-horse early in the morning, and ride in search of some.—With all my
heart, Obadiah, said my father, (pursuing his journey)—take the coach-
horse, and welcome.—But he wants a shoe, poor creature! said Obadiah.—
Poor creature! said my uncle Toby, vibrating the note back again, like a
string in unison. Then ride the Scotch horse, quoth my father hastily.—He
cannot bear a saddle upon his back, quoth Obadiah, for the whole world.
——The devil’s in that horse; then take PATRIOT,1 cried my father, and shut
the door.——PATRIOT is sold, said Obadiah.—Here’s for you! cried my
father, making a pause, and looking in my uncle Toby’s face, as if the thing
had not been a matter of fact.—Your worship ordered me to sell him last
April, said Obadiah.—Then go on foot for your pains, cried my father.—I
had much rather walk than ride, said Obadiah, shutting the door.
What plagues! cried my father, going on with his calculation.—But the
waters are out, said Obadiah,—opening the door again.
Till that moment, my father, who had a map of Sanson’s,2 and a book of
the post roads before him, had kept his hand upon the head of his
compasses, with one foot of them fixed upon Nevers,3 the last stage he had
paid for—purposing to go on from that point with his journey and
calculation, as soon as Obadiah quitted the room; but this second attack of
Obadiah’s, in opening the door and laying the whole country under water,
was too much.—He let go his compasses—or rather with a mixed motion
betwixt accident and anger, he threw them upon the table; and then there
was nothing for him to do, but to return back to Calais (like many others) as
wise as he had set out.
When the letter was brought into the parlour, which contained the news
of my brother’s death, my father had got forwards again upon his journey to
within a stride of the compasses of the very same stage of Nevers.—By
your leave, Mons. Sanson, cried my father, striking the point of his
compasses through Nevers into the table,—and nodding to my uncle Toby,
to see what was in the letter,—twice of one night is too much for an English
gentleman and his son, Mons. Sanson, to be turned back from so lousy a
town as Nevers,—what think’st thou, Toby, added my father in a sprightly
tone.—Unless it be a garrison town, said my uncle Toby,—for then—I shall
be a fool, said my father, smiling to himself, as long as I live.—So giving a
second nod—and keeping his compasses still upon Nevers with one hand,
and holding his book of the post-roads in the other—half calculating and
half listening, he leaned forwards upon the table with both elbows, as my
uncle Toby hummed over the letter.
— — — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — — —
— — — — he’s gone! said my uncle Toby.—Where—
Who? cried my father.––My nephew, said my uncle Toby.——What—
without leave—without money——without governor? cried my father in
amazement. No:—he is dead, my dear brother, quoth my uncle Toby.—
Without being ill? cried my father again.—I dare say not, said my uncle
Toby, in a low voice, and fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart,
he has been ill enough, poor lad! I’ll answer for him—for he is dead.
When Agrippina was told of her son’s death, Tacitus informs us, that not
being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she abruptly broke off
her work4—My father stuck his compasses into Nevers, but so much the
faster.—What contrarieties! his, indeed, was matter of calculation—
Agrippina’s must have been quite a different affair; who else could pretend
to reason from history?
How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.—
CHAP. III.
————And a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too—so look
to yourselves.
’Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, or Xenophon, or Epictetus, or
Theophrastus, or Lucian—or some one perhaps of later date—either
Cardan, or Budæus, or Petrarch, or Stella—or possibly it may be some
divine or father of the church, St. Austin, or St. Cyprian, or Barnard,1 who
affirms that it is an irresistable and natural passion to weep for the loss of
our friends or children2—and Seneca (I’m positive) tells us somewhere, that
such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel.3—And
accordingly we find, that David wept for his son Absolom—Adrian for his
Antinous—Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed
tears for Socrates before his death.4
My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from
most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the
Hebrews and the Romans—or slept it off, as the Laplanders—or hang’d it,
as the English, or drowned it, as the Germans5—nor did he curse it, or
damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or lillabullero it.——
——He got rid of it, however.
Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these
two pages?
When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at first he laid it to his
heart,—he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto it.—
O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!—still, still, still,—’twas O my Tullia!
——my Tullia! Methinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I talk with my
Tullia.—But as soon as he began to look into the stores of philosophy, and
consider how many excellent things might be said upon the occasion—no
body upon earth can conceive, says the great orator, how happy, how joyful
it made me.6
My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
could be for his life, and for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at
present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his weakness
too.——His strength—for he was by nature eloquent,—and his weakness—
for he was hourly a dupe to it; and provided an occasion in life would but
permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a
shrewd one—(bating the case of a systematick misfortune)—he had all he
wanted.—A blessing which tied up my father’s tongue, and a misfortune
which set it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed,
the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of
the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune but as five—my
father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as it
never had befallen him.7
This clue will unravel, what otherwise would seem very inconsistent in
my father’s domestick character; and it is this, that in the provocations
arising from the neglects and blunders of servants, or other mishaps
unavoidable in a family, his anger, or rather the duration of it, eternally ran
counter to all conjecture.
My father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned over to a
most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out of her for his own
riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so talked about his pad every day
with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke,—and bridled and
saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or other in
Obadiah, it so fell out, that my father’s expectations were answered with
nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was
produced.
My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of
Obadiah—and that there never would be an end of the disaster.——See
here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have done!
—It was not me, said Obadiah.—How do I know that? replied my father.
Triumph swam in my father’s eyes, at the repartee—the Attic salt8
brought water into them—and so Obadiah heard no more about it.
Now let us go back to my brother’s death.
Philosophy has a fine saying for every thing.—For Death it has an entire
set; the misery was, they all at once rushed into my father’s head, that ’twas
difficult to string them together, so as to make any thing of a consistent
show out of them.—He took them as they came.
“’Tis an inevitable chance—the first statute in Magnâ Chartâ—it is an
everlasting act of parliament, my dear brother,—All must die.9
“If my son could not have died, it had been matter of wonder,—not that
he is dead.”
“Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us.”10
“—To die, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature: tombs and
monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves; and
the proudest pyramid of them all, which wealth and science have erected,
has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveller’s horizon.”11 (My
father found he got great ease, and went on)—“Kingdoms and provinces,
and towns and cities, have they not their periods? and when those principles
and powers, which at first cemented and put them together, have performed
their several evolutions, they fall back.”—Brother Shandy, said my uncle
Toby, laying down his pipe at the word evolutions12—Revolutions, I meant,
quoth my father,—by heaven! I meant revolutions, brother Toby—
evolutions is nonsense.—’tis not nonsense—said my uncle Toby.——But is
it not nonsense to break the thread of such a discourse, upon such an
occasion? cried my father—do not—dear Toby, continued he, taking him by
the hand, do not—do not, I beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.—My
uncle Toby put his pipe into his mouth.
“Where is Troy and Mycenæ, and Thebes and Delos, and Persepolis, and
Agrigentum”—continued my father, taking up his book of post-roads,
which he had laid down.—“What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and
Babylon, of Cizicum and Mitylenœ?13 The fairest towns that ever the sun
rose upon, are now no more: the names only are left, and those (for many of
them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piecemeals to decay, and in
length of time will be forgotten, and involved with every thing in a
perpetual night: the world itself, brother Toby, must—must come to an end.
“Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from Ægina towards Megara,”
(when can this have been? thought my uncle Toby) “I began to view the
country round about. Ægina was behind me, Megara was before, Pyræus
on the right hand, Corinth on the left.—What flourishing towns now
prostrate upon the earth! Alas! alas! said I to myself, that man should
disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully
buried in his presence——Remember, said I to myself again—remember
thou art a man.”——
Now my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of
Servius Sulpicius’s consolatory letter to Tully.—He had as little skill, honest
man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity.—And as
my father, whilst he was concerned in the Turky trade, had been three or
four different times in the Levant, in one of which he had staid a whole year
and a half at Zant,14 my uncle Toby naturally concluded, that in some one of
these periods he had taken a trip across the Archipelago into Asia; and that
all this sailing affair with Ægina behind, and Megara before, and Pyræus on
the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my
father’s voyage and reflections.—’Twas certainly in his manner, and many
an undertaking critick would have built two stories higher upon worse
foundations.—And pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, laying the end of
his pipe upon my father’s hand in a kindly way of interruption—but waiting
till he finished the account—what year of our Lord was this?—’Twas no
year of our Lord, replied my father.—That’s impossible, cried my uncle
Toby.—Simpleton! said my father,—’twas forty years before Christ was
born.
My uncle Toby had but two things for it; either to suppose his brother to
be the wandering Jew,15 or that his misfortunes had disordered his brain.
—“May the Lord God of heaven and earth protect him and restore him,”
said my uncle Toby, praying silently for my father, and with tears in his
eyes.
—My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his
harangue with great spirit.
“There is not such great odds, brother Toby, betwixt good and evil, as the
world imagines”——(this way of setting off, by the bye, was not likely to
cure my uncle Toby’s suspicions).––“Labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want,
and woe, are the sauces of life.”16—Much good may it do them—said my
uncle Toby to himself.——
“My son is dead!17—so much the better;—’tis a shame in such a tempest
to have but one anchor.”18
“But he is gone for ever from us!—be it so. He is got from under the
hands of his barber before he was bald—he is but risen from a feast before
he was surfeited—from a banquet before he had got drunken.”
“The Thracians wept when a child was born”—(and we were very near
it, quoth my uncle Toby)—“and feasted and made merry when a man went
out of the world;19 and with reason.—Death opens the gate of fame, and
shuts the gate of envy after it,20—it unlooses the chain of the captive, and
puts the bondsman’s task into another man’s hands.”
“Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I’ll shew
thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.”21
Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (for mark—our appetites are but
diseases)—is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?—not to thirst,
than to take physick to cure it?
Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and
melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life,22 than like a galled
traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey
afresh?23
There is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from
groans and convulsions—and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of
tears with the bottoms of curtains in a dying man’s room.—Strip it of these,
what is it—’Tis better in battle than in bed,24 said my uncle Toby.—Take
away its hearses, its mutes,25 and its mourning,—its plumes, scutcheons,
and other mechanic aids—What is it?—Better in battle! continued my
father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby—’tis terrible
no way—for consider, brother Toby,—when we are—death is not;—and
when death is—we are not.26 My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider
the proposition; my father’s eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man—
away it went,—and hurried my uncle Toby’s ideas along with it.——
For this reason, continued my father, ’tis worthy to recollect, how little
alteration in great men, the approaches of death have made.—Vespasian
died in a jest upon his close stool—Galba with a sentence—Septimius
Severus in a dispatch—Tiberius in dissimulation, and Cæsar Augustus in a
compliment.—I hope, ’twas a sincere one—quoth my uncle Toby.
—’Twas to his wife,27—said my father.
CHAP. IV.
——And lastly—for of all the choice anecdotes which history can
produce of this matter, continued my father,—this, like the gilded dome
which covers in the fabrick—crowns all.—
’Tis of Cornelius Gallus,1 the prætor—which I dare say, brother Toby,
you have read.—I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.—He died, said my
father, as *************––And if it was with his wife, said my uncle Toby
—there could be no hurt in it.—That’s more than I know—replied my
father.
CHAP. V.
MY mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led
to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.—’Tis a shrill,
penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a
little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it, to imagine herself the
subject of the conversation: so laying the edge of her finger across her two
lips—holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a
twist of her neck—(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her
ear was brought to the chink)—she listened with all her powers:——the
listening slave,1 with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have
given a finer thought for an intaglio.
In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I
bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church)2 to
the same period.
CHAP. VI.
THOUGH in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it
consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, that
these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one
upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses,——
that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and advantages of
a complex one,——and a number of as odd movements within it, as ever
were beheld in the inside of a Dutch silk-mill.
Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak of, in which, perhaps,
it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and it was this, that
whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or dissertation, was
going forwards in the parlour, there was generally another at the same time,
and upon the same subject, running parallel along with it in the kitchen.
Now to bring this about, whenever an extraordinary message, or letter,
was delivered in the parlour,—or a discourse suspended till a servant went
out—or the lines of discontent were observed to hang upon the brows of my
father or mother—or, in short, when any thing was supposed to be upon the
tapis1 worth knowing or listening to, ’twas the rule to leave the door, not
absolutely shut, but somewhat a-jar—as it stands just now,—which, under
covert of the bad hinge, (and that possibly might be one of the many
reasons why it was never mended) it was not difficult to manage; by which
means, in all these cases, a passage was generally left, not indeed as wide as
the Dardanells, but wide enough, for all that, to carry on as much of this
windward trade, as was sufficient to save my father the trouble of governing
his house;—my mother at this moment stands profiting by it.—Obadiah did
the same thing, as soon as he had left the letter upon the table which
brought the news of my brother’s death; so that before my father had well
got over his surprize, and entered upon his harangue,—had Trim got upon
his legs, to speak his sentiments upon the subject.
A curious observer of nature, had he been worth the inventory of all
Job’s stock—though, by the bye, your curious observers are seldom worth
a groat—would have given the half of it, to have heard Corporal Trim and
my father, two orators so contrasted by nature and education, haranguing
over the same bier.
My father a man of deep reading—prompt memory—with Cato, and
Seneca, and Epictetus, at his fingers ends.—
The corporal—with nothing—to remember—of no deeper reading than
his muster-roll—or greater names at his finger’s end, than the contents of it.
The one proceeding from period to period, by metaphor and allusion,
and striking the fancy as he went along, (as men of wit and fancy do) with
the entertainment and pleasantry of his pictures and images.
The other, without wit or antithesis, or point, or turn, this way or that;
but leaving the images on one side, and the pictures on the other, going
strait forwards as nature could lead him, to the heart. O Trim! would to
heaven thou had’st a better historian!—would!—thy historian had a better
pair of breeches!——O ye criticks! will nothing melt you?
CHAP. VII.
———My young master in London is dead! said Obadiah.
——A green sattin night-gown of my mother’s, which had been twice
scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah’s exclamation brought into
Susannah’s head.——Well might Locke write a chapter upon the
imperfections of words.1—Then, quoth Susannah, we must all go into
mourning.—But note a second time: the word mourning, notwithstanding
Susannah made use of it herself—failed also of doing its office; it excited
not one single idea, tinged either with grey or black,—all was green.——
The green sattin night-gown hung there still.
—O! ’twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried Susannah.—My
mother’s whole wardrobe followed.—What a procession! her red damask,
—her orange-tawny,—her white and yellow lutestrings,—her brown taffata,
—her bone-laced caps, her bed-gowns, and comfortable under-petticoats.—
Not a rag was left behind.—“No,—she will never look up again,” said
Susannah.
We had a fat foolish scullion—my father, I think, kept her for her
simplicity;—she had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy.—He is
dead! said Obadiah,—he is certainly dead!—So am not I, said the foolish
scullion.
——Here is sad news, Trim! cried Susannah, wiping her eyes as Trim
step’d into the kitchen,—master Bobby is dead and buried,—the funeral
was an interpolation of Susannah’s,—we shall have all to go into mourning,
said Susannah.
I hope not, said Trim.—You hope not! cried Susannah earnestly.—The
mourning ran not in Trim’s head, whatever it did in Susannah’s.—I hope—
said Trim, explaining himself, I hope in God the news is not true. I heard
the letter read with my own ears, answered Obadiah; and we shall have a
terrible piece of work of it in stubbing the ox-moor.—Oh! he’s dead, said
Susannah.—As sure, said the scullion, as I am alive.
I lament for him from my heart and my soul, said Trim, fetching a sigh.
—Poor creature!—poor boy! poor gentleman!
—He was alive last Whitsontide, said the coachman.—Whitsontide! alas!
cried Trim, extending his right arm, and falling instantly into the same
attitude in which he read the sermon,––what is Whitsontide, Jonathan, (for
that was the coachman’s name) or Shrovetide, or any tide or time past, to
this? Are we not here now, continued the corporal, (striking the end of his
stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health and
stability)—and are we not—(dropping his hat upon the ground) gone! in a
moment!—’Twas infinitely striking! Susannah burst into a flood of tears.—
We are not stocks and stones.—Jonathan, Obadiah, the cook-maid, all
melted.—The foolish fat scullion herself, who was scouring a fish-kettle
upon her knees, was rous’d with it.—The whole kitchen crouded about the
corporal.
Now as I perceive plainly, that the preservation of our constitution in
church and state,—and possibly the preservation of the whole world—or
what is the same thing, the distribution and balance of its property and
power, may in time to come depend greatly upon the right understanding of
this stroke of the corporal’s eloquence2—I do demand your attention,—your
worships and reverences, for any ten pages together, take them where you
will in any other part of the work, shall sleep for it at your ease.
I said, “we were not stocks and stones”—’tis very well. I should have
added, nor are we angels, I wish we were,—but men cloathed with bodies,
and governed by our imaginations;––and what a junketting piece of work of
it there is, betwixt these and our seven senses, especially some of them, for
my own part, I own it, I am ashamed to confess.3 Let it suffice to affirm,
that of all the senses, the eye,4 (for I absolutely deny the touch, though most
of your Barbati, I know, are for it) has the quickest commerce with the soul,
—gives a smarter stroke, and leaves something more inexpressible upon the
fancy, than words can either convey—or sometimes get rid of.
—I’ve gone a little about—no matter, ’tis for health—let us only carry it
back in our mind to the mortality of Trim’s hat.––“Are we not here now,—
and gone in a moment?”—There was nothing in the sentence—’twas one of
your self-evident truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; and if
Trim had not trusted more to his hat than his head—he had made nothing at
all of it.
———“Are we not here now;”—continued the corporal, “and are we
not”—(dropping his hat plumb upon the ground—and pausing, before he
pronounced the word)——“gone! in a moment?” The descent of the hat
was as if a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.——
Nothing could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was
the type and fore-runner, like it,—his hand seemed to vanish from under it,
—it fell dead,—the corporal’s eye fix’d upon it, as upon a corps,—and
Susannah burst into a flood of tears.
Now—Ten thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand (for matter
and motion are infinite) are the ways by which a hat may be dropped upon
the ground, without any effect.——Had he flung it, or thrown it, or cast it,
or skimmed it, or squirted, or let it slip or fall in any possible direction
under heaven,—or in the best direction that could be given to it,—had he
dropped it like a goose—like a puppy—like an ass—or in doing it, or even
after he had done, had he looked like a fool,—like a ninny—like a
nicompoop—it had fail’d, and the effect upon the heart had been lost.
Ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns with the
engines of eloquence,—who heat it, and cool it, and melt it, and mollify it,
——and then harden it again to your purpose——
Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass,––and,
having done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet—
Ye, lastly, who drive——and why not, Ye also who are driven, like
turkeys to market, with a stick and a red clout—meditate—meditate, I
beseech you, upon Trim’s hat.
CHAP. VIII.
STAY——I have a small account to settle with the reader, before Trim can
go on with his harangue.—It shall be done in two minutes.
Amongst many other book-debts, all of which I shall discharge in due
time,—I own myself a debtor to the world for two items,—a chapter upon
chamber-maids and button-holes, which, in the former part of my work, I
promised and fully intended to pay off this year: but some of your worships
and reverences telling me, that the two subjects, especially so connected
together, might endanger the morals of the world,—I pray the chapter upon
chamber-maids and button-holes may be forgiven me,—and that they will
accept of the last chapter in lieu of it; which is nothing, an’t please your
reverences, but a chapter of chamber-maids, green-gowns, and old hats.1
Trim took his off the ground,—put it upon his head,—and then went on
with his oration upon death, in manner and form following.
CHAP. IX.
——To us, Jonathan, who know not what want or care is—who live
here in the service of two of the best of masters—(bating in my own case
his majesty King William the Third, whom I had the honour to serve both in
Ireland and Flanders)—I own it, that from Whitsontide to within three
weeks of Christmas,—’tis not long—’tis like nothing;—but to those,
Jonathan, who know what death is, and what havock and destruction he can
make, before a man can well wheel about—’tis like a whole age.—O
Jonathan! ’twould make a good-natured man’s heart bleed, to consider,
continued the corporal, (standing perpendicularly) how low many a brave
and upright fellow has been laid since that time!—And trust me, Susy,
added the corporal, turning to Susannah, whose eyes were swiming in
water,—before that time comes round again,—many a bright eye will be
dim.—Susannah placed it to the right side of the page—she wept—but she
court’sied too.—Are we not, continued Trim, looking still at Susannah—are
we not like a flower of the field—a tear of pride stole in betwixt every two
tears of humiliation—else no tongue could have described Susannah’s
affliction—is not all flesh grass?—’Tis clay,—’tis dirt.—They all looked
directly at the scullion,—the scullion had just been scouring a fish-kettle.—
It was not fair.——
—What is the finest face that ever man looked at!—I could hear Trim
talk so for ever, cried Susannah,—what is it! (Susannah laid her hand upon
Trim’s shoulder)—but corruption?1——Susannah took it off.
—Now I love you for this—and ’tis this delicious mixture within you
which makes you dear creatures what you are—and he who hates you for it
———all I can say of the matter, is—That he has either a pumkin for his
head2—or a pippin for his heart,—and whenever he is dissected ’twill be
found so.
CHAP. X.
WHETHER Susannah, by taking her hand too suddenly from off the
corporal’s shoulder, (by the whisking about of her passions)——broke a
little the chain of his reflections——
Or whether the corporal began to be suspicious, he had got into the
doctor’s quarters, and was talking more like the chaplain than himself
———
Or whether – – – – – – – – – –
– Or whether——for in all such cases a man of invention and parts
may with pleasure fill a couple of pages with suppositions——which of all
these was the cause, let the curious physiologist, or the curious any body
determine——’tis certain, at least, the corporal went on thus with his
harangue.
For my own part, I declare it, that out of doors, I value not death at all:
—not this . . added the corporal, snapping his fingers,—but with an air
which no one but the corporal could have given to the sentiment.—In battle,
I value death not this1… and let him not take me cowardly, like poor Joe
Gibbins, in scouring his gun.—What is he? A pull of a trigger—a push of a
bayonet an inch this way or that—makes the difference.—Look along the
line—to the right—see! Jack’s down! well,—’tis worth a regiment of horse
to him.—No—’tis Dick. Then Jack’s no worse.—Never mind which,—we
pass on,—in hot pursuit the wound itself which brings him is not felt,2—the
best way is to stand up to him,—the man who flies, is in ten times more
danger than the man who marches up into his jaws.—I’ve look’d him,
added the corporal, an hundred times in the face,—and know what he is.—
He’s nothing, Obadiah, at all in the field.—But he’s very frightful in a
house, quoth Obadiah.——I never mind it myself, said Jonathan, upon a
coach-box.—It must, in my opinion, be most natural in bed, replied
Susannah.—And could I escape him by creeping into the worst calf’s skin
that ever was made into a knapsack, I would do it there—said Trim—but
that is nature.3
——Nature is nature, said Jonathan.—And that is the reason, cried
Susannah, I so much pity my mistress.—She will never get the better of it.
—Now I pity the captain the most of any one in the family, answered Trim.
——Madam will get ease of heart in weeping,—and the Squire in talking
about it,—but my poor master will keep it all in silence to himself.—I shall
hear him sigh in his bed for a whole month together, as he did for lieutenant
Le Fever. An’ please your honour, do not sigh so piteously, I would say to
him as I laid besides him. I cannot help it, Trim, my master would say,
——’tis so melancholy an accident—I cannot get it off my heart.—Your
honour fears not death yourself.—I hope, Trim, I fear nothing, he would
say, but the doing a wrong thing.——Well, he would add, whatever betides,
I will take care of Le Fever’s boy.—And with that, like a quieting draught,
his honour would fall asleep.
I like to hear Trim’s stories about the captain, said Susannah.—He is a
kindly-hearted gentleman, said Obadiah, as ever lived.—Aye,—and as
brave a one too, said the corporal, as ever stept before a platoon.—There
never was a better officer in the king’s army,—or a better man in God’s
world; for he would march up to the mouth of a cannon, though he saw the
lighted match at the very touch-hole,—and yet, for all that, he has a heart as
soft as a child for other people.——He would not hurt a chicken.——I
would sooner, quoth Jonathan, drive such a gentleman for seven pounds a
year—than some for eight.—Thank thee, Jonathan! for thy twenty
shillings,—as much, Jonathan, said the corporal, shaking him by the hand,
as if thou hadst put the money into my own pocket.——I would serve him
to the day of my death out of love. He is a friend and a brother to me,—and
could I be sure my poor brother Tom was dead,—continued the corporal,
taking out his handkerchief,—was I worth ten thousand pounds, I would
leave every shilling of it to the captain.——Trim could not refrain from
tears at this testamentary proof he gave of his affection to his master.——
The whole kitchen was affected.——Do tell us this story of the poor
lieutenant, said Susannah.——With all my heart, answered the corporal.
Susannah, the cook, Jonathan, Obadiah, and corporal Trim, formed a
circle about the fire; and as soon as the scullion had shut the kitchen door,—
the corporal begun.
CHAP. XI.
I Am a Turk if I had not as much forgot my mother, as if Nature had
plaistered me up, and set me down naked upon the banks of the river Nile,1
without one.——Your most obedient servant, Madam—I’ve cost you a
great deal of trouble,—I wish it may answer;—but you have left a crack in
my back,—and here’s a great piece fallen off here before,—and what must I
do with this foot?——I shall never reach England with it.
For my own part I never wonder at any thing;—and so often has my
judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,—
at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as
much as any body; and when it has slipped us, if a man will but take me by
the hand, and go quietly and search for it, as for a thing we have both lost,
and can neither of us do well without,—I’ll go to the world’s end with him:
——But I hate disputes,—and therefore (bating religious points, or such as
touch society) I would almost subscribe to any thing which does not choak
me in the first passage, rather than be drawn into one——But I cannot bear
suffocation,——and bad smells worst of all.——For which reasons, I
resolved from the beginning, That if ever the army of martyrs was to be
augmented,—or a new one raised,—I would have no hand in it, one way or
t’other.
CHAP. XII.
——BUT to return to my mother.
My uncle Toby’s opinion, Madam, “that there could be no harm in
Cornelius Gallus, the Roman prætor’s lying with his wife;”——or rather
the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard of it) caught
hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:——You shall not mistake
me,—I mean her curiosity,1—she instantly concluded herself the subject of
the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her fancy, you will
readily conceive every word my father said, was accommodated either to
herself, or her family concerns.
——Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have
done the same?
From the strange mode of Cornelius’s death, my father had made a
transition to that of Socrates, and was giving my uncle Toby an abstract of
his pleading before his judges;——’twas irresistable:——not the oration of
Socrates,2—but my father’s temptation to it.——He had wrote the *Life of
Socrates3 himself the year before he left off trade, which, I fear, was the
means of hastening him out of it;——so that no one was able to set out with
so full a sail, and in so swelling a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion,
as my father was. Not a period in Socrates’s oration, which closed with a
shorter word than transmigration, or annihilation,—or a worse thought in
the middle of it than to be—or not to be,—the entering upon a new and
untried state of things,—or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep,
without dreams, without disturbance;——That we and our children were
born to die,––but neither of us born to be slaves.——No—there I mistake;
that was part of Eleazer’s oration, as recorded by Josephus (de Bell.
Judaic.)——Eleazer owns he had it from the philosophers of India;4 in all
likelihood Alexander the Great, in his irruption into India, after he had over-
run Persia, amongst the many things he stole,—stole that sentiment also; by
which means it was carried, if not all the way by himself, (for we all know
he died at Babylon)5 at least by some of his maroders, into Greece,—from
Greece it got to Rome,—from Rome to France,—and from France to
England:——So things come round.6——
By land carriage I can conceive no other way.——
By water the sentiment might easily have come down the Ganges into
the Sinus Gangeticus, or Bay of Bengal, and so into the Indian Sea; and
following the course of trade, (the way from India by the Cape of Good
Hope being then unknown) might be carried with other drugs and spices up
the Red Sea to Joddah, the port of Mekka, or else to Tor or Sues, towns at
the bottom of the gulf; and from thence by karrawans to Coptos,7 but three
days journey distant, so down the Nile directly to Alexandria, where the
SENTIMENT would be landed at the very foot of the great stair-case of the
Alexandrian library,—–and from that store-house it would be fetched.
———Bless me! what a trade was driven by the learned in those days!
CHAP. XIII.
——NOW my father had a way, a little like that of Job’s (in case there ever
was such a man1——if not, there’s an end of the matter.——
Though, by the bye, because your learned men find some difficulty in
fixing the precise æra in which so great a man lived;—whether, for
instance, before or after the patriarchs, &c.——to vote, therefore, that he
never lived at all, is a little cruel,—’tis not doing as they would be done by
—happen that as it may)——My father, I say, had a way, when things went
extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience,
—of wondering why he was begot,—wishing himself dead;—sometimes
worse:——And when the provocation ran high, and grief touched his lips
with more than ordinary powers,—Sir, you scarce could have distinguished
him from Socrates himself.——Every word would breathe the sentiments
of a soul disdaining life, and careless about all its issues; for which reason,
though my mother was a woman of no deep reading, yet the abstract of
Socrates’s oration, which my father was giving my uncle Toby, was not
altogether new to her.—She listened to it with composed intelligence, and
would have done so to the end of the chapter, had not my father plunged
(which he had no occasion to have done) into that part of the pleading
where the great philosopher reckons up his connections, his alliances, and
children; but renounces a security to be so won by working upon the
passions of his judges.—“I have friends—I have relations,—I have three
desolate children,”—says Socrates.—
——Then, cried my mother, opening the door,——you have one more,
Mr. Shandy, than I know of.
By heaven! I have one less,—said my father, getting up and walking out
of the room.
CHAP. XIV.
——They are Socrates’s children, said my uncle Toby. He has been dead
a hundred years ago, replied my mother.
My uncle Toby was no chronologer—so not caring to advance a step but
upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe deliberately upon the table, and
rising up, and taking my mother most kindly by the hand, without saying
another word, either good or bad, to her, he led her out after my father, that
he might finish the éclaircissement himself.
CHAP. XV.
HAD this volume been a farce,1 which, unless every one’s life and opinions
are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, I see no reason to suppose
—the last chapter, Sir, had finished the first act of it, and then this chapter
must have set off thus.
Ptr . . r . . r . . ing—twing—twang—prut—trut——’tis a cursed bad
fiddle.—Do you know whether my fiddle’s in tune or no?—trut . . prut . .––
They should be fifths.——’Tis wickedly strung—tr… a.e.i.o.u.–twang.—
The bridge is a mile too high, and the sound-post absolutely down,—else—
trut . . prut—hark! ’tis not so bad a tone.—Diddle diddle, diddle diddle,
diddle diddle, dum. There is nothing in playing before good judges,—but
there’s a man there—no—not him with the bundle under his arm—the
grave man in black.—S’death! not the gentleman with the sword on.—Sir, I
had rather play a Caprichio to Calliope2 herself, than draw my bow across
my fiddle before that very man; and yet, I’ll stake my Cremona to a Jew’s
trump, which is the greatest musical odds that ever were laid, that I will this
moment stop three hundred and fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle,
without punishing one single nerve that belongs to him.—Twaddle diddle,
tweddle diddle,—twiddle diddle,——twoddle diddle,—twuddle diddle,
——prut-trut—krish—krash—krush.—I’ve undone you, Sir,—but you see
he is no worse,—and was Apollo to take his fiddle after me, he can make
him no better.
Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle—hum—dum—drum.
—Your worships and your reverences love musick—and God has made
you all with good ears—and some of you play delightfully yourselves——
trut-prut,—prut-trut.
O! there is—whom I could sit and hear whole days,—whose talents lie
in making what he fiddles to be felt,—who inspires me with his joys and
hopes, and puts the most hidden springs of my heart into motion.——If you
would borrow five guineas of me, Sir,—which is generally ten guineas
more than I have to spare—or you, Messrs. Apothecary and Taylor, want
your bills paying,—that’s your time.
CHAP. XVI.
THE first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a little
settled in the family, and Susannah had got possession of my mother’s
green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the example of
Xenophon,1 and write a TRISTRA-pædia, or system of education for me;
collecting first for that purpose his own scattered thoughts, counsels, and
notions; and binding them together, so as to form an INSTITUTE for the
government of my childhood and adolescence.2 I was my father’s last stake
—he had lost my brother Bobby entirely,––he had lost, by his own
computation, full three fourths of me—that is, he had been unfortunate in
his three first great casts for me—my geniture, nose, and name,—there was
but this one left; and accordingly my father gave himself up to it with as
much devotion as ever my uncle Toby had done to his doctrine of projectils.
—The difference between them was, that my uncle Toby drew his whole
knowledge of projectils from Nicholas Tartaglia3—My father spun his,
every thread of it, out of his own brain,—or reeled and cross-twisted what
all other spinners and spinsters had spun before him, that ’twas pretty near
the same torture to him.
In about three years, or something more, my father had got advanced
almost into the middle of his work.—Like all other writers, he met with
disappointments.—He imagined he should be able to bring whatever he had
to say, into so small a compass, that when it was finished and bound, it
might be rolled up in my mother’s hussive.4—Matter grows under our
hands.—Let no man say,—“Come—I’ll write a duodecimo.”
My father gave himself up to it, however, with the most painful
diligence, proceeding step by step in every line, with the same kind of
caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite so religious a
principle) as was used by John de la Casse,5 the lord archbishop of
Benevento, in compassing his Galatea; in which his Grace of Benevento
spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came out, it was not of
above half the size or the thickness of a Rider’s Almanack.6—How the holy
man managed the affair, unless he spent the greatest part of his time in
combing his whiskers, or playing at primero with his chaplain,—would
pose any mortal not let into the true secret;—and therefore ’tis worth
explaining to the world, was it only for the encouragement of those few in
it, who write not so much to be fed—as to be famous.7
I own had John de la Casse, the archbishop of Benevento, for whose
memory (notwithstanding his Galatea) I retain the highest veneration,—had
he been, Sir, a slender clerk—of dull wit—slow parts—costive head, and so
forth,—he and his Galatea might have jogged on together to the age of
Methusalah for me,—the phænomenon had not been worth a parenthesis.—
But the reverse of this was the truth: John de la Casse was a genius of
fine parts and fertile fancy; and yet with all these great advantages of
nature, which should have pricked him forwards with his Galatea, he lay
under an impuissance at the same time of advancing above a line and an
half in the compass of a whole summer’s day: this disability in his Grace
arose from an opinion he was afflicted with,—which opinion was this,—viz.
that whenever a Christian was writing a book (not for his private
amusement, but) where his intent and purpose was bonâ fide, to print and
publish it to the world, his first thoughts were always the temptations of the
evil one.—This was the state of ordinary writers: but when a personage of
venerable character and high station, either in church or state, once turned
author,––he maintained, that from the very moment he took pen in hand—
all the devils in hell broke out of their holes to cajole him.—’Twas Term-
time8 with them,—every thought, first and last, was captious;—how
specious and good soever,—’twas all one;—in whatever form or colour it
presented itself to the imagination,—’twas still a stroke of one or other of
’em levelled at him, and was to be fenced off.—So that the life of a writer,9
whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of
composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of
any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much
upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.
My father was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse,
archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) I
believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy estate, to have
been the broacher of it.––How far my father actually believed in the devil,
will be seen, when I come to speak of my father’s religious notions, in the
progress of this work: ’tis enough to say here, as he could not have the
honour of it, in the literal sense of the doctrine—he took up with the
allegory of it;—and would often say, especially when his pen was a little
retrograde,10 there was as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge,
couched under the veil of John de la Casse’s parabolical representation,—
as was to be found in any one poetic fiction, or mystick record of antiquity.
—Prejudice of education, he would say, is the devil,—and the multitudes of
them which we suck in with our mother’s milk11—are the devil and all.
——We are haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and
researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they
obtruded upon him,—what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add,
throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the
clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes)
throughout the kingdom.
This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress my
father made in his Tristra-pædia; at which (as I said) he was three years and
something more, indefatigably at work, and at last, had scarce compleated,
by his own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that
I was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what
was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which
my father had spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,
——every day a page or two became of no consequence.——
——Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human
wisdom, That the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and
eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.
In short, my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,––or in other
words,—he advanced so very slow with his work, and I began to live and
get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not happened,——which,
when we get to it, if it can be told with decency, shall not be concealed a
moment from the reader——I verily believe, I had put by my father, and
left him drawing a sun-dial,12 for no better purpose than to be buried under
ground.
CHAP. XVII.
——’TWAS nothing,—I did not lose two drops of blood by it––’twas not
worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us——thousands
suffer by choice, what I did by accident.——Doctor Slop made ten times
more of it, than there was occasion:——some men rise, by the art of
hanging great weights upon small wires,1—and I am this day (August the
10th, 1761)2 paying part of the price of this man’s reputation.——O
’twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!——
The chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under the bed:——Cannot you
contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she
spoke, and helping me up into the window seat with the other,—cannot you
manage, my dear, for a single time to **** *** ** *** ******?
I was five years old.——Susannah did not consider that nothing was
well hung in our family,——so slap came the sash down like lightening
upon us;—Nothing is left,—cried Susannah,—nothing is left—for me, but
to run my country.——
My uncle Toby’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah
fled to it.
CHAP. XVIII.
WHEN Susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the
circumstances which attended the murder of me,—(as she called it)—the
blood forsook his cheeks;—all accessaries in murder, being principals,1—
Trim’s conscience told him he was as much to blame as Susannah,—and if
the doctrine had been true, my uncle Toby had as much of the blood-shed to
answer for to heaven, as either of ’em;—so that neither reason or instinct,
separate or together, could possibly have guided Susannah’s steps to so
proper an asylum. It is in vain to leave this to the Reader’s imagination:
——to form any kind of hypothesis that will render these propositions
feasible, he must cudgel his brains sore,—and to do it without,—he must
have such brains as no reader ever had before him.——Why should I put
them either to tryal or to torture? ’Tis my own affair: I’ll explain it myself.
CHAP. XIX.
’TIS a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, resting with his hand upon the
corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,—that we
have not a couple of field pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt;
——’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that
side quite complete:——get me a couple cast, Trim.
Your honour shall have them, replied Trim, before to-morrow morning.
It was the joy of Trim’s heart,—nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for
expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle Toby in his campaigns, with
whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last crown, he would have sate
down and hammered it into a paderero to have prevented1 a single wish in
his Master. The corporal had already,—what with cutting off the ends of my
uncle Toby’s spouts—hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden
gutters,—melting down his pewter shaving bason,—and going at last, like
Lewis the fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.2——
he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering
cannons, besides three demi-culverins into the field; my uncle Toby’s
demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work
again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights
from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone,
were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of
wheels for one of their carriages.
He had dismantled every sash window in my uncle Toby’s house long
before, in the very same way,—though not always in the same order; for
sometimes the pullies had been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he began
with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became
useless,—and so the lead went to pot too.3
——A great MORAL might be picked handsomly out of this, but I have
not time—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally
fatal to the sash window.
CHAP. XX.
THE corporal had not taken his measures so badly in this stroke of
artilleryship, but that he might have kept the matter entirely to himself, and
left Susannah to have sustained the whole weight of the attack, as she
could;—true courage is not content with coming off so.——The corporal,
whether as general or comptroller of the train,—’twas no matter,——had
done that, without which, as he imagined, the misfortune could never have
happened,—at least in Susannah’s hands;——How would your honours
have behaved?——He determined at once, not to take shelter behind
Susannah,—but to give it; and with this resolution upon his mind, he
marched upright into the parlour, to lay the whole manœuvre before my
uncle Toby.
My uncle Toby had just then been giving Yorick an account of the Battle
of Steenkirk,1 and of the strange conduct of count Solmes2 in ordering the
foot to halt, and the horse to march where it could not act; which was
directly contrary to the king’s commands, and proved the loss of the day.
There are incidents in some families so pat to the purpose of what is
going to follow,—they are scarce exceeded by the invention of a dramatic
writer;—I mean of ancient days.———
Trim, by the help of his forefinger, laid flat upon the table, and the edge
of his hand striking a-cross it at right angles, made a shift to tell his story
so, that priests and virgins might have listened to it;3—and the story being
told,—the dialogue went on as follows.
CHAP. XXI.
——I would be picquetted1 to death, cried the corporal, as he concluded
Susannah’s story, before I would suffer the woman to come to any harm,
—’twas my fault, an’ please your honour,—not hers.
Corporal Trim, replied my uncle Toby, putting on his hat which lay upon
the table,——if any thing can be said to be a fault, when the service
absolutely requires it should be done,—’tis I certainly who deserve the
blame,——you obeyed your orders.
Had count Solmes, Trim, done the same at the battle of Steenkirk, said
Yorick, drolling a little upon the corporal, who had been run over by a
dragoon in the retreat,——he had saved thee;——Saved! cried Trim,
interrupting Yorick, and finishing the sentence for him after his own
fashion,——he had saved five battalions, an’ please your reverence, every
soul of them:——there was Cutts’s—continued the corporal, clapping the
forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round
his hand,——there was Cutts’s,——Mackay’s,——Angus’s,——Graham’s
——and Leven’s,2 all cut to pieces;——and so had the English life-guards
too, had it not been for some regiments upon the right, who marched up
boldly to their relief, and received the enemy’s fire in their faces, before any
one of their own platoons discharged a musket,——they’ll go to heaven for
it,—added Trim.—Trim is right, said my uncle Toby, nodding to Yorick,
——he’s perfectly right. What signified his marching the horse, continued
the corporal, where the ground was so strait, and the French had such a
nation of hedges, and copses, and ditches, and fell’d trees laid this way and
that to cover them; (as they always have.)——Count Solmes should have
sent us,——we would have fired muzzle to muzzle with them for their
lives.——There was nothing to be done for the horse:——he had his foot
shot off however for his pains, continued the corporal, the very next
campaign at Landen.3—Poor Trim got his wound there, quoth my uncle
Toby.——’Twas owing, an’ please your honour, entirely to count Solmes,
——had we drub’d them soundly at Steenkirk, they would not have fought
us at Landen.——Possibly not,——Trim, said my uncle Toby;——though
if they have the advantage of a wood, or you give them a moment’s time to
intrench themselves, they are a nation which will pop and pop for ever at
you.——There is no way but to march cooly up to them,——receive their
fire, and fall in upon them, pell-mell——Ding dong, added Trim.——Horse
and foot, said my uncle Toby.——Helter skelter, said Trim.——Right and
left, cried my uncle Toby.——Blood an’ ounds, shouted the corporal;——
the battle raged,——Yorick drew his chair a little to one side for safety, and
after a moment’s pause, my uncle Toby sinking his voice a note,—resumed
the discourse as follows.
CHAP. XXII.
KING William, said my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Yorick, was so
terribly provoked at count Solmes for disobeying his orders, that he would
not suffer him to come into his presence for many months after.——I fear,
answered Yorick, the squire will be as much provoked at the corporal, as the
King at the count.——But ’twould be singularly hard in this case,
continued he, if corporal Trim, who has behaved so diametrically opposite
to count Solmes, should have the fate to be rewarded with the same
disgrace;——too oft in this world, do things take that train.——I would
spring a mine, cried my uncle Toby, rising up,——and blow up my
fortifications, and my house with them, and we would perish under their
ruins, ere I would stand by and see it.——Trim directed a slight,——but a
grateful bow towards his master,——and so the chapter ends.
CHAP. XXIII.
——Then, Yorick, replied my uncle Toby, you and I will lead the way
abreast,——and do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.——And
Susannah, an’ please your honour, said Trim, shall be put in the rear.
——’Twas an excellent disposition,—and in this order, without either
drums beating, or colours flying, they marched slowly from my uncle
Toby’s house to Shandy-hall.
——I wish, said Trim, as they entered the door,—instead of the sash-
weights, I had cut off the church-spout, as I once thought to have done.—
You have cut off spouts enow, replied Yorick.——
CHAP. XXIV.
AS many pictures as have been given of my father, how like him soever in
different airs and attitudes,—not one, or all of them, can ever help the
reader to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, speak,
or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of life.—There was that
infinitude of oddities in him, and of chances along with it, by which handle
he would take a thing,—it baffled, Sir, all calculations.——The truth was,
his road lay so very far on one side, from that wherein most men travelled,
—that every object before him presented a face and section of itself to his
eye, altogether different from the plan and elevation of it seen by the rest of
mankind.—In other words, ’twas a different object,—and in course was
differently considered:
This is the true reason, that my dear Jenny and I, as well as all the world
besides us, have such eternal squabbles about nothing.—She looks at her
outside,—I, at her in—. How is it possible we should agree about her
value?
CHAP. XXV.
’TIS a point settled,—and I mention it for the comfort of *Confucius,1 who
is apt to get entangled in telling a plain story—that provided he keeps along
the line of his story,—he may go backwards and forwards as he will,—’tis
still held to be no digression.
This being premised, I take the benefit of the act of going backwards
myself.
CHAP. XXVI.
FIFTY thousand pannier loads of devils1—(not of the Archbishop of
Benevento’s,—I mean of Rabelais’s devils) with their tails chopped off by
their rumps, could not have made so diabolical a scream of it, as I did—
when the accident befell me: it summoned up my mother instantly into the
nursery,—so that Susannah had but just time to make her escape down the
back stairs, as my mother came up the fore.
Now, though I was old enough to have told the story myself,—and
young enough, I hope, to have done it without malignity; yet Susannah, in
passing by the kitchen, for fear of accidents, had left it in short-hand with
the cook—the cook had told it with a commentary to Jonathan, and
Jonathan to Obadiah; so that by the time my father had rung the bell half a
dozen times, to know what was the matter above,—was Obadiah enabled to
give him a particular account of it, just as it had happened.—I thought as
much, said my father, tucking up his night-gown;—and so walked up stairs.
One would imagine from this——(though for my own part I somewhat
question it)—that my father before that time, had actually wrote that
remarkable chapter in the Tristrapædia, which to me is the most original
and entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the chapter upon sash-
windows, with a bitter Philippick2 at the end of it, upon the forgetfulness of
chamber-maids.—I have but two reasons for thinking otherwise.
First, Had the matter been taken into consideration, before the event
happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash-window for
good an’ all;—which, considering with what difficulty he composed books,
—he might have done with ten times less trouble, than he could have wrote
the chapter: this argument I foresee holds good against his writing the
chapter, even after the event; but ’tis obviated under the second reason,
which I have the honour to offer to the world in support of my opinion, that
my father did not write the chapter upon sash-windows and chamber-pots,
at the time supposed,—and it is this.
——That, in order to render the Tristrapædia complete,—I wrote the
chapter myself.
CHAP. XXVII.
MY father put on his spectacles—looked,—took them off,—put them into
the case—all in less than a statutable minute; and without opening his lips,
turned about, and walked precipitately down stairs: my mother imagined he
had stepped down for lint and basilicon;1 but seeing him return with a
couple of folios under his arm, and Obadiah following him with a large
reading desk, she took it for granted ’twas an herbal, and so drew him a
chair to the bed side, that he might consult upon the case at his ease.
—–If it be but right done,—said my father, turning to the Section—de
sede vel subjecto circumcisionis,——for he had brought up Spencer2 de
Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus—and Maimonides,3 in order to confront
and examine us altogether.—
——If it be but right done, quoth he:—Only tell us, cried my mother,
interrupting him, what herbs.——For that, replied my father, you must send
for Dr. Slop.
My mother went down, and my father went on, reading the section as
follows.4
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *——Very well,—said my
father,* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *—nay, if it has that
convenience––—and so without stopping a moment to settle it first in his
mind, whether the Jews had it from the Egyptians, or the Egyptians from
the Jews,—he rose up, and rubbing his forehead two or three times across
with the palm of his hand, in the manner we rub out the footsteps of care,
when evil has trod lighter upon us than we foreboded,—he shut the book,
and walked down stairs.—Nay, said he, mentioning the name of a different
great nation upon every step as he set his foot upon it—if the EGYPTIANS,—
the SYRIANS,—the PHOENICIANS,––the ARABIANS,—the CAPADOCIANS,5——
if the COLCHI, and TROGLODYTES did it——if SOLON and PYTHAGORAS6
submitted,—what is TRISTRAM?——Who am I, that I should fret or fume
one moment about the matter?
CHAP. XXVIII.
DEAR Yorick, said my father smiling, (for Yorick had broke his rank with my
uncle Toby in coming through the narrow entry, and so had stept first into
the parlour)—this Tristram of ours, I find, comes very hardly by all his
religious rites.—Never was the son of Jew, Christian, Turk, or Infidel
initiated into them in so oblique and slovenly a manner.—But he is no
worse, I trust, said Yorick.—There has been certainly, continued my father,
the duce and all to do in some part or other of the ecliptic, when this
offspring of mine was formed.—That, you are a better judge of than I,
replied Yorick.—Astrologers, quoth my father, know better than us both:—
the trine and sextil aspects have jumped awry,—or the opposite of their
ascendents have not hit it, as they should,—or the lords of the genitures1 (as
they call them) have been at bo-peep,—or something has been wrong
above, or below with us.
’Tis possible, answered Yorick.—But is the child, cried my uncle Toby,
the worse?—The Troglodytes say not, replied my father.—And your
theologists, Yorick, tell us—Theologically? said Yorick,—or speaking after
the manner of *apothecaries?—†statesmen?—or ‡washer-women?2
——I’m not sure, replied my father,—but they tell us, brother Toby, he’s
the better for it.——Provided, said Yorick, you travel him into Egypt.——
Of that, answered my father, he will have the advantage, when he sees the
Pyramids.——
Now every word of this, quoth my uncle Toby, is Arabick to me.——I
wish, said Yorick, ’twas so, to half the world.
—§ILUS,3 continued my father, circumcised his whole army one
morning.—Not without a court martial? cried my uncle Toby.——Though
the learned, continued he, taking no notice of my uncle Toby’s remark, but
turning to Yorick,—are greatly divided still who Ilus was;—some say
Saturn;—some the supream Being;—others, no more than a brigadier
general under Pharoah-neco.——Let him be who he will, said my uncle
Toby, I know not by what article of war he could justify it.
The controvertists, answered my father, assign two and twenty different
reasons for it:—others indeed, who have drawn their pens on the opposite
side of the question, have shewn the world the futility of the greatest part of
them.—But then again, our best polemic divines4—I wish there was not a
polemic divine, said Yorick, in the kingdom;—one ounce of practical
divinity5—is worth a painted ship load of all their reverences have imported
these fifty years.—Pray, Mr. Yorick, quoth my uncle Toby,—do tell me what
a polemic divine is.——The best description, captain Shandy, I have ever
read, is of a couple of ’em, replied Yorick, in the account of the battle fought
single hands betwixt Gymnast and captain Tripet;6 which I have in my
pocket.——I beg I may hear it, quoth my uncle Toby earnestly.—You shall,
said Yorick.—And as the corporal is waiting for me at the door,—and I
know the description of a battle, will do the poor fellow more good than his
supper,—I beg, brother, you’ll give him leave to come in.—With all my
soul, said my father.——Trim came in, erect and happy as an emperour; and
having shut the door, Yorick took a book from his right-hand coat pocket,
and read, or pretended to read, as follows.
CHAP. XXIX.
——“which words being heard by all the soldiers which were there,
divers of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for
the assailant: all this did Gymnast very well remark and consider; and
therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was
poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his short sword
by his thigh) shifting his feet in the stirrup and performing the stirrup-
leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he
forthwith launched himself aloft into the air, and placed both his feet
together upon the saddle, standing upright, with his back turned towards his
horse’s head,—Now (said he) my case goes forward. Then suddenly in the
same posture wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and
turning to the left-hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just
into his former position, without missing one jot.——Ha! said Tripet, I will
not do that at this time,—and not without cause. Well, said Gymnast, I have
failed,—I will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility,
turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another frisking gambol as
before; which done, he set his right-hand thumb upon the bow of the saddle,
raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and upholding his whole
weight upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and
whirled himself about three times: at the fourth, reversing his body and
overturning it upside-down, and foreside back, without touching any thing,
he brought himself betwixt the horse’s two ears, and then giving himself a
jerking swing, he seated himself upon the crupper——”
(This can’t be fighting, said my uncle Toby.——The corporal shook his
head at it.——Have patience, said Yorick.)
“Then (Tripet) pass’d his right leg over his saddle, and placed himself en
croup.1—But, said he, ’twere better for me to get into the saddle; then
putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper before him, and
thereupon leaning himself, as upon the only supporters of his body, he
incontinently turned heels over head in the air, and straight found himself
betwixt the bow of the saddle in a tolerable seat; then springing into the air
with a summerset, he turned him about like a wind-mill, and made above a
hundred frisks, turns and demi-pommadas.”2—Good God! cried Trim,
losing all patience,—one home thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.——I
think so too, replied Yorick.——
—I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father.
CHAP. XXX.
——No,—I think I have advanced nothing, replied my father, making
answer to a question which Yorick had taken the liberty to put to him,—I
have advanced nothing in the Tristrapædia, but what is as clear as any one
proposition in Euclid.1––Reach me, Trim, that book from off the scrutoir:2
——it has oft times been in my mind, continued my father, to have read it
over both to you, Yorick, and to my brother Toby, and I think it a little
unfriendly in myself, in not having done it long ago:——shall we have a
short chapter or two now,—and a chapter or two hereafter, as occasions
serve; and so on, till we get through the whole? My uncle Toby and Yorick
made the obeisance which was proper; and the corporal, though he was not
included in the compliment, laid his hand upon his breast, and made his
bow at the same time.——The company smiled. Trim, quoth my father, has
paid the full price for staying out the entertainment.——He did not seem to
relish the play, replied Yorick.——’Twas a Tom-fool-battle, an’ please your
reverence, of captain Tripet’s and that other officer, making so many
summersets, as they advanced;——the French come on capering now and
then in that way,—but not quite so much.
My uncle Toby never felt the consciousness of his existence with more
complacency than what the corporal’s, and his own reflections, made him
do at that moment;——he lighted his pipe,——Yorick drew his chair closer
to the table,—Trim snuff’d the candle,3—my father stir’d up the fire,—took
up the book,—cough’d twice, and begun.
CHAP. XXXI.1
THE first thirty pages, said my father, turning over the leaves,—are a little
dry; and as they are not closely connected with the subject,——for the
present we’ll pass them by: ’tis a prefatory introduction, continued my
father, or an introductory preface (for I am not determined which name to
give it) upon political or civil government; the foundation of which being
laid in the first conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the
species——I was insensibly led into it.——’Twas natural, said Yorick.
The original of society, continued my father, I’m satisfied is, what
Politian2 tells us, i.e. merely conjugal; and nothing more than the getting
together of one man and one woman;—to which, (according to Hesiod) the
philosopher adds a servant:——but supposing in the first beginning there
were no men servants born——he lays the foundation of it, in a man,—a
woman—and a bull.——I believe ’tis an ox, quoth Yorick, quoting the
passage (οἶϰον μὲν πρώτιστα, γυναῖϰα τε, βοῦν τ᾽ ἀροτηρα.)——A bull must
have given more trouble than his head was worth.——But there is a better
reason still, said my father, (dipping his pen into his ink) for, the ox being
the most patient of animals, and the most useful withal in tilling the ground
for their nourishment,—was the properest instrument, and emblem too, for
the new joined couple, that the creation could have associated with them.—
And there is a stronger reason, added my uncle Toby, than them all for the
ox.—My father had not power to take his pen out of his ink-horn, till he had
heard my uncle Toby’s reason.—For when the ground was tilled, said my
uncle Toby, and made worth inclosing, then they began to secure it by walls
and ditches, which was the origin of fortification.3——True, true; dear
Toby, cried my father, striking out the bull, and putting the ox in his place.
My father gave Trim a nod, to snuff the candle, and resumed his
discourse.
——I enter upon this speculation, said my father carelessly, and half
shutting the book, as he went on,—merely to shew the foundation of the
natural relation between a father and his child; the right and jurisdiction
over whom he acquires these several ways—
1st, by marriage.
2d, by adoption.
3d, by legitimation.
And 4th, by procreation; all which I consider in their order.
I lay a slight stress upon one of them; replied Yorick——the act,
especially where it ends there, in my opinion lays as little obligation upon
the child, as it conveys power to the father.—You are wrong,—said my
father argutely,4 and for this plain reason * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * *.—I own, added my father, that the
offspring, upon this account, is not so under the power and jurisdiction of
the mother.—But the reason, replied Yorick, equally holds good for her.
——She is under authority herself, said my father:—and besides, continued
my father, nodding his head and laying his finger upon the side of his nose,
as he assigned his reason,—she is not the principal agent,5 Yorick.—In
what? quoth my uncle Toby, stopping his pipe.—Though by all means,
added my father (not attending to my uncle Toby) “The son ought to pay her
respect,” as you may read, Yorick, at large in the first book of the Institutes
of Justinian,6 at the eleventh title and the tenth section.—I can read it as
well, replied Yorick, in the Catechism.
CHAP. XXXII.
TRIM can repeat every word of it by heart, quoth my uncle Toby.—Pugh!
said my father, not caring to be interrupted with Trim’s saying his
Catechism. He can upon my honour, replied my uncle Toby.—Ask him, Mr.
Yorick, any question you please.——
—The fifth Commandment, Trim—said Yorick, speaking mildly, and
with a gentle nod, as to a modest Catechumen. The corporal stood silent.—
You don’t ask him right, said my uncle Toby, raising his voice, and giving it
rapidly like the word of command;——The fifth———cried my uncle
Toby.—I must begin with the first, an’ please your honour, said the
corporal.——
—Yorick could not forbear smiling.—Your reverence does not consider,
said the corporal, shouldering his stick like a musket, and marching into the
middle of the room, to illustrate his position,—that ’tis exactly the same
thing, as doing one’s exercise in the field.—
“Join your right hand to your firelock,” cried the corporal, giving the
word of command, and performing the motion.—
“Poise your firelock,” cried the corporal, doing the duty still of both
adjutant and private man.—
“Rest your firelock;”—one motion, an’ please your reverence, you see
leads into another.—If his honour will begin but with the first—
THE FIRST—cried my uncle Toby, setting his hand upon his side—* *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.
THE SECOND—cried my uncle Toby, waving his tobacco-pipe, as he
would have done his sword at the head of a regiment.—The corporal went
through his manual with exactness; and having honoured his father and
mother, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the room.
Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,—and has wit
in it, and instruction too,—if we can but find it out.1
—Here is the scaffold work of INSTRUCTION, its true point of folly,
without the BUILDING behind it.—
—Here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governours,
gerund-grinders and bear-leaders2 to view themselves in, in their true
dimensions.—
Oh! there is a husk and shell, Yorick, which grows up with learning,
which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling away!
—SCIENCES MAY BE LEARNED BY ROTE, BUT WISDOM NOT.3
Yorick thought my father inspired.—I will enter into obligations this
moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt Dinah’s legacy, in charitable
uses (of which, by the bye, my father had no high opinion) if the corporal
has any one determinate idea annexed4 to any one word he has repeated.—
Prythee, Trim, quoth my father, turning round to him,—What do’st thou
mean, by “honouring thy father and mother?”
Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a day out of my
pay, when they grew old.—And didst thou do that, Trim? said Yorick.—He
did indeed, replied my uncle Toby.––Then, Trim, said Yorick, springing out
of his chair, and taking the corporal by the hand, thou art the best
commentator upon that part of the Decalogue; and I honour thee more for
it, corporal Trim, than if thou hadst had a hand in the Talmud5 itself.
CHAP. XXXIII.
O Blessed health! cried my father, making an exclamation, as he turned over
the leaves to the next chapter,—thou art above all gold and treasure;1 ’tis
thou who enlargest the soul,—and openest all it’s powers to receive
instruction and to relish virtue.—He that has thee, has little more to wish
for;—and he that is so wretched as to want thee,—wants every thing with
thee.
I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important head, said
my father, into a very little room, therefore we’ll read the chapter quite
thro’.
My father read as follows.
“The whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for
mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture”2—You have
proved that matter of fact, I suppose, above, said Yorick. Sufficiently,
replied my father.
In saying this, my father shut the book,—not as if he resolved to read no
more of it, for he kept his forefinger in the chapter:——nor pettishly,—for
he shut the book slowly; his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the
upper-side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower-side of it,
without the least compressive violence.——
I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding to
Yorick, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter.
Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth had
wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret of all health
depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and
the radical moisture,—and that he had managed the point so well, that there
was not one single word wet or dry upon radical heat or radical moisture,
throughout the whole chapter,—or a single syllable in it, pro or con, directly
or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers in any part of
the animal œconomy——
“O thou eternal maker of all beings!”—he would cry, striking his breast
with his right hand, (in case he had one)—“Thou whose power and
goodness can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree of
excellence and perfection,—What have we MOONITES done?”
CHAP. XXXIV.1
WITH two strokes, the one at Hippocrates, the other at Lord Verulam, did
my father atchieve it.
The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no
more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the Ars longa,—
and Vita brevis.——Life short, cried my father,—and the art of healing
tedious! And who are we to thank for both, the one and the other, but the
ignorance of quacks themselves,—and the stage-loads2 of chymical
nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which in all ages, they have first
flatter’d the world, and at last deceived it.
——O my lord Verulam! cried my father, turning from Hippocrates, and
making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and
the fittest to be made an example of to the rest,——What shall I say to thee,
my great lord Verulam? What shall I say to thy internal spirit,—thy opium,
—thy salt-petre,——thy greasy unctions,—thy daily purges,—thy nightly
glisters,3 and succedaneums?
——My father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any
subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing:
how he dealt with his lordship’s opinion,——you shall see;——but when—
I know not:——we must first see what his lordship’s opinion was.
CHAP. XXXV.
“THE two great, causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life, says
lord Verulam, are first——
“The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame, wastes the body down to
death:—And secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to ashes:—
which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at
length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions of
life.”
This being the state of the case; the road to Longevity was plain; nothing
more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by
the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a
regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on
the other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning before you
got up.——
Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of the air
without;—but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions,
which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no spicula1 could enter;
——nor could any one get out.——This put a stop to all perspiration,
sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy
distempers—a course of glisters was requisite to carry off redundant
humours,—and render the system compleat.
What my father had to say to my lord of Verulam’s opiates, his salt-
petre, and greasy unctions and glisters, you shall read,—but not to day—or
to morrow: time presses upon me,—my reader is impatient—I must get
forwards.——You shall read the chapter at your leisure, (if you chuse it) as
soon as ever the Tristrapædia is published.———
Sufficeth it at present, to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with the
ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and established his
own.——
CHAP. XXXVI.
THE whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence again,
depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical heat and
radical moisture within us;—the least imaginable skill had been sufficient to
have maintained it, had not the school-men confounded the task, merely (as
Van Helmont,1 the famous chymist, has proved) by all along mistaking the
radical moisture for the tallow and fat of animal bodies.
Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily
and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or
watery parts are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively
heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of Aristotle, “Quod omne
animal post coitum est triste.”2
Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, but
whether vice versâ, is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the other
decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat, which causes an
unnatural dryness——or an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies.——
So that if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught to avoid running into
fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his destruction,——’twill be all that
is needful to be done upon that head.——
CHAP. XXXVII.
THE description of the siege of Jerico itself, could not have engaged the
attention of my uncle Toby more powerfully than the last chapter;—his eyes
were fixed upon my father, throughout it;—he never mentioned radical heat
and radical moisture, but my uncle Toby took his pipe out of his mouth, and
shook his head; and as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the
corporal to come close to his chair, to ask him the following question,—
aside.——* * * * * * * * * * * * *. It was at the siege
of Limerick,1 an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow.
The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to my
father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the siege of
Limerick was raised, upon the very account you mention.——Now what
can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother Toby? cried
my father, mentally.——By Heaven! continued he, communing still with
himself, it would puzzle an Œdipus to bring it in point.——
I believe, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, that if it had not
been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and
cinnamon with which I plyed your honour off;—And the geneva, Trim,
added my uncle Toby, which did us more good than all——I verily believe,
continued the corporal, we had both, an’ please your honour, left our lives
in the trenches, and been buried in them too.——The noblest grave,
corporal! cried my uncle Toby, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier
could wish to lie down in.——But a pitiful death for him! an’ please your
honour, replied the corporal.
All this was as much Arabick to my father, as the rites of the Colchi and
Troglodites had been before to my uncle Toby; my father could not
determine whether he was to frown or smile.
My uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, resumed the case at Limerick, more
intelligibly than he had begun it,—and so settled the point for my father at
once.
CHAP. XXXVIII.
IT was undoubtedly, said my uncle Toby, a great happiness for myself and
the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most
raging thirst, during the whole five and twenty days the flux was upon us in
the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture, must, as I
conceive it, inevitably have got the better.——My father drew in his lungs
top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth again, as slowly as he possibly
could.——
———It was heaven’s mercy to us, continued my uncle Toby, which put
it into the corporal’s head to maintain that due contention betwixt the
radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all
along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) a
continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning
to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was.——
Upon my honour, added my uncle Toby, you might have heard the
contention within our bodies, brother Shandy, twenty toises.—If there was
no firing, said Yorick.
Well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after
the word——Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me
one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided
they had had their clergy ———— ———— ———— ————Yorick
foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his
hand upon my father’s breast, and begged he would respite it for a few
minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.——Prithee, Trim, said Yorick,
without staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy
opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture?
With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the
corporal, making a bow to my uncle Toby—Speak thy opinion freely,
corporal, said my uncle Toby.—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my
slave,—added my uncle Toby, turning to my father.——
The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging
upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he
marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then
touching his under jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before
he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus.
CHAP. XXXIX.
JUST as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled Dr. Slop.—’Tis
not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who
will come in.——
Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions of
his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and what has this whelp of mine
to say to the matter?——
Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-
dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system which Dr.
Slop had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode
of enquiry.—He sat down.
Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, in a manner which could not go
unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’Twill end in a phimosis,1
replied Dr. Slop.
I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle Toby,—returning his pipe into
his mouth.——Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical
lecture.—The corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr. Slop, and then
delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the
following words.
CHAP. XL.
THE city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun under his majesty king
William himself, the year after I went into the army—lies, an’ please your
honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.––’Tis quite
surrounded, said my uncle Toby, with the Shannon, and is, by its situation,
one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland.——
I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. Slop, of beginning a medical
lecture.––’Tis all true, answered Trim.—Then I wish the faculty would
follow the cut of it, said Yorick.––’Tis all cut through, an’ please your
reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was
such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a
puddle,—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which
had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such
thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry
in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water;—nor was
that enough, for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without
setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the
damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.———
And what conclusion dost thou draw, Corporal Trim, cried my father,
from all these premises?
I infer, an’ please your worship, replied Trim, that the radical moisture is
nothing in the world but ditch-water—and that the radical heat, of those
who can go to the expence of it, is burnt brandy—the radical heat and
moisture of a private man, an’ please your honours, is nothing but ditch-
water—and a dram of geneva——and give us but enough of it, with a pipe
of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the vapours—we know not
what it is to fear death.1
I am at a loss, Captain Shandy, quoth Doctor Slop, to determine in which
branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology, or
divinity.—Slop had not forgot2 Trim’s comment upon the sermon.—
It is but an hour ago, replied Yorick, since the corporal was examined in
the latter, and pass’d muster with great honour.——
The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor Slop, turning to my father,
you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being,—as the root of a
tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It is inherent in the seeds
of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally in my
opinion by consubstantials, impriments, and occludents.3——Now this
poor fellow, continued Dr. Slop, pointing to the corporal, has had the
misfortune to have heard some superficial emperic discourse4 upon this nice
point.——That he has,—said my father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—
I’m sure of it—quoth Yorick.——
CHAP. XLI.
DOCTOR Slop being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave
my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the Tristra-
pædia.——Come! chear up, my lads; I’ll shew you land1———for when
we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again
this twelvemonth.—Huzza!—
CHAP. XLII.
—FIVE years with a bib under his chin;
Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to Malachi;1
A year and a half in learning to write his own name;
Seven long years and more τυπτω-ing it, at Greek and Latin;2
Four years at his probations and his negations—the fine statue still lying
in the middle of the marble block,3—and nothing done, but his tools
sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great Julius
Scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?———
Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and Peter
Damianus, lord bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, could not so much
as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And Baldus4 himself, as eminent as
he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body
imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder,
when Eudamidas, the son of Archidamas, heard Xenocrates at seventy-five
disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,—If the old man be yet
disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom—what time will he have to
make use of it?5
Yorick listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning
of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had
sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost
attoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when you imitate him.
I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half reading and half
discoursing, that there is a North west passage6 to the intellectual world;
and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing
itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.——
But alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—
every child, Yorick! has not a parent to point it out.
——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon
the auxiliary verbs,7 Mr. Yorick.
Had Yorick trod upon Virgil’s snake,8 he could not have looked more
surprised.—I am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and I reckon
it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befell the republick of letters,
That those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, and
whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas,
in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of
the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done——So that, except
Raymond Lullius, and the elder Pelegrini,9 the last of which arrived to such
perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that in a few lessons, he could
teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject,
pro and con, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written
concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld
him—I should be glad, said Yorick, interrupting my father, to be made to
comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father.
The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high
metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and
not the better;——but be that as it may,—when the mind has done that with
it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at rest,—until a second idea
enters;——and so on.
Now the use of the Auxiliaries is, at once to set the soul a going by
herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability10
of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracks of
enquiry, and make every idea engender millions.
You excite my curiosity greatly, said Yorick.
For my own part, quoth my uncle Toby, I have given it up.——The
Danes, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the left at
the siege of Limerick, were all auxiliaries.——And very good ones, said my
uncle Toby.—And your honour roul’d with them, captains with captains.—
Very well, said the corporal.11—But the auxiliaries, my brother is talking
about, answered my uncle Toby,—I conceive to be different things.——
——You do? said my father, rising up.
CHAP. XLIII.
MY father took a single turn across the room, then sat down and finished
the chapter.
The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are,
am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would;
can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont.—And these varied with tenses,
present, past, future, and conjugated with the verb see,—or with these
questions added to them;—Is it? Was it? Will it be? Would it be? May it be?
Might it be? And these again put negatively, Is it not? Was it not? Ought it
not?—Or affirmatively,—It is; It was; It ought to be. Or chronologically,—
Has it been always? Lately? How long ago?—Or hypothetically,—If it was;
If it was not? What would follow?——If the French should beat the
English? If the Sun go out of the Zodiac?
Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in
which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter
his brain how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions
may be drawn forth from it.——Did’st thou ever see a white bear? cried my
father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair:––
No, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.——But thou could’st
discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of need?——How is it
possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one?
——’Tis the fact I want; replied my father,—and the possibility of it, is as
follows.
A WHITE BEAR! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen
one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever
see one?
Would I had seen a white bear? (for how can I imagine it?)
If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a
white bear, what then?
If I never have, can, must or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever
seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted?—described? Have I never
dreamed of one?
Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white
bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the
white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth?
—Is the white bear worth seeing?—
—Is there no sin in it?—
Is it better than a BLACK ONE?
END of the FIFTH VOLUME.
THE
LIFE
AND
OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN.
IT was some time in the summer of that year in which Dendermond was
taken1 by the allies,—which was about seven years before my father came
into the country,—and about as many, after the time, that my uncle Toby
and Trim had privately decamped from my father’s house in town, in order
to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest fortified cities in
Europe——when my uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper, with
Trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard,—I say, sitting—for in
consideration of the corporal’s lame knee (which sometimes gave him
exquisite pain)—when my uncle Toby dined or supped alone, he would
never suffer the corporal to stand; and the poor fellow’s veneration for his
master was such, that, with a proper artillery, my uncle Toby could have
taken Dendermond itself, with less trouble than he was able to gain this
point over him; for many a time when my uncle Toby supposed the
corporal’s leg was at rest, he would look back, and detect him standing
behind him with the most dutiful respect: this bred more little squabbles
betwixt them, than all other causes for five and twenty years together——
But this is neither here nor there—why do I mention it?——Ask my pen,—
it governs me,—I govern not it.2
He was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord of a
little inn in the village came into the parlour with an empty phial in his
hand, to beg a glass or two of sack; ’Tis for a poor gentleman,—I think, of
the army, said the landlord, who has been taken ill at my house four days
ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste any thing,
till just now, that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast,––—I
think, says he, taking his hand from his forehead, it would comfort me.
———
——If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing,––added the
landlord,—I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so ill.——I
hope in God he will still mend, continued he,—we are all of us concerned
for him.
Thou art a good natured soul, I will answer for thee, cried my uncle
Toby; and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman’s health in a glass of sack
thyself,—and take a couple of bottles with my service, and tell him he is
heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do him good.
Though I am persuaded, said my uncle Toby, as the landlord shut the
door, he is a very compassionate fellow—Trim,—yet I cannot help
entertaining a high opinion of his guest too; there must be something more
than common in him, that in so short a time should win so much upon the
affections of his host;——And of his whole family, added the corporal, for
they are all concerned for him.——Step after him, said my uncle Toby,––
do, Trim,—and ask if he knows his name.
——I have quite forgot it, truly, said the landlord, coming back into the
parlour with the corporal,—but I can ask his son again:——Has he a son
with him then? said my uncle Toby.––A boy, replied the landlord, of about
eleven or twelve years of age;—but the poor creature has tasted almost as
little as his father; he does nothing but mourn and lament for him night and
day:——He has not stirred from the bedside these two days.
My uncle Toby laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from
before him, as the landlord gave him the account; and Trim, without being
ordered, took away without saying one word, and in a few minutes after
brought him his pipe and tobacco.
——Stay in the room a little, said my uncle Toby.——
Trim!——said my uncle Toby, after he lighted his pipe, and smoak’d
about a dozen whiffs.——Trim came in front of his master and made his
bow;—my uncle Toby smoak’d on, and said no more.——Corporal! said
my uncle Toby——the corporal made his bow.——My uncle Toby
proceeded no farther, but finished his pipe.
Trim! said my uncle Toby, I have a project in my head, as it is a bad
night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a visit to
this poor gentleman.——Your honour’s roquelaure, replied the corporal,
has not once been had on, since the night before your honour received your
wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate of St.
Nicholas;——and besides it is so cold and rainy a night, that what with the
roquelaure, and what with the weather, ’twill be enough to give your honour
your death,3 and bring on your honour’s torment in your groin. I fear so;
replied my uncle Toby, but I am not at rest in my mind, Trim, since the
account the landlord has given me.——I wish I had not known so much of
this affair,—added my uncle Toby,—or that I had known more of it:——
How shall we manage it? Leave it, an’t please your honour, to me, quoth the
corporal;——I’ll take my hat and stick and go to the house and reconnoitre,
and act accordingly; and I will bring your honour a full account in an hour.
——Thou shalt go, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and here’s a shilling for thee
to drink with his servant.——I shall get it all out of him, said the corporal,
shutting the door.
My uncle Toby filled his second pipe; and had it not been, that he now
and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full
as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line, as a crooked one,
—he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor Le Fever and
his boy the whole time he smoaked it.
CHAP. VII.
The Story of LE FEVER continued.
IT was not till my uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe,
that corporal Trim returned from the inn, and gave him the following
account.
I despaired at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back your
honour any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick lieutenant—Is he
in the army then? said my uncle Toby——He is: said the corporal——And
in what regiment? said my uncle Toby——I’ll tell your honour, replied the
corporal, every thing straight forwards, as I learnt it.—Then, Trim, I’ll fill
another pipe, said my uncle Toby, and not interrupt thee till thou hast done;
so sit down at thy ease, Trim, in the window seat, and begin thy story again.
The corporal made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow
could speak it—Your honour is good:——And having done that, he sat
down, as he was ordered,—and begun the story to my uncle Toby over
again in pretty near the same words.
I despaired at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back any
intelligence to your honour, about the lieutenant and his son; for when I
asked where his servant was, from whom I made myself sure of knowing
every thing which was proper to be asked,—That’s a right distinction, Trim,
said my uncle Toby—I was answered, an’ please your honour, that he had
no servant with him;——that he had come to the inn with hired horses,
which, upon finding himself unable to proceed, (to join, I suppose, the
regiment) he had dismissed the morning after he came.—If I get better, my
dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay the man,—we can hire
horses from hence.——But alas! the poor gentleman will never get from
hence, said the landlady to me,—for I heard the death-watch1 all night
long;––—and when he dies, the youth, his son, will certainly die with him;
for he is broken-hearted already.
I was hearing this account, continued the corporal, when the youth came
into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of;——but I will
do it for my father myself, said the youth.——Pray let me save you the
trouble, young gentleman, said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, and
offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst I did it.——I
believe, Sir, said he, very modestly, I can please him best myself.——I am
sure, said I, his honour will not like the toast the worse for being toasted by
an old soldier.——The youth took hold of my hand, and instantly burst into
tears.——Poor youth! said my uncle Toby,—he has been bred up from an
infant in the army, and the name of a soldier, Trim, sounded in his ears like
the name of a friend;—I wish I had him here.
——I never in the longest march, said the corporal, had so great a mind
to my dinner, as I had to cry with him for company:—What could be the
matter with me, an’ please your honour? Nothing in the world, Trim, said
my uncle Toby, blowing his nose,—but that thou art a good natured fellow.
When I gave him the toast, continued the corporal, I thought it was
proper to tell him I was Captain Shandy’s servant, and that your honour
(though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father;—and that if
there was any thing in your house or cellar——(And thou might’st have
added my purse too, said my uncle Toby)——he was heartily welcome to it:
——He made a very low bow, (which was meant to your honour) but no
answer,—for his heart was full—so he went up stairs with the toast;—I
warrant you, my dear, said I, as I opened the kitchen door, your father will
be well again.——Mr. Yorick’s curate was smoaking a pipe by the kitchen
fire,—but said not a word good or bad to comfort the youth.——I thought it
wrong; added the corporal——I think so too, said my uncle Toby.
When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt himself
a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to let me know, that in about
ten minutes he should be glad if I would step up stairs.——I believe, said
the landlord, he is going to say his prayers,——for there was a book laid
upon the chair by his bedside, and as I shut the door, I saw his son take up a
cushion.——
I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim,
never said your prayers at all.——I heard the poor gentleman say his
prayers last night, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears,
or I could not have believed it.——Are you sure of it? replied the curate.
——A soldier, an’ please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own
accord) as a parson;——and when he is fighting for his king, and for his
own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God, of
any one in the whole world——’Twas well said of thee, Trim, said my
uncle Toby.——But when a soldier, said I, an’ please your reverence, has
been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in
cold water,—or engaged, said I, for months together in long and dangerous
marches;—harrassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day;—harrassing others to-
morrow;—detached here;—countermanded there;––resting this night out
upon his arms;—beat up in his shirt the next;—benumbed in his joints;—
perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on;—must say his prayers how
and when he can.––I believe, said I,—for I was piqued, quoth the corporal,
for the reputation of the army,—I believe, an’ please your reverence, said I,
that when a soldier gets time to pray,—he prays as heartily as a parson,—
though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy.——Thou shouldst not have said
that, Trim, said my uncle Toby,––for God only knows who is a hypocrite,
and who is not:——At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at
the day of judgment, (and not till then)—it will be seen who has done their
duties in this world,—and who has not; and we shall be advanced, Trim,
accordingly.——I hope we shall, said Trim.––—It is in the Scripture, said
my uncle Toby; and I will shew it thee to-morrow:—In the mean time we
may depend upon it, Trim, for our comfort, said my uncle Toby, that God
Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but
done our duties in it,—it will never be enquired into, whether we have done
them in a red coat or a black one:——I hope not; said the corporal——But
go on, Trim, said my uncle Toby, with thy story.
When I went up, continued the corporal, into the lieutenant’s room,
which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes,––he was lying in
his bed with his head raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon the pillow,
and a clean white cambrick handkerchief beside it:——The youth was just
stooping down to take up the cushion, upon which I supposed he had been
kneeling,—the book was laid upon the bed,—and as he rose, in taking up
the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away at the
same time.——Let it remain there, my dear, said the lieutenant.
He did not offer to speak to me, till I had walked up close to his bed-
side:—If you are Captain Shandy’s servant, said he, you must present my
thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks along with them, for his
courtesy to me;—if he was of Leven’s—said the lieutenant.—I told him
your honour was––Then, said he, I served three campaigns with him in
Flanders, and remember him,—but ’tis most likely, as I had not the honour
of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me.——You will
tell him, however, that the person his good nature has laid under obligations
to him, is one Le Fever, a lieutenant in Angus’s2——but he knows me not,
—said he, a second time, musing;——possibly he may my story—added he
—pray tell the captain, I was the ensign at Breda,3 whose wife was most
unfortunately killed with a musket shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.
——I remember the story, an’t please your honour, said I, very well.——
Do you so? said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief,—then well may
I.—In saying this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied
with a black ribband about his neck, and kiss’d it twice——Here, Billy, said
he,——the boy flew across the room to the bed-side,—and falling down
upon his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it too,—then kissed his
father, and sat down upon the bed and wept.
I wish, said my uncle Toby, with a deep sigh,—I wish, Trim, I was
asleep.
Your honour, replied the corporal, is too much concerned;––shall I pour
your honour out a glass of sack to your pipe?——Do, Trim, said my uncle
Toby.
I remember, said my uncle Toby, sighing again, the story of the ensign
and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted;—and particularly
well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other, (I forget what) was
universally pitied by the whole regiment;—but finish the story thou art
upon:––’Tis finished already, said the corporal,—for I could stay no longer,
—so wished his honour a good night; young Le Fever rose from off the bed,
and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and as we went down together, told
me, they had come from Ireland, and were on their route to join the
regiment in Flanders.––—But alas! said the corporal,—the lieutenant’s last
day’s march is over.—–Then what is to become of his poor boy? cried my
uncle Toby.
CHAP. VIII
The Story of LE FEVER continued.
THE sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but Le
Fever’s and his afflicted son’s; the hand of death press’d heavy upon his
eye-lids,——and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle,1
—when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time,
entered the lieutenant’s room, and without preface or apology, sat himself
down upon the chair by the bed-side, and independantly of all modes and
customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer
would have done it, and asked him how he did,—how he had rested in the
night,—what was his complaint,—where was his pain,—and what he could
do to help him:——and without giving him time to answer any one of the
enquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he had been
concerting with the corporal the night before for him.——
——You shall go home directly, Le Fever, said my uncle Toby, to my
house,—and we’ll send for a doctor to see what’s the matter,—and we’ll
have an apothecary,—and the corporal shall be your nurse;——and I’ll be
your servant, Le Fever.
There was a frankness in my uncle Toby,—not the effect of familiarity,—
but the cause of it,—which let you at once into his soul, and shewed you the
goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his looks, and voice,
and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to
come and take shelter under him; so that before my uncle Toby had half
finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly
pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat,
and was pulling it towards him.——The blood and spirits of Le Fever,
which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their
last citadel, the heart,––rallied back,—the film forsook his eyes for a
moment,—he looked up wistfully2 in my uncle Toby’s face,—then cast a
look upon his boy,——and that ligament, fine as it was,—was never
broken.———
Nature instantly ebb’d again,——the film returned to its place,——the
pulse fluttered——stopp’d——went on——throb’d——stopp’d again——
moved——stopp’d——shall I go on?——No.
CHAP. XI.
I Am so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young Le
Fever’s, that is, from this turn of his fortune, to the time my uncle Toby
recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very few words, in
the next chapter.—All that is necessary to be added to this chapter is as
follows.—
That my uncle Toby, with young Le Fever in his hand, attended the poor
lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.
That the governor of Dendermond paid his obsequies all military
honours,—and that Yorick, not to be behind hand––paid him all ecclesiastic
—for he buried him in his chancel:––And it appears likewise, he preached a
funeral sermon over him––—I say it appears,—for it was Yorick’s custom,
which I suppose a general one with those of his profession, on the first leaf
of every sermon which he composed, to chronicle down the time, the place,
and the occasion of its being preached: to this, he was ever wont to add
some short comment or stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed,
much to its credit:—For instance, This sermon upon the jewish dispensation
—I don’t like it at all;—Though I own there is a world of WATER-LANDISH
knowlege1 in it,––but ’tis all tritical,2 and most tritically put together.———
This is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my head when I
made it?
——N.B. The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any sermon,—and
of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.———
——For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest
part of it. Doctor Paidagunes found me out. Set a thief to catch a thief3
———
On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and
upon a couple Moderato; by which, as far as one may gather from Altieri’s
Italian dictionary,4—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green
whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of Yorick’s whip-lash,
with which he has left us the two sermons marked Moderato, and the half
dozen of So, so, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves,—one may
safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing.
There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is this,
that the moderato’s are five times better than the so, so’s;—shew ten times
more knowlege of the human heart;––have seventy times more wit and
spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discover a thousand
times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than
those tied up with them;—for which reason, whene’er Yorick’s dramatic
sermons5 are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the
whole number of the so, so’s, I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the
two moderato’s without any sort of scruple.
What Yorick could mean by the words lentamente,6––tenutè,—grave,—
and sometimes adagio,—as applied to theological compositions, and with
which he has characterized some of these sermons, I dare not venture to
guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding a l’octava alta! upon one;
——Con strepito upon the back of another;——Scicilliana upon a third;––
—Alla capella upon a fourth;——Con l’arco upon this;——Senza l’arco
upon that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and have a
meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt, but that
by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions in hand,
they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters upon his fancy,
—whatever they may do upon that of others.
Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably
led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor Le Fever,
wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more,
because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is upon
mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and
then rolled up and twisted round with a half sheet of dirty blue paper,7
which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to
this day smells horribly of horse-drugs.——Whether these marks of
humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because at the end of
the sermon, (and not at the beginning of it)—very different from his way of
treating the rest, he had wrote——
Bravo!
——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least,
and a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at
the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which,
you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is
wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small Italian hand,8 as
scarce to sollicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or
not,—so that from the manner of it, it stands half excused; and being wrote
moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing,––’tis more like a
ritratto9 of the shadow of vanity, than of VANITY herself—of the two,
resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up
in the heart of the composer, than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon
the world.
With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do no
service to Yorick’s character as a modest man;––but all men have their
failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is this;
that the word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a
different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner, BRAVO
——as if he had retracted, or was ashamed of the opinion he had once
entertained of it.
These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in
this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover
to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text;—
but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and
sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in,—he took a larger
circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched
the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at
vice, than the straitness of the pulpit allowed.—These, though hussar-like,
they skirmish lightly and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of
virtue—; tell me then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke,10
why they should not be printed together?
CHAP. XII.
WHEN my uncle Toby had turned every thing into money, and settled all
accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and Le Fever, and betwixt Le
Fever and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle
Toby’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my uncle
Toby found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration.
The coat my uncle Toby gave the corporal;——Wear it, Trim, said my uncle
Toby, as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor lieutenant——
And this,——said my uncle Toby, taking up the sword in his hand, and
drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke——and this, Le Fever, I’ll save
for thee,––’tis all the fortune, continued my uncle Toby, hanging it up upon
a crook, and pointing to it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear Le Fever, which
God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in
the world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—’tis enough for us.
As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a foundation, and taught him to
inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where,
excepting Whitsontide and Christmas, at which times the corporal was
punctually dispatched for him,––he remained to the spring of the year,
seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his army into Hungary
against the Turks,1 kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his Greek
and Latin without leave, and throwing himself upon his knees before my
uncle Toby, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle Toby’s leave along
with it, to go and try his fortune under Eugene.—Twice did my uncle Toby
forget his wound, and cry out, Le Fever! I will go with thee, and thou shalt
fight beside me––—And twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung
down his head in sorrow and disconsolation.———
My uncle Toby took down the sword from the crook, where it had hung
untouched ever since the lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the corporal
to brighten up;——and having detained Le Fever a single fortnight to equip
him, and contract for his passage to Leghorn,—he put the sword into his
hand,––—If thou art brave, Le Fever, said my uncle Toby, this will not fail
thee,——but Fortune, said he, (musing a little)——Fortune may——And if
she does,—added my uncle Toby, embracing him, come back again to me,
Le Fever, and we will shape thee another course.
The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of Le Fever more
than my uncle Toby’s paternal kindness;——he parted from my uncle Toby,
as the best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped tears——and
as my uncle Toby gave him his last kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up in
an old purse of his father’s, in which was his mother’s ring, into his hand,––
and bid God bless him.
CHAP. XIII.
LE Fever got up to the Imperial army just time enough to try what metal his
sword was made of, at the defeat of the Turks before Belgrade;1 but a series
of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment, and trod close
upon his heels for four years together after: he had withstood these
buffetings to the last, till sickness overtook him at Marseilles, from whence
he wrote my uncle Toby word, he had lost his time, his services, his health,
and, in short, every thing but his sword;——and was waiting for the first
ship to return back to him.
As this letter came to hand about six weeks before Susannah’s accident,
Le Fever was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle Toby’s mind
all the time my father was giving him and Yorick a description of what kind
of a person he would chuse for a preceptor to me: but as my uncle Toby
thought my father at first somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments he
required, he forbore mentioning Le Fever’s name,——till the character, by
Yorick’s interposition, ending unexpectedly, in one, who should be gentle
tempered, and generous, and good, it impressed the image of Le Fever, and
his interest upon my uncle Toby so forceably, he rose instantly off his chair;
and laying down his pipe, in order to take hold of both my father’s hands
——I beg, brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby, I may recommend poor Le
Fever’s son to you——I beseech you, do, added Yorick——He has a good
heart, said my uncle Toby——And a brave one too, an’ please your honour,
said the corporal.
——The best hearts, Trim, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle Toby.
——And the greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our regiment,
were the greatest rascals in it.——There was serjeant Kumbur, and ensign
———
——We’ll talk of them, said my father, another time.
CHAP. XIV.
WHAT a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your
worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want,
grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!
Doctor Slop, like a son of a w——, as my father called him for it,—to
exalt himself,—debased me to death,—and made ten thousand times more
of Susannah’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s
time, or less, it was in every body’s mouth, That poor Master Shandy
* * * * * * * * * * * * entirely.––And FAME, who loves to double every
thing,—in three days more, had sworn positively she saw it,—and all the
world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence——“That the nursery window
had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *;——but that * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *’s also.”
Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE,––my father had
brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul
of individuals about it——as every soul who had mentioned the affair, did
it with the greatest pity imaginable;——’twas like flying in the very face of
his best friends:——And yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence––was
to acknowledge it openly,—at least in the opinion of one half of the world;
and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it,—was to confirm it as
strongly in the opinion of the other half.———
——Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my
father.
I would shew him publickly, said my uncle Toby, at the market cross.
——’Twill have no effect, said my father.
CHAP. XV.
——I’ll put him, however, into breeches said my father,—let the world
say what it will.
CHAP. XVI.
THERE are a thousand resolutions, Sir, both in church and state, as well as in
matters, Madam, of a more private concern;—which, though they have
carried all the appearance in the world of being taken, and entered upon in a
hasty, hare-brained, and unadvised manner, were, notwithstanding this, (and
could you or I have got into the cabinet, or stood behind the curtain, we
should have found it was so) weighed, poized, and perpended——argued
upon——canvassed through——entered into, and examined on all sides
with so much coolness, that the GODDESS of COOLNESS herself (I do not take
upon me to prove her existence) could neither have wished it, or done it
better.
Of the number of these was my father’s resolution of putting me into
breeches; which, though determined at once,—in a kind of huff, and a
defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been pro’d and conn’d, and
judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month before, in
two several beds of justice,1 which my father had held for that purpose. I
shall explain the nature of these beds of justice in my next chapter; and in
the chapter following that, you shall step with me, Madam, behind the
curtain, only to hear in what kind of manner my father and my mother
debated between themselves, this affair of the breeches,—from which you
may form an idea, how they debated all lesser matters.
CHAP. XVII.
THE ancient Goths of Germany, who (the learned Cluverius is positive)
were first seated in the country between the Vistula and the Oder, and who
afterwards incorporated the Herculi, the Bugians,1 and some other
Vandallick clans to ’em,—had all of them a wise custom of debating every
thing of importance to their state, twice; that is,—once drunk, and once
sober:——Drunk—that their counsels might not want vigour;––—and
sober—that they might not want discretion.
Now my father being entirely a water-drinker,—was a long time
gravelled almost to death, in turning this as much to his advantage, as he
did every other thing, which the ancients did or said; and it was not till the
seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless experiments and
devices, that he hit upon an expedient which answered the purpose;——and
that was when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the
family, which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its
determination,——he fixed and set apart the first Sunday night in the
month, and the Saturday night which immediately preceded it, to argue it
over, in bed with my mother: By which contrivance, if you consider, Sir,
with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.
These my father, humourously enough, called his beds of justice;——for
from the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a
middle one was generally found out, which touched the point of wisdom as
well, as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times.
It must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers full as
well in literary discussions, as either in military or conjugal; but it is not
every author that can try the experiment as the Goths and Vandals did it
——or if he can, may it be always for his body’s health; and to do it, as my
father did it,—am I sure it would be always for his soul’s.——
My way is this:———
In all nice and ticklish discussions,—(of which, heaven knows, there are
but too many in my book)—where I find I cannot take a step without the
danger of having either their worships or their reverences upon my back
——I write one half full,—and t’other fasting;2——or write it all full,—and
correct it fasting;——or write it fasting,—and correct it full, for they all
come to the same thing:——So that with a less variation from my father’s
plan, than my father’s from the Gothick——I feel myself upon a par with
him in his first bed of justice,——and no way inferior to him in his second.
——These different and almost irreconcileable effects, flow uniformly from
the wise and wonderful mechanism of nature,—of which,—be her’s the
honour.——All that we can do, is to turn and work the machine to the
improvement and better manufactury of the arts and sciences.———
Now, when I write full,—I write as if I was never to write fasting again
as long as I live;——that is, I write free from the cares, as well as the
terrors of the world.——I count not the number of my scars,—nor does my
fancy go forth into dark entries and bye corners to antedate my stabs.——In
a word, my pen takes its course; and I write on as much from the fullness of
my heart, as my stomach.——
But when, an’ please your honours, I indite fasting, ’tis a different
history.——I pay the world all possible attention and respect,—and have as
great a share (whilst it lasts) of that understrapping3 virtue of discretion, as
the best of you.——So that betwixt both, I write a careless kind of a civil,
nonsensical, good humoured Shandean book, which will do all your hearts
good———
——And all your heads too,—provided you understand it.
CHAP. XVIII.
WE should begin, said my father, turning himself half round in bed, and
shifting his pillow a little towards my mother’s, as he opened the debate
——We should begin to think, Mrs. Shandy, of putting this boy into
breeches.——
We should so,—said my mother.——We defer it, my dear, quoth my
father, shamefully.———I think we do, Mr. Shandy,—said my mother.
——Not but the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vests
and tunicks.———
——He does look very well in them,—replied my mother.———
——And for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to
take him out of ’em.———
——It would so,—said my mother:——But indeed he is growing a very
tall lad,—rejoin’d my father.
——He is very tall for his age, indeed,—said my mother.——
——I can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, quoth my father,
who the duce he takes after.——
I cannot conceive, for my life,—said my mother.———
Humph!——said my father.
(The dialogue ceased for a moment.)
——I am very short myself,—continued my father, gravely.
You are very short, Mr. Shandy,—said my mother.
Humph! quoth my father to himself, a second time: in muttering which,
he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother’s,—and turning about
again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a half.
——When he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher
tone, he’ll look like a beast in ’em.
He will be very aukward in them at first, replied my mother.———
——And ’twill be lucky, if that’s the worst on’t, added my father.
It will be very lucky, answered my mother.
I suppose, replied my father,—making some pause first,––he’ll be
exactly like other people’s children.———
Exactly, said my mother.———
——Though I should be sorry for that, added my father: and so the
debate stopped again.
——They should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again.
—
They will last him, said my mother, the longest.
But he can have no linings to ’em, replied my father.———
He cannot, said my mother.
’Twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my father.
Nothing can be better, quoth my mother.———
——Except dimity,—replied my father:——’Tis best of all,—replied
my mother.
——One must not give him his death, however,—interrupted my father.
By no means, said my mother:——and so the dialogue stood still again.
I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth
time, he shall have no pockets in them.——
——There is no occasion for any, said my mother.———
I mean in his coat and waistcoat,—cried my father.
——I mean so too,—replied my mother.
——Though if he gets a gig or a top——Poor souls! it is a crown and a
scepter to them,—they should have where to secure it.———
Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy, replied my mother.———
——But don’t you think it right? added my father, pressing the point
home to her.
Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy.———
——There’s for you! cried my father, losing temper——Pleases me!
——You never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to
do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.——This was
on the Sunday night;——and further this chapter sayeth not.
CHAP. XIX.1
AFTER my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother,—
he consulted Albertus Rubenius2 upon it; and Albertus Rubenius used my
father ten times worse in the consultation (if possible) than even3 my father
had used my mother: For as Rubenius had wrote a quarto express, De re
Vestiaria Veterum,—it was Rubenius’s business to have given my father
some lights.—On the contrary, my father might as well have thought of
extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long beard,—as of extracting a
single word out of Rubenius upon the subject.
Upon every other article of ancient dress,4 Rubenius was very
communicative to my father;—gave him a full and satisfactory account of
The Toga, or loose gown.
The Chlamys.
The Ephod.
The Tunica, or Jacket.
The Synthesis.
The Pænula.
The Lacerna, with its Cucullus.
The Paludamentum.
The Prætexta.
The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin.
The Trabea: of which, according to Suetonius, there were three kinds.—
——But what are all these to the breeches? said my father.
Rubenius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had
been in fashion with the Romans.———There was,
The open shoe.
The close shoe.
The slip shoe.
The wooden shoe.
The soc.
The buskin.
And The military shoe5 with hobnails in it, which
Juvenal takes notice of.
There were, The clogs.
The patins.6
The pantoufles.
The brogues.
The sandals, with latchets to them.
There was, The felt shoe.
The linen shoe.
The laced shoe.
The braided shoe.
The calceus incisus.
And The calceus rostratus.
Rubenius shewed my father how well they all fitted,—in what manner they
laced on,—with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribands, jaggs, and
ends.———
——But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father.
Albertus Rubenius informed my father that the Romans manufactured
stuffs of various fabricks,——some plain,––some striped,—others diapered
throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold——That
linen did not begin to be in common use, till towards the declension of the
empire, when the Egyptians coming to settle amongst them, brought it into
vogue.
——That persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the
fineness and whiteness of their cloaths; which colour (next to purple, which
was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected and wore on their
birth-days and public rejoicings.——That it appeared from the best
historians of those times, that they frequently sent their cloaths to the fuller,
to be cleaned and whitened;——but that the inferior people, to avoid that
expence, generally wore brown cloaths, and of a something coarser texture,
—till towards the beginning of Augustus’s reign, when the slave dressed
like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost,7 but the
Latus Clavus.
And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.
Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the learned:
——That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius, Budæus,
Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Causabon, and Joseph Scaliger,8 all
differed from each other,—and he from them: That some took it to be the
button,—some the coat itself,—others only the colour of it:—That the great
Bayfius,9 in his Wardrobe of the ancients, chap. 12.—honestly said, he
knew not what it was,—whether a fibula,10—a stud,—a button,—a loop,—a
buckle,—or clasps and keepers.———
——My father lost the horse, but not the saddle11——They are hooks
and eyes, said my father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my
breeches to be made.
CHAP. XX.
WE are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.———
——Leave we then the breeches in the taylor’s hands, with my father
standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a lecture
upon the latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband,
where he was determined to have it sewed on.——
Leave we my mother—(truest of all the Pococurante’s1 of her sex!)—
careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which concerned
her;—that is,—indifferent whether it was done this way or that,—provided
it was but done at all.——
Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.———
Leave we poor Le Fever to recover, and get home from Marseilles as he
can.——And last of all,—because the hardest of all——
Let us leave, if possible, myself:——But ’tis impossible,—I must go
along with you to the end of the work.
CHAP. XXI.
IF the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground
which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby’s kitchen garden, and which was
the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is not in me,—but in
his imagination;—for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I was
almost ashamed of it.
When FATE was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great
transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes, this little
plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,—she gave a
nod to NATURE—’twas enough—Nature threw half a spade full of her
kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms
of angles and indentings,—and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade,
and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather.
My uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans
along with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy and Flanders; so let
the Duke of Marlborough,1 or the allies, have set down before what town
they pleased, my uncle Toby was prepared for them.
His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as
ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design was known) to take
the plan of it, (let it be what town it would) and enlarge it upon a scale to
the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of
a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the
ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his
paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the
depths and slopes of the ditches,––the talus of the glacis, and the precise
height of the several banquets, parapets, &c.—he set the corporal to work
——and sweetly went it on:——The nature of the soil,—the nature of the
work itself,—and above all, the good nature of my uncle Toby sitting by
from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past-
done deeds,—left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name.
When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper
posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle Toby and the corporal
began to run their first parallel.——I beg I may not be interrupted in my
story, by being told, That the first parallel should be at least three hundred
toises distant from the main body of the place,2—and that I have not left a
single inch for it;——for my uncle Toby took the liberty of incroaching
upon his kitchen garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling
green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels
betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his collyflowers; the conveniences
and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of
my uncle Toby’s and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now
writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three
pages (but there is no guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up
as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a
weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to
rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work——surely
they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take
the following sketch of them in the mean time.
CHAP. XXII.
WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the
corporal began to run their first parallel––—not at random, or any how——
but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs;
and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle Toby
received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the whole siege, step
by step with the allies.
When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,——my uncle Toby
made a lodgment too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered
down, or a defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,
—and so on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the
works one after another, till the town fell into their hands.
To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,––there could not
have been a greater sight in the world, than, on a post-morning,1 in which a
practicable breach had been made by the duke of Marlborough, in the main
body of the place,––to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and
observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied
forth;——the one with the Gazette2 in his hand,—the other with a spade on
his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest triumph in my
uncle Toby’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts! What intense pleasure
swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph
ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make
the breach an inch too wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow––—But when
the chamade3 was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and
followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—–
Heaven! Earth! Sea!——but what avails apostrophes?——with all your
elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.
In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it,
except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week
or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so
long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In this track, I
say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which,
and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the
other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their
operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them
on.
The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the
plain and simple method I’ve related.
In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond,4
he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges, of
two of which I have given an exact description, in the former part of my
work.
At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with
portcullises:——These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the
better thing;5 and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby,
instead of a new suit of cloaths, which he always had at Christmas, treated
himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-
green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little
kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of
war upon.
——The sentry-box was in case of rain.
All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which
enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.
My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole
universe had done such a thing, except his brother Toby, it would have been
looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satyrs upon the parade
and prancing manner, in which Lewis XIV. from the beginning of the war,
but particularly that very year, had taken the field——But ’tis not my
brother Toby’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.
——But let us go on.
CHAP. XXIII.
I Must observe, that although in the first year’s campaign, the word town is
often mentioned,—yet there was no town at that time within the polygon;
that addition was not made till the summer following the spring in which
the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the third year of my
uncle Toby’s campaigns,—when upon his taking Amberg, Bonn, and
Rhinberg, and Huy and Limbourg,1 one after another, a thought came into
the corporal’s head, that to talk of taking so many towns, without one TOWN
to show for it,—was a very nonsensical way of going to work, and so
proposed to my uncle Toby, that they should have a little model of a town
built for them,––to be run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and
clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all.
My uncle Toby felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed
to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was
almost as proud, as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself.
The one was to have the town built exactly in the stile of those, of which
it was most likely to be the representative:——with grated windows, and
the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.—as those in Ghent
and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in Brabant and Flanders.2
The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal
proposed, but to have every house independant, to hook on, or off, so as to
form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put directly into
hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation was exchanged
between my uncle Toby and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work.
——It answered prodigiously the next summer——the town was a
perfect Proteus3——It was Landen, and Trerebach, and Santvliet, and
Drusen, and Hagenau,—and then it was Ostend and Menin, and Aeth and
Dendermond.4——
——Surely never did any TOWN act so many parts, since Sodom and
Gomorrah, as my uncle Toby’s town did.
In the fourth year, my uncle Toby thinking a town looked foolishly
without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.––—Trim was for
having bells in it;——my uncle Toby said, the mettle had better be cast into
cannon.
This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field pieces,—
to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle Toby’s sentry-box;
and in a short time, these led the way for a train of somewhat larger,—and
so on—(as must always be the case in hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces
of half an inch bore, till it came at last to my father’s jack boots.
The next year,5 which was that in which Lisle was besieged, and at the
close of which both Ghent and Bruges fell into our hands,—my uncle Toby
was sadly put to it for proper ammunition;——I say proper ammunition
——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and ’twas well for
the Shandy family they would not——For so full were the papers, from the
beginning to the end of the siege,6 of the incessant firings kept up by the
besiegers,——and so heated was my uncle Toby’s imagination with the
accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away all his estate.
SOMETHING therefore was wanting, as a succedaneum,7 especially in one
or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something
like a continual firing in the imagination,——and this something, the
corporal, whose principal strength lay in invention, supplied by an entire
new system of battering of his own,—without which, this had been objected
to by military critics, to the end of the world, as one of the great desiderata8
of my uncle Toby’s apparatus.
This will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as I generally do, at
a little distance from the subject.
CHAP. XXIV.
WITH two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great regard,
which poor Tom, the corporal’s unfortunate brother, had sent him over, with
the account of his marriage with the Jew’s widow——there was
A Montero-cap1 and two Turkish tobacco pipes.
The Montero-cap I shall describe by and bye.——The Turkish tobacco
pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and ornamented as
usual, with flexible tubes of Morocco leather and gold wire, and mounted at
their ends, the one of them with ivory,—the other with black ebony, tipp’d
with silver.
My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the
world, would say to the corporal, that he ought to look upon these two
presents more as tokens of his brother’s nicety, than his affection.——Tom
did not care, Trim, he would say, to put on the cap, or to smoak in the
tobacco-pipe of a Jew.––—God bless your honour, the corporal would say,
(giving a strong reason to the contrary)—how can that be.——
The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine Spanish cloth, died in grain,
and mounted all round with furr, except about four inches in the front,
which was faced with a light blue, slightly embroidered,—and seemed to
have been the property of a Portuguese quartermaster, not of foot, but of
horse, as the word denotes.
The corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own sake, as the
sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but upon GALA-days; and yet
never was a Montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all controverted points,
whether military or culinary, provided the corporal was sure he was in the
right,––it was either his oath,—his wager,—or his gift.
——’Twas his gift in the present case.
I’ll be bound, said the corporal, speaking to himself, to give away my
Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if I do not manage
this matter to his honour’s satisfaction.
The completion was no further off, than the very next morning; which
was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the Lower Deule, to the
right, and the gate St. Andrew,—and on the left, between St. Magdalen’s
and the river.
As this was the most memorable attack in the whole war,––the most
gallant and obstinate on both sides,—and I must add the most bloody2 too,
for it cost the allies themselves that morning above eleven hundred men,—
my uncle Toby prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity.
The eve which preceded, as my uncle Toby went to bed, he ordered his
ramallie wig,3 which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an
old campaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out and laid
upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;—and the very first thing he did in
his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle Toby, after he had
turned the rough side outwards,—put it on:——This done, he proceeded
next to his breeches, and having buttoned the waistband, he forthwith
buckled on his sword belt, and had got his sword half way in,—when he
considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient
doing it with his sword on,—so took it off:——In assaying to put on his
regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle Toby found the same objection in
his wig,—so that went off too:—So that what with one thing, and what with
another, as always falls out when a man is in the most haste,—’twas ten
o’clock, which was half an hour later than his usual time, before my uncle
Toby sallied out.
CHAP. XXV.
MY uncle Toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which
separated his kitchen garden from his bowling green, when he perceived the
corporal had began the attack without him.——
Let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal’s apparatus; and of
the corporal himself in the height of this attack just as it struck my uncle
Toby, as he turned towards the sentry box, where the corporal was at work,
——for in nature there is not such another,——nor can any combination of
all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal.
The corporal———
——Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,——for he was your
kinsman:
Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,—for he was your brother.—
Oh corporal! had I thee, but now,—now, that I am able to give thee a dinner
and protection,—how would I cherish thee! thou should’st wear thy
Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week,—and when
it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it:——But alas! alas!
alas! now that I can do this, in spight of their reverences—the occasion is
lost—for thou art gone;—thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it
came;—and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels,
compressed into a clod of the valley!1
——But what——what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I
look towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy
master—the first—the foremost of created beings;——where, I shall see
thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling hand
across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door, to take his
mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he directed thee;——
where—all my father’s systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in
spight of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he inspects the lackered
plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew
which nature has shed upon them——When I see him cast in the rosemary2
with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my ears,——O Toby! in
what corner of the world shall I seek thy fellow?
——Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in
his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain3——when I
shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted hand.
CHAP. XXVI.
THE corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind, to supply the
grand desideratum, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon
the enemy during the heat of the attack,—had no further idea in his fancy at
that time, than a contrivance of smoaking tobacco against the town, out of
one of my uncle Toby’s six field pieces, which were planted on each side of
his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the
same time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from
the miscarriage of his projects.
Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began to
find out, that by means of his two Turkish tobacco-pipes, with the
supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their lower
ends, to be tagg’d by the same number of tin pipes fitted to the touch holes,
and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed
silk at their several insertions into the Morocco tube,1––he should be able to
fire the six field pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one.
———
——Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out
for the advancement of human knowlege. Let no man who has read my
father’s first and second beds of justice, ever rise up and say again, from
collision of what kinds of bodies, light may, or may not be struck out, to
carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.——Heaven! thou knowest how
I love them;––—thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this
moment give my shirt——Thou art a fool, Shandy, says Eugenius,—for
thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and ’twill break thy set.——
No matter for that, Eugenius; I would give the shirt off my back to be
burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how many
sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of
it.——Think ye not that in striking these in,—he might, peradventure,
strike something out? as sure as a gun.——
——But this project, by the bye.
The corporal sat up the best part of the night in bringing his to
perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with charging
them to the top with tobacco,—he went with contentment to bed.
CHAP. XXVII.
THE corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby, in
order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my
uncle Toby came.
He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in
front of my uncle Toby’s sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about a
yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience
of charging, &c.—and the sake possibly of two batteries, which he might
think double the honour of one.
In the rear, and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the
sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken his post:
——He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt
the finger and thumb of his right hand,—and the ebony pipe tipp’d with
silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and
thumb of the other——and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground,
as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the corporal, with his montero-cap
upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time
against the counterguard, which faced the counterscarp, where the attack
was to be made that morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than
giving the enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the puffs, as
well as the puffing, had insensibly got hold of the corporal, and drawn him
on from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time my uncle
Toby joined him.
’Twas well for my father, that my uncle Toby had not his will to make
that day.
CHAP. XXVIII.
MY uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked at it
for half a minute, and returned it.
In less than two minutes my uncle Toby took the pipe from the corporal
again, and raised it half way to his mouth——then hastily gave it back a
second time.
The corporal redoubled the attack,——my uncle Toby smiled,——then
looked grave,——then smiled for a moment,––—then looked serious for a
long time;——Give me hold of the ivory pipe, Trim, said my uncle Toby
——my uncle Toby put it to his lips,——drew it back directly,——gave a
peep over the horn-beam hedge;——never did my uncle Toby’s mouth
water so much for a pipe in his life.——My uncle Toby retired into the
sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.———
——Dear uncle Toby! don’t go into the sentry-box with the pipe,—
there’s no trusting a man’s self with such a thing in such a corner.
CHAP. XXIX.
I Beg the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle Toby’s ordnance
behind the scenes,——to remove his sentry-box, and clear the theatre, if
possible, of horn-works and half moons, and get the rest of his military
apparatus out of the way; ——that done, my dear friend Garrick,1 we’ll
snuff the candles bright,—sweep the stage with a new broom,—draw up the
curtain, and exhibit my uncle Toby dressed in a new character, throughout
which the world can have no idea how he will act: and yet, if pity be akin to
love,—and bravery no alien to it, you have seen enough of my uncle Toby
in these, to trace these family likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case
there is one) to your heart’s content.
Vain science! thou assists us in no case of this kind—and thou puzzlest
us in every one.
There was, Madam, in my uncle Toby,2 a singleness of heart which
misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in which things of this
nature usually go on; you can—you can have no conception of it: with this,
there was a plainness and simplicity of thinking, with such an unmistrusting
ignorance of the plies and foldings of the heart of woman;——and so naked
and defenceless did he stand before you, (when a siege was out of his head)
that you might have stood behind any one of your serpentine walks, and
shot my uncle Toby ten times in a day, through his liver,3 if nine times in a
day, Madam, had not served your purpose.
With all this, Madam,—and what confounded every thing as much on
the other hand, my uncle Toby had that unparalleled modesty of nature I
once told you of, and which, by the bye, stood eternal sentry upon his
feelings, that you might as soon––—But where am I going? these
reflections croud in upon me ten pages at least too soon, and take up that
time, which I ought to bestow upon facts.
CHAP. XXX.
OF the few legitimate sons of Adam, whose breasts never felt what the sting
of love was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to be bastards)—the
greatest heroes of ancient and modern story have carried off amongst them,
nine parts in ten of the honour; and I wish for their sakes I had the key of
my study out of my draw-well,1 only for five minutes, to tell you their
names—recollect them I cannot—so be content to accept of these, for the
present, in their stead.———
There was the great king Aldrovandus, and Bosphorus, and Capadocius,
and Dardanus, and Pontus, and Asius,——to say nothing of the iron-
hearted Charles the XIIth, whom the Countess of K*****2 herself could
make nothing of.——There was Babylonicus, and Mediterraneus, and
Polixenes,3 and Persicus, and Prusicus, not one of whom (except
Capadocius and Pontus, who were both a little suspected) ever once bowed
down his breast to the goddess——The truth is, they had all of them
something else to do—and so had my uncle Toby—till Fate––till Fate I say,
envying his name the glory of being handed down to posterity with
Aldrovandus’s and the rest,—she basely patched up the peace of Utrecht.4
——Believe me, Sirs, ’twas the worst deed she did that year.
CHAP. XXXI.
AMONGST the many ill consequences of the treaty of Utrecht, it was within a
point of giving my uncle Toby a surfeit of sieges; and though he recovered
his appetite afterwards, yet Calais itself left not a deeper scar in Mary’s
heart,1 than Utrecht upon my uncle Toby’s. To the end of his life he never
could hear Utrecht mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as
read an article of news extracted out of the Utrecht Gazette, without
fetching a sigh, as if his heart would break in twain.
My father, who was a great MOTIVE-MONGER, and consequently a very
dangerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying,—for he
generally knew your motive for doing both, much better than you knew it
yourself—would always console my uncle Toby upon these occasions, in a
way, which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle Toby grieved for nothing
in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his hobby-horse.——Never mind,
brother Toby, he would say,—by God’s blessing we shall have another war
break out again some of these days; and when it does,—the belligerent
powers, if they would hang themselves, cannot keep us out of play.——I
defy ’em, my dear Toby, he would add, to take countries without taking
towns,——or towns without sieges.
My uncle Toby never took this back-stroke of my father’s at his hobby
horse kindly.——He thought the stroke ungenerous; and the more so,
because in striking the horse, he hit the rider too, and in the most
dishonourable part a blow could fall; so that upon these occasions, he
always laid down his pipe upon the table with more fire to defend himself
than common.
I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle Toby was not
eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the contrary:——I
repeat the observation, and a fact which contradicts it again.—He was not
eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle Toby to make long harangues,—and
he hated florid ones; but there were occasions where the stream overflowed
the man, and ran so counter to its usual course, that in some parts my uncle
Toby, for a time, was at least equal to Tertullus2——but in others, in my
own opinion, infinitely above him.
My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical orations
of my uncle Toby’s, which he had delivered one evening before him and
Yorick, that he wrote it down before he went to bed.
I have had the good fortune to meet with it amongst my father’s papers,
with here and there an insertion of his own, betwixt two crooks, thus [ ],
and is endorsed,
My brother TOBY’s justification of his own principles and
conduct in wishing to continue the war.
I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of my uncle
Toby’s a hundred times, and think it so fine a model of defence,—and shews
so sweet a temperament of gallantry and good principles in him, that I give
it the world, word for word, (interlineations and all) as I find it.
CHAP. XXXII.
My uncle TOBY’s apologetical oration.1
These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and
fourth volumes.2——In the fifth volume I have been very good,——the
precise line I have described in it being this:
By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip
to Navarre,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was
there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,—I have not taken the least frisk
of a digression, till John de la Casse’s devils led me the round you see
marked D.––for as for c c c c c they are nothing but parentheses, and the
common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state;
and when compared with what men have done,––or with my own
transgressions at the letters A B D—they vanish into nothing.
In this last volume I have done better still—for from the end of Le
Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby’s campaigns,—I have
scarce stepped a yard out of my way.
If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the good leave of his
grace of Benevento’s devils——but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency
of going on even thus;
————————————————————————————
———
which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master’s
ruler, (borrowed for that purpose) turning neither to the right hand or to the
left.
This right line,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines——
——The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero3——
——The best line! say cabbage-planters4——is the shortest line,5 says
Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.——
I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart in your next birth-day
suits!6
——What a journey!
Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I write my chapter
upon straight lines——by what mistake——who told them so——or how it
has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded
this line, with the line of GRAVITATION.
END of the SIXTH VOLUME.
THE
LIFE
AND
OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN.
and so, as he finish’d the last mouthful of it, we enter’d the town of
Montreuil.
CHAP. IX.
THERE is not a town in all France, which in my opinion, looks better in the
map, than MONTREUIL;——I own, it does not look so well in the book of
post roads; but when you come to see it—to be sure it looks most pitifully.
There is one thing however in it at present very handsome; and that is
the inn-keeper’s daughter:1 She has been eighteen months at Amiens, and
six at Paris, in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances,
and does the little coquetries very well.——
—A slut!2 in running them over within these five minutes that I have
stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread
stocking——Yes, yes—I see, you cunning gipsy!—’tis long, and taper—
you need not pin it to your knee––and that ’tis your own—and fits you
exactly.——
——That Nature should have told this creature a word about a statue’s
thumb!3——
—But as this sample is worth all their thumbs——besides I have her
thumbs and fingers in at the bargain if they can be any guide to me,—and as
Janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing——may
I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a draught-horse, by main
strength all the days of my life,—if I do not draw her in all her proportions,
and with as determin’d a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.4——
—But your worships chuse rather that I give you the length, breadth, and
perpendicular height of the great parish church, or a drawing of the fascade
of the abbey of Saint Austreberte which has been transported from Artois
hither5—every thing is just I suppose as the masons and carpenters left
them,—and if the belief in Christ continues so long, will be so these fifty
years to come—so your worships and reverences, may all measure them at
your leisures——but he who measures thee, Janatone, must do it now—
thou carriest the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the
chances of a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment; e’er
twice twelve months are pass’d and gone, thou mayest grow out like a
pumkin, and lose thy shapes——or, thou mayest go off like a flower, and
lose thy beauty——nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy––and lose thyself.
——I would not answer for my aunt Dinah, was she alive——’faith, scarce
for her picture——were it but painted by Reynolds—
—But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of Apollo, I’ll
be shot———
So you must e’en be content with the original; which if the evening is
fine in passing thro’ Montreuil, you will see at your chaise door, as you
change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have—you
had better stop:—She has a little of the devote:6 but that, sir, is a terce to a
nine in your favour——
—L–– help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued,
and repiqued, and capotted7 to the devil.
CHAP. X.
ALL which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much
nearer me than I imagined——I wish I was at Abbeville, quoth I, were it
only to see how they card and spin1——so off we set.
*de Montreuil a Nampont – poste et demi
de Nampont a Bernay - - - poste
de Bernay a Nouvion - - - poste
de Nouvion a ABBEVILLE poste
——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.
CHAP. XI.
WHAT a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy
for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter.
CHAP. XII.
WAS I in a condition to stipulate with death, as I am this moment with my
apothecary, how and where I will take his glister——I should certainly
declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore, I never
seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which
generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe
itself, but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the
Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own
house——but rather in some decent inn––—at home, I know it,——the
concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows and
smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay
me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my
physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted,
would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed,
but punctual attention——but mark. This inn, should not be the inn at
Abbeville——if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike
that inn out of the capitulation: so
Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning––—Yes,
by four, Sir,——or by Genevieve!1 I’ll raise a clatter in the house, shall
wake the dead.
CHAP. XIII.
“MAKE them like unto a wheel,”1 is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know,
against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which David
prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days;
and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop Hall, ’tis one of the severest
imprecations which David ever utter’d against the enemies of the Lord––
and, as if he had said, “I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling
about”—So much motion, continues he, (for he was very corpulent)—is so
much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of
heaven.
Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is
so much of life, and so much of joy——and that to stand still, or get on but
slowly, is death and the devil——
Hollo! Ho!——the whole world’s asleep!——bring out the horses——
grease the wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail into that
moulding——I’ll not lose a moment——
Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto, for
that would make an Ixion’s wheel2 of it) he curseth his enemies, according
to the bishop’s habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel,
whether they were set up in Palestine at that time or not——and my wheel,
for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round
its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator,
I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country.
I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny)
for their “χωρισμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ Σώματος, εἰς τὸ καλῶς φιλοσοφεῖν”——[their]
“getting out of the body, in order to think well.” No man thinks right whilst
he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn
differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too
tense a fibre——REASON, is half of it, SENSE; and the measure of heaven
itself is but the measure of our present appetites and concoctions3——
——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly
in the wrong?
You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early.
CHAP. XIV.
——But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my beard till I
got to Paris;——yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the cold
cautiousness of one of those little souls from which Lessius (lib. 13. de
moribus divinis, cap. 24.) hath made his estimate, wherein he setteth forth,
That one Dutch mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to
spare, for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great
a number of souls (counting from the fall of Adam) as can possibly be
damn’d to the end of the world.
From what he has made this second estimate——unless from the
parental goodness of God—I don’t know——I am much more at a loss
what could be in Franciscus Ribbera’s head, who pretends that no less a
space than one of two hundred Italian miles multiplied into itself, will be
sufficient to hold the like number——he certainly must have gone upon
some of the old Roman souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how
much, by a gradual and most tabid decline, in a course of eighteen hundred
years, they must unavoidably have shrunk, so as to have come, when he
wrote, almost to nothing.1
In Lessius’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can
be imagined——
——We find them less now——
And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on from
little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not one moment to affirm,
that in half a century, at this rate, we shall have no souls at all; which being
the period beyond which I doubt likewise of the existence of the Christian
faith, ’twill be one advantage that both of ’em will be exactly worn out
together——
Blessed Jupiter! and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for
now ye will all come into play again, and with Priapus2 at your tails——
what jovial times!——but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of
things am I rushing?3 I——I who must be cut short in the midst of my
days,4 and taste no more of ’em than what I borrow from my imagination
——peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on.
CHAP. XV.
———“So hating, I say, to make mysteries of nothing”——I intrusted it
with the post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones; he gave a crack with
his whip to balance the compliment; and with the thill-horse1 trotting, and a
sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it along to Ailly au
clochers,2 famed in days of yore for the finest chimes in the world; but we
danced through it without music——the chimes being greatly out of order
—(as in truth they were through all France).
And so making all possible speed, from
Ailly au clochers, I got to Hixcourt,3
from Hixcourt, I got to Pequignay, and
from Pequignay, I got to AMIENS,
concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have
informed you once before——and that was—–that Janatone went there to
school.
CHAP. XVI.
IN the whole catalogue of those whiffling vexations which come puffing
across a man’s canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and tormenting
nature, than this particular one which I am going to describe——and for
which, (unless you travel with an avance-courier,1 which numbers do in
order to prevent it)——there is no help: and it is this.
That be you in never so kindly a propensity to sleep——tho’ you are
passing perhaps through the finest country—upon the best roads,—and in
the easiest carriage for doing it in the world——nay was you sure you
could sleep fifty miles straight forwards, without once opening your eyes
——nay what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be
of any truth in Euclid, that you should upon all accounts be full as well
asleep as awake——nay perhaps better——Yet the incessant returns of
paying for the horses at every stage,——with the necessity thereupon of
putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence, three
livres fifteen sous (sous by sous) puts an end to so much of the project, that
you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a post and a
half, that is but nine)——were it to save your soul from destruction.
—I’ll be even with ’em, quoth I, for I’ll put the precise sum into a piece
of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way: “Now I shall have
nothing to do” said I (composing myself to rest) “but to drop this gently
into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a word.”——Then there wants two sous
more to drink––—or there is a twelve sous piece of Louis XIV. which will
not pass—or a livre and some odd liards2 to be brought over from the last
stage, which Monsieur had forgot; which altercations (as a man cannot
dispute very well asleep) rouse him: still is sweet sleep retrievable; and still
might the flesh weigh down the spirit,3 and recover itself of these blows—
but then, by heaven! you have paid but for a single post—whereas ’tis a
post and a half; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the
print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you
will or no: then Monsieur le Curè4 offers you a pinch of snuff——or a poor
soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling5 his box——or the priestesse
of the cistern will water your wheels——they do not want it——but she
swears by her priesthood (throwing it back) that they do:——then you have
all these points to argue, or consider over in your mind; in doing of which,
the rational powers get so thoroughly awakened––—you may get ’em to
sleep again as you can.
It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had pass’d clean
by the stables of Chantilly6——
——But the postillion first affirming, and then persisting in it to my
face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, I open’d my eyes to
be convinced—and seeing the mark upon it, as plain as my nose—I leap’d
out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at Chantilly in spite.
—I tried it but for three posts and a half, but believe ’tis the best principle in
the world to travel speedily upon; for as few objects look very inviting in
that mood—you have little or nothing to stop you; by which means it was
that I pass’d through St. Dennis,7 without turning my head so much as on
side towards the Abby——
——Richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense!—bating their jewels,
which are all false, I would not give three sous for any one thing in it, but
Judas’s lantern——nor for that either, only as it grows dark, it might be of
use.
CHAP. XVII.
CRACK, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack——so this is Paris!1 quoth
I (continuing in the same mood)——and this is Paris!——humph!——
Paris! cried I, repeating the name the third time——
The first, the finest, the most brilliant——
—The streets however are nasty;
But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells——crack, crack––—crack,
crack——What a fuss thou makest!—as if it concern’d the good people to
be inform’d, That a man with pale face, and clad in black, had the honour to
be driven into Paris at nine o’clock at night, by a postilion in a tawny
yellow jerkin turned up with red calamanco2——crack, crack——crack,
crack——crack, crack——I wish thy whip——
——But ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack—crack on.
Ha!——and no one gives the wall!3——but in the SCHOOL of URBANITY
herself, if the walls are besh—t—how can you do otherwise?
And prithee when do they light the lamps? What?—never in the summer
months!——Ho! ’tis the time of sallads.——O rare! sallad and soup—soup
and sallad—sallad and soup, encore——
——’Tis too much for sinners.
Now I cannot bear the barbarity of it; how can that unconscionable
coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? don’t you see, friend, the
streets are so villainously narrow, that there is not room in all Paris to turn a
wheel-barrow? In the grandest city of the whole world, it would not have
been amiss, if they had been left a thought wider; nay were it only so much
in every single street, as that a man might know (was it only for
satisfaction) on which side of it he was walking.
One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine––ten.––Ten
cook’s shops! and twice the number of barber’s! and all within three
minutes driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world on some
great merry-meeting with the barbers, by joint consent had said—Come, let
us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating——they are all
gourmands——we shall rank high; if their god is their belly4——their
cooks must be gentlemen: and forasmuch as the periwig maketh the man,5
and the periwig-maker maketh the periwig—–ergo, would the barbers say,
we shall rank higher still—we shall be above you all—we shall be
*Capitouls6 at least—pardi!7 we shall all wear swords——
—And so, one would swear, (that is by candle-light,––but there is no
depending upon it) they continue to do, to this day.
CHAP. XVIII.
THE French are certainly misunderstood:———but whether the fault is
theirs, in not sufficiently explaining themselves; or speaking with that exact
limitation and precision which one would expect on a point of such
importance, and which moreover, is so likely to be contested by us——or
whether the fault may not be altogether on our side, in not understanding
their language always so critically as to know “what they would be at”——
I shall not decide; but ’tis evident to me, when they affirm, “That they who
have seen Paris, have seen every thing,” they must mean to speak of those
who have seen it by day-light.
As for candle-light—I give it up——I have said before, there was no
depending upon it—and I repeat it again; but not because the lights and
shades are too sharp—or the tints confounded––or that there is neither
beauty or keeping, &c. … for that’s not truth—but it is an uncertain light in
this respect, That in all the five hundred grand Hôtels,1 which they number
up to you in Paris—and the five hundred good things, at a modest
computation (for ’tis only allowing one good thing to a Hôtel) which by
candle-light are best to be seen, felt, heard and understood (which, by the
bye is a quotation from Lilly)2——the devil a one of us out of fifty, can get
our heads fairly thrust in amongst them.
This is no part of the French computation: ’tis simply this.
That by the last survey3 taken in the year one thousand seven hundred
and sixteen, since which time there have been considerable augmentations,
Paris doth contain nine hundred streets; (viz.)
In the quarter called the City—there are fifty three streets.
In St. James of the Shambles, fifty five streets.
In St. Oportune, thirty four streets.
In the quarter of the Louvre, twenty five streets.
In the Palace Royal, or St. Honorius, forty nine streets.
In Mont. Martyr, forty one streets.
In St. Eustace, twenty nine streets.
In the Halles, twenty seven streets.
In St. Dennis, fifty five streets.
In St. Martin, fifty four streets.
In St. Paul, or the Mortellerie, twenty seven streets.
The Greve, thirty eight streets.
In St. Avoy, or the Verrerie, nineteen streets.
In the Marais, or the Temple, fifty two streets.
In St. Antony’s, sixty eight streets.
In the Place Maubert, eighty one streets.
In St. Bennet, sixty streets.
In St. Andrews de Arcs, fifty one streets.
In the quarter of the Luxembourg, sixty two streets.
And in that of St. Germain, fifty five streets, into any of which you may
walk; and that when you have seen them with all that belongs to them,
fairly by day-light—their gates, their bridges, their squares, their
statues––––and have crusaded it moreover through all their parish churches,
by no means omitting St. Roche and Sulplice4–––and to crown all, have
taken a walk to the four palaces, which you may see either with or without
the statues and pictures, just as you chuse—
——Then you will have seen——
——but, ’tis what no one needeth to tell you, for you will read it
yourself upon the portico of the Louvre,5 in these words,
*EARTH NO SUCH FOLKS!—NO FOLKS E’ER SUCH A TOWN
AS PARIS IS!—SING, DERRY, DERRY, DOWN.
The French have a gay way of treating every thing that is Great; and that
is all can be said upon it.
CHAP. XIX.
IN mentioning the word gay (as in the close of the last chapter) it puts one
(i.e. an author) in mind of the word spleen——especially if he has any thing
to say upon it: not that by any analysis—or that from any table of interest or
genealogy, there appears much more ground of alliance betwixt them, than
betwixt light and darkness, or any two of the most unfriendly opposites in
nature——only ’tis an undercraft1 of authors to keep up a good
understanding amongst words, as politicians do amongst men—not
knowing how near they may be under a necessity of placing them to each
other—which point being now gain’d, and that I may place mine exactly to
my mind, I write it down here—
S P L E E N.
The two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; but
it went no further.——’Twill answer by an’ by, said the novice.
Quicker still, cried Margarita.
Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou.
Quicker still, cried Margarita.
Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou.
Quicker still—God preserve me! said the abbess—They do not
understand us, cried Margarita—But the Devil does, said the abbess of
Andoüillets.
CHAP. XXVI.
WHAT a tract of country have I run!—how many degrees nearer to the warm
sun am I advanced, and how many fair and goodly cities have I seen, during
the time you have been reading, and reflecting, Madam, upon this story!
There’s FONTAINBLEAU, and SENS, and JOIGNY, and AUXERRE, and DIJON the
capital of Burgundy, and CHALLON, and Mâcon the capital of the Mâconese,
and a score more upon the road to Lyons——and now I have run them over
——I might as well talk to you of so many market-towns in the moon, as
tell you one word about them: it will be this chapter at the least, if not both
this and the next entirely lost, do what I will——
—Why, ’tis a strange story! Tristram.
———Alas! Madam, had it been upon some melancholy lecture
of the cross—the peace of meekness, or the contentment of resignation——
I had not been incommoded: or had I thought of writing it upon the purer
abstractions of the soul, and that food of wisdom, and holiness, and
contemplation, upon which the spirit of man (when separated from the
body) is to subsist for ever——You would have come with a better appetite
from it——
——I wish I never had wrote it: but as I never blot any thing out1——let
us use some honest means to get it out of our heads directly.
——Pray reach me my fool’s cap——I fear you sit upon it, Madam
——’tis under the cushion——I’ll put it on——
Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——There then
let it stay, with a
Fa-ra diddle di
and a fa-ri diddle d
and a high-dum—dye-dum
fiddle–––dumb – c.
VEXATION
upon
VEXATION.
I had got my two dishes of milk coffee2 (which by the bye is excellently
good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and coffee together—
otherwise ’tis only coffee and milk)—and as it was no more than eight in
the morning, and the boat did not go off till noon, I had time to see enough
of Lyons to tire the patience of all the friends I had in the world with it. I
will take a walk to the cathedral, said I, looking at my list, and see the
wonderful mechanism of this great clock of Lippius of Basil, in the first
place——
Now, of all things in the world, I understand the least of mechanism——
I have neither genius, or taste, or fancy—and have a brain so entirely unapt
for every thing of that kind, that I solemnly declare I was never yet able to
comprehend the principles of motion of a squirrel cage, or a common knife-
grinder’s wheel—tho’ I have many an hour of my life look’d up with great
devotion at the one—and stood by with as much patience as any christian
ever could do, at the other——
I’ll go see the surprising movements of this great clock, said I, the very
first thing I do: and then I will pay a visit to the great library of the Jesuits,
and procure, if possible, a sight of the thirty volumes of the general history
of China, wrote (not in the Tartarian but) in the Chinese language, and in
the Chinese character too.
Now I almost know as little of the Chinese language, as I do of the
mechanism of Lippius’s clock-work; so, why these should have jostled
themselves into the two first articles of my list——I leave to the curious as
a problem of Nature. I own it looks like one of her ladyship’s obliquities;
and they who court her, are interested in finding out her humour as much as
I.
When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, half addressing myself to my
valet de place,3 who stood behind me——’twill be no hurt if we go to the
church of St. Ireneus, and see the pillar to which Christ was tied——and
after that, the house where Pontius Pilate lived4——’Twas at the next town,
said the valet de place—at Vienne; I am glad of it, said I, rising briskly
from my chair, and walking across the room with strides twice as long as
my usual pace——“for so much the sooner shall I be at the Tomb of the two
lovers.”5
What was the cause of this movement, and why I took such long strides
in uttering this——I might leave to the curious too; but as no principle of
clock-work is concern’d in it——’twill be as well for the reader if I explain
it myself.
CHAP. XXXI.
O! There is a sweet æra in the life of man, when, (the brain being tender
and fibrillous,1 and more like pap than any thing else)——a story read of
two fond lovers, separated from each other by cruel parents, and by still
more cruel destiny——
Amandus——He
Amanda2——She——
each ignorant of the other’s course,
He——east
She——west
Amandus taken captive by the Turks, and carried to the emperor of
Morocco’s court, where the princess of Morocco falling in love with him,
keeps him twenty years in prison, for the love of his Amanda——
She—(Amanda) all the time wandering barefoot, and with dishevell’d
hair, o’er rocks and mountains enquiring for Amandus——Amandus!
Amandus!—making every hill and vally to echo back his name——
Amandus! Amandus!
at every town and city sitting down forlorn at the gate——Has Amandus!—
has my Amandus enter’d?——till,——going round, and round, and round
the world——chance unexpected bringing them at the same moment of the
night, though by different ways, to the gate of Lyons their native city, and
each in well known accents calling out aloud,
they fly into each others arms, and both drop down dead for joy.
There is a soft æra in every gentle mortal’s life, where such a story
affords more pabulum3 to the brain, than all the Frusts, and Crusts, and
Rusts of antiquity,4 which travellers can cook up for it.
——’Twas all that stuck on the right side of the cullender in my own, of
what Spon and others, in their accounts of Lyons, had strained into it; and
finding, moreover, in some Itinerary, but in what God knows——That
sacred to the fidelity of Amandus and Amanda, a tomb was built without
the gates, where to this hour, lovers call’d upon them to attest their truths,––
—I never could get into a scrape of that kind in my life, but this tomb of the
lovers, would some how or other, come in at the close——nay such a kind
of empire had it establish’d over me, that I could seldom think or speak of
Lyons—and sometimes not so much as see even a Lyons-waistcoat, but this
remnant of antiquity would present itself to my fancy; and I have often said
in my wild way of running on——tho’ I fear with some irreverence——“I
thought this shrine (neglected as it was) as valuable as that of Mecca,5 and
so little short, except in wealth, of the Santa Casa6 itself, that some time or
other, I would go a pilgrimage (though I had no other business at Lyons) on
purpose to pay it a visit.”
In my list, therefore, of Videnda7 at Lyons, this, tho’ last––was not, you
see, least; so taking a dozen or two of longer strides than usual across my
room, just whilst it passed my brain, I walked down calmly into the Basse
Cour,8 in order to sally forth; and having called for my bill—as it was
uncertain whether I should return to my inn, I had paid it——had moreover
given the maid ten sous, and was just receiving the dernier9 compliments of
Monsieur Le Blanc,10 for a pleasant voyage down the Rhône——when I
was stopped at the gate——
CHAP. XXXII.
—’TWAS by a poor ass who had just turned in with a couple of large
panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosunary turnip-tops and cabbage-
leaves; and stood dubious, with his two forefeet on the inside of the
threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing
very well whether he was to go in, or no.
Now, ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike——
there is a patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so unaffectedly in his looks
and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me;
and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the
contrary, meet him where I will—whether in town or country—in cart or
under panniers—whether in liberty or bondage——I have ever something
civil to say to him on my part; and as one word begets another (if he has as
little to do as I)——I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely
never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the
etchings of his countenance—and where those carry me not deep enough
——in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an
ass to think—as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only
creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this: for
parrots, jackdaws, &c.——I never exchange a word with them——nor with
the apes, &c. for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others
speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay my dog and my cat, though I
value them both——(and for my dog he would speak if he could)—yet
some how or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation
——I can make nothing of a discourse with them, beyond the proposition,
the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father’s and my mother’s
conversations, in his beds of justice——and those utter’d—there’s an end
of the dialogue——
—But with an ass, I can commune for ever.1
Come Honesty! said I,—seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him
and the gate——art thou for coming in, or going out?
The ass twisted his head round to look up the street——
Well—replied I—we’ll wait a minute for thy driver:
——He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the
opposite way——
I understand thee perfectly; answered I——if thou takest a wrong step in
this affair, he will cudgel thee to death——Well! a minute is but a minute,
and if it saves a fellow creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-
spent.
He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and in
the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness,
had dropt it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and pick’d it up again——
God help thee, Jack! said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on’t—and many a
bitter day’s labour—and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages——’tis all
—all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others.——And now thy mouth,
if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare say, as soot—(for he had cast
aside the stem) and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world, that will
give thee a macaroon.––—In saying this, I pull’d out a paper of ’em, which
I had just purchased, and gave him one—and at this moment that I am
telling it, my heart smites me, that there was more of pleasantry in the
conceit, of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon——than of
benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act.
When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I press’d him to come in——the
poor beast was heavy loaded——his legs seem’d to tremble under him——
he hung rather backwards, and as I pull’d at his halter, it broke short in my
hand——he look’d up pensive in my face—“Don’t thrash me with it—but
if you will, you may”——If I do, said I, I’ll be d——d.
The word was but one half of it pronounced, like the abbess of
Andoüillet’s—(so there was no sin in it)—when a person coming in, let fall
a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil’s crupper, which put an end to
the ceremony.
The
REVIEWERS
of
MY BREECHES.
PAR LE ROY.1
LONDON:
Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. DEHONT,
in the Strand. M DCC LXV.
staragen,5
salt, and
A gitating
B ewitching
C onfounded
E xtravagant
F utilitous
G alligaskinish
H andy-dandyish
M isgiving
N innyhammering
O bstipating2
P ragmatical
S tridulous
R idiculous—though by the bye the R should have gone first—
But in short ’tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle Toby
upon the close of a long dissertation upon the subject——“You can scarce,”
said he, “combine two ideas together upon it, brother Toby, without an
hypallage”——What’s that? cried my uncle Toby.
My father’s ass
LONDON:
Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. DEHONDT,
in the Strand. MDCCLXVII.
(Height of original type-page 103 mm.)
A
DEDICATION
TO A
G R E A T M A N.1
CHAP. I.
I CALL all the powers of time and chance,1 which severally check us in our
careers in this world, to bear me witness, that I could never yet get fairly to
my uncle Toby’s amours, till this very moment, that my mother’s curiosity,
as she stated the affair,——or a different impulse in her, as my father would
have it——wished her to take a peep at them through the key-hole.
“Call it, my dear, by its right name, quoth my father, and look through
the key-hole as long as you will.”
Nothing but the fermentation of that little subacid humour, which I have
often spoken of, in my father’s habit, could have vented such an insinuation
——he was however frank and generous in his nature, and at all times open
to conviction; so that he had scarce got to the last word of this ungracious
retort, when his conscience smote him.
My mother was then conjugally swinging with her left arm twisted
under his right, in such wise, that the inside of her hand rested upon the
back of his—she raised her fingers, and let them fall—it could scarce be
call’d a tap; or if it was a tap——’twould have puzzled a casuist to say,
whether ’twas a tap of remonstrance, or a tap of confession: my father, who
was all sensibilities from head to foot, class’d it right—Conscience
redoubled her blow—he turn’d his face suddenly the other way, and my
mother supposing his body was about to turn with it in order to move
homewards, by a cross movement of her right leg, keeping her left as its
centre, brought herself so far in front, that as he turned his head, he met her
eye———Confusion again! he saw a thousand reasons to wipe out the
reproach, and as many to reproach himself——a thin, blue, chill, pellucid
chrystal with all its humours so at rest, the least mote2 or speck of desire
might have been seen at the bottom of it, had it existed——it did not——
and how I happen to be so lewd myself, particularly a little before the
vernal and autumnal equinoxes——Heaven above knows——My mother
——madam——was so at no time, either by nature, by institution, or
example.
A temperate current of blood ran orderly through her veins in all months
of the year, and in all critical moments both of the day and night alike; nor
did she superinduce the least heat into her humours from the manual
effervescencies of devotional tracts, which having little or no meaning in
them, nature is oft times obliged to find one——And as for my father’s
example! ’twas so far from being either aiding or abetting thereunto, that
’twas the whole business of his life to keep all fancies of that kind out of her
head——Nature had done her part, to have spared him this trouble; and
what was not a little inconsistent, my father knew it——And here am I
sitting, this 12th day of August, 1766,3 in a purple jerkin and yellow pair of
slippers, without either wig or cap on, a most tragicomical completion of
his prediction, “That I should neither think, nor act like any other man’s
child, upon that very account.”
The mistake of my father, was in attacking my mother’s motive, instead
of the act itself: for certainly key-holes were made for other purposes; and
considering the act, as an act which interfered with a true proposition, and
denied a key-hole to be what it was———it became a violation of nature;
and was so far, you see, criminal.4
It is for this reason, an’ please your Reverences, That key-holes are the
occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put
together.
——which leads me to my uncle Toby’s amours.
CHAP. II.1
THOUGH the Corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle
Toby’s great ramallie-wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce
any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of
his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better
of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a
business as one would have wished. The Corporal with cheary eye and both
arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to
inspire it, if possible, with a better air——had SPLEEN given a look at it,
’twould have cost her ladyship a smile——it curl’d every where but where
the Corporal would have it; and where a buckle2 or two, in his opinion,
would have done it honour, he could as soon have raised the dead.
Such it was——or rather such would it have seem’d upon any other
brow; but the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle Toby’s,
assimulated every thing around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature had
moreover wrote GENTLEMAN with so fair a hand in every line of his
countenance, that even his tarnish’d gold-laced hat and huge cockade of
flimsy taffeta became him; and though not worth a button in themselves, yet
the moment my uncle Toby put them on, they became serious objects, and
altogether seem’d to have been picked up by the hand of Science to set him
off to advantage.
Nothing in this world could have co-operated more powerfully towards
this, than my uncle Toby’s blue and gold——had not Quantity in some
measure been necessary to Grace:3 in a period of fifteen or sixteen years
since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle Toby’s life, for
he seldom went further than the bowling-green—his blue and gold had
become so miserably too strait for him, that it was with the utmost difficulty
the Corporal was able to get him into them: the taking them up at the
sleeves, was of no advantage.——They were laced however down the back,
and at the seams of the sides, &c. in the mode of King William’s reign; and
to shorten all description, they shone so bright against the sun that morning,
and had so metallick, and doughty an air with them, that had my uncle Toby
thought of attacking in armour,4 nothing could have so well imposed upon
his imagination.
As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripp’d by the taylor
between the legs, and left at sixes and sevens——
——Yes, Madam,——but let us govern our fancies. It is enough they
were held impracticable the night before, and as there was no alternative in
my uncle Toby’s wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush.5
The Corporal had array’d himself in poor Le Fevre’s6 regimental coat;
and with his hair tuck’d up under his Montero cap, which he had furbish’d
up for the occasion, march’d three paces distant from his master: a whiff of
military pride had puff’d out his shirt at the wrist; and upon that in a black
leather thong clipp’d into a tassel beyond the knot, hung the Corporal’s
stick——My uncle Toby carried his cane like a pike.
——It looks well at least; quoth my father to himself.
CHAP. III.
MY uncle Toby turn’d his head more than once behind him, to see how he
was supported by the Corporal; and the Corporal as oft as he did it, gave a
slight flourish with his stick—but not vapouringly; and with the sweetest
accent of most respectful encouragement, bid his honour “never fear.”
Now my uncle Toby did fear; and grievously too: he knew not (as my
father had reproach’d him) so much as the right end of a Woman from the
wrong, and therefore was never altogether at his ease near any one of them
——unless in sorrow or distress; then infinite was his pity; nor would the
most courteous knight of romance have gone further, at least upon one leg,
to have wiped away a tear from a woman’s eye; and yet excepting once that
he was beguiled into it by Mrs. Wadman, he had never looked stedfastly
into one; and would often tell my father in the simplicity of his heart, that it
was almost (if not alout)1 as bad as talking bawdy.——
——And suppose it is? my father would say.
CHAP. IV.
SHE cannot, quoth my uncle Toby, halting, when they had march’d up to
within twenty paces of Mrs. Wadman’s door—she cannot, Corporal, take it
amiss.——
——She will take it, an’ please your honour, said the Corporal, just as
the Jew’s widow at Lisbon took it of my brother Tom.——
——And how was that? quoth my uncle Toby, facing quite about to the
Corporal.
Your honour, replied the Corporal, knows of Tom’s misfortunes; but this
affair has nothing to do with them any further than this, That if Tom had not
married the widow——or had it pleased God after their marriage, that they
had but put pork into their sausages, the honest soul had never been taken
out of his warm bed, and dragg’d to the inquisition——’Tis a cursed place
—added the Corporal, shaking his head,—when once a poor creature is in,
he is in, an’ please your honour, for ever.
’Tis very true; said my uncle Toby looking gravely at Mrs. Wadman’s
house, as he spoke.
Nothing, continued the Corporal, can be so sad as confinement for life—
or so sweet, an’ please your honour, as liberty.
Nothing, Trim——said my uncle Toby, musing——
Whilst a man is free—cried the Corporal, giving a flourish with his
stick1 thus——
A thousand of my father’s most subtle syllogisms could not have said more
for celibacy.
My uncle Toby look’d earnestly towards his cottage and his bowling
green.
The Corporal had unwarily conjured up the Spirit of calculation with his
wand; and he had nothing to do, but to conjure him down again with his
story, and in this form of Exorcism, most un-ecclesiastically did the
Corporal do it.
CHAP. V.
AS Tom’s place, an’ please your honour, was easy—and the weather warm
—it put him upon thinking seriously of settling himself in the world; and as
it fell out about that time, that a Jew who kept a sausage shop in the same
street, had the ill luck to die of a strangury, and leave his widow in
possession of a rousing trade——Tom thought (as every body in Lisbon
was doing the best he could devise for himself) there could be no harm in
offering her his service to carry it on: so without any introduction to the
widow, except that of buying a pound of sausages at her shop—Tom set out
—counting the matter thus within himself, as he walk’d along; that let the
worst come of it that could, he should at least get a pound of sausages for
their worth—but, if things went well, he should be set up; inasmuch as he
should get not only a pound of sausages—but a wife––and a sausage-shop,
an’ please your honour, into the bargain.
Every servant in the family, from high to low, wish’d Tom success; and I
can fancy, an’ please your honour, I see him this moment with his white
dimity waistcoat and breeches, and hat a little o’ one side, passing jollily
along the street, swinging his stick, with a smile and a chearful word for
every body he met:––—But alas! Tom! thou smilest no more, cried the
Corporal, looking on one side of him upon the ground, as if he
apostrophized him in his dungeon.
Poor fellow! said my uncle Toby, feelingly.
He was an honest, light-hearted lad, an’ please your honour, as ever
blood warm’d——
——Then he resembled thee, Trim, said my uncle Toby, rapidly.
The Corporal blush’d down to his fingers ends—a tear of sentimental
bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle Toby—and a tear of sorrow
for his brother’s misfortunes, started into his eye and ran sweetly down his
cheek together; my uncle Toby’s kindled as one lamp does at another; and
taking hold of the breast of Trim’s coat (which had been that of Le Fevre’s)
as if to ease his lame leg, but in reality to gratify a finer feeling——he
stood silent for a minute and a half; at the end of which he took his hand
away, and the Corporal making a bow, went on with his story of his brother
and the Jew’s widow.
CHAP. VI.
WHEN Tom, an’ please your honour, got to the shop, there was nobody in it,
but a poor negro girl,1 with a bunch of white feathers slightly tied to the end
of a long cane, flapping away flies—not killing them.——’Tis a pretty
picture! said my uncle Toby—she had suffered persecution, Trim, and had
learnt mercy——
——She was good, an’ please your honour, from nature as well as from
hardships; and there are circumstances in the story of that poor friendless
slut that would melt a heart of stone, said Trim; and some dismal winter’s
evening, when your honour is in the humour, they shall be told you with the
rest of Tom’s story, for it makes a part of it——
Then do not forget, Trim, said my uncle Toby.
A Negro has a soul? an’ please your honour, said the Corporal
(doubtingly).
I am not much versed, Corporal, quoth my uncle Toby, in things of that
kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without one, any more than
thee or me——
——It would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the
Corporal.
It would so; said my uncle Toby. Why then, an’ please your honour, is a
black wench to be used worse than a white one?
I can give no reason, said my uncle Toby———
——Only, cried the Corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one
to stand up for her——
——’Tis that very thing, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,——which
recommends her to protection——and her brethren with her; ’tis the fortune
of war which has put the whip into our hands now——where it may be
hereafter, heaven knows!——but be it where it will, the brave, Trim! will
not use it unkindly.
——God forbid, said the Corporal.
Amen, responded my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon his heart.
The Corporal returned to his story, and went on———but with an
embarrassment in doing it, which here and there a reader in this world will
not be able to comprehend; for by the many sudden transitions all along,
from one kind and cordial passion to another, in getting thus far on his way,
he had lost the sportable2 key of his voice which gave sense and spirit to his
tale: he attempted twice to resume it, but could not please himself; so giving
a stout hem! to rally back the retreating spirits, and aiding Nature at the
same time with his left arm a-kimbo on one side, and with his right a little
extended, supporting her on the other—the Corporal got as near the note as
he could; and in that attitude, continued his story.
CHAP. VII.
AS Tom, an’ please your honour, had no business at that time with the
Moorish girl, he passed on into the room beyond to talk to the Jew’s widow
about love——and his pound of sausages; and being, as I have told your
honour, an open, cheary hearted lad, with his character wrote in his looks
and carriage, he took a chair, and without much apology, but with great
civility at the same time, placed it close to her at the table, and sat down.
There is no thing so awkward, as courting a woman, an’ please your
honour, whilst she is making sausages——So Tom began a discourse upon
them; first gravely,——“as how they were made——with what meats,
herbs and spices”—Then a little gayly—as, “With what skins——and if
they never burst——Whether the largest were not the best”——and so on
—taking care only as he went along, to season what he had to say upon
sausages, rather under, than over;——that he might have room to act in
——
It was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my uncle Toby,
laying his hand upon Trim’s shoulder, That Count de la Motte lost the battle
of Wynendale:1 he pressed too speedily into the wood; which if he had not
done, Lisle had not fallen into our hands, nor Ghent and Bruges, which both
followed her example; it was so late in the year, continued my uncle Toby,
and so terrible a season came on, that if things had not fallen out as they
did, our troops must have perished in the open field.——
——Why therefore, may not battles, an’ please your honour, as well as
marriages, be made in heaven?2—My uncle Toby mused.——
Religion inclined him to say one thing, and his high idea of military skill
tempted him to say another; so not being able to frame a reply exactly to his
mind——my uncle Toby said nothing at all; and the Corporal finished his
story.
As Tom perceived, an’ please your honour, that he gained ground, and
that all he had said upon the subject of sausages was kindly taken, he went
on to help her a little in making them.——First, by taking hold of the ring
of the sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with her hand——
then by cutting the strings into proper lengths, and holding them in his
hand, whilst she took them out one by one——then, by putting them across
her mouth, that she might take them out as she wanted them——and so on
from little to more, till at last he adventured to tie the sausage himself,
whilst she held the snout.——
——Now a widow, an’ please your honour, always chuses a second
husband as unlike the first as she can: so the affair was more than half
settled in her mind before Tom mentioned it.
She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a
sausage:——Tom instantly laid hold of another——
But seeing Tom’s had more gristle in it——
She signed the capitulation——and Tom sealed it; and there was an end
of the matter.
CHAP. VIII.
ALL womankind, continued Trim, (commenting upon his story) from the
highest to the lowest, an’ please your honour, love jokes; the difficulty is to
know how they chuse to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by
trying as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down
their breeches, till we hit the mark.1——
——I like the comparison, said my uncle Toby, better than the thing
itself——
——Because your honour, quoth the Corporal, loves glory, more than
pleasure.
I hope, Trim, answered my uncle Toby, I love mankind more than either;
and as the knowledge of arms tends so apparently to the good and quiet of
the world——and particularly that branch of it which we have practised
together in our bowling-green, has no object but to shorten the strides of
AMBITION,2 and intrench the lives and fortunes of the few, from the
plunderings of the many——whenever that drum beats in our ears, I trust,
Corporal, we shall neither of us want so much humanity and fellow-feeling
as to face about and march.
In pronouncing this, my uncle Toby faced about, and march’d firmly as
at the head of his company——and the faithful Corporal, shouldering his
stick, and striking his hand upon his coat-skirt as he took his first step——
march’d close behind him down the avenue.
——Now what can their two noddles be about? cried my father to my
mother——by all that’s strange, they are besieging Mrs. Wadman in form,
and are marching round her house to mark out the lines of circumvallation.
I dare say, quoth my mother——But stop, dear Sir——for what my
mother dared to say upon the occasion——and what my father did say upon
it——with her replies and his rejoinders, shall be read, perused,
paraphrased, commented and discanted upon—or to say it all in a word,
shall be thumb’d over by Posterity in a chapter apart——I say, by Posterity
—and care not, if I repeat the word again—for what has this book done
more than the Legation of Moses, or the Tale of a Tub,3 that it may not
swim down the gutter of Time along with them?
I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells
me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more
precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our
heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more——every thing
presses on——whilst thou art twisting that lock,——see! it grows grey; and
every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it,
are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.4——
——Heaven have mercy upon us both!
CHAP. IX.
NOW, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation1——I would not give a
groat.
CHAP. X.
MY mother had gone with her left arm twisted in my father’s right, till they
had got to the fatal angle of the old garden wall, where Doctor Slop was
overthrown by Obadiah on the coach-horse: as this was directly opposite to
the front of Mrs. Wadman’s house, when my father came to it, he gave a
look across; and seeing my uncle Toby and the Corporal within ten paces of
the door, he turn’d about——“Let us just stop a moment, quoth my father,
and see with what ceremonies my brother Toby and his man Trim make
their first entry——it will not detain us, added my father, a single
minute:”——No matter, if it be ten minutes, quoth my mother.
——It will not detain us half a one; said my father.
The Corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother Tom
and the Jew’s widow: the story went on—and on––—it had episodes in it
——it came back, and went on——and on again; there was no end of it
——the reader found it very long——
——G–– help my father! he pish’d fifty times at every new attitude, and
gave the corporal’s stick, with all its flourishings and danglings, to as many
devils as chose to accept of them.
When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in
the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of
expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it
out.
Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all
œconomy to justify the expence of the first——and for the third, fourth,
fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment—’tis a point of
HONOUR.
I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to
Patience; but that VIRTUE methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient of her
own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles
which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.
My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries to
the end of Trim’s story; and from thence to the end of my uncle Toby’s
panegyrick upon arms, in the chapter following it; when seeing, that instead
of marching up to Mrs. Wadman’s door, they both faced about and march’d
down the avenue diametrically opposite to his expectation—he broke out at
once with that little subacid soreness of humour which, in certain situations,
distinguished his character from that of all other men.
CHAP. XI.
——“NOW what can their two noddles be about?” cried my father– –&c.– –
––
I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications——
——Not on Mrs. Wadman’s premises! cried my father, stepping back
——
I suppose not: quoth my mother.
I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of
fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds,
gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts———
——They are foolish things——said my mother.
Now she had a way, which by the bye, I would this moment give away
my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your
reverences would imitate—and that was never to refuse her assent and
consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did
not understand it, or had no ideas to the principal word1 or term of art, upon
which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself with doing all
that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her2—but no more; and so
would go on using a hard word twenty years together—and replying to it
too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any
trouble to enquire about it.
This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, at
the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than could have
done the most petulant contradiction––—the few which survived were the
better for the cuvetts——
—“They are foolish things;” said my mother.
——Particularly the cuvetts;3 replied my father.
’Twas enough—he tasted the sweet of triumph—and went on.
—Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. Wadman’s premises, said
my father, partly correcting himself—because she is but tenant for life——
——That makes a great difference—said my mother——
—In a fool’s head, replied my father——
Unless she should happen to have a child—said my mother——
——But she must persuade my brother Toby first to get her one—
——To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother.
——Though if it comes to persuasion—–said my father––Lord have
mercy upon them.
Amen: said my mother, piano.
Amen: cried my father, fortissimè.
Amen: said my mother again—–but with such a sighing cadence of
personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father—
he instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, Yorick’s
congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to one half of his
business with it—and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day4—left
him as little in doubt, as to the other part—He put his almanack into his
pocket.
The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of ways and means, could not
have returned home, with a more embarrassed look.
CHAP. XII.
UPON looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the
texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the
five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep
up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would
not hold together a single year: nor is it a poor creeping digression (which
but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on in the king’s
highway) which will do the business——no; if it is to be a digression, it
must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the
horse or his rider are to be caught, but by rebound.
The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the
service: FANCY is capricious—WIT must not be searched for—and
PLEASANTRY (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an
empire to be laid at her feet.
——The best way for a man, is to say his prayers——
Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well ghostly
as bodily—for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he has
said them than before—for other purposes, better.
For my own part there is not a way either moral or mechanical under
heaven that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this
case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and
arguing the point over and over again with her upon the extent of her own
faculties——
——I never could make them an inch the wider——
Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon
the body, by temperance, soberness and chastity:1 These are good, quoth I,
in themselves—they are good, absolutely;—they are good, relatively;—they
are good for health––they are good for happiness in this world—they are
good for happiness in the next——
In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and there
they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made it: as
for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it courage; but then
that sniveling virtue of Meekness2 (as my father would always call it) takes
it quite away again, so you are exactly where you started.
Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have
found to answer so well as this——
——Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, and that I am not
blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me,
merely upon this symptom of it, that I do not know what envy is: for never
do I hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of
good writing, but I instantly make it public; willing that all mankind should
write as well as myself.
——Which they certainly will, when they think as little.
CHAP. XIII.
NOW in ordinary cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts rise
heavily and pass gummous1 through my pen——
Or that I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of
infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift2 out of it for my soul; so
must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator3 to the end of
the chapter, unless something be done——
——I never stand confering with pen and ink one moment; for if a pinch
of snuff or a stride or two across the room will not do the business for me—
I take a razor at once; and having tried the edge of it upon the palm of my
hand, without further ceremony, except that of first lathering my beard, I
shave it off; taking care only if I do leave a hair, that it be not a grey one:
this done, I change my shirt—put on a better coat—send for my last wig—
put my topaz ring4 upon my finger; and in a word, dress myself from one
end to the other of me, after my best fashion.
Now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do: for consider, Sir,
as every man chuses to be present at the shaving of his own beard (though
there is no rule without an exception) and unavoidably sits overagainst
himself the whole time it is doing, in case he has a hand in it—the Situation,
like all others, has notions of her own to put into the brain.——
——I maintain it, the conceits of a rough-bearded man, are seven years
more terse and juvenile for one single operation; and if they did not run a
risk of being quite shaved away, might be carried up by continual shavings,
to the highest pitch of sublimity—How Homer could write with so long a
beard, I don’t know——and as it makes against my hypothesis, I as little
care——But let us return to the Toilet.
Ludovicus Sorbonensis5 makes this entirely an affair of the body
(εξωτερικη πραξις) as he calls it——but he is deceived: the soul and body
are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas
get cloath’d at the same time; and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one
of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him—
so that he has nothing to do, but take his pen, and write like himself.
For this cause, when your honours and reverences would know whether
I writ clean and fit to be read, you will be able to judge full as well by
looking into my Laundress’s bill, as my book: there was one single month
in which I can make it appear, that I dirtied one and thirty shirts with clean
writing; and after all, was more abus’d, curs’d, criticis’d and confounded,
and had more mystic heads shaken at me, for what I had wrote in that one
month, than in all the other months of that year put together.
——But their honours and reverences had not seen my bills.
CHAP. XIV.
AS I never had any intention of beginning the Digression, I am making all
this preparation for, till I come to the 15th chapter——I have this chapter to
put to whatever use I think proper——I have twenty this moment ready for
it——I could write my chapter of Button-holes1 in it——
Or my chapter of Pishes, which should follow them——
Or my chapter of Knots, in case their reverences have done with them
——they might lead me into mischief: the safest way is to follow the tract
of the learned, and raise objections against what I have been writing, tho’ I
declare before-hand, I know no more than my heels how to answer them.
And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire,2 as
black as the very ink ’tis wrote with——(and by the bye, whoever says so,
is indebted to the muster-master general of the Grecian army, for suffering
the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a man as Thersites to continue upon
his roll——for it has furnished him with an epithet)——in these
productions he will urge, all the personal washings and scrubbings upon
earth do a sinking genius no sort of good——but just the contrary,
inasmuch as the dirtier the fellow is, the better generally he succeeds in it.
To this, I have no other answer——at least ready——but that the
Archbishop of Benevento wrote his nasty Romance of the Galatea,3 as all
the world knows, in a purple coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of breeches;
and that the penance set him of writing a commentary upon the book of the
Revelations, as severe as it was look’d upon by one part of the world, was
far from being deem’d so, by the other, upon the single account of that
Investment.
Another objection, to all this remedy, is its want of universality;
forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so much stress is laid, by an
unalterable law of nature excludes one half of the species entirely from its
use: all I can say is, that female writers, whether of England, or of France,
must e’en go without it———
As for the Spanish ladies——I am in no sort of distress——
CHAP. XV.
THE fifteenth chapter is come at last; and brings nothing with it but a sad
signature of “How our pleasures slip from under us in this world;”1
For in talking of my digression——I declare before heaven I have made
it! What a strange creature is mortal man! said she.
’Tis very true, said I——but ’twere better to get all these things out of
our heads, and return to my uncle Toby.
CHAP. XVI.
WHEN my uncle Toby and the Corporal had marched down to the bottom of
the avenue, they recollected their business lay the other way; so they faced
about and marched up streight to Mrs. Wadman’s door.
I warrant your honour; said the Corporal, touching his Montero-cap with
his hand, as he passed him in order to give a knock at the door——My
uncle Toby, contrary to his invariable way of treating his faithful servant,
said nothing good or bad: the truth was, he had not altogether marshal’d his
ideas; he wish’d for another conference, and as the Corporal was mounting
up the three steps before the door—he hem’d twice—a portion of my uncle
Toby’s most modest spirits fled, at each expulsion, towards the Corporal; he
stood with the rapper of the door suspended for a full minute in his hand, he
scarce knew why. Bridget stood perdue within, with her finger and her
thumb upon the latch, benumb’d with expectation; and Mrs. Wadman, with
an eye ready to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-
curtain of her bed-chamber, watching their approach.
Trim! said my uncle Toby——but as he articulated the word, the minute
expired, and Trim let fall the rapper.
My uncle Toby perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knock’d
on the head by it———whistled Lillabullero.
CHAP. XVII.
AS Mrs. Bridget’s finger and thumb were upon the latch, the Corporal did
not knock as oft as perchance your honour’s taylor——I might have taken
my example something nearer home; for I owe mine, some five and twenty
pounds at least, and wonder at the man’s patience——
——But this is nothing at all to the world: only ’tis a cursed thing to be
in debt; and there seems to be a fatality in the exchequers of some poor
princes, particularly those of our house, which no Economy can bind down
in irons: for my own part, I’m persuaded there is not any one prince,
prelate, pope, or potentate, great or small upon earth, more desirous in his
heart of keeping streight with the world than I am——or who takes more
likely means for it. I never give above half a guinea––—or walk with boots
——or cheapen tooth-picks——or lay out a shilling upon a band-box the
year round; and for the six months I’m in the country, I’m upon so small a
scale, that with all the good temper in the world, I out-do Rousseau,1 a bar
length2———for I keep neither man or boy, or horse, or cow, or dog, or
cat, or any thing that can eat or drink, except a thin poor piece of a Vestal
(to keep my fire in)3 and who has generally as bad an appetite as myself
——but if you think this makes a philosopher of me——I would not, my
good people! give a rush for your judgments.
True philosophy———but there is no treating the subject whilst my
uncle is whistling Lillabullero.
——Let us go into the house.
CHAP. XVIII.
CHAP. XIX.
CHAP. XX.
——— *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * *———
——You shall see the very place, Madam; said my uncle Toby.
Mrs. Wadman blush’d——look’d towards the door——turn’d pale——
blush’d slightly again——recovered her natural colour——blush’d worse
than ever; which for the sake of the unlearned reader, I translate thus——
Whilst all this was running through Mrs. Wadman’s imagination, my uncle
Toby had risen from the sopha, and got to the other side of the parlour-door,
to give Trim an order about it in the passage——
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *——I believe it is in the garret, said
my uncle Toby——I saw it there, an’ please your honour, this morning,
answered Trim——Then prithee, step directly for it, Trim, said my uncle
Toby, and bring it into the parlour.
The Corporal did not approve of the orders, but most chearfully obey’d
them. The first was not an act of his will—the second was; so he put on his
Montero cap, and went as fast as his lame knee would let him. My uncle
Toby returned into the parlour, and sat himself down again upon the sopha.
——You shall lay your finger upon the place—said my uncle Toby.——
I will not touch it, however, quoth Mrs. Wadman to herself.
This requires a second translation:1—it shews what little knowledge is
got by mere words—we must go up to the first springs.
Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, I
must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself.
Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads—blow your noses—
cleanse your emunctories—sneeze, my good people!––—God bless you
——
Now give me all the help you can.
CHAP. XXI.
AS there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in——as well civil as
religious) for which a woman takes a husband, she first sets about and
carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, which of all
that number of ends, is hers: then by discourse, enquiry, argumentation and
inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of the
right one——and if she has——then, by pulling it gently this way and that
way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the drawing.
The imagery under which Slawkenbergius impresses this upon his
reader’s fancy, in the beginning of his third Decad, is so ludicrous, that the
honour I bear the sex, will not suffer me to quote it——otherwise ’tis not
destitute of humour.
“She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops the asse, and holding his halter in
her left hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts her right hand into the
very bottom of his pannier to search for it—For what?—you’ll not know
the sooner, quoth Slawkenbergius, for interrupting me”——
“I have nothing, good Lady, but empty bottles;” says the asse.
“I’m loaded with tripes;” says the second.
——And thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is there
in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles––and so to the fourth and fifth,
going on one by one through the whole string, till coming to the asse which
carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at it—considers it—
samples it—measures it—stretches it—wets it—dries it—then takes her
teeth both to the warp and weft of it——
——Of what? for the love of Christ!
I am determined, answered Slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon
earth shall never wring that secret from my breast.
CHAP. XXII.
WE live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles1—and so
’tis no matter——else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every thing
so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless for
pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her
hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart––or
whatever other creature she models, be it but an asse’s foal, you are sure to
have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally
bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.
Whether it is in the choice of the clay——or that it is frequently spoiled
in the baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty (you
know) on one hand——or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the
other——or whether this great Artificer is not so attentive to the little
Platonic exigences2 of that part of the species, for whose use she is
fabricating this——or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort
of a husband will do——I know not: we will discourse about it after supper.
It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning upon it,
are at all to the purpose——but rather against it; since with regard to my
uncle Toby’s fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better: she had
formed him of the best and kindliest clay——had temper’d it with her own
milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit——she had made him all
gentle, generous and humane——she had fill’d his heart with trust and
confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it, for the
communication of the tenderest offices——she had moreover considered
the other causes for which matrimony was ordained——
And accordingly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *.
The DONATION was not defeated3 by my uncle Toby’s wound.
Now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is
the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in Mrs.
Wadman’s brain about it; and like a true devil as he was, had done his own
work at the same time, by turning my uncle Toby’s Virtue thereupon into
nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, and pantofles.
CHAP. XXIII.
MRS. Bridget had pawn’d all the little stock of honour a poor chambermaid
was worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in ten
days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulatums in
nature: namely, that whilst my uncle Toby was making love to her mistress,
the Corporal could find nothing better to do, than make love to her
——“And I’ll let him as much as he will,” said Bridget, “to get it out of
him.”
Friendship has two garments; an outer, and an under one. Bridget was
serving her mistress’s interests in the one—and doing the thing which most
pleased herself in the other; so had as many stakes depending upon my
uncle Toby’s wound, as the Devil himself——Mrs. Wadman had but one—
and as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. Bridget, or
discrediting her talents) was determined to play her cards herself.1
She wanted not encouragement: a child might have look’d into his hand
——there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what
trumps he had——with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace2
——and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha with
widow Wadman, that a generous heart would have wept to have won the
game of him.
Let us drop the metaphor.
CHAP. XXIV.
——AND the story too––if you please: for though I have all along been
hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well
knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world, yet
now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, and go on with
the story for me that will—I see the difficulties of the descriptions I’m
going to give—and feel my want of powers.
It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of
blood1 this week in a most uncritical2 fever which attacked me at the
beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it may
be more in the serous or globular3 parts of the blood, than in the subtile
aura of the brain——be it which it will—an Invocation can do no hurt——
and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me
according as he sees good.
THE INVOCATION.
GENTLE Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst didst sit upon the easy pen of
my beloved CERVANTES; Thou who glided’st daily through his lattice, and
turned’st the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy presence
——tinged’st his little urn of water with heaven-sent Nectar, and all the
time he wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic mantle o’er
his wither’d *stump, and wide extended it to all the evils of his life4———
——Turn in hither, I beseech thee!——behold these breeches!——they
are all I have in the world——that piteous rent was given them at Lyons
———
My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen’d amongst ’em—for the
laps are in Lombardy, and the rest of ’em here––I never had but six, and a
cunning gypsey of a laundress at Milan cut me off the fore-laps of five—To
do her justice, she did it with some consideration—for I was returning out
of Italy.5
And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was
moreover filch’d from me at Sienna, and twice that I pay’d five Pauls for
two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at Capua6—I do not
think a journey through France and Italy, provided a man keeps his temper7
all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe: there
must be ups and downs, or how the duce should we get into vallies where
Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.—’Tis nonsense to imagine
they will lend you their voitures8 to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and
unless you pay twelve sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor
peasant get butter to his bread?—We really expect too much—and for the
livre or two above par for your suppers and bed—at the most they are but
one shilling and ninepence halfpenny——who would embroil their
philosophy for it? for heaven’s and for your own sake, pay it——pay it with
both hands open, rather than leave Disappointment sitting drooping upon
the eye of your fair Hostess and her Damsels in the gate-way, at your
departure––—and besides, my dear Sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of
’em worth a pound——at least I did——
——For my uncle Toby’s amours running all the way in my head, they
had the same effect upon me as if they had been my own——I was in the
most perfect state of bounty and good will; and felt the kindliest harmony
vibrating within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so that
whether the roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; every thing
I saw, or had to do with, touch’d upon some secret spring either of
sentiment or rapture.
——They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down
the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly——’Tis Maria;9 said the
postilion, observing I was listening———Poor Maria, continued he,
(leaning his body on one side to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt
us) is sitting upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little
goat beside her.
The young fellow utter’d this with an accent and a look so perfectly in
tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow, I would give him a four
and twenty sous piece, when I got to Moulins——
———And who is poor Maria? said I.
The love and pity of all the villages around us; said the postillion——it
is but three years ago, that the sun did not shine upon so fair, so quick-
witted and amiable a maid; and better fate did Maria deserve, than to have
her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the curate of the parish who published
them——
He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe
to her mouth and began the air again——they were the same notes;——yet
were ten times sweeter: It is the evening service to the Virgin, said the
young man——but who has taught her to play it—or how she came by her
pipe, no one knows; we think that Heaven has assisted her in both; for ever
since she has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only consolation——
she has never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays that service upon
it almost night and day.
The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural
eloquence, that I could not help decyphering something in his face above
his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not poor Maria’s
taken such full possession of me.
We had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria was sitting:
she was in a thin white jacket with her hair, all but two tresses, drawn up
into a silk net, with a few olive-leaves twisted a little fantastically on one
side——she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest
heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her——
——God help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, said the
postillion, have been said in the several parish churches and convents
around, for her,——but without effect; we have still hopes, as she is
sensible for short intervals, that the Virgin at last will restore her to herself;
but her parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think
her senses are lost for ever.
As the postillion spoke this, MARIA made a cadence so melancholy, so
tender and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and found
myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my
enthusiasm.
MARIA look’d wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat——
and then at me——and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately——
——Well, Maria, said I softly——What resemblance do you find?
I do intreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the
humblest conviction of what a Beast man is,——that I ask’d the question;
and that I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the
venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever Rabelais
scatter’d——and yet I own my heart smote me, and that I so smarted at the
very idea of it, that I swore I would set up for Wisdom and utter grave
sentences the rest of my days——and never——never attempt again to
commit mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day I had to live.10
As for writing nonsense to them——I believe, there was a reserve—but
that I leave to the world.
Adieu, Maria!—adieu, poor hapless damsel!——some time, but not
now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips——but I was deceived; for
that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I
rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walk’d softly to my chaise.
———What an excellent inn at Moulins!
CHAP. XXV.
WHEN we have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must all
turn back to the two blank chapters, on the account of which my honour has
lain bleeding this half hour——I stop it, by pulling off one of my yellow
slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the opposite side of my
room, with a declaration at the heel of it——
——That whatever resemblance it may bear to half the chapters which
are written in the world, or, for aught I know, may be now writing in it—
that it was as casual as the foam of Zeuxis his horse:1 besides, I look upon a
chapter which has, only nothing in it, with respect; and considering what
worse things there are in the world——That it is no way a proper subject
for satire———
——Why then was it left so? And here, without staying for my reply,
shall I be call’d as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads,
ninnyhammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nicompoops, and sh--t-a-beds——and
other unsavory appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of Lernè, cast in the
teeth of King Gargantua’s shepherds2——And I’ll let them do it, as Bridget
said, as much as they please; for how was it possible they should foresee the
necessity I was under of writing the 25th chapter of my book, before the
18th, &c.
———So I don’t take it amiss——All I wish is, that it may be a lesson
to the world, “to let people tell their stories their own way.”
The Eighteenth Chapter.
AS Mrs. Bridget open’d the door before the Corporal had well given the
rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby’s introduction into the
parlour, was so short, that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to get from
behind the curtain——lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a step or two
towards the door to receive him.
My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, after the manner in which women
were saluted by men in the year of our Lord God one thousand seven
hundred and thirteen——then facing about, he march’d up abreast with her
to the sopha, and in three plain words——though not before he was sat
down——nor after he was sat down———but as he was sitting down, told
her, “he was in love”——so that my uncle Toby strained himself more in
the declaration than he needed.
Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down, upon a slit she had been darning
up in her apron, in expectation every moment, that my uncle Toby would go
on; but having no talents for amplification, and LOVE moreover of all others
being a subject of which he was the least a master——When he had told
Mrs. Wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the matter to
work after its own way.
My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby’s,
as he falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother Toby to
his processe have added but a pipe of tobacco——he had wherewithal to
have found his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb,3 towards the
hearts of half the women upon the globe.
My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant; nor will I
presume to extract more from it, than a condemnation of an error which the
bulk of the world lie under——but the French, every one of ’em to a man,
who believe in it, almost as much as the REAL PRESENCE, “That talking of
love, is making it.”4
———I would as soon set about making a black-pudding5 by the same
receipt.
Let us go on: Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do
so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on one side
or the other, generally becomes indecent: so edging herself a little more
towards him, and raising up her eyes, sub-blushing, as she did it——she
took up the gauntlet——or the discourse (if you like it better) and
communed with my uncle Toby, thus.
The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. Wadman,
are very great. I suppose so—said my uncle Toby: and therefore when a
person, continued Mrs. Wadman, is so much at his ease as you are—so
happy, captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends and your amusements—I
wonder, what reasons can incline you to the state——
——They are written, quoth my uncle Toby, in the Common-Prayer
Book.6
Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth,
leaving Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulph as she pleased.
——As for children—said Mrs. Wadman—though a principal end
perhaps of the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent—
yet do not we all find, they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain
comforts?7 and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-achs—what
compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a
suffering and defenceless mother who brings them into life? I declare, said
my uncle Toby, smit with pity, I know of none; unless it be the pleasure
which it has pleased God——
——A fiddlestick! quoth she.
Chapter the Nineteenth
NOW there are such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs, looks,
and accents with which the word fiddlestick may be pronounced in all such
causes as this, every one of ’em impressing a sense and meaning as
different from the other, as dirt from cleanliness—That Casuists (for it is an
affair of conscience on that score) reckon up no less than fourteen thousand
in which you may do either right or wrong.
Mrs. Wadman hit upon the fiddlestick, which summoned up all my uncle
Toby’s modest blood into his cheeks—so feeling within himself that he had
somehow or other got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and without entering
further either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand
upon his heart, and made an offer to take them as they were, and share them
along with her.
When my uncle Toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so
casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. Wadman had laid upon the table,
he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others the
most interesting to him––which was the siege of Jericho—he set himself to
read it over––leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his
declaration of love, to work with her after its own way. Now it wrought
neither as an astringent or a loosener; nor like opium, or bark, or mercury,
or buckthorn, or any one drug which nature had bestowed upon the world—
in short, it work’d not at all in her; and the cause of that was, that there was
something working there before——Babbler that I am! I have anticipated
what it was a dozen times; but there is fire still in the subject——allons.8
CHAP. XXVI.
IT is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from London to Edinburgh,
to enquire before he sets out, how many miles to York; which is about the
half way——nor does any body wonder, if he goes on and asks about the
Corporation,1 &c. – –
It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, whose first husband was all his
time afflicted with a Sciatica, to wish to know how far from the hip to the
groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in her feelings, in
the one case than in the other.
She had accordingly read Drake’s anatomy from one end to the other.
She had peeped into Wharton upon the brain, and borrowed Graaf* upon
the bones and muscles;2 but could make nothing of it.
She had reason’d likewise from her own powers——laid down theorems
——drawn consequences, and come to no conclusion.
To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor Slop, “if poor captain
Shandy was ever likely to recover of his wound——?”
——He is recovered, Doctor Slop would say——
What! quite?
——Quite: madam——
But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. Wadman would say.
Doctor Slop was the worst man alive at definitions; and so Mrs.
Wadman could get no knowledge: in short, there was no way to extract it,
but from my uncle Toby himself.
There is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which lulls
SUSPICION to rest——and I am half persuaded the serpent got pretty near it,
in his discourse with Eve; for the propensity in the sex to be deceived could
not be so great, that she should have boldness to hold chat with the devil,
without it––—But there is an accent of humanity——how shall I describe
it?—’tis an accent which covers the part with a garment, and gives the
enquirer a right to be as particular with it, as your body-surgeon.
“——Was it without remission?—
——Was it more tolerable in bed?
——Could he lie on both sides alike with it?
—Was he able to mount a horse?
—Was motion bad for it?” et cætera, were so tenderly spoke to, and so
directed towards my uncle Toby’s heart, that every item of them sunk ten
times deeper into it than the evils themselves——but when Mrs. Wadman
went round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby’s groin; and engaged
him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and pêle mêle with the
Dutch to take the counterguard of St. Roch sword in hand—and then with
tender notes playing upon his ear, led him all bleeding by the hand out of
the trench, wiping her eye, as he was carried to his tent––—Heaven! Earth!
Sea!—all was lifted up—the springs of nature rose above their levels—an
angel of mercy sat besides him on the sopha—his heart glow’d with fire—
and had he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs.
Wadman.
—And whereabouts, dear Sir, quoth Mrs. Wadman, a little categorically,
did you receive this sad blow?——In asking this question, Mrs. Wadman
gave a slight glance towards the waist-band of my uncle Toby’s red plush
breeches, expecting naturally, as the shortest reply to it, that my uncle Toby
would lay his fore-finger upon the place——It fell out otherwise——for
my uncle Toby having got his wound before the gate of St. Nicolas, in one
of the traverses of the trench, opposite to the salient angle of the demi-
bastion of St. Roch; he could at any time stick a pin upon the identical spot
of ground where he was standing when the stone struck him: this struck
instantly upon my uncle Toby’s sensorium——and with it, struck his large
map of the town and citadel of Namur and its environs, which he had
purchased and pasted down upon a board by the Corporal’s aid, during his
long illness——it had lain with other military lumber in the garret ever
since, and accordingly the Corporal was detached into the garret to fetch it.
My uncle Toby measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. Wadman’s scissars,
from the returning angle before the gate of St. Nicolas; and with such a
virgin modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the goddess of Decency,
if then in being—if not, ’twas her shade—shook her head, and with a finger
wavering across her eyes—forbid her to explain the mistake.
Unhappy Mrs. Wadman!——
——For nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an
apostrophe to thee——but my heart tells me, that in such a crisis an
apostrophe is but an insult in disguise, and ere I would offer one to a
woman in distress—let the chapter go to the devil; provided any damn’d
critick in keeping3 will be but at the trouble to take it with him.
CHAP. XXVII.
MY uncle Toby’s Map is carried down into the kitchen.
CHAP. XXVIII.
——AND here is the Maes—and this is the Sambre;1 said the Corporal,
pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his left
upon Mrs. Bridget’s shoulder—but not the shoulder next him—and this,
said he, is the town of Namur—–and this the citadel—and there lay the
French—and here lay his honour and myself——and in this cursed trench,
Mrs. Bridget, quoth the Corporal, taking her by the hand, did he receive the
wound which crush’d him so miserably here——In pronouncing which he
slightly press’d the back of her hand towards the part he felt for——and let
it fall.
We thought, Mr. Trim, it had been more in the middle——said Mrs.
Bridget——
That would have undone us for ever—said the Corporal.
——And left my poor mistress undone too—said Bridget.
The Corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs. Bridget a
kiss.
Come—come—said Bridget—holding the palm of her left-hand parallel
to the plane of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of the other over it, in a
way which could not have been done, had there been the least wart or
protuberance——’Tis every syllable of it false, cried the Corporal, before
she had half finished the sentence——
—I know it to be fact, said Bridget, from credible witnesses.
———Upon my honour, said the Corporal, laying his hand upon his
heart, and blushing as he spoke with honest resentment—’tis a story, Mrs.
Bridget, as false as hell——Not, said Bridget, interrupting him, that either I
or my mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether ’tis so or no———only
that when one is married, one would chuse to have such a thing by one at
least——
It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. Bridget, that she had begun the
attack with her manual exercise; for the Corporal instantly * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*.
CHAP. XXIX.
IT was like the momentary contest in the moist eye-lids of an April
morning,1 “Whether Bridget should laugh or cry.”
She snatch’d up a rolling-pin——’twas ten to one, she had laugh’d——
She laid it down——she cried; and had one single tear of ’em but tasted
of bitterness, full sorrowful would the Corporal’s heart have been that he
had used the argument; but the Corporal understood the sex, a quart major
to a terce2 at least, better than my uncle Toby, and accordingly he assailed
Mrs. Bridget after this manner.
I know, Mrs. Bridget, said the Corporal, giving her a most respectful
kiss, that thou art good and modest by nature, and art withal so generous a
girl in thyself, that if I know thee rightly, thou wouldst not wound an insect,
much less the honour of so gallant and worthy a soul as my master, wast
thou sure to be made a countess of——but thou hast been set on, and
deluded, dear Bridget, as is often a woman’s case, “to please others more
than themselves——”
Bridget’s eyes poured down at the sensations the Corporal excited.
——Tell me——tell me then, my dear Bridget, continued the Corporal,
taking hold of her hand, which hung down dead by her side,——and giving
a second kiss——whose suspicion has misled thee?
Bridget sobb’d a sob or two——then open’d her eyes——the Corporal
wiped ’em with the bottom of her apron——she then open’d her heart and
told him all.
CHAP. XXX.
MY uncle Toby and the Corporal had gone on separately with their
operations the greatest part of the campaign, and as effectually cut off from
all communication of what either the one or the other had been doing, as if
they had been separated from each other by the Maes or the Sambre.
My uncle Toby, on his side, had presented himself every afternoon in his
red and silver, and blue and gold alternately, and sustained an infinity of
attacks in them, without knowing them to be attacks—and so had nothing to
communicate——
The Corporal, on his side, in taking Bridget, by it had gain’d
considerable advantages——and consequently had much to communicate
——but what were the advantages——as well, as what was the manner by
which he had seiz’d them, required so nice an historian that the Corporal
durst not venture upon it; and as sensible as he was of glory, would rather
have been contented to have gone barehead and without laurels for ever,
than torture his master’s modesty for a single moment——
——Best of honest and gallant servants!——But I have apostrophiz’d
thee, Trim! once before——and could I apotheosize thee also (that is to
say) with good company——I would do it without ceremony in the very
next page.
CHAP. XXXI.
NOW my uncle Toby had one evening laid down his pipe upon the table, and
was counting over to himself upon his finger ends, (beginning at his thumb)
all Mrs. Wadman’s perfections one by one; and happening two or three
times together, either by omitting some, or counting others twice over, to
puzzle himself sadly before he could get beyond his middle finger——
Prithee, Trim! said he, taking up his pipe again,——bring me a pen and ink:
Trim brought paper also.
Take a full sheet1——Trim! said my uncle Toby, making a sign with his
pipe at the same time to take a chair and sit down close by him at the table.
The Corporal obeyed——placed the paper directly before him——took a
pen and dip’d it in the ink.
—She has a thousand virtues, Trim! said my uncle Toby––——
Am I to set them down, an’ please your honour? quoth the Corporal.
——But they must be taken in their ranks, replied my uncle Toby; for of
them all, Trim, that which wins me most, and which is a security for all the
rest, is the compassionate turn and singular humanity of her character—I
protest, added my uncle Toby, looking up, as he protested it, towards the top
of the ceiling——That was I her brother, Trim, a thousand fold, she could
not make more constant or more tender enquiries after my sufferings——
though now no more.
The Corporal made no reply to my uncle Toby’s protestation, but by a
short cough—he dip’d the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my uncle
Toby, pointing with the end of his pipe as close to the top of the sheet at the
left hand corner of it, as he could get it——the Corporal wrote down the
word
H U M A N I T Y – – – – thus.
Prithee, Corporal, said my uncle Toby, as soon as Trim had done it
———how often does Mrs. Bridget enquire after the wound on the cap of
thy knee, which thou received’st at the battle of Landen?
She never, an’ please your honour, enquires after it at all.
That, Corporal, said my uncle Toby, with all the triumph the goodness of
his nature would permit——That shews the difference in the character of
the mistress and maid——had the fortune of war allotted the same
mischance to me, Mrs. Wadman would have enquired into every
circumstance relating to it a hundred times——She would have enquired,
an’ please your honour, ten times as often about your honour’s groin——
The pain, Trim, is equally excruciating,——and Compassion has as much
to do with the one as the other——
——God bless your honour! cried the Corporal——what has a woman’s
compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man’s knee? had your
honour’s been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen, Mrs.
Wadman would have troubled her head as little about it as Bridget; because,
added the Corporal, lowering his voice and speaking very distinctly, as he
assigned his reason——
“The knee is such a distance from the main body—whereas the groin,
your honour knows, is upon the very curtin of the place.”
My uncle Toby gave a long whistle——but in a note which could scarce
be heard across the table.
The Corporal had advanced too far to retire——in three words he told
the rest——
My uncle Toby laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender, as if it had
been spun from the unravellings of a spider’s web———
———Let us go to my brother Shandy’s, said he.
CHAP. XXXII.
THERE will be just time, whilst my uncle Toby and Trim are walking to my
father’s, to inform you, that Mrs. Wadman had, some moons before this,
made a confident of my mother; and that Mrs. Bridget, who had the burden
of her own, as well as her mistress’s secret to carry, had got happily
delivered of both to Susannah behind the garden-wall.
As for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the least bustle
about——but Susannah was sufficient by herself for all the ends and
purposes you could possibly have, in exporting a family secret; for she
instantly imparted it by signs to Jonathan––—and Jonathan by tokens to the
cook, as she was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold it with some
kitchen-fat to the postillion for a groat, who truck’d it with the dairy-maid
for something of about the same value——and though whisper’d in the
hay-loft, FAME caught the notes with her brazen trumpet and sounded them
upon the house-top—In a word, not an old woman in the village or five
miles round, who did not understand the difficulties of my uncle Toby’s
siege, and what were the secret articles which had delay’d the surrender.
——
My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an
hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did
——had but just heard of the report as my uncle Toby set out; and catching
fire suddenly at the trespass done his brother by it, was demonstrating to
Yorick, notwithstanding my mother was sitting by——not only, “That the
devil was in women, and that the whole of the affair was lust;” but that
every evil and disorder in the world of what kind or nature soever, from the
first fall of Adam, down to my uncle Toby’s (inclusive) was owing one way
or other to the same unruly appetite.
Yorick was just bringing my father’s hypothesis to some temper, when
my uncle Toby entering the room with marks of infinite benevolence and
forgiveness in his looks, my father’s eloquence rekindled against the
passion——and as he was not very nice in the choice of his words when he
was wroth——as soon as my uncle Toby was seated by the fire, and had
filled his pipe, my father broke out in this manner.
CHAP. XXXIII.1
——THAT provision should be made for continuing the race of so great, so
exalted and godlike a Being as man––I am far from denying—but
philosophy speaks freely of every thing; and therefore I still think and do
maintain it to be a pity, that it should be done by means of a passion which
bends down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, contemplations, and
operations of the soul backwards—–a passion, my dear, continued my
father, addressing himself to my mother, which couples and equals wise
men with fools, and makes us come out of our caverns and hiding-places
more like satyrs and four-footed beasts than men.
I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the
Prolepsis)2 that in itself, and simply taken——like hunger, or thirst, or
sleep——’tis an affair neither good or bad—or shameful or otherwise.——
Why then did the delicacy of Diogenes and Plato3 so recalcitrate4 against
it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a man, do we put
out the candle? and for what reason is it, that all the parts thereof—the
congredients5—the preparations—the instruments, and whatever serves
thereto, are so held as to be conveyed to a cleanly mind by no language,
translation, or periphrasis whatever?
——The act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father
raising his voice—and turning to my uncle Toby––you see, is glorious—
and the weapons by which we do it are honourable——We march with
them upon our shoulders——We strut with them by our sides——We gild
them——We carve them——We in-lay them——We enrich them——Nay,
if it be but a scoundril cannon, we cast an ornament upon the breech of it.—
——My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to intercede for a better epithet
——and Yorick was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to pieces——
——When Obadiah broke into the middle of the room with a complaint,
which cried out for an immediate hearing.
The case was this:
My father, whether by ancient custom of the manor, or as improprietor
of the great tythes,6 was obliged to keep a Bull for the service of the Parish,
and Obadiah had led his cow upon a pop-visit to him one day or other the
preceeding summer––—I say, one day or other—because as chance would
have it, it was the day on which he was married to my father’s house-maid
——so one was a reckoning to the other. Therefore when Obadiah’s wife
was brought to bed—Obadiah thanked God——
——Now, said Obadiah, I shall have a calf: so Obadiah went daily to
visit his cow.
She’ll calve on Monday—on Tuesday—or Wednesday at the farthest
——
The cow did not calve——no—she’ll not calve till next week––—the
cow put it off terribly—–till at the end of the sixth week Obadiah’s
suspicions (like a good man’s) fell upon the Bull.
Now the parish being very large, my father’s Bull, to speak the truth of
him, was no way equal to the department; he had, however, got himself,
somehow or other, thrust into employment—and as he went through the
business with a grave face, my father had a high opinion of him.
——Most of the townsmen, an’ please your worship, quoth Obadiah,
believe that ’tis all the Bull’s fault——
——But may not a cow be barren? replied my father, turning to Doctor
Slop.
It never happens: said Dr. Slop, but the man’s wife may have come
before her time naturally enough——Prithee has the child hair upon his
head?—added Dr. Slop———
——It is as hairy as I am;7 said Obadiah.——Obadiah had not been
shaved for three weeks——Wheu – – u – – – – u – – – – – – – – cried my
father; beginning the sentence with an exclamatory whistle——and so,
brother Toby, this poor Bull of mine, who is as good a Bull as ever p—ss’d,
and might have done for Europa herself in purer times——had he but two
legs less, might have been driven into Doctors Commons8 and lost his
character——which to a Town Bull, brother Toby, is the very same thing as
his life———
L--d! said my mother, what is all this story about?——
A COCK and a BULL,9 said Yorick——And one of the best of its kind,
I ever heard.
The END of the NINTH VOLUME.
Appendix
Glossary of Terms of Fortification
Generally the definitions herein are quoted directly from Chambers; in two instances, recourse is had
to John Muller, A Treatise Containing the Elementary Part of Fortification (1746). The plate is from
Chambers.
Banquette ‘A little foot-bank, or elevation of earth forming a path which runs along the inside of a
parapet; by which the musqueteers get up, to discover the counterscarp, or to fire on the enemies
in the moat, or in the covert-way. The Banquette is generally a foot and a half high, and almost
three foot broad; having two or three steps to mount it by.’
Bastion ‘A huge massive of earth usually faced with sods, sometimes with brick, rarely with stone,
standing out from a rampart, whereof it is a principal part. A Bastion consists of two faces and
two flanks.… The union of the two faces makes the outmost or saliant angle, called also the
angle of the Bastion.’ See plate, figures o and p.
Blinds ‘Defences usually made of oziers, or branches interwoven and laid across, between two rows
of stakes about the height of a man, and four or five foot apart; used particularly at the heads of
trenches, when they are extended in front towards the glacis; serving to shelter the workmen, and
prevent their being overlooked by the enemy.’ See plate for illustration.
Breastworks See Parapet.
Circumvallation ‘A line or trench, with a parapet, thrown up by the besiegers, encompassing all
their camp, to defend it against any army that may attempt to relieve the place. This line is to be
cannon-shot distant from the place.’
Counterguard (s.v. Envelope in Chambers) ‘A mount of earth, sometimes raised in the ditch of a
place, and sometimes beyond it; being either in form of a simple parapet, or of a small rampart
bordered with a parapet. These envelopes are made, where weak places are only to be covered
with single lines; without advancing towards the field.’
Counterscarp ‘The exterior slope, or acclivity of the ditch, looking towards the campaign.
Counterscarp is also used for the covert-way, and the glacis. To be lodged on the Counterscarp,
is to be lodged on the covert-way, or the glacis.’
Covered way (s.v. Covert Way in Chambers) ‘A space of ground level with the adjoining country, on
the edge of the ditch, ranging quite round the half-moons, and other works without-side the
ditch… One of the greatest difficulties in a siege, is to make a lodgment on the Covert way;
because, usually, the besieged pallisade it along the middle, and undermine it on all sides.’ See
plate, figure b.
Cross batteries (s.v. Battery in Chambers) ‘Two batteries at a considerable distance from each other,
which play a-thwart one another at the same time, and upon the same point, forming right
angles.’
Curtin ‘That part of a wall, or rampart, which is between two bastions; or which joins the flanks
thereof… The Curtin is usually bordered with a parapet five foot high; behind which the soldiers
stand to fire upon the covert way, and into the moat.’ See plate, figure q. See also above, n. 3 to
II.xii.
Cuvette (s.v. Cunette in Chambers) ‘A deep trench, about three or four fathom wide, sunk along the
middle of a dry moat, to lade out the water; or to make the passage more difficult to the enemy.’
Demi-bastion ‘A kind of fortification, that has only one face, and one flank.’
Demi-culverin ‘A piece of ordnance commonly 4½ inches bore, 10 foot long, 2700 pound weight;
its charge is 7 pound 4 ounces of powder; and it carries a shot of 10 pounds 11 ounces; and
shoots point blank 175 paces.’
Ditch ‘Called also Foss, and Moat, a trench dug round the rampart, or wall of a fortified place,
between the scarp, and counterscarp. Some Ditches are dry; others full of water: each whereof
have their advantages.’ See plate, figure h.
Double tenaille See Tenaille.
Epaulement ‘A side-work hastily thrown up, to cover the cannon, or the men. It is made either of
earth thrown up, of bags filled with sand or earth, or of gabions, fascines, &c. with earth.
‘Epaulement, is also used for a demi-bastion… placed at the point of a horn or crown-work.’
Esplanade See Glacis.
Face ‘Faces of a bastion, are the two foremost sides, reaching from the flanks to the point of the
bastion, where they meet.… Face of a place, denotes the interval between the points of two
neighbouring bastions, containing the curtain, the two flanks, and the two Faces of the bastions
that looked towards one another. This is otherwise called the tenaille of the place.’
Fausse-braye ‘An elevation of earth, two or three fathoms broad, round the foot of the rampart on
the outside, defended by a parapet which parts it from the berme [i.e., the space between the ditch
and the base of the parapet], and the edge of the ditch: its use is for the defence of the ditch.… It
is of little use where ramparts are faced with wall, because of the rubbish which the cannon beats
down into it. For this reason, engineers will have none before the faces of the bastions.’
Flank ‘A line, drawn from the extremity of the face, towards the inside of the work.… Or, Flank is
that part of the bastion, which reaches from the curtin to the face, and defends the opposite face,
the Flank, and the curtin.’
Foss(e) ‘A ditch, or moat.’
Gabions ‘Large baskets, made of osier twigs, woven of a cylindrical form, six foot high, and four
wide; which being filled with earth, serve as a defence, or shelter from the enemy’s fire.’ See
plate for illustration.
Gazons ‘Turfs, or pieces of fresh earth covered with grass, cut in form of a wedge, about a foot long,
and half a foot thick: to line or face the outside of works made of earth, in order to keep up the
same, and prevent their mouldering.’
Glacis The slope or declivity of the counterscarp; ‘being a sloping bank which reaches from the
parapet of the counterscarp, or covert-way, to the level side of the field’. See plate, figure a. Also
called Esplanade.
Gorge ‘The entrance of a bastion; or of a ravelin, or other outwork.… The Gorge of a bastion, is
what remains of the sides of the polygon of a place, after retrenching the curtins: in which case it
makes an angle in the centre of the bastion.… Gorge of a half moon, or ravelin, is the space
between the two ends of their faces next the place.’
Half-moon ‘An outwork, consisting of two faces, forming together a saliant angle, whose gorge is
turned like an half moon.… Half-moons are sometimes raised before the curtin, when the ditch is
wider than it ought to be; in which case it is much the same with a ravelin; only that the gorge of
an Half-moon is made bending in like a bow, or crescent, and is chiefly used to cover the point of
the bastion; whereas ravelins are always placed before the curtin.—But they are both defective,
as being ill flanked.’ See plate, figures 5 (top) and k. See also above, n. 3 to II.xii.
Horn-work ‘A sort of out-work, advancing toward the field, to cover and defend a curtin, bastion,
or other place suspected to be weaker than the rest.… It consists of two demi-bastions… joined
by a curtin.’ See plate, figures 9 and f.
Ichnography ‘The plan or representation of the length and breadth of a fortress, the distinct parts of
which are marked out, either on the ground itself, or upon paper.’
Investing ‘The opening a siege, and the incamping of an army round the place, to block up its
avenues, and prevent all ingress and egress.… It is the cavalry that always begins to invest a
place.’
Lodgment ‘A work cast up by the besiegers, during their approaches, in some dangerous post,
which they have gained, and where it is absolutely necessary to secure themselves against the
enemies fire; as in a covert-way; in a breach, the bottom of a moat, or any other part gained from
the besieged. Lodgments are made by casting up earth, or by gabions, or palisades,… mantelets,
or any thing capable of covering soldiers in the place they have gained, and are determined to
keep.’
Mantelet See Blinds.
Mine ‘A subterraneous canal, or passage dug under the wall, or rampart of a fortification, intended
to be blown up by gun-powder.’
Mole ‘A massive work formed of large stones laid in the sea by means of coffer-dams, extended
either in a right line or an arch of a circle, before a port; which it serves to close; to defend the
vessels in it from the impetuosity of the waves, and prevent the passage of ships without leave.’
Orgues ‘Thick long pieces of wood pointed and shod with iron, and hung each by a separate rope
over the gateway of a city, ready on any surprize or attempt of the enemy to be let down to stop
up the gate.’ See above, n. 5 to VI.xxii.
Out-works ‘All those works made without side the ditch of a fortified place, to cover and defend
it.… Out-works, called also advanced and detached works, are those which not only serve to
cover the body of the place, but also to keep the enemy at a distance, and prevent his taking
advantage of the cavities and elevations usually found in the places about the counterscarp.…
Such are, ravelins, tenailles, horn-works.’
Ouvrage de corne See Horn-work.
Paderero (s.v. Pedrero in Chambers) ‘A small piece of ordnance, used on board ships for the
discharging of nails, broken iron, or partridge shot on an enemy attempting to board.’
Palisado (s.v. Palisade in Chambers) ‘An inclosure of stakes, or piles driven into the ground, six or
seven inches square, and eight foot long; three whereof are hid under ground.… Palisades are
used to fortify the avenues of open forts, gorges, half-moons, the bottoms of ditches, the parapets
of covert-ways; and in general all posts liable to surprize, and to which the access is easy.’ See
plate.
Parallels ‘Deep trenches 15 or 18 feet wide, joining the several attacks together; they serve to place
the guard of the trenches in, to be at hand to support the workmen when attacked. There are
generally three in an attack; the first is about 300 toises from the covert-way, the second 160, and
the third near or on the glacis’ (Muller, 227–8).
Parapet ‘A defence or skreen, on the extreme of a rampart, or other work, serving to cover the
soldiers, and the cannon from the enemy’s fire.… Parapets are raised on all works, where it is
necessary to cover the men from the enemy’s fire; both within and without the place, and even
the approaches.… The Parapet of the wall is sometimes of stone.—The Parapet of the trenches
is either made of the earth dug up; or of gabions, fascines, barrels, sacks of earth, or the like.’
Petard ‘A brass pot fixed upon a strong square plank, which has an iron hook to fix it against a gate
or palissades; this pot is filled with powder, which when fired, breaks every thing about it, and
thereby makes an opening for an enemy to enter the place’ (Muller, 228).
Place ‘A general name for kinds of fortresses, where a party may defend themselves.’
Portcullice ‘An assemblage of several great pieces of wood laid or joined across one another, like an
harrow; and each pointed at the bottom with iron.… These formerly used to be hung over the
gate-ways of fortified places, to be ready to let down in case of a surprize, when the enemy
should come so quick, as not to allow time to shut the gates. But now-a-days, the orgues are more
generally used, as being found to answer the purpose better.
Rampart ‘A massy bank, or elevation of earth raised about the body of a place, to cover it from the
great shot; and formed into bastions, curtins, &c.’ See plate, figure r.
Ravelin ‘A detached work, composed only of two faces, which make a salient angle, without any
flanks; and raised before the curtin on the counterscarp of the place.… Its use before a curtin, is
to cover the opposite flanks of the two next bastions. It is used also to cover a bridge or a gate;
and is always placed without the moat. What the engineers call a Ravelin, the soldiers generally
call a demi-lune, or half-moon.’ See plate, figures 5 (top) and i.
Redans (s.v. Redens in Chambers) ‘A kind of work indented in form of the teeth of a saw, with
saliant and re-entering angles; to the end that one part may flank or defend another.’
Redoubt ‘A small square fort, without any defence but in front; used in trenches, lines of
circumvallation, contravallation, and approach; as also for the lodging of corps de garde, and to
defend passages.’ See plate, figure 4 (bottom).
Returning angle (s.v. Angle, Re-entering in Chambers) ‘That whose vertex is turned inwards,
towards the place.’
Salient angle (s.v. Angle, Saillant in Chambers) ‘That which advances its point toward the field.’
Sap ‘A work carried on under ground, to gain the descent of a ditch, counterscarp, or the like.’ See
plate, figure 5 (bottom).
Scarp ‘The interior slope of the ditch of a place; that is, the slope of that side of a ditch which is next
to the place, and faces the campaign.’
Sods See Gazons.
Talus ‘The slope or diminution allowed to [a bastion or rampart]; whether it be of earth, or stone; the
better to support its weight… The exterior Talus of a work, is its slope on the side towards the
country… The interior Talus of a work, is its slope on the inside, towards the place.’
Tenaille ‘A kind of out-work, consisting of two parallel sides, with a front, wherein is a re-entering
angle… In strictness, that angle, and the faces which compose it, are the Tenaille…
‘Double, or flanked Tenaille, is a large out-work consisting of two simple Tenailles, or three
saliant and two re-entering angles…’ See plate, figures 8, 9, e.
Terrace (or Terras) ‘An earth-work usually lined, and breasted with a strong wall, in compliance
with the natural inequality of the ground.’
Toise ‘A French measure, containing six of their feet, or a fathom.’
Traverse ‘A trench with a little parapet, sometimes two, one on each side, to serve as a cover from
the enemy that might come in flank.’
Notes
(New readers are advised that the Notes make
details of the plot explicit.)
These annotations are based on Volume 3 of the Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne:
Tristram Shandy: The Notes, ed. Melvyn New, with Richard A. Davies and W. G. Day (University
Press of Florida, 1984); I gratefully acknowledge their kind permission to use materials in that
volume. Readers interested in further pursuing information in the notes below are advised to consult
the Florida Notes, since many details therein have necessarily been omitted here.
All annotators of Tristram Shandy must also pay homage to Sterne’s first textbook annotator,
James A. Work (Odyssey, 1940). Many of Work’s identifications of historical persons are repeated
verbatim in these notes, as they were in the Florida Notes.
All journals are abbreviated as in the PMLA Bibliography. Classical quotations and translations are
taken from the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press), unless otherwise indicated.
Shakespeare is quoted from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, et al. (Houghton
Mifflin, 1974). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. In quoting Rabelais, Montaigne,
Cervantes, Burton, Chambers and other sources, I have used the translation or edition cited in the
Florida Notes, but have not provided the detailed page references available in that volume.
Sterne’s letters are quoted from the valuable edition of Lewis Perry Curtis (Clarendon Press,
1935). His forty-five sermons are cited by their sequential number in the seven volumes published
between 1760 and 1769; the scholarly edition of the Sermons is the Florida Edition of The Works of
Laurence Sterne, Volumes 4 and 5 (1996).
Assertion that a phrase is ‘proverbial’ is based on its appearance in The Oxford Dictionary of
English Proverbs, 3rd edn., rev. F. P. Wilson (Clarendon Press, 1970) or Morris Palmer Tilley, A
Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (University of
Michigan Press, 1950).
Conjectural alternative readings are indicated by an italicized question mark. Terms of fortification
are defined in the Glossary of Terms of Fortification (pp. 589–95).
Titles often referred to have been given short titles as follows:
ASJ [Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick, ed. Gardner D. Stout,
Jr. (University of California Press, 1967).
Burton Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 5th edn. (Oxford, 1638).
Cash, EMY Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Early and Middle Years (Methuen, 1975).
Cash, LY Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Later Years (Methuen, 1986).
Chambers Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia: or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 5th
edn., 2 vols. (1741, 1743).
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Peter Motteux, rev. John Ozell, 7th edn., 4
vols. (1743).
Montaigne Michel de Montaigne, Essays, trans. Charles Cotton, 5th edn., 3 vols. (1738).
OED Oxford English Dictionary.
Pope John Butt, general ed., The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope (Methuen,
1939–69).
Rabelais The Works of Francis Rabelais, M.D., trans. Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux, with
notes by John Ozell, 5 vols. (1750).
Spectator The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Clarendon Press, 1965).
Tindal Paul Rapin de Thoyras, The History of England, trans. and continued by N. Tindal, 3rd edn.,
4 vols. in 5 (1743–7).
Watt [Sterne], Tristram Shandy, ed. Ian Watt (Riverside Editions, 1965).
Work[Sterne], Tristram Shandy, ed. James A. Work (Odyssey, 1940).
VOLUME I
Motto: From the Enchiridion of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–c.
135): ‘We are tormented with the opinions we have of things, and not by
things themselves.’ Donald Greene offers an alternative translation
important for understanding TS: ‘Not practicalities trouble human beings,
but dogmas concerning them’ (‘Pragmatism versus Dogmatism: The
Ideology of Tristram Shandy’, in Approaches to Teaching ‘Tristram
Shandy’ (Modern Language Association, 1989)).
DEDICATION
3. ill health: Sterne was consumptive and troubled by ill-health during much
of the writing of TS.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
5. Tully, Puffendorff: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), Roman orator and
statesman; Samuel Pufendorf (1632–94), German jurist and philosopher. It
is doubtful that Sterne had specific passages in mind; the names are invoked
as typical legal authorities.
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
1. midwife: Sterne enters the ongoing debate in his age regarding midwives
and male doctors, clearly on the side of the former. See Jean Donnison,
Midwives and Medical Men (Schocken, 1977), and Donna Landry and
Gerald MacLean, ‘Of Forceps, Patents, and Paternity: Tristram Shandy’,
ECS 23 (1990).
4. whim-wham: While the word may denote ‘fantastic notion, odd fancy’
(OED), Sterne found his purport in Ozell’s note to Rabelais, IV.32: ‘whim-
whams, men’s pissing tools’.
7. running horses: Possibly bawdy, since the term was used in the
eighteenth century for a venereal affliction.
8. pallets: Palettes.
CHAPTER VIII
2. fiddler and painter: Sterne was both; he wrote in his ‘Memoirs’ for his
daughter, Lydia, that ‘Books, painting, fiddling, and shooting’ were his
amusements (Sterne’s Memoirs, ed. Kenneth Monkman (The Laurence
Sterne Trust, 1985)). See Cash, EMY, 208–14.
3. pads: Horses.
CHAPTER IX
2. painter’s scale: Sterne’s use in this paragraph of the ‘painter’s scale’, the
invention of Roger de Piles, a seventeenth-century authority on painting,
has been usefully discussed in R. F. Brissenden, ‘Sterne and Painting’, in Of
Books and Humankind, ed. John Butt (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964). De
Piles awards grades (1–20) in several categories to fifty painters, including
an 18 to Raphael for design; Tristram awards himself a 19, although the pun
on design should be noted. An English translation, The Principles of
Painting, appeared in 1743.
3. tout ensemble: In a painting, the ‘harmony which results from the
distribution of the several objects or figures, whereof it is composed’
(Chambers).
4. Mr. Dodsley: Since Robert Dodsley (1703–64) retired from their thriving
publishing firm in March 1759, his brother James (1724–97) is most likely
referred to here. Robert had turned down Sterne’s manuscript in the spring
of 1759, but after Sterne published the first two volumes in York at his own
expense, James bought the copyright for a second edition, as well as for
Volumes III and IV, and two volumes of sermons.
5. CANDID and Miss CUNEGUND's affairs: The hero and heroine of Voltaire’s
Candide, published in January 1759 and translated into English soon
thereafter.
CHAPTER X
3. demi-peak’d: ‘Peak of about half the height of that of the older war-
saddle’ (OED).
9. like wit and judgment: Cf. Tristram’s ‘Author’s Preface’ in III.xx: ‘for
that wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are
two operations differing from each other as wide as east is from west.—So,
says Locke,—so are farting and hickuping, say I.’
10. compose his cough: Tristram and Yorick share with Sterne the common
characteristic of a pulmonary ailment.
CHAPTER XI
14. his gibes and his jests: Cf. Hamlet, V.i.189: ‘Where be your gibes now
… ?’ asks Hamlet of Yorick’s skull.
CHAPTER XII
6. that when … him: Cf. Henry VIII, III.ii.355–8: ‘The third day comes a
frost, a killing frost, / And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely / His
greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, / And then he falls as I do.’ That the
words are spoken by Cardinal Wolsey, an emblem of clerical vicissitudes at
the highest level, provides Sterne with a rich irony in applying them to a
country parson’s disappointments; first noted by Watt (23, n. 5).
Sterne’s narrative of Yorick’s career has usually been considered an idealized autobiographical
account, especially of his poor relationship with his uncle, Jaques Sterne (1695/6–1759), and his
failure to advance in the church. The story of the relationship is told in Cash, EMY, 232–40 and
passim.
7. Sancho Pança: Sterne alludes to Sancho Pança’s reply to the idea of his
wife’s becoming a Queen in Don Quixote, I.I.7. Sterne often referred to his
frustrated ambitions in the church with variants of this passage.
9. faint picture … roar: Cf. Hamlet, V.i.189–91: ‘Where be your gibes now,
your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set
the table on a roar?’
10. Alas, poor YORICK: Hamlet, V.i.184. Sterne’s black page may reflect
an earlier elegiac tradition in which words were printed with white letters
on black paper; Florida Notes gives details of several examples.
CHAPTER XIII
1. rhapsodical work: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘Of a
literary work: Consisting of a medley of narratives, etc.; fragmentary or
disconnected in style.’ Cf. Montaigne, ‘The Ceremony of the Interview of
Princes’, which opens: ‘There is no Subject so frivolous, that does not merit
a Place in this Rhapsody.’
2. out-edge: OED records two examples, this passage and one from ASJ.
CHAPTER XIV
2. from Rome … Loretto: Santa Casa, or the Holy House of Loreto, one of
the most famous shrines of Italy since the fifteenth century, is on the
Adriatic Sea, about 125 miles north-east of Rome.
CHAPTER XV
1. ingress … regress: Legal formula; Sterne uses it again in IV.xxxi – with
bawdy intent, as did many in his age.
CHAPTER XVI
2. From Stilton … Grantham: Two post stages on the road from London to
Edinburgh; Stilton is fifty-nine miles north of London, and Grantham
twenty-eight miles farther north. The Trent crossed the post road at
Newark-on-Trent, ten miles north of Grantham. York is approximately 200
miles north of London, midway to Edinburgh.
3. running divisions: The image is a musical one; OED, s.v. Division: ‘The
execution of a rapid melodic passage, originally conceived as the dividing
of each of a succession of long notes into several short ones … esp. as a
variation on, or accompaniment to, a theme or “plain song”.’ See a similar
usage in III.xi.
CHAPTER XVII
2. ’Tis known … one: Cf. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642): ‘for
obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good’. The sentence has a
proverbial aura, perhaps stretching as far back as Tacitus, Germania.
CHAPTER XVIII
3. March 9, 1759: The first of four specific dates that Tristram provides for
the writing of TS, coinciding with Sterne’s own time of writing; the other
dates are 26 March 1759 (I.xxi); 10 August 1761 (V.xvii); and 12 August
1766 (IX.i).
4. dear Jenny: Cash, EMY, 292, points out that the identification of Jenny
with Catherine Fourmantel, the professional singer with whom Sterne was
having a liaison during the autumn and winter of 1759–60, and who carried
the York edition of Volumes I and II of TS to David Garrick in London, is
unlikely to have been the mistress Sterne writes about in the spring of 1759,
unless she was in York for the 1758–9 season as well – for which only
supposition exists. More likely, he argues, Jenny is ‘not Catherine … but a
vague general figure of the confidante and mistress’. Yorick’s statement in
ASJ perhaps best solves the problem: ‘[I have] been in love with one
princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die,
being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some
interval betwixt one passion and another…’
10. weaker vessels: See 1 Peter 3:7: ‘giving honour unto the wife, as unto
the weaker vessel’.
11. Sir Robert Filmer’s opinion: Although Walter’s remarks are in accord
with the ideas of the English conservative political writer Robert Filmer (d.
1653), as found in Patriarcha, there are no direct borrowings. Wilfred
Watson, ‘The Fifth Commandment: Some Allusions to Sir Robert Filmer’s
Writings in Tristram Shandy’, MLN 62 (1947), makes the point that Sterne
could have known Filmer’s ideas primarily through Locke’s Two Treatises
of Government, or simply because Filmer’s name continued well into the
eighteenth century as representative of ‘antiquated and hobby-horsical
political thinking’ about the divine rights of kings. See V.xxxi–xxxii for
another allusion to Filmer.
12. Te Deum: Te deum laudamus (We praise thee, O God), the title and first
words of a hymn attributed to St Ambrose and sung following a victory;
and also in the Anglican morning service.
13. Surely, Madam … sex: Cf. Jean de la Bruyère, The Characters, or the
Manners of the Age (1699): ‘There may be a Friendship between persons of
different Sexes, which may subsist without Enjoyment; yet a Woman will
always look upon a Man as a Man, and so will a Man still look upon a
Woman as a Woman.’
14. sentimental: More than any other author of the eighteenth century,
Sterne has been credited with the introduction of the word sentimental to
English literary consciousness; see Mullan in Further Reading. While
Sterne’s usage varies, the gist of this passage is captured in a letter he wrote
from France in 1765: ‘I carry on my affairs quite in the French way,
sentimentally—“l’amour” (say they) “n’est rien sans sentiment”—Now
notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no
precise idea annex’d to it…’ In ASJ, Sterne offers a neat turn on his French
motto: ‘Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour’ (Love is nothing
without sentiment. And sentiment is even less without love).
CHAPTER XIX
8. piano: Softness.
11. that NATURE … eloquent: Cf. Antony’s ‘This was the noblest Roman of
them all’ speech, Julius Caesar, V.v.73–5: ‘His life was gentle, and the
elements / So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the
world, “This was a man!”’
12. Cicero … commentator: Sterne’s list includes some standard reading in
rhetorical studies, beginning with the great Roman orators, Cicero (see n. 5
to I.ii) and Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 35–c. 95), author of the Institutio
Oratoria. He then lists some earlier Greek authors, Isocrates (436–338 BC)
and Aristotle (384–322 BC), whose Rhetoric was still standard fare in the
eighteenth century. Longinus is the name Sterne’s age gave to the author of
On the Sublime (first century), a work Sterne returns to several times in TS.
In his ‘Rabelaisian Fragment’, the central character is named Longinus
Rabelaicus – the would-be author of a parodic treatise on writing sermons.
Gerhard Johann Voss (1577–1649), Francis Burgersdyk (1590–1635), Caspar Schoppe (1576–
1649) and Petrus Ramus (1515–72) were continental rhetoricians (the first two were Dutch), while
Thomas Farnaby (c. 1575–1647) and Richard Crakanthorpe (1567–1624) were English. Although
such lists usually import dead learning, these authors were still read in the universities. Dutch
commentator, commonplace for a verbose and weighty scholar.
14. Jesus College: Sterne took his BA degree from Jesus College,
Cambridge, where he was in residence from 1733 to 1737; his MA degree
was awarded in 1740. Sterne’s great-grandfather, Archbishop Richard
Sterne, had been Master of the college during the Civil War. See Cash,
EMY, 41–62.
15. vive la Bagatelle: Long live trifles (foolery). The phrase was closely
associated with Swift, as in Pope’s Imitations of Horace, Ep. I.vi: ‘And
Swift cry wisely, “Vive la Bagatelle!” / The Man that loves and laughs,
must sure do well.’
17. Numps … Nick: OED defines Numps as a ‘silly or stupid person’. The
Devil was referred to as Nick or Old Nick.
1. Pliny: Pliny the Younger (c. 61–c. 112) did say this in his Epistolae, but
he was talking about his uncle, Pliny the Elder (23/24–79), the Roman
naturalist.
CHAPTER XXI
1. I think … sentence: Tristram recalls his uncle later in this chapter, but
does not allow him to finish his sentence until II.vi. The Russian formalist
critic Viktor Shklovsky calls attention to this and similar interruptions in his
famous essay: ‘A Parodying Novel: Sterne’s Tristram Shandy’ (1929)
reprinted in Laurence Sterne, ed. John Traugott (Prentice-Hall, 1968).
5. As war … peace: A song or catch traced as far back as the sixth century.
The full verse has a bearing on TS: ‘War begets Poverty, / Poverty Peace: /
Peace maketh Riches flow, / (Fate ne’er doth cease:) / Riches produceth
Pride, / Pride is War’s ground, / War begets Poverty, &c. / The World goes
round.’
6. the females … all: Cf. Pope, ‘Epistle to a Lady’, lines 1–2: ‘NOTHING so
true as what you once let fall, / “Most Women have no Characters at all.” ’
9. Tacitus: The Roman historian Tacitus (c. 55–c. 117) had a reputation
throughout the eighteenth century for excessive subtlety.
10. modesty of nature: Don Quixote was also distinguished by his extreme
modesty (II.III.44). Wayne Booth (‘Did Sterne Complete Tristram
Shandy?’, MP 48 (1951)) points to this and similar passages in the first four
volumes to argue that Sterne knew the end of his story would come –
whatever else intervened – with the telling of Toby’s amours.
13. Amicus Plato … sister: Plato is my friend, but truth is a greater friend.
The saying may be traced to Plato’s Phaedo or Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics.
15. ’tis only DEATH: The anti-militaristic idea that ‘he who kills one man is
a murderer, while he who kills a thousand is a hero’ seems to have been a
commonplace; the distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murder’ on the basis of
malice is a legal principle.
CHAPTER XXII
1. Bishop Hall: The work so carefully cited has never been located,
although John Beale did publish some works by Joseph Hall (1574–1656),
Bishop, successively, of Exeter and Norwich. Hall was a prolific author and
one of Sterne’s primary sources when composing his sermons. Kenneth
Monkman supplied Florida Notes with the sentence Sterne possibly had in
mind, from Hall’s Meditations and Vowes (1624): ‘It is a vaine-glorious
flatterie for a man to praise himselfe.’
CHAPTER XXIII
5. efficient cause … final cause: Terms from Aristotelian logic, used here
with typical Sternean facetiousness. The ‘efficient cause’ is that which
produces an effect, and the ‘final cause’, the end for which any act is taken;
both terms were subject to endless debate over definition and significance.
6. more: mere ?
7. play the fool … house: Cf. Hamlet, III.i.131–2: ‘Let the doors be shut
upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in ’s own house.’
16. HOBBY-HORSE: Cf. Sterne’s letter of January 1760, defending TS: ‘The
ruleing passion et les egarements du cœur [and the wanderings of the heart],
are the very things which mark, and distinguish a man’s character;—in
which I would as soon leave out a man’s head as his hobby-horse.’ Cf. his
comments in sermon 9, on Herod, concerning the way to understand
character: ‘distinguish … the principal and ruling passion which leads the
character—and separate that, from the other parts of it … [W]e often think
ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all
the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth
but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.’
The classic eighteenth-century statement on the ruling passion is Pope’s in his Essay on Man, II.
Whether Sterne’s hobby-horse and Pope’s ruling passion are the same remains, however, an open
question.
CHAPTER XXIV
1. oss pubis … oss illeum: Cf. Chambers, s.v. Coxæ, coxendicis: ‘In infants,
each of these [hipbones] consists of three distinct bones, separated by
cartilages; which, in adults, grow up, and constitute one firm, solid bone;
whose parts, however, retain three distinct names … viz. the os ilium, …
[the] os coxendicis, and the os pubis.’ Chambers’s anatomical chart makes
clear that the wound site is as close as possible to the groin without a direct
hit.
VOLUME II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
5. ’yclept: I.e. called, named; Sterne’s use of archaisms (see above, ‘eke
[i.e. also] the thimble’) is worth noting.
CHAPTER III
1. feet of the elephant: W. E. Buckley, N&Q 6th ser. 5 (1882), suggests that
the title of Toby’s map was adorned with a cartouche, ‘among the
ornaments of which an elephant was introduced’, a common decoration in
the eighteenth century.
4. assimulation: Cf. pp. 134 and 547 for similar misspelling; Sterne may
have found the error useful, embodying ‘assimilation’ and ‘stimulation’ in
one word.
7. invaded his library: See Don Quixote, I.I.6: ‘There they found above a
hundred large Volumes neatly bound, and a good Number of small ones…’
8. the third year: Sterne’s chronology is confused. Since Toby was wounded
in late July 1695, August 1699 would be the beginning of the fifth year,
unless it took Toby two years to reach London from Namur.
10. latus rectum: Straight line; Sterne found the term in Chambers.
11. mases: I.e. mazes. For an excellent study of mazes and labyrinths in TS,
see Soud in Further Reading.
12. fly … serpent: Ecclesiasticus 21:2: ‘Flee from sin as from the face of a
serpent…’
13. Is it fit … age: Sterne borrows this passage from his ‘Rabelaisian
Fragment’, two chapters of an abortive effort to write a parodic ‘Art of
Sermon-writing’ similar to Pope’s Peri Bathous; see New, ‘Sterne’s
Rabelaisian Fragment: A Text from the Holograph Manuscript’, PMLA 87
(1972). Radical moisture is a medieval medical term for that which
nourishes and preserves the vital flame of life.
CHAPTER IV
1. I Would … groat: Proverbial; the groat was not coined after 1662, but
remained a term for a very small sum.
3. clean shirt: A daily clean shirt was the century’s sign of respectability.
CHAPTER V
1. WHEN a man … discretion: Cf. Swift, A Tale of a Tub, sect. IX: ‘But
when a Man’s Fancy gets astride on his Reason, when Imagination is at
Cuffs with the Senses, and common Understanding, as well as common
Sense, is Kickt out of Doors; the first Proselyte he makes, is Himself…’
(ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith, 2nd edn. (Clarendon Press,
1958)).
9. sit down before: Trim puns on the military usage of sit, meaning ‘to
encamp before a town, etc., in order to besiege it; to begin to a siege’
(OED).
12. something like a tansy: OED cites this passage as its last illustration of
the phrase: ‘properly, fittingly, perfectly’. Tansy is the name of a plant and,
by extension, of a pudding or omelette flavoured with its juice.
15. retina: OED cites this passage as its first illustration of figurative usage.
16. epitasis: Traditional second part of a drama in which the plot or action is
complicated.
CHAPTER VI
2. pudding’s end: Sterne has something more bawdy in mind than the
knotted end of a sausage, i.e. a trifle; the trumpeter’s wife in
‘Slawkenbergius’s Tale’ calls Diego’s nose a ‘pudding’s end’.
5. Poco piu … Poco meno: The little more and the little less. Brissenden,
‘Sterne and Painting’, traces Sterne’s discussion to Hogarth’s The Analysis
of Beauty (1753), where Hogarth alludes to ‘what the Italians call, Il poco
piu (the little more that is expected from the hand of a master)’. ‘The
precise line of beauty’ also alludes to Hogarth, his argument that all beauty
can be associated with the sinuous curvatures (the serpentine line)
represented by a wire twisted round a cone.
Sterne’s inclusion of poco meno, a term not used in art criticism, indicates familiarity with the
origin of both terms in musical notation.
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
1. IT is … bell: Only Chapters vi and vii have occurred since the ringing of
the bell. Toby was interrupted mid-sentence in I.xxi, and is allowed to
conclude his thought with the suggestion to ring the bell only at the
beginning of II.vi; this is the ‘hour and a half ’ of reading to which Sterne
alludes.
2. unity … of time: Watt’s note (79, n. 1) is useful: ‘One of the three neo-
classical dramatic unities, the unity of time required that the events in a play
take no longer than they would in real life. Aristotle, in the Poetics, stated
that the events in a plot should be probable; this may account for Sterne’s
reference to probability.’
3. duration … ideas: Sterne again anticipates his discussion of duration in
III.xviii. The issue is treated in Locke’s Essay in a chapter entitled ‘Of
Duration, and its simple Modes’ (II.14).
CHAPTER IX
1. IMagine … height: See n. 2 to I.xviii. As Cash notes, the real John Burton
appears to have been ‘a tall Well sett’ person, and not a Roman Catholic
(EMY, 180); Sterne’s portrait is imaginary in its most salient details. Cf. the
opening paragraph of The Adventures of Gil Blas, trans. Tobias Smollett:
‘Figure to yourself a little fellow, three feet and a half high, as fat as you
can conceive, with a head sunk deep between his shoulders, and you have
my uncle to the life.’
4. fardel: Cf. Hamlet, III.i.75–6: ‘who would fardels bear, / To grunt and
sweat under a weary life…’ Hamlet is clearly on Sterne’s mind in the next
chapter.
8. imprompt: OED cites this passage as its sole illustration: ‘Not ready or
prepared; unready.’
CHAPTER X
1. unwiped … him: Cf. Hamlet, I.v.74–9: ‘Ghost. Thus was I … / Cut off
even in the blossoms of my sin, / Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d, / No
reck’ning made, but sent to my account / With all my imperfections on my
head.’ The ghost stands ‘motionless and speechless’ in I.i.41–9 and I.iv.38–
57. The clever alteration of ‘disappointed’ to ‘unappointed’ takes into
account that the midwife, not Dr Slop, has the position of trust with regard
to the delivery. Unanealed, i.e. not having received extreme unction.
CHAPTER XI
3. Lucina: Facet of the goddess Juno, that which makes the child see the
light of day; and also, possibly, an allusion to Lucina’s relationship with
Hecate as the author of nightmares (see Schulze in Further Reading).
4. Pilumnus: One of three deities who protected a woman in labour from the
god of uncultivated land, Silvanus.
5. thy tire-tête … thee: Sterne’s ‘salvation and deliverance’ are ironic, since
the primary function of the tire-tête (head-puller) and the crotchet (little
hook) was to extract a foetus by crushing or attaching its skull. Burton was
very proud of his newly invented forceps, but others deemed it unworkable
and dangerous. See Cash, ‘Birth’, in Further Reading. The ‘squirt’ is not a
real instrument, but alludes to the ‘petite canulle’ of the Sorbonne doctors,
and hence is a means of ‘salvation’ only from the Roman Catholic
viewpoint.
6. bays: Baize.
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XV
1. the next Halberd: Reading and writing were required for advancement in
the military, in this instance, promotion to sergeant, denoted by the
‘Halberd’.
CHAPTER XVII
5. old house over his head: Proverbial for getting into trouble.
7. I never … before: Sterne makes a rare slip here, since Trim tells Toby the
entire story in 1713 (IX.iv–vii), five years before this scene.
9. plann’d: placed ?
10. Now … good also: This paragraph owes much – as does the entire
sermon – to Swift’s sermon on the same subject; see Prose Works
(Blackwell, 1939–68), Vol. 9; both authors echo 1 John 3:20–22.
16. Shall not … before me: Sterne alludes to the parable of the Pharisee and
the publican, Luke 18:10–12.
20. the heart … things: Jeremiah 17:9; Sterne alludes to this text in several
sermons, including 4, ‘Self knowledge’, an early version of ‘Abuses of
conscience’.
28. Corps de Garde: Sentry duty and those who comprise the detail, usually
under a corporal’s command.
30. two tables: The stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were
inscribed; the two tables refer to the division of the decalogue into religious
and moral duties. See Exodus 32:15ff.
31. I said … life: Cf. Swift, ‘On the testimony of conscience’ for the
substance of this entire discussion; however, where Swift uses a tradesman
and lawyer for his examples, Sterne, considering his audience, substitutes a
banker and a physician.
44. Yorick’s ghost … walks: Cf. Hamlet, I.v.9–10: ‘Ghost. I am thy father’s
spirit, / Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night.’
45. sample of his sermons: In May 1760, Sterne published two volumes of
previously written sermons with the title Sermons of Mr. Yorick. In the
preface he wrote: ‘The sermon which gave rise to the publication of these,
having been offer’d to the world as a sermon of Yorick’s, I hope the most
serious reader will find nothing to offend him, in my continuing these two
volumes under the same title: lest it should be otherwise, I have added a
second title page with the real name of the author…’ Despite the ploy of
two title-pages, some were appalled, including the Monthly Review 22 (May
1760): ‘we consider [this] the greatest outrage against Sense and Decency,
that has been offered since the first establishment of Christianity…’ In
general, however, the reception was favourable, and the two volumes were
reprinted seven times before Sterne’s death in 1768.
CHAPTER XVIII
1. en Soveraines: As sovereigns.
CHAPTER XIX
4. in infinitum: To infinity.
9. our poverty … consent: Cf. Romeo and Juliet, V.i.75: ‘My poverty, but
not my will, consents.’
11. Now, as … place: Walter rushes in where Locke, refusing to explore the
why of uneven capacities, feared to tread (Essay, IV.20.5). René Descartes
(1596–1650) was bolder, although Sterne’s learning here is derived from
Chambers, not Descartes; see B. L. Greenberg, ‘Laurence Sterne and
Chambers’ Cyclopædia’, MLN 69 (1954). Under Soul, Sterne discovered
Descartes and the pineal gland; under Pineal gland, he was led to
Conarium, and the definition ‘a small gland, about the bigness of a pea’;
thence to Brain, where experiments are recounted of pigeons and dogs
surviving after the cerebellum was removed. Returning to Soul, he read
about ‘Borri, a milanese physician, in a letter to Bartholine, [who] asserts,
that in the brain is found a certain, very subtile, fragrant juice, which is the
principal seat or residence of the reasonable soul…’ The tradition in which
this discourse of mock learning thrives (see the important essay by
Jefferson in Further Reading) is made clear when one notes that Martinus
Scriblerus (Memoirs, ch. 12) makes a similar attempt to locate the soul –
and also reaches Descartes’s conclusion.
12. battle of Landen: 29 July 1693; Trim receives his wound during the
retreat (VIII.xix).
13. If death … Q. E. D.: Chambers, s.v. Death, has a similar definition.
Q.E.D.: Quod erat demonstrandum (which was to be proved), usually
reserved for mathematical theorems.
16. Animus … Anima: Philosophy and theology had long considered the
possibility of two souls, in order to explain the difference between ‘life’ or
‘soul’ (anima) and ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ (animus).
18. seven senses: ‘Speech’ and ‘understanding’ are most often listed (cf.
Ecclesiasticus 17:5) as the additional ‘senses’.
19. Causa sine quâ non: Indispensable cause or condition, a cause without
which a certain effect is impossible.
21. 470 pounds: Sterne’s figure is a gross exaggeration, the force being
between 32 and 50 pounds.
22. piece of dough: The metaphor is perhaps derived from Burton, Letter,
who writes of the head’s assuming the shape of a ‘Sugar Loaf, nine and
forty Times in fifty’; it may, however, be a commonplace.
26. Cæsarian section: Sterne returns to Chambers for the substance of his
discussion, including the anatomical terms epigastrium (the part of the
abdomen lying over the stomach) and matrix (uterus or womb), and the
allusions to Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius and Edward VI.
‘Manlius Torquatus’ (consul in the third century BC) is Sterne’s ‘learned’
error, caused by Chambers’s misspelling; the proper citation would have
been to Manilius Manius, who invaded Carthage in 149 BC, as noted by
Work (152, n. 10). Mrs Shandy has every right to pale at Walter’s
suggestion: the first recorded successful caesarean operation in England
(i.e. the mother surviving) occurred in 1793. Before then it was associated
with Roman Catholicism’s interest in saving the unbaptized child rather
than the already baptized mother.
Sterne’s addition of Hermes Trismegistus to Chambers’s list seems unjustified, except for
foreshadowing the christening scene (IV.xiv).
27. oss coxcygis: Sterne’s unorthodox spelling for coccygis, the four bones
at the end of the spinal column. Note that Volume I ends with an attempt to
locate Toby’s wound between the os pubis and the coxendix, and Volume II
with a similar anatomical survey of the female, the pudendum being
between the os pubis in front and the os coccygis behind.
28. sage Alquife … truth: Sterne borrows from a footnote to Don Quixote,
I.I.5; Don Belianis of Greece, sixteenth-century Spanish romance, still
popular in Sterne’s day.
VOLUME III
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
2. Reynolds: Sterne sat for Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) in March and
April 1760, one sign of his celebrity status following the publication of
Volumes I and II of TS (for details of his London stay, see Cash, LY, ch. 1).
The result is one of Reynolds’s best portraits. Sterne’s compliment to him is
implied by ‘great and gracefully’, since these qualities were thought to be
rarely combined modes of excellence.
CHAPTER III
1. zig-zaggery: Zigzag is an approach towards a besieged place in short
turns or ‘zigzags’, so as not to be enfiladed by the defenders.
CHAPTER IV
1. gum-taffeta: Taffeta stiffened with gum was known quickly to wear out;
hence the expression ‘to fret like gum-taffeta’ became proverbial.
3. nine months together: I.e. since the publication of Volumes I and II;
Sterne may be referring to reviewers (see next note) or bothersome
imitators, of which there were many.
4. monthly Reviewers: The Monthly Review and the Critical Review were
favourably inclined towards the first volumes of TS, but when Sterne
published his sermons under the name Mr. Yorick (in May 1760), some
reconsideration occurred (see n. 45 to II.xvii). Alan B. Howes, Sterne: The
Critical Heritage (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), is an excellent source-
book for early responses to TS.
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
2. patriots: The word had negative connotations from the mid 1740s, as
noted in Johnson’s Dictionary: ‘a factious disturber of the government’. Cf.
V.ii, where Walter instructs Obadiah to saddle ‘PATRIOT’, and is informed
that ‘PATRIOT is sold.’
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
3. implication: Sterne puns on the Latin implico: ‘to enfold, embrace, join’,
with the idea of intimacy.
6. cut my thumb: Cf. Swift, Polite Conversation, ed. Eric Partridge (Oxford
University Press, 1963): ‘Col. Ods so, I have cut my Thumb with this
cursed Knife. Lady Answ. Ay, that was your Mother’s Fault; because she
only warned you not to cut your Fingers. Lady Sm. No, no; ’tis only Fools
cut their Fingers, but Wise Folks cut their Thumbs.’ Partridge comments on
the proverbial thrust of this: ‘the follies of the wise are prodigious’. John
Burton’s forceps required expert use of the thumb to keep the blades
properly separated.
CHAPTER XI
1. vel os: Standard rubric allowing the Bishop to adapt the curse to the
singular or (vel) plural. ‘N.N.’ abbreviates Nomen, Nomina (i.e. name,
names); Slop supplies Obadiah’s name.
Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), Roman scholar; Sterne cites him (III.iv) in his list of Stoics
borrowed from Chambers.
7. Cid Hamet: Cid Hamet Benengeli, the reputed chronicler of many of Don
Quixote’s adventures, swears that ‘by Mahomet, he would have given the
best Coat of two that he had…’ (II.III.48). Sterne forgets that Tristram is
not a parson.
CHAPTER XII
2. Garrick: David Garrick (1717–79), the greatest actor of the century, with
whom Sterne struck up an immediate acquaintance when he came to
London in the winter of 1760, having previously sent copies of TS to him
by means of Catherine Fourmantel (see n. 4 to I.xviii); see Cash, EMY,
294–6 and LY, 47–52. Sterne refers to Garrick again in TS (pp. 188, 251,
411), always with a compliment. Here he parodies contemporary criticisms
of Garrick, e.g. Thomas Fitzpatrick’s in An Enquiry into the Real Merit of a
Certain Popular Performer (1760): ‘it was agreed that we should go to …
Hamlet this evening, and each man, furnished with a printed play and a
pencil, mark such improprieties, in respect of speaking, as Mr. G------ might
possibly fall into’; twenty faults are then listed.
3. new book: I.e. TS, though the most famous such statement would be
made by Samuel Johnson fifteen years later: ‘Nothing odd will do long.
“Tristram Shandy” did not last.’
8. I would … wherefore: Cf. Idler 76: ‘for these rules being always
uppermost … instead of giving up the reins of their imagination into their
author’s hands, their frigid minds are employed in examining whether the
performance be according to the rules of art’.
9. Great Apollo: In his role as the god of learning, poetry and music, as
opposed to Mercury, the god of science and commerce. Sterne later calls
Reynolds ‘that son of Apollo’ (VII.ix).
12. Justinian … digest: Sterne’s learning is from Chambers, s.v. Civil Law:
‘Lastly, Justinian [c. 482–565], finding the authority of the Roman law
almost abolished in the west, by the declension of the empire; resolved to
make a general collection, of the whole Roman jurisprudence; and
committed the care thereof to his chancellor Tribonianus [d. c. 542] … See
DIGEST, and CODE … The same year he published an abridgment thereof …
under the title of institutes. See INSTITUTES.’ The resultant Corpus Juris
Civilis is the basis of western jurisprudence. Digests and institutes of all
knowledge were a favourite target for the Scriblerians.
CHAPTER XIII
1. julap: I.e. julep, a medicinal drink, usually the base for other medicines.
2. reduction … year Ten: Not in 1710, but in December 1708; Sterne dates
it correctly in VI.xxiii. A mutiny over bread took place at Ghent in 1712.
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
1. pantoufles: Slippers.
3. rapid succession: Locke never quite ties the length of duration to the
speed of the succession of ideas, but the notion had become a
commonplace; see Essay, II.14.3–4.
4. the ideas … us: The ideas that do not concern Toby are precisely those of
most interest to Locke.
7. ’Tis owing … all: Cf. Locke, II.14.19. The parenthetical comment may
glance at a phenomenon reported in The Clockmakers Outcry, one of many
imitations of TS to appear in 1760, namely, that the enquiry ‘Sir, will you
have your clock wound-up?’ had become popular among street walkers;
hence Walter’s (or Sterne’s) comment. Or perhaps Walter is simply
lamenting the association established in I.i.
8. regular … candle: Cf. Essay, II.14.9: ‘[is it] not probable that our Ideas
do, whilst we are awake, succeed one another in our Minds at certain
distances, not much unlike the Images in the inside of a Lanthorn, turned
round by the Heat of a Candle’.
9. smoak-jack: OED credits Sterne with a new, figurative meaning for this
word, ‘The head, as the seat of confused ideas.’ The jack was used to turn a
roasting-spit by means of the hot air rising from the fire.
CHAPTER XIX
1. Lucian … Cervantes: Cf. Fielding, Tom Jones, XIII.1: ‘Come thou, that
hast inspired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, thy Cervantes, thy Rabelais…’
These are the writers one would traditionally summon as Muses for a work
of comedy or satire. Lucian of Samosata (c. 120–after 180), the model for
much subsequent prose satire, especially the dialogue and the fantastic
voyage.
CHAPTER XX
4. Phutatorius: Copulator; he will receive the hot chestnut in his lap at the
Visitation dinner, IV.xxvii.
7. opacular: OED cites this passage as its sole illustration; Sterne seems to
mean ‘opaque’.
10. several receptacles … out: Cf. Rabelais, III.31: ‘the more promptly,
dexterously, and copiously to suppeditate, furnish, and supply him with
store of spirits, sufficient to replenish, and fill up the ventricles, seats,
tunnels, mansions, receptacles, and celluls of the common sense…’ Here,
and in what follows, Sterne has in view Rabelais’s description of the
glorious world that will ensue when all men are lenders (see III.3–4).
11. satire and sarcasm: In sermon 18, ‘The Levite and his concubine’,
Sterne offers some strictures on men of ‘wit and parts’ who make ‘shrewd
and sarcastick reflections upon whatever is done in the world … [I]t has
helped to give wit a bad name, as if the main essence of it was satire:
certainly there is a difference between Bitterness and Saltness,—that is,
——between the malignity and the festivity of wit,––—the one is a mere
quickness of apprehension, void of humanity,––and is a talent of the devil;
the other comes down from the Father of Spirits, so pure and abstracted
from persons, that willingly it hurts no man…’
13. compass of his cave: Thomas Salmon, Modern History, 3rd edn. (1744),
points out that winters in the north are nine months long and that in Nova
Zembla (Arctic islands off the coast of eastern Russia), the inhabitants must
‘escape to some cave and shelter themselves’ if they are to survive them.
14. where the spirits … itself: Another glance at the theory that climate and
national character are linked; see I.xxi.
15. Angels … defend us: Hamlet, I.iv.39; ‘plentiful a lack of wit’ is also
from Hamlet, II.ii.199.
17. Norway … Tartary: Sterne almost certainly traced this voyage on a map.
From Russia’s Novaya Zemlya islands (Nova Zembla), between the Kara
and Barents Seas, he moves south-west across the northernmost regions of
Scandinavia and Finland (North Lapland); reaching Norway, he turns
nearly 180 degrees and moves east, crossing Sweden through the northern
district of Angermania to the Gulf of Bothnia, between Sweden and
Finland, and then enters Russia just north of the Gulf of Finland, at the
easternmost point of which is St Petersburg. Carelia is the area north of St
Petersburg, Ingria the area south. Sterne then continues eastward in Russia.
18. luxuriant island: An earlier statement of these commonplaces – that
climate and national character are interrelated, and that England’s
changeable weather produces eccentric characters – is found in William
Temple’s essay ‘Of Poetry’, quoted at length in the Florida Notes.
19. height … necessities: Cf. Swift, A Tale of a Tub, sect. IX: ‘For, what
Man in the natural State, or Course of Thinking, did ever conceive it in his
Power, to reduce the Notions of all Mankind, exactly to the same Length,
and Breadth, and Height of his own?’ The sufficiency of our faculties to our
needs is discussed by Locke, Essay, II.23.12, a section Pope paraphrases in
his Essay on Man, I.193–206. See also Locke, IV.14.2.
22. How d’ye: Earlier in the century servants called on their master’s or
mistress’s acquaintances to ask, with their compliments, ‘How do ye?’ –
equivalent to leaving a card.
23. I tremble … kennels: Cf. Swift, A Tale of a Tub, sect. XI: ‘HE would
shut his Eyes as he walked along the Streets, and if he happened to bounce
his Head against a Post, or fall into the Kennel (as he seldom missed either
to do one or both)…’ The serious side of both passages is suggested by
scriptural echoes (Isaiah 59:9–10, Job 5:14, Luke 6:39, John 3:19–20)
amidst the comedy. Stinks: sinks ? Kennels = gutters.
25. like hogs: Cf. Pope, Dunciad (B), IV.525: ‘The vulgar herd turn off to
roll with Hogs.’
26. In this … one: A typical witticism at the expense of doctors, found in
Swift, Pope and Fielding, but perhaps most succinctly in Sancho Pança’s
proverb, ‘A Doctor gives his Advice by the Pulse of your Pocket.’
Aesculapius was for both Greeks and Romans the god of medicine.
27. coalition of the gown: I.e. the legal profession; hence the ‘spacious
HALL’ = Westminster Hall.
28. John o’Nokes … Tom o’Stiles: Fictitious names for parties in a legal
action.
30. contrist: Make sad: Sterne may have found this rare word in Rabelais;
cf. Tristram.
31. for what … chair: Copied verbatim from Rabelais, III.16. Sterne adds
the ‘cane chair’ from which he creates his argument; mittain = mitten.
33. sow with one ear: Sterne conflates three proverbial expressions: ‘You
cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’; ‘To have the sow by the right
[or wrong] ear’; and ‘To take the right [or wrong] sow by the ear.’
34. good fame or feeding: In his January 1760 letter defending TS, Sterne
argues that he ‘wrote not [to] be fed, but to be famous’, inverting Colley
Cibber’s ‘I wrote more to be Fed than be Famous’ (A Letter from Mr.
Cibber to Mr. Pope (1742)).
35. thousand vulgar errors: Thomas Browne, in his preface to the best
known collection of vulgar (common) errors, Pseudodoxia Epidemica
(1646), cites numerous forerunners in the tradition, but perhaps the most
famous is Burton’s Anatomy. Locke defines himself in his Essay as
‘employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little, and removing
some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge…’
CHAPTER XXI
3. pouring in oyl: Cf. the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:33–4).
CHAPTER XXII
2. jack-boots: Riding boots of the gentry and the military, and a likely
allusion to Lord Bute, who was already beginning his rapid rise to power as
George III’s most trusted minister; John Bute was easily corrupted into Jack
Boot, his iconographic as well as cognomenal representation in political
prints and pamphlets.
3. cut off the entail: Legal expression meaning to put an end to the
limitation of an inheritance to a particular line of heirs; one rightly suspects
a bawdy play. A perpetuity in law is considered odious because it prevents
the circulation of property and wealth; cf. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Ep.
II.ii.246–7: ‘The Laws of God, as well as of the Land, / Abhor, a Perpetuity
should stand.’
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
5. vis a vis: Light carriage for two persons sitting face to face (correctly: vis
à vis). Madame de Pompadour (1721–64), mistress of Louis XV.
7. soss: OED cites this passage as its sole illustration of usage as an adverb:
‘with a heavy fall or dull thud’. Now considered dialect.
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXXI
1. the word Nose: That ‘nose’ does not simply mean ‘nose’ is obvious, but
in addition to its phallic implications, there is a classical tradition wherein
the length of one’s nose is equated to the extent of one’s wit. Of his ‘chapter
of noses’ Sterne wrote to a friend in late 1760: ‘I am not much in pain upon
what gives my kind friends … so much on the chapter of Noses—because,
as the principal satire throughout that part is levelled at those learned
blockheads who, in all ages, have wasted their time and much learning upon
points as foolish—it shifts off the idea of what you fear [excessive
bawdiness?], to another point.’
CHAPTER XXXII
1. saving the mark: Proverbial, from ‘God save the mark’; used by way of
apology when something obscene or horrible has been mentioned.
6. turn’d up trumps: From whist, where the final card dealt is turned up to
establish the trump suit. Clubs were considered unlucky.
CHAPTER XXXIV
1. ex confesso: Confessedly.
6. wafted: The first edition’s ‘wasted’ makes no sense in context and has
been emended.
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
1. celebrated dialogue: ‘De Captandis Sacerdotiis’ (‘Of Benefice-Hunters’)
from the Colloquia Familiaria of Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), author
of Praise of Folly (1509), a work comparable to TS in significant ways.
3. ab urb. con.: Events in Roman history were dated ‘from the founding of
the city’ (ab urbe condita) of Rome in 753 BC. The second Punic War began
in 218 BC, or 535 ab urb. con.
4. reader! read: Cf. p. 254, where we are told to read Longinus with similar
insistence; the parallel is interesting in view of the main character, Longinus
Rabelaicus, in Sterne’s ‘Rabelaisian Fragment’.
6. penetrate the moral: Cf. Political Romance, where Sterne talks about the
meanings found under the ‘dark Veil of its Allegory, [as many] as ever were
discovered in … Gargantua and Pantagruel.’ He is recalling Motteux’s
preface: ‘THE ingenious of our age … have been extreamly desirous of
discovering the truths which are hid under the dark veil of allegories in that
incomparable work.’
CHAPTER XXXVII
1. “NIHIL me … fail: Sterne quotes from Erasmus’s dialogue between
Pamphagus and Cocles and translates (loosely) as he goes. The line on
which Walter sets to work is ‘Conducet excitando foculo, si desuerit follis’
(If you haven’t a bellows, it [a nose] will serve to stir the fire). Work (229,
n. 3) suggests that Walter’s emendation of focum to either ficum (fig) or
locum (place) would provide additional bawdiness, both words having
sexual connotations.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
6. Crim Tartary: Cf. Chambers, s.v. Nose: ‘The Crim-Tartars break the
noses of their children while young, as thinking it a great piece of folly to
have their noses stand before their eyes.’ This perhaps explains why the
hero of ‘Slawkenbergius’s Tale’ will return to ‘Crim-Tartary’ (Crimea) after
his journey to Frankfort.
7. bating … heaven: A commonplace observation of travellers to Turkey
was the reverence given to fools and madmen as inspired by God.
8. Ambrose Paræus: Paré served several kings, but not Francis IX – who
never existed. He attributed to Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545–99) an operation
for the restoration of the nose (its loss usually the effect of the mercury used
to treat venereal disease) by grafting skin from the arm. Although
Tagliacozzi responded on several occasions that the procedure was not his,
the eighteenth century, on the basis of Paré’s testimony, made Tagliacozzi a
subject of ridicule, as in Butler’s Hudibras and Tatler 260. That Sterne
knew Paré was in error indicates he read more deeply on this issue than was
his usual practice.
9. efficient cause: Sterne elaborates on Friar John’s explanation for his long
nose (Rabelais, I.40): ‘according to the true monastical philosophy, it is
because my nurse had soft teats, by virtue whereof, whilst she gave me
suck, my nose did sink in, as in so much butter’. It is to this passage that
Ozell adds the footnotes quoted above.
12. refocillated: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘to revive,
refresh, reanimate, comfort’.
14. crucifix’d: OED’s last illustration is dated 1635; Sterne uses the far
more common crucified in IX.xxxii.
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
1. contrited and attrited: OED cites this passage as its last example of
contrited (crushed, ground to pieces); and its first example of attrited (worn
down by continued friction).
VOLUME IV
SLAWKENBERGIUS’S TALE
5. Rem penitus explorabo: The bawdiness of ‘I’ll know the bottom of it’ is
abetted by the association of penitus (as an adverb) with penis, and the
usual play on rem, i.e. thing.
7. saint Nicolas: Patron saint of Russia and of children, sailors and, more
generally, travellers.
10. Minime tangetur: ‘It never shall be touched’ is too strong; more
accurately: ‘It shall be touched as little as possible.’
11. turpentine: Sterne was probably aware that the turpentine of Strasbourg
was the most commonly used in England; and perhaps, also, that turpentine
was used for clearing blocked urinary passages.
14. placket holes: Openings in the outer skirt, giving access to the pocket
within; obscene connotations adhered to them from the beginning of the
seventeenth century.
15. third … Francis: Lay order of men and women, the first and second
orders being fully professed men and women. It was founded by St Francis
in 1221.
22. nuns of saint Ursula: Either the Ursulines, founded at Brescia in 1535,
or the Society of the Sisters of St Ursula of the Blessed Virgin, founded in
1606. Ursula was accompanied in martyrdom by 11,000 other virgins.
25. butter’d buns: Cant expression for a woman who has intercourse with
several men in quick succession, or, more simply, a whore.
29. It was … time: Chambers notes that the foetus is first ‘head upwards’
but after eight months, as the head becomes heavier than the body, it
‘tumbles in the liquor which contains it’, and turns head downwards;
Sterne’s ‘statical’ seems a foreshortening of hydrostatical, alluding to the
pressures of this ‘liquor’ or fluid.
30. stamina: Cf. Chambers: ‘those simple, original parts, which existed first
in the embryo, or even in the seed…’ In the following discussion about
sanguification, Sterne again seems to gather his ‘learning’ from Chambers.
37. Martin Luther’s damnation: Sterne found the entire debate, as well as a
suggestion for connecting it to Strasbourg, in Pierre Bayle, Dictionary, 5
vols. (1734–8), s.v. Luther (first noted by Work, 261; see n. *). Bayle
annotates his sentence ‘[They] have even falsified the day of his birth, in
order to frame a scheme of his nativity to his disadvantage’ with his
customary elaborateness:
Martin Luther was born the tenth of November, betwixt eleven and twelve of the clock
at night, at Isleben [a note informs us that Isleben is in the county of Mansfeld] … [His
mother] being examined … concerning the year she was brought to bed … answered …
she only knew the day and the hour. It is therefore out of pure malice, that Florimond de
Remond places his birth on the twenty second of October. He thought thereby to
confirm the astrological predictions of Junctinus … This Astrologer was strongly
confuted by a professor of Strasburg, who shewed, that, by the rules of Astrology,
Luther was to be a great man.
Bayle traces the debate at length, and Sterne copies his discussion,
including the Latin note and its wonderful error ‘religiosissimus’ for
‘irreligiosissimus’, the Catholic astrologer being said to have found Luther
dying wholly religious, a slip Sterne may have wanted to retain, assuming
he noticed it. Bayle translates himself: ‘This is strange, indeed terrible, five
planets being in conjunction in Scorpio, in the ninth house which the
Arabians allotted to religion, made [Luther] a sacrilegious Heretic, a most
bitter and most prophane enemy to the Christian faith. It appears from the
horoscope directed to the conjunction of Mars, that he died without any
sense of religion, his soul steeped in guilt sailed to hell, there to be lashed
with the fiery whips of Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megera thro’ endless ages.’
Lucas Gauricus (1476–1558), Bishop of Civitate and noted astrologer;
Sterne’s reference to his Astrological Treatise on the Past Accidents of
Many Men, by Means of an Examination of their Nativities (1552) was
taken from Bayle’s margin. Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera, the Greek
Erinyes (Roman Furies) responsible for avenging crimes, here and
hereafter.
39. doubled the cape: Partridge, Dictionary, s.v. Double Cape Horn: ‘To be
made a cuckold.’
40. distribute their types: Technical printing term: ‘To remove (type that has
been “composed” or set up) from the forme, and return each letter into its
proper box or compartment in the case’ (OED).
43. He can make two and two five: The first and second editions read
‘cannot’, but it seems evident that the ‘Popish’ position is the ‘Nosarian’
position (‘God’s power is infinite’) as opposed to the ‘Lutheran’ or
‘Antinosarian’ position (‘It extends only to all possible things’). Descartes
is commonly associated with the specific assertion that God can make two
and two five.
47. beguines: Sisterhood founded in the twelfth century. The members were
free to quit the cloister and to marry. They flourished in much of western
Europe, so there is little validity to Toby’s claim (VIII.xx) that they were
found only in the Spanish Netherlands and Amsterdam. Trim falls in love
with a beguine, VIII.xx–xxii.
49. rest and quietness: Not in Aristotle’s Poetics but part of the received
commentary.
50. Valadolid: Cf. Cervantes, I.IV.2: ‘for I have known several Men in my
Time go by the Names of the Places where they were born, as [e.g.] …
Diego de Valladolid.’
51. dying un——: Florida Notes suggests ‘undone’ (see IX.xxviii) rather
than ‘unconvinced’, but New, ‘Swift and Sterne’ (see Further Reading),
argues the relevance of ‘conviction’ to the ‘Tale’.
52. eased his mind: Partridge, Dictionary, suggests easing oneself was used
euphemistically for ejaculation; the more usual suggestion of defecation
(urination) might also be in play.
53. As this … tale: Sterne is accurate in saying the fall of Strasbourg was
often spoken of––always with awe over Louis XIV’s treachery and scorn
for Strasbourg’s pride and unpreparedness; see, e.g., Gilbert Burnet, Some
Letters Containing an Account of … Travelling through Switzerland, Italy,
Some Parts of Germany, 2nd edn. (Rotterdam, 1687):
One seeth, in the ruin of this City, what a mischievous thing the popular pride of a free
City is: they fancied they were able to defend themselves, and so they refused to let an
Imperial Garrison come within their Town … [T]he Town thought this was a
Diminution of their Freedom, and so chose rather to pay a Garrison of three thousand
Souldiers, which … ex[h]austed their Revenue, and brought them under great Taxes …
The Town begins to sink in its Trade, notwithstanding the great circulation of Money …
for it is impossible for a Place of Trade, that is to have alwayes eight or ten thousand
Souldiers in it, to continue long in a Flourishing State.
54. Universal Monarchy: The term was often used in relation to Louis XIV,
but not ‘every body’ attributed the scheme to Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–
83), his finance minister.
CHAPTER I
1. pupilability: OED cites this passage as its sole example and notes the pun
on the pupils of the eyes.
2. not worth stooping for: Cf. Twelfth Night, II.ii.14–15, where Malvolio
tosses Olivia’s ring at Viola’s feet: ‘If it be worth stooping for, there it
lies…’
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER VI
1. Attitudes … all: Sterne perhaps borrows his idea from Charles Avison,
An Essay on Musical Expression, 2nd edn. (1753): ‘As the proper Mixture
of Light and Shade … is, indeed, essential to the Composition of a good
Picture; so the judicious Mixture of Concords and Discords is equally
essential to a musical Composition … [T]he Preparations and Resolutions
of Discords, resemble the soft Gradations from Light to Shade, or from
Shade to Light in Painting.’
CHAPTER VII
4. cutting the knot: Behind Sterne’s metaphor is the proverbial cutting of the
Gordian knot. In sermon 45, ‘The ingratitude of Israel’, Sterne condemns
those who believe it ‘idle to bring in the Deity to untie the knot, when [the
causes of earthquakes] can be resolved easily into natural causes’: ‘Vain
unthinking mortals!—As if natural causes were any thing else in the hands
of God,—but instruments which he can turn to work the purposes of his
will…’ Sterne’s glances at his sermons in these chapters are noteworthy.
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER X
2. fifty other cold conceits: Cf. IX.xiii, where Tristram writes of ‘a cold
unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing’; and ASJ: ‘I confess I do hate all
cold conceptions, as I do the puny ideas which engender them…’
3. you must read Longinus: Sterne alludes to the discussion of bombast and
puerilities in sect. III of On the Sublime, and specifically to a note in the
English translation by William Smith (1739) to Longinus’s mention of a
writer of ‘empty simple Froth’. To exemplify this ‘frigid’ writing, the note
offers his explanation of why Diana’s temple at Ephesus burned to ashes the
night Alexander the Great was born: the goddess, he wrote, was too busy
assisting the midwife and ‘had no leisure to extinguish the Flames’. The
sentence became a commonplace in discussions of bad writing. In sermon
42, ‘Search the Scriptures’, Sterne calls Longinus ‘the best critic the eastern
world ever produced’. See Lamb, Sterne’s Fiction, in Further Reading.
CHAPTER XII
1. Job’s stock of asses: Job begins with 500 she-asses, doubled to 1,000 at
the end of his sufferings.
CHAPTER XIII
2. day-tall: I.e. day-taler, ‘a worker engaged and paid by the day’ (OED).
CHAPTER XV
3. God’s blessing … cloak: Cf. Don Quixote, II.III.68: ‘Now Blessings light
on him that first invented this same Sleep: It covers a Man all over,
Thoughts and all, like a Cloak…’
CHAPTER XVII
1. riddles and mysteries: Cf. p. 569: ‘We live in a world beset on all sides
with mysteries and riddles…’ Sterne’s wording for this passage has roots in
two sermons, 44, ‘The ways of Providence justified to man’: ‘Nay, have not
the most obvious things that come in our way dark sides, which the quickest
sight cannot penetrate into; and do not the clearest and most exalted
understandings find themselves puzzled, and at a loss, in every particle of
matter?’; and 19, ‘Felix’s behaviour towards Paul’: ‘That in many dark and
abstracted questions of mere speculation, we should err——is not strange:
we live amongst mysteries and riddles, and almost every thing which comes
in our way, in one light or other, may be said to baffle our understandings.’
The source for both passages is Norris, Practical Discourses … Volume Two (1691): ‘We live
among Mysteries and Riddles, and there is not one thing that comes in at our Senses, but what baffles
our Understandings; but though (as the Wise Man [Wisdom 9:16] complains,) hardly do we guess
aright at the things that are upon Earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us…’
Behind Norris and Sterne is Locke, Essay, IV.3.22: ‘He that knows anything, knows this in the first
place, that he need not seek long for Instances of his Ignorance. The meanest, and most obvious
Things that come in our way, have dark sides, that the quickest Sight cannot penetrate into. The
clearest, and most enlarged Understandings of thinking Men find themselves puzzled, and at a loss,
in every Particle of Matter.’
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
3. book of embryotic evils: OED cites this passage for its first recorded
usage and refers to embryonic, 2 fig.: ‘Immature, undeveloped.’ The
context, however, points to embryonic, 1: ‘Pertaining to … an embryo.’
4. radical heat: Chambers, s.v. Flame (vital), defines ‘radical heat’ as the
‘fine, warm, ignious substance, supposed … to reside in the hearts of
animals, as necessary to life, or rather, as that which constitutes life itself’.
For ‘radical moisture’ see n. 13 to II.iii.
7. There she gave vent: Sterne perhaps plays on vent; cf. p. 295, where the
mother is referred to in legal parlance as the venter.
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
4. pulling up his breeches: Louis XIV was infamous for conducting state
business while sitting at stool.
CHAPTER XXII
1. disport: OED cites this passage as its sole illustration: ‘bearing, carriage,
deportment’.
CHAPTER XXIII
1. these great dinners: On the institution of the visitation dinner, see Cash,
EMY, 128–32. Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, letter 58, describes it thus:
‘it was formerly the custom here for the … [bishops] to go about the
country once a year, and examine upon the spot whether those of
subordinate orders did their duty…’ He describes the dinners as orgies of
feasting. Sterne’s **** in Ch. xxv represents York.
CHAPTER XXV
1. chasm of ten pages: The first edition skips nine pages (147–55), resulting
in even-numbered right-hand pages for the remainder of Volume IV; to
avoid this anomaly, which would have to continue to the end of modern
one-volume editions, ten pages are usually skipped, as in this edition.
3. bend dexter: In heraldry, the bend dexter is the diagonal band drawn
across the shield from the top left (looking at the shield), or dexter chief, to
the lower right (sinister base); when the band is drawn in the opposite
direction, it is called the bend sinister and indicates bastardy.
4. blot in my escutcheon: Play on the literal and figurative meanings of the
phrase, i.e. stain on a person’s reputation.
5. by siege: Sterne plays with the bawdy usage of the word for the anus.
CHAPTER XXVI
3. head instead of my heart: Sterne often uses this formula, as in his preface
to Volumes I and II of Sermons: ‘I trust [these sermons] will be no less felt,
or worse received, for the evidence they bear, of proceeding more from the
heart than the head.’ The preference was stated almost universally in the
eighteenth-century Anglican pulpit in reaction to the polemical and divisive
theologizing of the previous century.
CHAPTER XXVII
5. Gastripheres: See n. 9 to III.xx, for this and other names at the visitation
dinner.
7. temple of Janus: Janus, Roman god of doors and beginnings; closing the
temple doors signified peace, opening them, war.
10. compursions: OED cites this passage as its sole example: humorously,
‘A pursing together.’
11. Asker: Common name, in West Midlands and Yorkshire dialect, for a
newt.
CHAPTER XXVIII
1. take out the fire: Sterne plays on the ‘heat’ of venereal infection; cf. the
eighteenth-century term fire-ship for a prostitute.
CHAPTER XXIX
1. Had a priest … last: Sterne borrows his discussion from Ozell’s note to
Rabelais, I.19. Had he pursued Ozell’s citation he would have discovered,
as Work notes (327, n. 2), that Pope Zachary (741–52), not Pope Leo III
(795–816), issued the decree; in all likelihood, Sterne cited his authority at
random. At stake is whether or not grammatical errors (here, wrong
declensional endings) invalidate a baptism. The correct Latin is in nomine
patris et filii et spiritus sancti (in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost).
7. Lord Coke: Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), English jurist. Brook refers to
Sir Robert Broke (d. 1558), another jurist cited by Swinburne.
11. Liberi … liberorum: Sterne translates this immediately above: ‘that the
child may be of the blood … etc.’, except that, following Swinburne’s
translation rather than the Latin, he twice adds ‘seed’ to ‘blood’.
12. *Mater non … signific: The mother is not numbered among the blood
relations. The sentence is from Swinburne, as is the reference to Pietro
Baldi de Ubaldis (c. 1327–1400), Italian jurist.
14. Selden: See Table Talk of John Selden (1689), ed. Sir Frederick Pollock
(Quaritch, 1927)): ‘The King … [charged them with treason because they]
charged my Lord of Canterbury & Sr. George Ratcliffe … with as much
Logick as the boy that would have layen with his Grandmother said to his
father, You lay with my Mother & why should I not lye with yors.’ Selden
(1584–1654), English jurist and orientalist.
CHAPTER XXX
1. said: Sad ?
CHAPTER XXXI
1. loop of his hat: Since the cocked hats in fashion during the century were
made by turning up (i.e. ‘cocking’) the brim on three sides and securing it
with buttons and loops, to ‘let down one loop’ suggests dishevelment,
perhaps mourning.
CHAPTER XXXII
1. choicest morsel: Cf. p. 571, where Tristram again refers to Toby’s amours
with these words.
4. like Sancho Pança: Cf. Don Quixote, I.IV.2, where Sancho, considering
the fact that ‘the People, over whom he was to be Governor, were all to be
black’, decides that the only remedy is ‘loading a Ship with ’em, and having
’em into Spain’, where he would be able to sell them.
5. vile cough: Sterne had opened TS with an allusion to his ill-health, but he
recovered somewhat during 1760, when writing Volumes III and IV. Within
the next year, however, his health failed to the point of sending him, in
January 1762, to the south of France in pursuit of a more congenial climate.
See Cash, LY, 104–5.
VOLUME V
Mottoes: The two mottoes of the first edition are borrowed from Burton’s
Anatomy and alert readers to the frequent presence of Burton in Volumes V
and VI. Burton’s introductory ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’ explores,
among other subjects, the use of a satiric voice or ironic persona and the
freedom it affords; Sterne found his mottoes in one paragraph of this
discussion: ‘If I have overshot my selfe in this which hath beene hitherto
said, or that it is, which I am sure some will object, too phantasticall, too
light and comicall for a Divine, too satyricall for one of my profession, I
will presume to answer with Erasmus, in like case, ’Tis not I, but
Democritus, Democritus dixit [Burton’s marginal note here reads: ‘Mor.
Encom. si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet Theologum, aut
mordacius quam deceat Christianum’]: you must consider what it is to
speake in ones owne or anothers person … and what liberty those old
Satyrists have had, it is a Cento collected from others, not I, but they that
say it. Dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris / Cum veniâ dabis.’ The
concluding verses are from Horace, Satires, I.iv.104–5: ‘if in my words I
am too free, perchance too light, this bit of liberty you will indulgently
grant me’. The passage from Erasmus’s Praise of Folly is from the
introductory letter to Sir Thomas More, translated by W. Kennett (4th edn.,
1724): ‘And it is a Chance if there be wanting some Quarrelsome Persons
that will shew their Teeth, and pretend these Fooleries are either too
Buffoon-like for a grave Divine, or too Satyrical for a Meek Christian.’
Sterne added a third motto to the second edition (1767), borrowed from the Second Council of
Carthage (or an intermediate source not yet discovered): ‘Si quis clericus aut monachus verba
scurrilia joculatoria, risumque moventia loquitur, acerrime corripiatur’ (If any priest or monk speak
words which are scurrilous, jesting, and exciting to laughter, let him be very sharply rebuked). Sterne
alters this somewhat to ‘If any priest or monk uses jesting words, exciting laughter, let him be
denounced.’ On the actual title-page, ‘visum’ is a misprint for ‘risum’.
Dedication: Sterne’s friendship with John Spencer (1734–83) began in 1761
and continued until Sterne’s death. The great-grandson of the Duke of
Marlborough, Spencer was created Baron of Althorp in 1761. The fair copy
of Le Fever’s story that Sterne sent to Lady Spencer, misplaced at the
British Library for a century, has resurfaced; see A Note on the Text.
CHAPTER I
5. farcy: OED cites this passage as its first example of this disease of
animals, especially horses, being applied to men – the ‘catachresis’, or
misuse, that Tristram alludes to; a pun can be assumed in view of ‘farcical’
in the next phrase.
10. St. Antony … Bridget: For St Antony and St Ursula, see nn. 21, 22 to
IV.S.T. St Francis (1181–1226), St Dominick (1170–1221), and St Bennet,
i.e. Benedict (c. 480–c. 550) founded the three monastical orders that bear
their names. St Basil (c. 330–79) established the rules by which monasteries
of the Eastern Orthodox Church were run. For St Bridget, see n. 1 to
III.xxiv.
11. lady Baussiere rode on: Sterne parodies an episode in Burton, 3.1.3.3, in
which a person rides on impervious to cries for charity, and even ignores
the ‘Host’ (communion bread).
12. order of mercy: Order of Our Lady of Mercy, founded in Spain in 1218
to solicit funds for ransoming Christians during the Crusades.
13. The best … combinations: Cf. A Tale of a Tub, sect. VII, where Swift
comments on ‘that highly celebrated Talent among the Modern Wits, of
deducing Similitudes, Allusions, and Applications, very Surprizing,
Agreeable, and Apposite, from the Pudenda of either Sex, together with
their proper Uses.’
CHAPTER II
1. ’Tis … Barnard: Sterne borrows from Burton, 2.3.1.1, who stops ‘to
collect and gleane a few remedies, and comfortable speeches out of our best
Orators, Philosophers, Divines, and fathers of the Church…’ In sermon 15,
‘Job’s expostulation with his wife’, Sterne strongly endorses the notion that
Christian consolations for death far surpass those of the ancients, the
primary ‘moral’ of this chapter as well.
Sterne picked names selectively from Burton’s much longer list: Jerome Cardan (1501–76), Italian
physician, the most famous of his era; Budaeus, i.e. Guillaume Budé (1468–1540), highly regarded
French classicist; and Petrarch (1304–74), the most important Italian poet after Dante, singled out for
his sonnets on the death of Laura or his posthumous De Contemptu Mundi. For Stella, i.e. Diego
d’Estella, see n. 14 to V.i. St Austin, i.e. Augustine (354–430); St Cyprian (d. 258), Bishop of
Carthage; and St Barnard, i.e. Bernard (1091–1153), are major ecclesiastics.
4. David … death: Cf. Burton, 1.2.4.7 and 2.3.5. The mingling of classical
figures (Antinous, favourite of the emperor Hadrian) with biblical (David
and Absalom; see 2 Samuel 18:33–19:4) and mythological (Niobe weeps
for her children even after being turned to stone) is Burton’s doing, but
Sterne turns to another section for the death of Socrates to complete the
hodgepodge.
5. neither wept … Germans: Cf. Burton, 2.3.5: ‘The Italians most part sleep
away care and grief … ; Danes, Dutchmen, Polanders and Bohemians drink
it down…’
6. When Tully … me: Sterne again combines two separate parts of Anatomy
to produce his paragraph, 1.2.4.7 and 2.3.5. The reference to Pliny is to
Letters; to Cicero, either Tusculan Disputations or Letters to Atticus.
8. Attic salt: ‘Refined, delicate, poignant wit’ (OED, citing this passage).
Cf. Sterne’s distinction between the ‘bitterness’ and ‘saltness’ of wit in
sermon 18, quoted in n. 11 to III.xx.
10. If my son … with us: Cf. Joseph Hall, Epistles (1624): ‘If they could
not have dyed, it had been worthy of wonder; not at all, that they are dead
… Lo, all Princes and Monarchs daunce with us in the same ring.’
12. evolutions: Cf. Chambers: ‘in the art of war … a term applied to the
diverse figures, turns, and motions, made by a body of soldiers’.
13. Mitylenæ: Typical of his practice as a borrower, Sterne adds one city to
Sulpicius’s roll-call: Mytilene, chief city of Lesbos, home of Sappho.
14. Zant: Island in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Greece; in Walter’s day it
was owned by Venice and served for trade with Turkey and the East.
‘Archipelago’ had specific reference in the century to the Aegean Sea.
15. wandering Jew: The Jew who, according to legend, taunted Christ on
his way to Calvary and was condemned to wander the earth until Judgment
Day.
16. Labour … life: Cf. Burton, 2.3.2: ‘And therefore with good discretion,
Iovianus Pontanus caused this short sentence to be engraven on his tombe
in Naples: Labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want and woe, to serve proud
masters, bear that superstitious yoke, and bury your dearest friends, &c.
are the sawces of our life.’
17. My son is dead: Throughout Walter’s oration, Sterne may have had in
mind Gargantua’s lament over his wife’s death (II.3): ‘My wife is dead,
well, by G—— … I shall not raise her again by my crying: she is well; she
is in paradise at least … What tho’ she be dead, must not we also die? The
same debt … hangs over our heads; nature will require it of us, and we must
all of us, some day, taste of the same sauce.’
18. ’tis a shame … anchor: Burton, 2.3.5, attributes the sentence to Seneca.
19. He is got … world: Cf. Burton, 2.3.5: ‘he had risen, saith Plutarch,
from the midst of a feast, before he was drunk … . Why dost thou lament
my death … ? what misfortune is befaln me? Is it because I am not bald …
? The Thracians wept still when a child was born, feasted and made mirth
when any man was buried…’ Plutarch is quoted from Moralia; the second
sentence is from Lucian, ‘On Funerals’; the third, from Herodotus, Persian
Wars.
21. Shew me … liberty: Cf. Hall, Epistles: ‘Shew mee ever any man that
knew what life was, and was loth to leave it. I will shew you a prisoner that
would dwell in his Goale [sic], a slave that likes to be chained to his
Galley.’
22. Is it not … life: Cf. Burton, 2.3.5: ‘Is it not much better not to hunger at
all then to eat: not to thirst then to drink to satisfie thirst: not to be cold
then to put on clothes to drive away cold? You had more neede rejoyce that
I am freed from diseases, agues, cares, … love…’ The sentiment is from
Lucian, ‘On Funerals’.
23. a galled … afresh: Cf. Burton, 2.3.5: ‘thou dost him great injury to
desire his longer life. Wilt thou have him crased & sickly still, like a tired
traveller that comes wearie to his Inne, beginne his journey afresh…’
24. There is … bed: Sterne combines Bacon, ‘Of Death’: ‘Groanes and
Convulsions, and a discoloured Face, and Friends weeping, and Blackes,
and Obsequies, and the like, shew Death Terrible’ with Montaigne, ‘Of
Experience’: ‘Death is more abject, more languishing and painful in Bed
than in Battle’; cf. the index heading for this passage: ‘Death is more
glorious in a Battle than in a Bed.’ Cf. Trim’s similar sentiment, p. 329.
26. when we are … not: Cf. Burton, 2.3.5: ‘When we are, death is not, but
when death is, then we are not…’ Burton cites Seneca; the more likely
source is Epicurus or Cicero.
27. For this … wife: Sterne takes his examples from Bacon’s ‘Of Death’; all
five figures were Roman emperors. The jest of Vespasianus (9–79) was ‘I
think I’m becoming a god.’ Galba (c. 3 BC–AD 69) told his assassins: ‘Strike,
if it be for the good of the Roman people.’ Septimius Severus (146–211)
died while asking his attendants to make haste if anything was left for him
to do; Sterne miscopied or plays with Bacon’s ‘in dispatch’. Tiberius (42
BC–AD 37) pretended continued strength and health while dying. And
Augustus Caesar (63 BC–AD 14) died asking his wife, Livia, not to forget the
days of their marriage.
In a letter a few weeks before his death, Sterne wrote: ‘But I brave evils.—et quand Je serai mort,
on mettra mon nom dans le liste de ces Heros, qui sont Morts en plaisantant [and when I shall have
died, my name will be placed in the list of those heroes who have died in jest].’
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
1. upon the tapis: An absorption of the French idiom sur le tapis (‘on the
table[cloth]’), i.e. under discussion.
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
1. Are we … corruption: Sterne has Trim echo the Order for the Burial of
the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer, made up of several scriptural
passages – e.g. Psalm 90:5–6, Job 14:1–2, Isaiah 40:6–8 (1 Peter 1:24) and
1 Corinthians 15, especially 15:42: ‘So also is the resurrection of the dead.
It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.’
2. pumkin for his head: The man impervious to love, according to Burton,
3.2.1.2, ‘is not a man but a block, a very stone … he hath a gourd for his
head, a pepon for his heart…’ The entire paragraph contains an idea central
to Sterne’s thought: ‘there is nothing unmixt in this world’ (ASJ).
CHAPTER X
2. in hot … felt: Cf. Bacon, ‘On Death’: ‘He that dies in an earnest Pursuit,
is like one that is wounded in hot Bloud; who, for the time, scarce feeles the
Hurt…’
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
2. oration of Socrates: Sterne did not go to Plato’s Apology for his account,
but to Montaigne’s version in ‘Of Physiognomy’, interweaving it with the
famous soliloquy in Hamlet, III.i.55ff.
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
5. John de la Casse: From a few facts – Giovanni della Casa (1503–56) was
the Archbishop of Benevento and did write a famous Renaissance conduct
book called the Galateo (1558) – Sterne spins an elaborate fictional web. In
all likelihood, he never read the Galateo, but rather found references to
della Casa in Burton, Bayle, and Rabelais, all of whom mention his
youthful celebration of sodomy. Sterne seems to have confused this with the
Galateo, which, in IX.xiv, he calls della Casa’s ‘nasty Romance’. No
evidence exists that della Casa held the theory of composition attributed to
him.
6. Rider’s Almanack: Usually no more than twenty small pages, while the
Galateo is perhaps four or five times that size.
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
1. all … principals: True of high treason, but not of murder in English law.
CHAPTER XIX
2. like Lewis … &c.: The armies of the day considered church-bells as war-
booty because the metal was valuable for recasting into ordnance.
3. the lead … too: Proverbial; to be cut into pieces like meat for the pot; to
be ruined or destroyed.
CHAPTER XX
1. Steenkirk: Sterne’s account of the allied defeat at Steinkirk (24 July 1692)
is taken, often verbatim, from Tindal.
3. made … to it: Michael O. Houlahan, N&Q 217 (1972), notes that Sterne
parodies the advice Warburton gave him in June 1760: ‘You say you will
continue to laugh aloud. In good time. But one … would wish to laugh in
good company, where priests and virgins may be present…’ His giving this
advice seems to have been public knowledge.
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
1. FIFTY … devils: Cf. Rabelais, ‘Author’s Prologue’ to Vol. II: ‘even as I
give myself fairly to an hundred thousand panniers full of devils’; and
again, III.22: ‘his soul goeth infallibly to thirty thousand panniers full of
devils’.
CHAPTER XXVII
1. lint and basilicon: For excellent readings of Mrs Shandy’s role in TS, see
Ehlers, Loscocco and Ostovich in Further Reading. Basilicon: an ointment.
4. as follows: Sterne uses the device of the lacuna again, pp. 352, 391, 393,
418, 425, 475, 567, 570, 582. Swift employs it frequently in A Tale of a
Tub.
CHAPTER XXVIII
1. the trine … genitures: Sterne parodies legitimate catch-phrases from the
vocabulary of astrology.
3. Ilus: Again Sterne borrows from Spencer, including this note, which
Spencer translates into Latin, and Sterne paraphrases in this sentence.
Sanchuniathon is an ancient Phoenician authority. The history of Pharaoh-
neco (reigned 610–594 BC) is told in 2 Kings 23:29, 24:1–7, etc.; he was
defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in 604, and retired into
Egypt for the rest of his reign. If Ilus lived at all, he did so in the fourteenth
or thirteenth century BC and hence could not have served in Neco’s army.
4. polemic divines: One year after the publication of Volumes V and VI,
Warburton delivered a strong defence of polemical divinity in the closing
pages of Doctrine of Grace (1763), lamenting, in particular, ‘any well-
meaning Clergyman of affected taste and real ignorance’ who ridicules
polemic divines just to be in fashion when, in reality, the term simply means
those who study the doctrines of their faith.
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
3. snuff’d the candle: Trim is not putting out the candle, the meaning of
snuff most familiar to modern readers, but brightening its flame by freeing
the candle from its excess wick, either by pinching or cutting off its snuff
(the part of the wick partially consumed in burning).
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
1. Every thing … out: Cf. George Herbert, ‘The Church-porch’, lines 239–
40: ‘All things are bigge with jest: nothing that’s plain, / But may be wittie,
if thou hast the vein’; noted by Herbert Rauter (Anglia 80 (1962)).
CHAPTER XXXIII
1. O Blessed … treasure: Cf. Burton, 1.2.4.7: ‘O blessed health! thou art
above all gold and treasure’; cf. Ecclesiasticus 30:15.
CHAPTER XXXIV
1. CHAP. XXXIV: In this chapter and the next, Sterne again borrows from
Mackenzie, The History of Health, including the allusions to Francis Bacon
(Lord Verulam), the epithet ‘nostrum-mongers’, the famous first aphorism
of Hippocrates (‘art is long, and life is short’), and the entire discussion of
the causes of a shortened life. He did not need to consult Bacon’s Historia
Vitæ et Mortis (1623) at this point.
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
1. Van Helmont: Sterne seems to have borrowed his entire discussion from
the Duchess of Newcastle’s Life of William Cavendish (1667), as noted by
Wilfred Watson, ‘Sterne’s Satire on Mechanism: A Study of Tristram
Shandy’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1951). Jean-Baptiste
van Helmont (1577–1644), Flemish physician and chemist, quoted
extensively by the Duchess.
CHAPTER XXXVII
1. siege of Limerick: In August 1690; an account, including the flooded
trenches, is given by Tindal.
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
2. Slop had not forgot: An allusion to Trim’s remark, five years earlier, that
the ‘Abuses of conscience’ was ‘wrote upon neither side … for ’tis only
upon Conscience’ (II.xvii), a tribute to Slop’s memory or a slight slip on
Sterne’s part.
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
2. Seven … Latin: The Greek, τυπτω, tupto: pounding, slogging away (and
perhaps a bilingual pun: tiptoe-ing), was used as a paradigm of the Greek
verb. Probations and negations are terms in logic.
4. Scaliger … Baldus: Cf. Walker: ‘Jul. Scagiler [sic] began not to learn
Greek till 40 years old, and then mastered it in a very few months … Pet.
Damianus learned not to read till Mans Estate … Baldus entred so late upon
the Law, that they told him he intended to be an Advocate in the other
World.’ Baillet provides very similar information in a section on ‘contrary
examples’ to his discussion of prodigies. Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–
1558), Italian author and philosopher; St Pietro Damiani (c. 1007-72),
Benedictine monk; Baldus (see n. 12 to IV.xxix). Walker does not indicate
that Damianus was Bishop of Ostia; the name was probably unfamiliar to
Sterne, and required some ‘index-learning’, perhaps from Bayle.
5. when Eudamidas … of it: Plutarch tells the story in his Moralia (‘Sayings
of Spartans’). Eudamidas (King of Sparta, fl. c. 330 BC), son of Archidamas
(King of Sparta, c. 361-338 BC). Xenocrates (396-314 BC) headed the
Platonic Academy at Athens.
6. North west passage: ‘A passage for vessels along the north coast of
America, formerly thought of as a possible channel for navigation between
the Atlantic and the Pacific’ (OED, which records figurative usage from
1670).
7. auxiliary verbs: The theory of auxiliary verbs parodies Walker’s reliance
on them as a pedagogic instrument, the use of which he explains at
interminable length in Of Education, ch. 11. The full extent of Sterne’s
borrowing is recorded in the Florida Notes. Sterne’s citations of ‘Lullius’
(Raymond Lull, c. 1232–1315, Spanish theologian and author of a
mechanical learning aid similar to Pellegrini’s) and ‘Pelegrini’ (Matteo
Pellegrini, 1595–1652, Italian humanist, whose system of predication forms
the basis of Walker’s chapter) are almost surely derived from Walker, rather
than from a direct reading of either.
Walker illustrates his method with a ‘Battel’, which Sterne alters because the subject must be
‘barren’ for Trim. What ‘white bear’ signifies is undecided; one possibility is an allusion to Pope’s
Imitations of Horace, Ep. II.i.320–23: ‘With laughter sure Democritus had dy’d, / Had he beheld an
Audience gape so wide. / Let Bear or Elephant be e’er so white, / The people, sure, the people are the
sight!’ Democritus and the white elephant are Horace’s, but the white bear is Pope’s invention.
Another is suggested by Thomas Sharp, also a Yorkshire cleric, in his ‘Second Discourse on
Preaching’ (1756): ‘As I remember we had, at the university, a peculiar term for extravagant conceits
of this kind in the compositions of preachers. I think we called them white bears; meaning thereby,
such emblems, or similes, as were too bold and striking to be easily forgotten; and yet, from some
strange impropriety or oddness in them, could not be remembered but with discredit to the brains that
formed them’ (see James Gow and Mark Loveridge, N&Q 47 (2000)).
8. Virgil’s snake: Cf. Aeneid, Book II, where Virgil describes the reaction of
the Greek warrior Androgeos when he discovers himself amidst the enemy.
10. versability: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘aptness or
readiness to be changed or turned (round)’. The word occurs in Walker, but
differently defined: the speedy comparison of all circumstances as a
function of wit.
11. And your honour … corporal: The second edition of Volume V adds
these two sentences to the discussion of the Danish auxiliaries, the only
major substantive variation from the first edition of TS in subsequent
lifetime editions. Its significance is not known, but since the addition
entailed rewriting the next sentence as well, it was not simply omitted by
the compositor’s oversight. According to OED, s.v. roll, citing a military
dictionary, ‘to roul’ was used for officers of equal quality, engaged in
similar duties; one would not ‘[en]roul’ with inferior officers. Hence, Sterne
compliments the Danes, whose auxiliaries did play a gallant part at
Limerick, according to Tindal.
VOLUME VI
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
6. substantial forms: Like the ten predicaments, this was another exploded
Aristotelian attempt to classify knowledge that came under severe attack
throughout the seventeenth century, culminating in Locke’s Essay, III.6.10:
‘Those therefore who have been taught, that the several Species of
Substances had their distinct internal substantial Forms … were led yet
farther out of the way, by having their Minds set upon fruitless Enquiries
after substantial Forms, wholly unintelligible…’
CHAPTER III
2. the person: Sterne borrows his discussion of a proper tutor from Walker;
Florida Notes quotes the relevant passages. Sterne’s note, ‘Vid. Pellegrina’,
is a deliberate misdirection, since the Italian humanist (see n. 7 to V.xlii) has
nothing to do with the list.
CHAPTER VI
2. Ask my … not it: Cf. Sterne’s letter written in 1767 to a friend: ‘Now, I
take heav’n to witness, after all this badinage my heart is innocent—and the
sporting of my pen is equal, just equal, to what I did in my boyish days,
when I got astride of a stick, and gallop’d away—The truth is this—that my
pen governs me—not me my pen.’
3. your death: I.e. ‘your death of cold’, equivalent to the colloquial ‘catch
one’s death (of cold)’.
CHAPTER VII
3. Breda: Town in the Netherlands where prisoners were held, probably also
used for winter quarters by the allies.
CHAPTER VIII
1. a natural … law: Natural law is derived by the use of human reason;
positive law is revealed by divinity.
CHAPTER X
1. the wheel … circle: Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:6: ‘the wheel broken at the
cistern’; the entire twelfth chapter is about death. Sterne seems to have
borrowed important elements of Le Fever’s death scene from John Norris,
Practical Discourses … Volume Two (1691), as noted by J. T. Parnell,
privately to the editor.
CHAPTER XI
2. tritical: Cf. Swift’s ‘A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind’,
which makes clear OED’s definition ‘of a trite or commonplace character;
trite, with play on critical.’
3. For this … thief: Cf. Sterne’s ‘Rabelaisian Fragment’, where the preacher
Homenas is caught in the act of plagiarizing. Sterne’s own sermons
frequently contain passages from the works of Tillotson, Hall, Norris and
others. Eighteenth-century preachers, however, were encouraged to borrow
from more successful sermon-writers rather than risk leading their
congregations into error – or sleep. The Florida Sermons offers considerable
evidence of this aspect of Sterne’s sermon-writing. Paidagunes, i.e. a
pedagogue; more correctly, Paedagunes.
7. dirty blue paper: Work (429, n. 4) suggests a ‘sly jab at the blue-covered
Critical Review, which had given Sterne unfavorable reviews, and at its
contentious editor, Tobias Smollett’, who was trained as a doctor. Actually,
CR was more favourable to Sterne than the Monthly Review; Florida Notes
suggests the swipe is Sterne’s response to CR’s attacks not on himself, but
on Hall-Stevenson’s writing and anti-Bute politics.
8. small Italian hand: I.e. the handwriting used in Europe and America
today, as opposed to Gothic.
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XVI
1. beds of justice: Based on the lit de justice, the throne on which the King
of France sat when attending some sessions of parliament.
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XIX
1. CHAP. XIX: This chapter owes something in spirit to ch. 5 of Memoirs of
Martinus Scriblerus, in which Martin’s father establishes the classical
antecedents of his playthings. It is worth recalling that throughout the
century boys and girls wore dresses until the age of four or five.
3. even: ever?
4. ancient dress: Lefèvre points out that the toga was to be properly tied,
since a ‘loose gown’ was a ‘mark of dissolute manners’. Chlamys: like the
Paludamentum, a military robe worn over other clothes. Ephod: probably
Sterne’s joke, since it is the robe worn by Jewish priests, not discussed in
works on Roman costume. Tunica: sleeveless, knee-length vest worn under
the toga. Synthesis: large robe or cloak, for festivals and banquets. The
Pænula: short, thick woollen or leather coat, worn in cold or rainy weather
and for travelling. Lacerna, with its Cucullus: cloak for bad weather, with
its hood. The first edition has ‘Lacema’, but that seems to be a compositor’s
error; the Florida Text repeats the error, which is here corrected. Prætexta:
robe trimmed with purple, worn by magistrates. Sagum: vest worn by
soldiers. Trabea: a little shorter than the toga and striped with purple and
white. The reference to Suetonius (second-century Roman biographer,
historian and author of De Genere Vestium) may have been taken from
Rubens, but it also appeared in textbooks.
5. military shoe: The reference is to Juvenal, Satires, 16, lines 23–5: ‘you
must have a mulish brain … to provoke so many jack-boots, and all those
thousands of hobnails’.
11. lost the … saddle: Play on the proverbial expression ‘to win the horse or
lose the saddle’.
CHAPTER XX
1. Pococurante’s: OED cites this passage as its first example: ‘careless or
indifferent person; one who shows little interest’; from Voltaire’s Lord
Pococurante in ch. 25 of Candide.
CHAPTER XXI
2. the first … place: Sterne’s italics indicate a quotation; cf. John Muller, A
Treatise … of Fortification (1746), where it is observed of parallels that
‘there are generally three in an attack; the first is about 300 toises from the
covert-way…’
CHAPTER XXII
1. post-morning: OED cites this passage as its sole example: ‘indicating the
time at which the mail leaves or arrives’.
CHAPTER XXIII
1. Amberg … Limbourg: All taken in 1703. The first three are in Germany;
Huy and Limburg are in the Netherlands.
2. Ghent … Flanders: Ghent and Bruges, captured by the Allies in 1708, are
in Flanders; Brabant, an area of the Netherlands west and north of Flanders,
containing both Brussels and Antwerp.
3. Proteus: Minor sea-god with power to assume different shapes.
6. end of the siege: Sterne again plays on the early usage of ‘siege’ for
‘anus’ (OED); he has just mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah (the wicked
cities of Genesis 19) and the many ‘parts’ they acted.
7. succedaneum: Substitute.
CHAPTER XXIV
2. most bloody: Winston Churchill called the siege of Lille ‘the greatest
siege … since the invention of gunpowder’. There were 23,000 dead and
wounded among the 110,000 participants.
CHAPTER XXV
2. cast in the rosemary: Cf. Hamlet, IV.v.175: ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for
remembrance.’
3. lips … plain: See Isaiah 32:4 and 35:6.
CHAPTER XXVI
1. Morocco tube: I.e. of Moroccan leather (see p. 405); Trim rigs his two
water pipes (hookahs) so that when he inhales, smoke is sent from each
pipe’s main tube through three small wash-leather tubes, each attached to a
cannon.
CHAPTER XXIX
2. my uncle Toby: In the memoir of his family Sterne wrote for his daughter
in 1758, there is a sketch of his father in similar language: ‘he was … of a
kindly, sweet disposition, void of all design; and so innocent in his own
intentions, that he suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten
times in a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose’.
3. through his liver: According to tradition the liver is the seat of the
passions, especially of love.
CHAPTER XXX
4. peace of Utrecht: The end of the War of the Spanish Succession was
proclaimed on 4 May 1713.
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
3. spare the mole: It is possible to quarrel with the Florida Notes’ annotation
of ‘mole’ as slang for ‘penis’ (Partridge, Dictionary), if Partridge’s ‘mole’
refers only to the animal and not possibly to a large pier or breakwater, the
meaning of ‘mole’ here. Annotating Sterne’s bawdy is difficult, but when
one reads that the queen was beseeched to ‘spare the mole, for the mole’s
sake; which, in its naked situation, etc.’, one may be forgiven for believing
that a mole is not always a mole in TS, as a nose is not always a nose.
CHAPTER XXXVI
2. doctor Baynyard: Sterne borrows from Sir John Floyer and Edward
Baynard, The History of Cold-Bathing (1702), who lament the overuse of
‘cantharides’ (a blistering agent) by calling it ‘the Devil himself’. In
Sterne’s day, and long before, cantharides, a preparation of Spanish flies,
was also known – as it is today – as an aphrodisiac.
3. I have … passions: Work (467, n. 5) identifies this as a comment by St
Gregory Nazianzen (329–89), a father of the Eastern Church, to his friend
and correspondent Philagrius: ‘Bravo! that you philosophize in your
sufferings’; one suspects Sterne had an intermediate source.
4. Nor is … again: Sterne continues to borrow from Burton and at least one
other source, perhaps Jacques Ferrand, Erotomania (1640). The opinion of
Gordonius (Bernard de Gordon, French physician (fl. c. 1283–c. 1308)) is
clearly from the latter. Rhasis (fl. 925), Arabian physician; Dioscorides (fl.
75) and Aëtius (fl. 540), Greek physicians, are often mentioned by both, as
are refrigerants (cooling substances), although ‘hanea’ is mentioned only by
Burton, his probable error for another herb. Camphor and topaz were
thought to calm the passions; Tristram puts on a topaz ring in IX.xiii.
CHAPTER XL
1. cold seeds: Seeds of the cucumber, gourd, pumpkin, etc.; George Cheyne,
The English Malady (1733), makes it clear that a diet of them was a remedy
of last resort for extreme disorders of mind or body.
3. says Cicero: Cicero often invokes the ‘Recta via’ or ‘the right path’ in his
moral writings.
VOLUME VII
Motto: From the Epistles of Pliny the Younger, who defends a digression of
his own by arguing that although a writer’s first duty is to stick to his
theme, a digression such as Homer’s description of the arms of Achilles is
acceptable because it is ‘his main subject [the work itself] and not a
digression’ (‘Non enim excursus hic eius, sed opus ipsum est’).
CHAPTER I
1. fountain of life: Cf. Proverbs 13:14: ‘The law of the wise is a fountain of
life, to depart from the snares of death.’ Cf. Proverbs 14:27 and Psalm 36:9.
5. by the throat: Cash convincingly argues that Sterne lost his voice in the
spring of 1762 and never recovered its full use; see LY, 148–50.
6. Joppa: Port city of ancient Israel (modern Jaffa) from which Jonah went
to sea to escape God’s mission (Jonah 1:3); and where Peter received the
vision that allowed him to continue preaching to the Gentiles (Acts 11:5–
17).
CHAPTER II
1. Rochester … Canterbury: Three towns on the road between London and
Dover. Thomas à Becket (c. 1118–70) was murdered and enshrined in
Canterbury Cathedral.
CHAPTER IV
2. dry shod … not: Cf. ASJ: ‘much grief of heart has it oft and many a time
cost me, when I have observed how many a foul step the inquisitive
Traveller has measured to see sights and look into discoveries; all which, as
Sancho Pança said to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry-shod at
home’. The allusion is to Don Quixote, II.III.5, but the ultimate source is
Joseph Hall’s Quo Vadis? (1617).
CHAPTER V
7. Rapin’s own words: I.e. Sterne’s primary historical source, Paul Rapin de
Thoyras’s L’Histoire d’Angleterre (see n. 1 to II.i). His account of the siege
of Calais (1347–8) is actually less than a page, but Sterne is reading
Piganiol’s account of the valour of ‘Eustache de saint Pierre, the most
eminent person in the town’, who volunteered with five others to offer
themselves to King Edward III with nooses around their necks in order to
save the town.
CHAPTER VII
1. size-ace: Six and one on dice. For an entertaining note on the number
seven in this seventh chapter of the seventh volume, see Harold Love, N&Q
216 (1971).
CHAPTER IX
4. wettest drapery: Sterne probably knew that wet drapery, used by ancient
sculptors, was deemed inappropriate for painters.
6. devote: In ASJ, Yorick defines three stages in the life of a French woman,
viz., coquette, deist and devoté, the last being when she turns herself over to
religion.
7. terce … capotted: Terms from the game of piquet; ‘terce to a nine’, the
lowest three cards of a suit, i.e. seven, eight and nine; to hold them can be a
very minor advantage. To be ‘piqued’ is to have one’s opponent win on
cards and play before you begin to score; to be ‘repiqued’ is to have the
opponent win on cards alone (hence, one cannot be piqued and repiqued in
the same game). To be ‘capotted’ is to have one’s opponent win everything.
CHAPTER X
1. card and spin: Abbeville was famous for its weaving; Sterne’s conclusion
perhaps glances at the motto on the royal arms of France: ‘Lilia non
laborant neque nent’ (They toil not, neither do they spin).
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
1. MAKE them … wheel: See Joseph Hall, Quo Vadis?: ‘None of the least
imprecations, which David, makes against Gods enemies, is, Make them
like unto a wheele, o Lord [Psalm 83:13]: Motion is ever accompanied with
unquietnesse; and both argues, and causes imperfection, whereas the happy
estate of heaven is described by rest.’ Sterne plays on his own thinness, a
body ravaged by tubercular disease; whether Bishop Hall (see n. 1 to I.xxii)
was more corpulent than a bishop should be is unknown.
CHAPTER XIV
1. But she … nothing: Sterne borrows these two paragraphs from Burton,
2.2.3; they originated in John Wilkins, The Discovery of a World in the
Moon (1638), whence Burton appropriated them for the fifth edition of
Anatomy. Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623) and Francisco Ribera (1537–91)
were Jesuit theologians. Dutch mile = about 4.4 English miles; Italian mile
= not quite an English mile. Tabid: wasting, decaying.
CHAPTER XV
2. Ailly au clochers: Piganiol mentions Ailli aux Clochers, but says nothing
about the chimes; Sterne may simply be playing on cloche: ‘bell’; clocher:
‘steeple, belfry’.
CHAPTER XVI
2. liards: Smallest French coin, worth about half a farthing; the livre
contained twenty sous, about ten pence. Tristram’s difficulties are
compounded by a general recoinage in 1738, hence the Louis XIV twelve-
sous piece that ‘will not pass’.
CHAPTER XVII
3. gives the wall: Allusion to the long tradition whereby courtesy was
shown by allowing another pedestrian the side farthest from the gutter, and
superiority by claiming that side for oneself.
5. the periwig maketh the man: Sterne wrote to an acquaintance in 1765: ‘It
is a terrible thing to be in Paris without a perriwig to a man’s head!’
CHAPTER XVIII
5. portico of the Louvre: The complete sentence reads: ‘Non orbis gentem,
non urbem gens habet ullam, / Urbsve Domum, Dominum nec Domus ulla
parem’ (The world holds no race, no race a city, or any city a house, or any
house a master equal [to these]).
CHAPTER XIX
1. undercraft: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘a sly, underhand
trick’.
CHAPTER XX
3. volving: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘to turn over in the
mind; to consider’.
CHAPTER XXI
9. white swelling: Swelling without redness, but also a colloquial term for
pregnancy.
10. By my fig: By this point in the nuns’ story, ‘fig’ as a bawdy allusion to a
woman’s pudendum almost certainly comes into play – perhaps a bilingual
pun as well, i.e., pudendum muliebre.
CHAPTER XXII
1. obstreperated: OED cites this passage as its sole illustration: ‘to make a
noise or clamour’.
CHAPTER XXV
1. I see no sin: Sterne’s joke is based on the indecency of foutre (to fuck)
and the ambiguity of bouger (to stir, budge, move), with a probable allusion
to bougre (bugger). Sterne labelled France ‘foutre-land’ in a letter to Hall-
Stevenson.
2. fa … mi, ut: The names given by Guido of Arezzo to the six notes of the
hexachord system; see n. 2 to VI.i. Complines: the last of the seven daily
canonical services.
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
3. silks: The counsels of the various kings and courts, silks being used
allusively in recognition of their silk gowns.
7. Saint Optat: Bishop of Auxerre (d. c. 530). Latin optatus: longed for,
desired, welcomed.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
1. by water to Avignon: Tristram’s journey down the Rhône passes the area
to the west known as Vivarais and the area to the east, Dauphiné, as well as
the three cities mentioned. The Hermitage and Côte Rô tie were the most
famous vineyards of the Rhône valley.
2. chaise-undertaker: OED cites this passage as its only recorded example:
‘One who undertakes to renovate chaises, a dealer in secondhand chaises.’
CHAPTER XXX
4. Pilate lived: Sterne’s account does not come from Piganiol, but other
travel writers mention the house, said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate in
exile, a confusion over a local resident named Pilati and the town’s desire
for a ‘relic’. This is the explanation given by the famous antiquarian Jacob
Spon (1647–85), cited by Sterne in the next chapter; Sterne probably never
consulted him.
CHAPTER XXXI
1. fibrillous: This occurrence is the last cited by OED; a fibril is a small
fibre.
3. pabulum: OED cites this passage as its first example of figurative usage:
‘that which nourishes and sustains the mind or soul; food for thought’.
Sterne’s meaning is perhaps closer to pap, i.e. nonsense.
4. Frusts … antiquity: OED cites this passage for the first occurrence of
Frust: ‘a fragment’. ‘Rusts’ alludes to the value supposedly placed by
antiquarians on layers of encrusted oxidation.
6. Santa Casa: In Loreto, Italy, said to have been the home of the Virgin
Mary in Nazareth, miraculously relocated by angels; it remains a popular
objective of Roman Catholic pilgrimages.
7. Videnda: OED cites this passage as its first illustration: ‘things worth
seeing or which ought to be seen’.
9. dernier: Last.
10. Monsieur Le Blanc: Boswell (On the Grand Tour, 2 January 1766)
mentions the house of Le Blanc in Lyons, a place he takes for three livres a
day because ‘the best places were taken’. If the two Le Blancs are the same
person, it suggests that Sterne did not stay in the ‘best places’ during his
travels.
CHAPTER XXXII
1. But with … for ever: Sancho Pança wishes for an ass with which he
might ‘commune’ (I.III.11).
CHAPTER XXXIII
1. Don’t puzzle me; said I: Cf. ASJ: ‘There is not a more perplexing affair
in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am…’
CHAPTER XXXIV
3. post royal: Any post from Paris or Lyons or from any place where the
king actually resided, the fee for which was double.
4. for the salt: The gabelle, tax on salt, one of four primary taxes in
eighteenth-century France.
CHAPTER XXXV
3. THE PEACE WAS MADE: The Peace of Paris in 1763 that ended the Seven
Years War.
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVIII
1. papilliotes: Curl-papers.
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XLI
3. windyness of Avignion: I.e. the mistral, the north-west wind that sweeps
down the Rhône valley and is especially felt by the towns at the southern
end, Avignon and Orange. Only one proverb was found concerning this:
‘Avignon venteuse, sans vent contagieuse’ (Avignon is windy, but when not
windy, contagious).
CHAPTER XLIII
2. plain into a city: One of Sterne’s most persistent ideas, receiving a fine
restatement in ASJ:‘—What a large volume of adventures may be grasped
within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing,
and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding
out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his
hands on.’
4. carousal: Fit of carousing. The word was often confused with carousel, a
‘tournament in which knights, divided into companies … engaged in
various plays and exercises’. Sterne may combine both meanings.
9. lap of content: Cf. Sterne’s letter dated 16 November 1764: ‘I shall spend
every winter of my life, in the same lap of contentment, where I enjoy
myself now—and wherever I go—we must bring three parts in four of the
treat along with us—In short we must be happy within––and then few
things without us make much difference—This is my Shandean philosophy.
—You will read a comic account of my journey from Calais thro’ Paris to
the Garonne, in these volumes…’
10. nut brown maid: Phrase previously made commonplace by the popular
old ballad, ‘The Nut-Brown Maid’.
VOLUME VIII
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
1. the devil … imps: Proverbial: ‘No marvel it is if the imps follow when
the devil goes before.’
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
1. WHY weavers … them: Cf. Montaigne, ‘Of Cripples’, wherein he
contemplates the longstanding notion that, as the marginal note puts it,
‘Lame People best at the Sport of Venus.’ Pined, i.e. wasted.
2. grinding the faces: Cf. Isaiah 3:15: ‘What mean ye that ye … grind the
faces of the poor?’
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
1. Terra del Fuogo: Tierra del Fuego, the archipelago off the southern tip of
South America; literally, land of fire. In light of the remainder of the
sentence, Sterne’s bawdiness here may also include a play on ‘fugo’, an
eighteenth-century colloquialism for the anus.
3. furr’d cap: In a letter to a friend, Sterne joked: ‘When you have got to
your fireside … and are so much a sovereign as to sit in your furr’d cap (if
you like it, tho’ I should not, for a man’s ideas are at least the cleaner for
being dress’d decently)…’
CHAPTER XIII
2. Obstipating: Constipating.
CHAPTER XIV
1. wicker gate: Probably a solecism for wicket gate, a small gate opening on
to a field or enclosed space for those on foot.
CHAPTER XV
1. set on fire … end: Sterne brings new life to a proverbial expression, ‘to
burn or light a candle at both ends’, signifying prodigality or sociability.
2. blind gut: The discussion here bears comparison to those in I.xxv, on the
location of Toby’s wound, II.xix, on the advantages of the ‘Cæsarian
section’ and, of course, II.vi, on Toby’s ignorance concerning the right and
wrong end of a woman. The play is on ‘blind gut’ as a term for the cæcum
(the beginning of the large intestine), and, generally, for any tubular passage
with one end closed.
CHAPTER XVI
1. movement: moment?
CHAPTER XVII
6. seventeen hundred and twelve: Sterne borrows from Tindal the events of
the closing campaign of the War of the Spanish Succession, marked by the
Duke of Ormond’s refusal to support Prince Eugène and the Dutch General
François Nicolas Fagel (1655–1718) at their siege of Quesnoy because of
‘orders’ from Queen Anne or Marlborough. The precise nature of those
‘orders’ was the subject of Ormond’s later impeachment trial.
Contemporary accounts suggest that the army shared Toby’s anger at what
was considered a gross dereliction of duty; Roger Sterne, Laurence’s father,
was among the troops disbanded by the cessation of hostilities.
7. how Marlborough … marched: Sterne condenses four double-column
folio pages from Tindal describing Marlborough’s march into Germany;
Sterne (or his compositor) altered the spelling of many of the place-names,
but the entire list appears in one form or another in Tindal.
9. even: ever ?
10. the Chinese: Many of the military treatises Toby studied gave attention
to the invention of gunpowder, repeating the information in Chambers, and
adding the Chinese claim as well. In view of Trim’s question, ‘How came
priests and bishops … to trouble their heads so much about gun-powder?’,
one notes that Bishop Warburton discusses the history of gunpowder in
Julian, or A Discourse Concerning the Earthquake (1750); Sterne may
again be tweaking Warburton’s nose.
12. affair of Landen: Sterne’s account of the Battle of Landen (29 July
1693) is taken from Tindal. It was a costly battle, with some 20,000
casualties. The three regimental generals, Hugh Wyndham (d. 1708); Henry
Lumley (1660–1722); and the Earl of Galway (1648–1720), are all
mentioned by Tindal, as are the Prince de Conti (1664–1709), who led the
French cavalry, and François-Henri de Montmorency, duc de Luxembourg
(1628–95), the Marshal of France and head of its army at Landen. Thomas
Talmash, or Tollemache (c. 1651-94), was a lieutenant-general who fought
at Limerick and Steinkirk.
13. he deserves … halter: Possibly proverbial: ‘As well worth it as a thief is
worth a rope.’
14. mob: Informal head-covering, with a puffed crown and side pieces that
could be tied under the chin or left dangling.
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
1. the eyes: Sterne covers much-travelled ground in his praise of eyes as the
seat of love, but Burton’s discussion in 3.2.2.2–3 is still on his mind; e.g. ‘it
is not the eye of it selfe that entiseth to lust, but an adulterous eye, as Peter
termes it [2 Peter 2:14], a wanton, a rolling, lascivious eye’.
CHAPTER XXVI
1. for I call … for it: Cf. ASJ: ‘[I have] been in love with one princess or
another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly
persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval
betwixt one passion and another…’
2. A Devil … Turk: Borrowed from Burton, 3.2.4, who quotes from Robert
Tofte’s (d. 1620) translation of Benedetto Varchi’s Blazon of Jealousie
(1615).
CHAPTER XXVII
1. gap’d knife: OED cites this passage to illustrate Gapped: ‘Having the
edge notched or serrated.’ Possibly Sterne meant gaped, i.e. ‘opened’.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXIII
1. gymnicks: I.e. gymnastics, but Sterne borrows the word from Burton,
2.2.2, where the meaning seems delimited to sexual acrobatics.
CHAPTER XXXIV
1. affects: OED cites this passage as its last example of an obsolete usage:
‘To be drawn to, have affection or liking for.’
4. tongs and poker: Cf. III.xx, where Trim bores ‘touch holes with the point
of a hot poker’. The aural pun of ‘poker’ is obvious; an additional play on
‘tong[ue]’ is probable.
6. Thou must … them: Another borrowing from Burton, 3.2.5.1 and 1.2.2.1;
similar prescriptions for controlling sexual appetite are given by the
physician Rondibilis to Panurge in Rabelais, III.31. Claudius Ælianus (fl. c.
200), Roman author. Sterne takes his reference to De Natura Animalium –
where it is reported that Athenian women put ‘hanea’ in their beds to
relieve the pains of sexual abstinence – from Burton.
VOLUME IX
DEDICATION
CHAPTER I
1. time and chance: Ecclesiastes 9:11: ‘time and chance happeneth to them
all’, Sterne’s text for sermon 8, ‘Time and Chance’.
2. least mote: Matthew 7:3: ‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy
brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’
3. And here … 1766: Cf. Sterne’s letter of 23 July 1766: ‘at present I am in
my peaceful retreat, writing the ninth volume of Tristram—I shall publish
but one this year, and the next I shall begin a new work of four volumes [i.e.
ASJ, only two volumes of which were written], which when finish’d, I shall
continue Tristram with fresh spirit.’
CHAPTER II
1. CHAP. II: The format of Volume IX is unique in that each chapter begins
on a new page rather than a few spaces below the preceding chapter, a
format duplicated in the Florida Text but not here. This created a good deal
of white space in the original and served to emphasize its slightness and,
possibly, the weariness of its author.
3. had not … Grace: Cf. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty: ‘The grandeur of the
Eastern dress, which so far surpasses the European, depends as much on
quantity as on costliness. In a word, it is quantity which adds greatness to
grace.’
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER VI
1. poor negro girl: On 21 July 1766, a former slave, Ignatius Sancho, wrote
to Sterne in praise of his writings and in particular a passage in sermon 10
lamenting slavery. Sancho asks him to ‘give half an hours attention to
slavery’ in his next work. Sterne immediately responded that the letter had
arrived just as he was writing ‘a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless
poor negro-girl’, and that he would try to ‘weave’ it into the work he was
writing. We may have here part or all of that ‘tender tale’.
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
4. I will not … make: Scriptural echoes give this paragraph an intensity that
sets it apart from the humour surrounding it. See, e.g., Psalm 78:39: ‘For he
remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh
not again’; Job 7:9: ‘As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he
that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more’; and Proverbs 31:10:
‘Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.’
CHAPTER IX
1. ejaculation: Cf. ASJ, where Yorick breaks his oath of silence in the ‘Case
of Delicacy’ and then declares his ‘O my God!’ was merely ‘an ejaculation’
(OED: ‘a short prayer … in an emergency’).
CHAPTER XI
1. had no … word: Emendation might seem called for, but in all likelihood
Sterne is using, as Work notes (613, n. 2), a Lockean idiom meaning ‘no
ideas associated with or annexed to the word’.
3. the cuvetts: In so far as cuvettes are trenches, Walter is repeating the joke
in VIII.xxx; cuvette also means ‘bedpan’.
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
3. nasty … Galatea: See n. 5 to V.xvi. That Sterne had not read the Galateo
is clear from his epithet ‘nasty’, but less clear is the source of his
information about della Casa’s penance; Walker, Of Education, has a brief
account of his falling into disfavour because of his licentious verses, but
another person is said to have ‘paraphras’d the Gospel of S. John’ (not
Revelation) in penance for his writings. Investment is a play on della Casa’s
being a bishop, as are the allusions to ‘purple’.
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVII
2. bar length: OED notes the competitive tossing of a thick rod of iron or
wood, the contest being measured in lengths of the bar.
3. Vestal (to keep my fire in): Sterne plays on the perpetual fire burning in
Roman temples in honour of Vesta and the virgins assigned to keep that fire
burning.
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
1. play her cards herself: Proverbial for making good use of one’s resources
or opportunities.
2. ten-ace: In whist, to have the ten-ace is to possess the first and third best
cards while being the last player, a decided advantage.
CHAPTER XXIV
1. fourscore ounces of blood: Cf. Sterne’s letter dated ? 7–9 January 1767:
‘I miscarried of my tenth Volume by the violence of a fever, I have just got
thro’—I have however gone on to my reckoning with the ninth, of wch I am
all this week in Labour pains…’ Sterne often links images of giving birth
with publication.
3. serous or globular: Blood was considered separable into two parts, the
more glutinous and solid, called the ‘globular’, and the more thin and fluid,
called the ‘serous’.
4. GENTLE … life: In his preface, Cervantes calls his work ‘the Child of
Disturbance, engendered in some dismal Prison, where Wretchedness keeps
its Residence, and every dismal Sound its Habitation.’ In the account of
Cervantes prefixed to the Motteux-Ozell translation, Sterne could discover
that he lost his hand at the battle of Lepanto. Near the end of Don Quixote
(II.III.45) Cervantes invokes the Sun, ‘by whose assistance Man begets
Man, on thee I call for help! Inspire me, I beseech thee, warm and illumine
my gloomy Imagination, that my Narration may keep pace with the Great
Sancho Pança’s Actions…’
5. cunning … Italy: Sterne was in Italy from November 1765 to May 1766;
see Cash, LY, ch. 6. The anecdote told here was reported in the St James
Chronicle (14–17 June 1766) as having actually happened to Sterne, the
perpetrator being a pregnant laundress who thought the laps would make
comfortable ‘head cloathes’ for her baby, and perhaps inspire it with ‘Wit
and Humour’. One suspects, however, a more bawdy meaning in Sterne’s
rendition, given the italicized fore and out, a meaning clarified in this bit of
eighteenth-century verse: ‘For now tormented sore with scalding Heat / Of
Urine, dread fore-runner of a Clap! / With Eye repentant, he surveys his
Shirt / Diversify’d with Spots of yellow Hue, / Sad Symptom of ten
Thousand Woes to come!’
7. keeps his temper: Sterne’s comments here are directed at Smollett, whose
account of his own European tour, Travels through France and Italy (1766),
is a target in ASJ as well, where he is characterized as Smelfungus: ‘he set
out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he pass’d by was
discoloured or distorted—He wrote an account of them, but ’twas nothing
but the account of his miserable feelings.’ Typically, Smollett said of Sienna
that they were lodged in a ‘house that stunk like a privy’.
8. voitures: Carriages.
9. ’Tis Maria: In ASJ, Yorick feels compelled to visit the poor Maria, whom
‘my friend, Mr. Shandy, met with near Moulines’. It is possible that Sterne
used the scene to ‘advertise’ ASJ, certainly in his thoughts during the
composition of Volume IX. Maria, by herself, or with Yorick (Tristram),
was the single subject of Sterne’s fiction most often illustrated by artists in
the next century.
CHAPTER XXV
1. foam … his horse: Pliny (Natural History) tells of the painter Protogenes
(fourth century BC), who created foam on a dog’s mouth by throwing his
sponge, and then adds that Nealces (fl. 245 BC), another Greek painter, did
the same to represent a horse’s foam. The story appears often in literature as
an illustration of chance, but why Sterne assigns it to Zeuxis, another
celebrated fourth-century Greek painter, is unknown.
4. condemnation … making it: Cf. ASJ, where Yorick condemns the French
practice of ‘making love by sentiments’ and comments: ‘I should as soon
think of making a genteel suit of cloaths out of remnants…’ ‘Real presence’
here refers to the Roman Catholic doctrine that the body and blood, soul
and divinity, of Christ are really and substantially present in the Eucharist, a
doctrine held to be ‘repugnant to the plain words of Scripture’ in article 28
of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXXI
1. Take a full sheet: Cf. Sterne’s sermon 5, a charity sermon: ‘let any
number of us here imagine ourselves at this instant engaged in drawing the
most perfect and amiable character … I appeal to your own thoughts,
whether the first idea which offered itself to most of our imaginations,
would not be that of a compassionate benefactor…’ And cf. sermon 3
(‘Philanthropy recommended’): ‘I think there needs no stronger argument to
prove how universally and deeply the seeds of … compassion are planted in
the heart of man, than … that from the general propensity to pity the
unfortunate, we express that sensation by the word humanity, as if it was
inseparable from our nature. That it is not inseparable, I have allowed in the
former part of this discourse…’ The source of the second passage is
Sterne’s favourite sermon-writer, John Tillotson.
CHAPTER XXXIII
3. Diogenes and Plato: Such sentiments abound in Plato’s writings, but why
Sterne chose Diogenes (see n. 1 to I.xxiv) is unclear; perhaps his answer to
the question of when to marry stuck in his mind: ‘For a young man not yet:
for an old man never at all.’
4. recalcitrate: OED cites this passage as its first illustration: ‘to show
strong objection or repugnance’.
6. great tythes: Church revenues derived from major produce of the soil –
corn, hay, wood, and fruit. An ‘impropriator’ was a layman in possession of
those revenues; Sterne implies that possession entailed obligations, such as
keeping the town bull.
If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism, by
injection, as presented to the Doctors of the Sorbonne,—with their
consultation thereupon, it is as follows.
*Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to. 1734, p. 366.
* Pentagraph, an instrument to copy prints and pictures mechanically, and
in any proportion.
* The author is here twice mistaken;—for Lithopædus should be wrote thus,
Lithopædii Senonensis Icon. The second mistake is, that this Lithopædus is
not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child. The account of this,
published by Albosius, 1580, may be seen at the end of Cordæus’s works in
Spachius. Mr. Tristram Shandy has been led into this error, either from
seeing Lithopædus’s name of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr.
——, or by mistaking Lithopædus for Trinecavellius,—from the too great
similitude of the names.
* Vid. Vol. II. p. 159. (Page 128 in present volume.)
* Vid. Locke.
* Page 91 in the present edition.
* As Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis is extremely scarce, it may not be
unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his
original; I will make no reflection upon it, but that his story-telling Latin is
much more concise than his philosophic—and, I think, has more of Latinity
in it.
* Hafen Slawkenbergius means the Benedictine nuns of Cluny, founded in
the year 940, by Odo, abbé de Cluny.
* Mr. Shandy’s compliments to orators—is very sensible that
Slawkenbergius has here changed his metaphor—which he is very guilty of;
—that as a translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done what he could to make
him stick to it—but that here ’twas impossible.
*Nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formulâ utun. Quinimo et Legistæ
& Canonistæ—Vid. Parce Bar & Jas in d. L. Provincial. Constitut. de
conjec. vid. Vol. Lib. 4. Titul. 1. N. 7. quà etiam in re conspir. Om. de
Promontorio Nas. Tichmak. ff. d. tit. 3. fol. 189. passim. Vid. Glos. de
contrahend. empt. &c. nec non J. Scrudr. in cap. §. refut. ff. per totum. cum
his cons. Rever. J. Tubal, Sentent. & Prov. cap. 9. ff. 11, 12. obiter. V. et
Librum, cui Tit. de Terris & Phras. Belg. ad finem, cum Comment. N.
Bardy Belg. Vid. Scrip. Argentoratens. de Antiq. Ecc. in Episc. Archiv. fid.
coll. per Von Jacobum Koinshoven Folio Argent. 1583, præcip. ad finem.
Quibus add. Rebuff in L. obvenire de Signif. Nom. ff. fol. & de Jure, Gent.
& Civil. de prohib. aliena feud. per federa, test. Joha. Luxius in prolegom.
quem velim videas, de Analy. Cap. 1, 2, 3. Vid. Idea.35
*Hæc mira, satisque horrenda. 5 Planetarum coitio sub Scorpio Asterismo
in nonâ cœli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant effecit Martinum
Lutherum sacrilegum hereticum, christianæ religiosinis hostem acerrimum
atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus
obiit, ejus Anima scelestissima ad infernos navigavit—ab Alecto, Tisiphone
et Megera flagellis igneis cruciata perenniter.
PHILO.
‡Καθαριὸτητος εινεϰεν.
BOCHART.
SANCHUNIATHO.
* Nous aurions quelque interêt, says Baillet, de montrer qu’il n’a rien de
ridicule s’il étoit véritable, au moins dans le sens énigmatique que Nicius
Erythræus a tâché de lui donner. Cet auteur dit que pour comprendre
comme Lipse, a pû composer un ouvrage le premier jour de sa vie, il faut
s’imaginer, que ce premier jour n’est pas celui de sa naissance charnelle,
mais celui au quel il a commencé d’user de la raison; il veut que ç’ait été a
l’age de neuf ans; et il nous veut persuader que ce fut en cet âge, que Lipse
fit un poem.——Le tour est ingenieux, &c. &c.
* Vid. Pellegrina.
* Vid. Book of French post-roads,2 page 36. edition of 1762.
* Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &c. &c. &c.
* Non Orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam—————————ulla
parem.
* The same Don Pringello, the celebrated Spanish architect, of whom my
cousin Antony has made such honourable mention in a scholium to the Tale
inscribed to his name.
* Vid. Vol. VI. p. 152. (Page 426 in present edition.)
* Vid. Pope’s Portrait.
* Rodope Thracia tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exacte oculis
intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non posset, quin
caperetur.——I know not who.
* This will be printed with my father’s life of Socrates, &c. &c.3
* Mr. Shandy must mean the poor in spirit;6 inasmuch as they divided the
money amongst themselves.
* He lost his hand at the battle of Lepanto.
* This must be a mistake in Mr. Shandy; for Graaf wrote upon the
pancreatick juice, and the parts of generation.
This le was downloaded from Z-Library project
Z-Access
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library
ffi
fi