"THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN"
To the Right Honourable Mr. Pitt.
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 corner of the kingdom, and in a retir'd thatch'd
house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against
the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by
mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man
smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, 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 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.
Contents
VOLUME
THE FIRST
VOLUME
THE SECOND
VOLUME
THE THIRD
VOLUME
THE FOURTH
VOLUME THE FIRST
Chapter 1.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; had they
duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then
doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was
concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and
temperature 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 humours 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, 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
half-penny 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.
Chapter 1.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.
The Homunculus, Sir, in however 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 scientific research, he
stands confess'd—a Being guarded and circumscribed with
rights.—The minutest philosophers, 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,—endow'd 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,
cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals,
humours, and articulations;—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 Chancellor of
England.—He may be benefitted,—he may be injured,—he may
obtain redress; in a word, he has all the claims and rights
of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorf, 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 through 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 lain 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.
Chapter 1.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 complained 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.
Chapter 1.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 Progress itself—and in the end,
prove the very thing which Montaigne 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 farther
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.
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 publick for the better clearing up this point.
My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey
merchant, 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 on 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 pestered 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 popped into her head—& vice
versa:—Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious
Locke, 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, which was on the 25th of the same month in which I
date my geniture,—my father set upon his journey to London,
with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster
school;' 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 a 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.
Chapter 1.V.
On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the aera fixed
on, was as near nine kalendar months as any husband could in
reason have expected,—was I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,
brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous 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 (though 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 public 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 accidents
as ever small Hero sustained.
Chapter 1.VI.
In the beginning of the last chapter, I informed 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 farther 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 praeclarum!—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 jog on, either laugh with me, or at me,
or in short do any thing,—only keep your temper.
Chapter 1.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, 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 withal an object of compassion, whose distress,
and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly
lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched 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
cheerfully paid the fees for the ordinary's licence himself,
amounting in the whole, to the sum of eighteen shillings and
four pence; 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.
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
Didius 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 coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in
the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in order
to have this wham-wham 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, 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;—their
running horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their
drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their
pallets,—their maggots and their butterflies?—and so long as
a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the
King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up
behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with
it?
Chapter 1.VIII.
—De gustibus non est disputandum;—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 fidler and painter,
according as the fly stings:—Be it known to you, that I keep
a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do
I care who knows it) I frequently ride out and take the
air;—though sometimes, 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,
tucked up to their very chins, with whips across their
mouths, scouring and scampering it away like so many little
party-coloured 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 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 tomorrow
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, whenever 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.'
Chapter 1.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
hawked about, or offered publicly 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 public 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, 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,
divided into 20,—I believe, my Lord, the outlines 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.
Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid
into the hands of Mr. Dodsley, 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,—take Tristram Shandy's under thy
protection also.
Chapter 1.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, though 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, jackass of a horse, value
about one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all
description of him, was full brother to Rosinante, 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, which may have given grounds for the
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-peaked 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, poudre d'or,—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-cap 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 tranquillity.—His character was,—he
loved a jest in his heart—and as he saw himself in the true
point of ridicule, 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 humorous and
apposite 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 fuga faeculi, as with the
advantage of a death's-head 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, 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,—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 withheld 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 extreme.—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, 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, I would leave to a special jury of
sufferers in the same traffick, 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 disproportioned to his
other expences, but withal 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 though he could
very well have explained 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 panegyrick 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,
whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and
would actually have gone farther 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:
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.
Chapter 1.XI.
Yorick was this parson's name, and, what is very remarkable
in it, (as appears from a most ancient 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 grandfather 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 farther
inform us, That the family was originally of Danish
extraction, and had been transplanted into England as early
as in the reign of Horwendillus, 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 Shakespeare, 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's 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
performed by us two, a most delectable narrative 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 refined 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 chattels than she.
This is all that ever staggered 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, seemed not to
have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole
crasis; 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 looked for, in one so extracted;—he
was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a
composition,—as heteroclite a creature in all his
declensions;—with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur
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 somebody'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
bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one
twelve-month, 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 wit 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, he was a man unhackneyed 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 person, 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, or to be enlivened
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 shunned
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 jests
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.
Chapter 1.XII.
The Mortgager and Mortgagee differ the one from the other,
not more in length of purse, than the Jester and Jestee do,
in that of memory. But in this the comparison between them
runs, as the scholiasts call it, upon all-four; 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 thinks 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-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding
Eugenius's 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 carelessness 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 laughed 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 an hundred enemies; and till thou hast
gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and
art half stung to death by them, thou wilt 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, lie 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
enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire
to offer it up with.
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 tit with more
sobriety.—But, alas, too late!—a grand confederacy
with...and...at the head of it, was formed 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.
Yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable
gallantry for some time; till, overpowered 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 breathed 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 resources 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 mis-shapened with the blows which...and..., and some
others have so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I
might say with Sancho Panca, that should I recover, and
'Mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as
thick as hail, not one of them would fit it.'—Yorick's last
breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready to depart
as he uttered this:—yet still it was uttered with something
of a Cervantick tone;—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 Shakespeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set
the table in a roar!
Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his
friend was broke: he squeezed his hand,—and then walked
softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick
followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door,—he then closed
them, and never opened them more.
He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the
parish of..., under a plain marble slab, 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. Alas, poor Yorick!
Ten times 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,
Alas, poor Yorick!
Chapter 1.XIII.
It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has
been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to
mention her again to him, merely to put him in mind that
there is such a body still in the world, and whom, upon the
best judgment I can form upon my own plan at present, I am
going to introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh
matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall out
betwixt the reader and myself, which may require immediate
dispatch;—'twas right to take care that the poor woman
should not be lost in the mean time;—because when she is
wanted, we can no way do without her.
I think I told you that this good woman was a person of
no small note and consequence throughout our whole village
and township;—that her fame had spread itself to the very
out-edge and circumference of that circle of importance, of
which kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his
back or no,—has one surrounding him;—which said circle, by
the way, whenever 'tis said that such a one is of great
weight and importance in the world,—I desire may be enlarged
or contracted in your worship's fancy, in a compound ratio
of the station, profession, knowledge, abilities, height and
depth (measuring both ways) of the personage brought before
you.
In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four
or five miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish,
but extended itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets
in the skirts of the next parish; which made a considerable
thing of it. I must add, That she was, moreover, very well
looked on at one large grange-house, and some other odd
houses and farms within two or three miles, as I said, from
the smoke of her own chimney:—But I must here, once for all,
inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated
and explain'd in a map, now in the hands of the engraver,
which, with many other pieces and developements of this
work, will be added to the end of the twentieth volume,—not
to swell the work,—I detest the thought of such a thing;—but
by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to
such passages, incidents, or inuendos as shall be thought to
be either of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful
meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have been read
over (now don't forget the meaning of the word) by all the
world;—which, betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the
gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of all that their
worships shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,—I
am determined shall be the case.—I need not tell your
worship, that all this is spoke in confidence.
Chapter 1.XIV.
Upon looking into my mother's marriage settlement, in order
to satisfy myself and reader in a point necessary to be
cleared up, before we could proceed any farther in this
history;—I had the good fortune to pop upon the very thing I
wanted before I had read a day and a half straight
forwards,—it might have taken me up a month;—which shews
plainly, that when a man sits down to write a history,—tho'
it be but the history of Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he
knows no more than his heels what lets and confounded
hindrances he is to meet with in his way,—or what a dance he
may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over.
Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer
drives on his mule,—straight forward;—for instance, from
Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his
head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,—he
might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get
to his journey's end;—but the thing is, morally speaking,
impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will
have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this
or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid.
He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually
soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still
to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon:
Panegyricks to paste up at this door;
Pasquinades at that:—All which both the man and his mule
are quite exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at
every stage to be look'd into, and rolls, records,
documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever and
anon calls him back to stay the reading of:—In short there
is no end of it;—for my own part, I declare I have been at
it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly
could,—and am not yet born:—I have just been able, and
that's all, to tell you when it happen'd, but not how;—so
that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished.
These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no
conception of when I first set out;—but which, I am
convinced now, will rather increase than diminish as I
advance,—have struck out a hint which I am resolved to
follow;—and that is,—not to be in a hurry;—but to go on
leisurely, writing and publishing two volumes of my life
every year;—which, if I am suffered to go on quietly, and
can make a tolerable bargain with my bookseller, I shall
continue to do as long as I live.
Chapter 1.XV.
The article in my mother's marriage-settlement, which I told
the reader I was at the pains to search for, and which, now
that I have found it, I think proper to lay before him,—is
so much more fully express'd in the deed itself, than ever I
can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it
out of the lawyer's hand:—It is as follows.
'And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said
Walter Shandy, merchant, in consideration of the said
intended marriage to be had, and, by God's blessing, to be
well and truly solemnized and consummated between the said
Walter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux aforesaid, and divers
other good and valuable causes and considerations him
thereunto specially moving,—doth grant, covenant,
condescend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully agree to
and with John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. the
above-named Trustees, &c. &c.—to wit,—That in case it should
hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to
pass,—That the said Walter Shandy, merchant, shall have left
off business before the time or times, that the said
Elizabeth Mollineux shall, according to the course of
nature, or otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing
forth children;—and that, in consequence of the said Walter
Shandy having so left off business, he shall in despight,
and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the
said Elizabeth Mollineux,—make a departure from the city of
London, in order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at
Shandy Hall, in the county of..., or at any other
country-seat, castle, hall, mansion-house, messuage or
grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter to be purchased,
or upon any part or parcel thereof:—That then, and as often
as the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall happen to be enceint
with child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to
be begotten, upon the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux,
during her said coverture,—he the said Walter Shandy shall,
at his own proper cost and charges, and out of his own
proper monies, upon good and reasonable notice, which is
hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said
Elizabeth Mollineux's full reckoning, or time of supposed
and computed delivery,—pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of
one hundred and twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to
John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. or assigns,—upon Trust
and confidence, and for and unto the use and uses, intent,
end, and purpose following:—That is to say,—That the said
sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid into the
hands of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, or to be otherwise
applied by them the said Trustees, for the well and truly
hiring of one coach, with able and sufficient horses, to
carry and convey the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux,
and the child or children which she shall be then and there
enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of London; and for
the further paying and defraying of all other incidental
costs, charges, and expences whatsoever,—in and about, and
for, and relating to, her said intended delivery and
lying-in, in the said city or suburbs thereof. And that the
said Elizabeth Mollineux shall and may, from time to time,
and at all such time and times as are here covenanted and
agreed upon,—peaceably and quietly hire the said coach and
horses, and have free ingress, egress, and regress
throughout her journey, in and from the said coach,
according to the tenor, true intent, and meaning of these
presents, without any let, suit, trouble, disturbance,
molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture, eviction,
vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.—And that
it shall moreover be lawful to and for the said Elizabeth
Mollineux, from time to time, and as oft or often as she
shall well and truly be advanced in her said pregnancy, to
the time heretofore stipulated and agreed upon,—to live and
reside in such place or places, and in such family or
families, and with such relations, friends, and other
persons within the said city of London, as she at her own
will and pleasure, notwithstanding her present coverture,
and as if she was a femme sole and unmarried,—shall think
fit.—And this Indenture further witnesseth, That for the
more effectually carrying of the said covenant into
execution, the said Walter Shandy, merchant, doth hereby
grant, bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said
John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. their heirs, executors,
and assigns, in their actual possession now being, by virtue
of an indenture of bargain and sale for a year to them the
said John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. by him the said
Walter Shandy, merchant, thereof made; which said bargain
and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the date
of these presents, and by force and virtue of the statute
for transferring of uses into possession,—All that the manor
and lordship of Shandy, in the county of..., with all the
rights, members, and appurtenances thereof; and all and
every the messuages, houses, buildings, barns, stables,
orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts, garths,
cottages, lands, meadows, feedings, pastures, marshes,
commons, woods, underwoods, drains, fisheries, waters, and
water-courses;—together with all rents, reversions,
services, annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of
frankpledge, escheats, reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and
chattels of felons and fugitives, felons of themselves, and
put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and all other
royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions,
privileges and hereditaments whatsoever.—And also the
advowson, donation, presentation, and free disposition of
the rectory or parsonage of Shandy aforesaid, and all and
every the tenths, tythes, glebe-lands.'—In three words,—'My
mother was to lay in (if she chose it) in London.'
But in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair
play on the part of my mother, which a marriage-article of
this nature too manifestly opened a door to, and which
indeed had never been thought of at all, but for my uncle
Toby Shandy;—a clause was added in security of my father
which was this:—'That in case my mother hereafter should, at
any time, put my father to the trouble and expence of a
London journey, upon false cries and tokens;—that for every
such instance, she should forfeit all the right and title
which the covenant gave her to the next turn;—but to no
more,—and so on, toties quoties, in as effectual a manner,
as if such a covenant betwixt them had not been made.'—This,
by the way, was no more than what was reasonable;—and yet,
as reasonable as it was, I have ever thought it hard that
the whole weight of the article should have fallen entirely,
as it did, upon myself.
But I was begot and born to misfortunes;—for my poor
mother, whether it was wind or water—or a compound of
both,—or neither;—or whether it was simply the mere swell of
imagination and fancy in her;—or how far a strong wish and
desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment;—in short,
whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no
way becomes me to decide. The fact was this, That in the
latter end of September 1717, which was the year before I
was born, my mother having carried my father up to town much
against the grain,—he peremptorily insisted upon the
clause;—so that I was doom'd, by marriage-articles, to have
my nose squeez'd as flat to my face, as if the destinies had
actually spun me without one.
How this event came about,—and what a train of vexatious
disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have
pursued me from the mere loss, or rather compression, of
this one single member,—shall be laid before the reader all
in due time.
Chapter 1.XVI.
My father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down with
my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a
humour. The first twenty or five-and-twenty miles he did
nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and indeed
my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might
every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him
more than every thing else was, the provoking time of the
year,—which, as I told you, was towards the end of
September, when his wall-fruit and green gages especially,
in which he was very curious, were just ready for
pulling:—'Had he been whistled up to London, upon a Tom
Fool's errand, in any other month of the whole year, he
should not have said three words about it.'
For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down,
but the heavy blow he had sustain'd from the loss of a son,
whom it seems he had fully reckon'd upon in his mind, and
register'd down in his pocket-book, as a second staff for
his old age, in case Bobby should fail him. 'The
disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a
wise man, than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost
him, put together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,—he did
not mind it a rush.'
From Stilton, all the way to Grantham, nothing in the
whole affair provoked him so much as the condolences of his
friends, and the foolish figure they should both make at
church, the first Sunday;—of which, in the satirical
vehemence of his wit, now sharpen'd a little by vexation, he
would give so many humorous and provoking descriptions,—and
place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights and
attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;—that my
mother declared, these two stages were so truly
tragi-comical, that she did nothing but laugh and cry in a
breath, from one end to the other of them all the way.
From Grantham, till they had cross'd the Trent, my father
was out of all kind of patience at the vile trick and
imposition which he fancied my mother had put upon him in
this affair—'Certainly,' he would say to himself, over and
over again, 'the woman could not be deceived herself—if she
could,—what weakness!'—tormenting word!—which led his
imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play'd
the duce and all with him;—for sure as ever the word
weakness was uttered, and struck full upon his brain—so sure
it set him upon running divisions upon how many kinds of
weaknesses there were;—that there was such a thing as
weakness of the body,—as well as weakness of the mind,—and
then he would do nothing but syllogize within himself for a
stage or two together, How far the cause of all these
vexations might, or might not, have arisen out of himself.
In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude
springing out of this one affair, all fretting successively
in his mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever
was her journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down.—In
a word, as she complained to my uncle Toby, he would have
tired out the patience of any flesh alive.
Chapter 1.XVII.
Though my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none
of the best of moods,—pshawing and pishing all the way
down,—yet he had the complaisance to keep the worst part of
the story still to himself;—which was the resolution he had
taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle Toby's
clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him; nor was it
till the very night in which I was begot, which was thirteen
months after, that she had the least intimation of his
design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a
little chagrin'd and out of temper,—took occasion as they
lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what
was to come,—to let her know that she must accommodate
herself as well as she could to the bargain made between
them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in of her
next child in the country, to balance the last year's
journey.
My father was a gentleman of many virtues,—but he had a
strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might
not, add to the number.—'Tis known by the name of
perseverance in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in a bad one:
Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew 'twas
to no purpose to make any remonstrance,—so she e'en resolved
to sit down quietly, and make the most of it.
Chapter 1.XVIII.
As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined,
that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took
her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was
three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to
cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard
me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the
famous Dr. Manningham was not to be had, she had come to a
final determination in her mind,—notwithstanding there was a
scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of
us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings
book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed,
not only the blunders of the sisterhood itself,—but had
likewise super-added many curious improvements for the
quicker extraction of the foetus in cross births, and some
other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into the
world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was
absolutely determined to trust her life, and mine with it,
into no soul's hand but this old woman's only.—Now this I
like;—when we cannot get at the very thing we wish—never to
take up with the next best in degree to it:—no; that's
pitiful beyond description;—it is no more than a week from
this very day, in which I am now writing this book for the
edification of the world;—which is March 9, 1759,—that my
dear, dear Jenny, observing I looked a little grave, as she
stood cheapening a silk of five-and-twenty shillings a
yard,—told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so
much trouble;—and immediately went and bought herself a
yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard.—'Tis the duplication of
one and the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the
honour of it, somewhat, in my mother's case, was, that she
could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an
extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because
the old midwife had really some little claim to be depended
upon,—as much, at least, as success could give her; having,
in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the
parish, brought every mother's son of them into the world
without any one slip or accident which could fairly be laid
to her account.
These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not
altogether satisfy some few scruples and uneasinesses which
hung upon my father's spirits in relation to this choice.—To
say nothing of the natural workings of humanity and
justice—or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love,
all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as
possible in a case of this kind;—he felt himself concerned
in a particular manner, that all should go right in the
present case;—from the accumulated sorrow he lay open to,
should any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at
Shandy-Hall.—He knew the world judged by events, and would
add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him
with the whole blame of it.—'Alas o'day;—had Mrs. Shandy,
poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just
to lye-in and come down again;—which they say, she begged
and prayed for upon her bare knees,—and which, in my
opinion, considering the fortune which Mr. Shandy got with
her,—was no such mighty matter to have complied with, the
lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this
hour.'
This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;—and
yet, it was not merely to shelter himself,—nor was it
altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he
seemed so extremely anxious about this point;—my father had
extensive views of things,—and stood moreover, as he
thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from
the dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated
instance might be put to.
He was very sensible that all political writers upon the
subject had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the
beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign down to his own time,
that the current of men and money towards the metropolis,
upon one frivolous errand or another,—set in so strong,—as
to become dangerous to our civil rights,—though, by the
bye,—a current was not the image he took most delight in,—a
distemper was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run
it down into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was
identically the same in the body national as in the body
natural, where the blood and spirits were driven up into the
head faster than they could find their ways down;—a stoppage
of circulation must ensue, which was death in both cases.
There was little danger, he would say, of losing our
liberties by French politicks or French invasions;—nor was
he so much in pain of a consumption from the mass of
corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our constitution,
which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined;—but he
verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off,
all at once, in a state-apoplexy;—and then he would say, The
Lord have mercy upon us all.
My father was never able to give the history of this
distemper,—without the remedy along with it.
'Was I an absolute prince,' he would say, pulling up his
breeches with both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair,
'I would appoint able judges, at every avenue of my
metropolis, who should take cognizance of every fool's
business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid
hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his
own home, and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and
children, farmer's sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they
should be all sent back, from constable to constable, like
vagrants as they were, to the place of their legal
settlements. By this means I shall take care, that my
metropolis totter'd not thro' its own weight;—that the head
be no longer too big for the body;—that the extremes, now
wasted and pinn'd in, be restored to their due share of
nourishment, and regain with it their natural strength and
beauty:—I would effectually provide, That the meadows and
corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and sing;—that
good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such
weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the
Squirality of my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I
perceive my Nobility are now taking from them.
'Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen's seats,' he
would ask, with some emotion, as he walked across the room,
'throughout so many delicious provinces in France? Whence is
it that the few remaining Chateaus amongst them are so
dismantled,—so unfurnished, and in so ruinous and desolate a
condition?—Because, Sir' (he would say) 'in that kingdom no
man has any country-interest to support;—the little interest
of any kind which any man has any where in it, is
concentrated in the court, and the looks of the Grand
Monarch: by the sunshine of whose countenance, or the clouds
which pass across it, every French man lives or dies.'
Another political reason which prompted my father so
strongly to guard against the least evil accident in my
mother's lying-in in the country,—was, That any such
instance would infallibly throw a balance of power, too
great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in his
own, or higher stations;—which, with the many other usurped
rights which that part of the constitution was hourly
establishing,—would, in the end, prove fatal to the
monarchical system of domestick government established in
the first creation of things by God.
In this point he was entirely of Sir Robert Filmer's
opinion, That the plans and institutions of the greatest
monarchies in the eastern parts of the world, were,
originally, all stolen from that admirable pattern and
prototype of this houshold and paternal power;—which, for a
century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating
away into a mix'd government;—the form of which, however
desirable in great combinations of the species,—was very
troublesome in small ones,—and seldom produced any thing,
that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.
For all these reasons, private and publick, put
together,—my father was for having the man-midwife by all
means,—my mother, by no means. My father begg'd and
intreated, she would for once recede from her prerogative in
this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;—my mother, on
the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to
choose for herself,—and have no mortal's help but the old
woman's.—What could my father do? He was almost at his wit's
end;—talked it over with her in all moods;—placed his
arguments in all lights;—argued the matter with her like a
christian,—like a heathen,—like a husband,—like a
father,—like a patriot,—like a man:—My mother answered every
thing only like a woman; which was a little hard upon
her;—for as she could not assume and fight it out behind
such a variety of characters,—'twas no fair match:—'twas
seven to one.—What could my mother do?—She had the advantage
(otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small
reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore
her up, and enabled her to dispute the affair with my father
with so equal an advantage,—that both sides sung Te Deum. In
a word, my mother was to have the old woman,—and the
operator was to have licence to drink a bottle of wine with
my father and my uncle Toby Shandy in the back parlour,—for
which he was to be paid five guineas.
I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter
a caveat in the breast of my fair reader;—and it is
this,—Not to take it absolutely for granted, from an
unguarded word or two which I have dropp'd in it,—'That I am
a married man.'—I own, the tender appellation of my dear,
dear Jenny,—with some other strokes of conjugal knowledge,
interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough, have
misled the most candid judge in the world into such a
determination against me.—All I plead for, in this case,
Madam, is strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to
me as well as to yourself,—as not to prejudge, or receive
such an impression of me, till you have better evidence,
than, I am positive, at present can be produced against
me.—Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam, as to
desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear Jenny
is my kept mistress;—no,—that would be flattering my
character in the other extreme, and giving it an air of
freedom, which, perhaps, it has no kind of right to. All I
contend for, is the utter impossibility, for some volumes,
that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, should
know how this matter really stands.—It is not impossible,
but that my dear, dear Jenny! tender as the appellation is,
may be my child.—Consider,—I was born in the year
eighteen.—Nor is there any thing unnatural or extravagant in
the supposition, that my dear Jenny may be my
friend.—Friend!—My friend.—Surely, Madam, a friendship
between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported
without—Fy! Mr. Shandy:—Without any thing, Madam, but that
tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in
friendship, where there is a difference of sex. Let me
intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the
best French Romances;—it will really, Madam, astonish you to
see with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious
sentiment, which I have the honour to speak of, is dress'd
out.
Chapter 1.XIX.
I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in
geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman
of my father's great good sense,—knowing, as the reader must
have observed him, and curious too in philosophy,—wise also
in political reasoning,—and in polemical (as he will find)
no way ignorant,—could be capable of entertaining a notion
in his head, so out of the common track,—that I fear the
reader, when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least
of a cholerick temper, will immediately throw the book by;
if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily at it;—and if he
is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will, at first sight,
absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant; and that was
in respect to the choice and imposition of christian names,
on which he thought a great deal more depended than what
superficial minds were capable of conceiving.
His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a
strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he
called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and
conduct.
The hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more
seriousness,—nor had he more faith,—or more to say on the
powers of necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,—or on
Dulcinea's name, in shedding lustre upon them, than my
father had on those of Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the
one hand—or of Nyky and Simkin on the other. How many
Caesars and Pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of
the names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many,
he would add, are there, who might have done exceeding well
in the world, had not their characters and spirits been
totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing?
I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case
happened) my father would say—that you do not heartily
subscribe to this opinion of mine,—which, to those, he would
add, who have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,—I own
has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;—and
yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I
am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case
to you, not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and
trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid
disquisition in this matter;—you are a person free from as
many narrow prejudices of education as most men;—and, if I
may presume to penetrate farther into you,—of a liberality
of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it
wants friends. Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and
open temper you have so much to expect.—Your Billy,
Sir!—would you, for the world, have called him Judas?—Would
you, my dear Sir, he would say, laying his hand upon your
breast, with the genteelest address,—and in that soft and
irresistible piano of voice, which the nature of the
argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir,
if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the name for your
child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you
have consented to such a desecration of him?—O my God! he
would say, looking up, if I know your temper right, Sir,—you
are incapable of it;—you would have trampled upon the
offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter's
head with abhorrence.
Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire,
with that generous contempt of money, which you shew me in
the whole transaction, is really noble;—and what renders it
more so, is the principle of it;—the workings of a parent's
love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis,
namely, That was your son called Judas,—the forbid and
treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have
accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the
end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of
your example.
I never knew a man able to answer this argument.—But,
indeed, to speak of my father as he was;—he was certainly
irresistible;—both in his orations and disputations;—he was
born an orator;—(Greek).—Persuasion hung upon his lips, and
the elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in
him,—and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess at the weaknesses
and passions of his respondent,—that Nature might have stood
up and said,—'This man is eloquent.'—In short, whether he
was on the weak or the strong side of the question, 'twas
hazardous in either case to attack him.—And yet, 'tis
strange, he had never read Cicero, nor Quintilian de
Oratore, nor Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, amongst
the antients;—nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor
Farnaby, amongst the moderns;—and what is more astonishing,
he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of
subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon
Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius or any Dutch logician or
commentator;—he knew not so much as in what the difference
of an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad hominem
consisted; so that I well remember, when he went up along
with me to enter my name at Jesus College in...,—it was a
matter of just wonder with my worthy tutor, and two or three
fellows of that learned society,—that a man who knew not so
much as the names of his tools, should be able to work after
that fashion with them.
To work with them in the best manner he could, was what
my father was, however, perpetually forced upon;—for he had
a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to
defend—most of which notions, I verily believe, at first
entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la
Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for
half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them,
dismiss them till another day.
I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or
conjecture upon the progress and establishment of my
father's many odd opinions,—but as a warning to the learned
reader against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who,
after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into
our brains,—at length claim a kind of settlement
there,—working sometimes like yeast;—but more generally
after the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in
jest,—but ending in downright earnest.
Whether this was the case of the singularity of my
father's notions—or that his judgment, at length, became the
dupe of his wit;—or how far, in many of his notions, he
might, though odd, be absolutely right;—the reader, as he
comes at them, shall decide. All that I maintain here, is,
that in this one, of the influence of christian names,
however it gained footing, he was serious;—he was all
uniformity;—he was systematical, and, like all systematic
reasoners, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist
and torture every thing in nature to support his hypothesis.
In a word I repeat it over again;—he was serious;—and, in
consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience
whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should
have known better,—as careless and as indifferent about the
name they imposed upon their child,—or more so, than in the
choice of Ponto or Cupid for their puppy-dog.
This, he would say, look'd ill;—and had, moreover, this
particular aggravation in it, viz. That when once a vile
name was wrongfully or injudiciously given, 'twas not like
the case of a man's character, which, when wrong'd, might
hereafter be cleared;—and, possibly, some time or other, if
not in the man's life, at least after his death,—be, somehow
or other, set to rights with the world: But the injury of
this, he would say, could never be undone;—nay, he doubted
even whether an act of parliament could reach it:—He knew as
well as you, that the legislature assumed a power over
surnames;—but for very strong reasons, which he could give,
it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step
farther.
It was observable, that tho' my father, in consequence of
this opinion, had, as I have told you, the strongest likings
and dislikings towards certain names;—that there were still
numbers of names which hung so equally in the balance before
him, that they were absolutely indifferent to him. Jack,
Dick, and Tom were of this class: These my father called
neutral names;—affirming of them, without a satire, That
there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise
and good men, since the world began, who had indifferently
borne them;—so that, like equal forces acting against each
other in contrary directions, he thought they mutually
destroyed each other's effects; for which reason, he would
often declare, He would not give a cherry-stone to choose
amongst them. Bob, which was my brother's name, was another
of these neutral kinds of christian names, which operated
very little either way; and as my father happen'd to be at
Epsom, when it was given him,—he would oft-times thank
Heaven it was no worse. Andrew was something like a negative
quantity in Algebra with him;—'twas worse, he said, than
nothing.—William stood pretty high:—Numps again was low with
him:—and Nick, he said, was the Devil.
But of all names in the universe he had the most
unconquerable aversion for Tristram;—he had the lowest and
most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the
world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum
natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in
the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye,
he was frequently involved,—he would sometimes break off in
a sudden and spirited Epiphonema, or rather Erotesis, raised
a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the
discourse,—and demand it categorically of his antagonist,
Whether he would take upon him to say, he had ever
remembered,—whether he had ever read,—or even whether he had
ever heard tell of a man, called Tristram, performing any
thing great or worth recording?—No,—he would
say,—Tristram!—The thing is impossible.
What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a
book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little
boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his
opinions,—unless he gives them proper vent:—It was the
identical thing which my father did:—for in the year
sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at
the pains of writing an express Dissertation simply upon the
word Tristram,—shewing the world, with great candour and
modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.
When this story is compared with the title-page,—Will not
the gentle reader pity my father from his soul?—to see an
orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho' singular,—yet
inoffensive in his notions,—so played upon in them by cross
purposes;—to look down upon the stage, and see him baffled
and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes; to
behold a train of events perpetually falling out against
him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had
purposedly been plann'd and pointed against him, merely to
insult his speculations.—In a word, to behold such a one, in
his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day
suffering sorrow;—ten times in a day calling the child of
his prayers Tristram!—Melancholy dissyllable of sound!
which, to his ears, was unison to Nincompoop, and every name
vituperative under heaven.—By his ashes! I swear it,—if ever
malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in
traversing the purposes of mortal man,—it must have been
here;—and if it was not necessary I should be born before I
was christened, I would this moment give the reader an
account of it.
Chapter 1.XX.
—How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last
chapter? I told you in it, That my mother was not a
papist.—Papist! You told me no such thing, Sir.—Madam, I beg
leave to repeat it over again, that I told you as plain, at
least, as words, by direct inference, could tell you such a
thing.—Then, Sir, I must have miss'd a page.—No, Madam, you
have not miss'd a word.—Then I was asleep, Sir.—My pride,
Madam, cannot allow you that refuge.—Then, I declare, I know
nothing at all about the matter.—That, Madam, is the very
fault I lay to your charge; and as a punishment for it, I do
insist upon it, that you immediately turn back, that is as
soon as you get to the next full stop, and read the whole
chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the
lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the
best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for
it when she returns back:—'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste,
which has crept into thousands besides herself,—of reading
straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of
the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast,
if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart with
them—The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections,
and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude
of which made Pliny the younger affirm, 'That he never read
a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.' The stories
of Greece and Rome, run over without this turn and
application,—do less service, I affirm it, than the history
of Parismus and Parismenus, or of the Seven Champions of
England, read with it.
—But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over again
the chapter, Madam, as I desired you?—You have: And did you
not observe the passage, upon the second reading, which
admits the inference?—Not a word like it! Then, Madam, be
pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the chapter,
where I take upon me to say, 'It was necessary I should be
born before I was christen'd.' Had my mother, Madam, been a
Papist, that consequence did not follow. (The Romish Rituals
direct the baptizing of the child, in cases of danger,
before it is born;—but upon this proviso, That some part or
other of the child's body be seen by the baptizer:—But the
Doctors of the Sorbonne, by a deliberation held amongst
them, April 10, 1733,—have enlarged the powers of the
midwives, by determining, That though no part of the child's
body should appear,—that baptism shall, nevertheless, be
administered to it by injection,—par le moyen d'une petite
canulle,—Anglice a squirt.—'Tis very strange that St. Thomas
Aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying
and untying the knots of school-divinity,—should, after so
much pains bestowed upon this,—give up the point at last, as
a second La chose impossible,—'Infantes in maternis uteris
existentes (quoth St. Thomas!) baptizari possunt nullo
modo.'—O Thomas! Thomas! 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.)
It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine,
but more so to the Republick of letters;—so that my own is
quite swallowed up in the consideration of it,—that this
self-same vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things,
has got so strongly into our habit and humour,—and so wholly
intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our
concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more
carnal parts of a composition will go down:—The subtle hints
and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits
upwards,—the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one
and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were
still left in the bottom of the ink-horn.
I wish the male-reader has not pass'd by many a one, as
quaint and curious as this one, in which the female-reader
has been detected. I wish it may have its effects;—and that
all good people, both male and female, from example, may be
taught to think as well as read.
Memoire presente a Messieurs les Docteurs de Sorbonne
Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366.
Un Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente a Messieurs les
Docteurs de Sorbonne, qu'il y a des cas, quoique tres rares,
ou une mere ne scauroit accoucher, & meme ou l'enfant est
tellement renferme dans le sein de sa mere, qu'il ne fait
paroitre aucune partie de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas,
suivant les Rituels, de lui conferer, du moins sous
condition, le bapteme. Le Chirurgien, qui consulte, pretend,
par le moyen d'une petite canulle, de pouvoir baptiser
immediatement l'enfant, sans faire aucun tort a la mere.—Il
demand si ce moyen, qu'il vient de proposer, est permis &
legitime, & s'il peut s'en servir dans les cas qu'il vient
d'exposer.
Reponse
Le Conseil estime, que la question proposee souffre de
grandes difficultes. Les Theologiens posent d'un cote pour
principe, que le bapteme, qui est une naissance spirituelle,
suppose une premiere naissance; il faut etre ne dans le
monde, pour renaitre en Jesus Christ, comme ils
l'enseignent. S. Thomas, 3 part. quaest. 88 artic. II. suit
cette doctrine comme une verite constante; l'on ne peut, dit
ce S. Docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont renfermes dans
le sein de leurs meres, & S. Thomas est fonde sur ce, que
les enfans ne sont point nes, & ne peuvent etre comptes
parmi les autres hommes; d'ou il conclud, qu'ils ne peuvent
etre l'objet d'une action exterieure, pour recevoir par leur
ministere, les sacremens necessaires au salut: Pueri in
maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut cum
aliis hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici
actioni humanae, ut per eorum ministerium sacramenta
recipiant ad salutem. Les rituels ordonnent dans la pratique
ce que les theologiens ont etabli sur les memes matieres, &
ils deffendent tous d'une maniere uniforme, de baptiser les
enfans qui sont renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, s'ils
ne sont paroitre quelque partie de leurs corps. Le concours
des theologiens, & des rituels, qui sont les regles des
dioceses, paroit former une autorite qui termine la question
presente; cependant le conseil de conscience considerant
d'un cote, que le raisonnement des theologiens est
uniquement fonde sur une raison de convenance, & que la
deffense des rituels suppose que l'on ne peut baptiser
immediatement les enfans ainsi renfermes dans le sein de
leurs meres, ce qui est contre la supposition presente; &
d'un autre cote, considerant que les memes theologiens
enseignent, que l'on peut risquer les sacremens que Jesus
Christ a etablis comme des moyens faciles, mais necessaires
pour sanctifier les hommes; & d'ailleurs estimant, que les
enfans renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient
etre capables de salut, parcequ'ils sont capables de
damnation;—pour ces considerations, & en egard a l'expose,
suivant lequel on assure avoir trouve un moyen certain de
baptiser ces enfans ainsi renfermes, sans faire aucun tort a
la mere, le Conseil estime que l'on pourroit se servir du
moyen propose, dans la confiance qu'il a, que Dieu n'a point
laisse ces sortes d'enfans sans aucuns secours, & supposant,
comme il est expose, que le moyen dont il s'agit est propre
a leur procurer le bapteme; cependant comme il s'agiroit, en
autorisant la pratique proposee, de changer une regle
universellement etablie, le Conseil croit que celui qui
consulte doit s'addresser a son eveque, & a qui il
appartient de juger de l'utilite, & du danger du moyen
propose, & comme, sous le bon plaisir de l'eveque, le
Conseil estime qu'il faudroit recourir au Pape, qui a le
droit d'expliquer les regles de l'eglise, & d'y deroger dans
le cas, ou la loi ne scauroit obliger, quelque sage &
quelque utile que paroisse la maniere de baptiser dont il
s'agit, le Conseil ne pourroit l'approver sans le concours
de ces deux autorites. On conseile au moins a celui qui
consulte, de s'addresser a son eveque, & de lui faire part
de la presente decision, afin que, si le prelat entre dans
les raisons sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignes
s'appuyent, il puisse etre autorise dans le cas de
necessite, ou il risqueroit trop d'attendre que la
permission fut demandee & accordee d'employer le moyen qu'il
propose si avantageux au salut de l'enfant. Au reste, le
Conseil, en estimant que l'on pourroit s'en servir, croit
cependant, que si les enfans dont il s'agit, venoient au
monde, contre l'esperance de ceux qui se seroient servis du
meme moyen, il seroit necessaire de les baptiser sous
condition; & en cela le Conseil se conforme a tous les
rituels, qui en autorisant le bapteme d'un enfant qui fait
paroitre quelque partie de son corps, enjoignent neantmoins,
& ordonnent de le baptiser sous condition, s'il vient
heureusement au monde.
Delibere en Sorbonne, le 10 Avril, 1733.
A. Le Moyne.
L. De Romigny.
De Marcilly.
Mr. Tristram Shandy's compliments to Messrs. Le Moyne, De
Romigny, and De Marcilly; hopes they all rested well the
night after so tiresome a consultation.—He begs to know,
whether after the ceremony of marriage, and before that of
consummation, the baptizing all the Homunculi at once,
slapdash, by injection, would not be a shorter and safer cut
still; on condition, as above, That if the Homunculi do
well, and come safe into the world after this, that each and
every of them shall be baptized again (sous condition)—And
provided, in the second place, That the thing can be done,
which Mr. Shandy apprehends it may, par le moyen d'une
petite canulle, and sans faire aucune tort au pere.
Chapter 1.XXI.
—I wonder what's all that noise, and running backwards and
forwards for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing
himself, after an hour and a half's silence, to my uncle
Toby,—who, you must know, was sitting on the opposite side
of the fire, smoaking his social pipe all the time, in mute
contemplation of a new pair of black plush-breeches which he
had got on:—What can they be doing, brother?—quoth my
father,—we can scarce hear ourselves talk.
I think, replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his
mouth, and striking the head of it two or three times upon
the nail of his left thumb, as he began his sentence,—I
think, says he:—But to enter rightly into my uncle Toby's
sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to enter first
a little into his character, the out-lines of which I shall
just give you, and then the dialogue between him and my
father will go on as well again.
Pray what was that man's name,—for I write in such a
hurry, I have no time to recollect or look for it,—who first
made the observation, 'That there was great inconstancy in
our air and climate?' Whoever he was, 'twas a just and good
observation in him.—But the corollary drawn from it, namely,
'That it is this which has furnished us with such a variety
of odd and whimsical characters;'—that was not his;—it was
found out by another man, at least a century and a half
after him: Then again,—that this copious store-house of
original materials, is the true and natural cause that our
Comedies are so much better than those of France, or any
others that either have, or can be wrote upon the
Continent:—that discovery was not fully made till about the
middle of King William's reign,—when the great Dryden, in
writing one of his long prefaces, (if I mistake not) most
fortunately hit upon it. Indeed toward the latter end of
queen Anne, the great Addison began to patronize the notion,
and more fully explained it to the world in one or two of
his Spectators;—but the discovery was not his.—Then,
fourthly and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our
climate, producing so strange an irregularity in our
characters,—doth thereby, in some sort, make us amends, by
giving us somewhat to make us merry with when the weather
will not suffer us to go out of doors,—that observation is
my own;—and was struck out by me this very rainy day, March
26, 1759, and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the
morning.
Thus—thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this
great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes;
thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our
knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical,
nautical, mathematical, aenigmatical, technical,
biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with
fifty other branches of it, (most of 'em ending as these do,
in ical) have for these two last centuries and more,
gradually been creeping upwards towards that Akme of their
perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from
the advances of these last seven years, we cannot possibly
be far off.
When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end
to all kind of writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of
writing will put an end to all kind of reading;—and that in
time, As war begets poverty; poverty peace,—must, in course,
put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and then—we shall have
all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly
where we started.
—Happy! Thrice happy times! I only wish that the aera of
my begetting, as well as the mode and manner of it, had been
a little alter'd,—or that it could have been put off, with
any convenience to my father or mother, for some twenty or
five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the literary
world might have stood some chance.—
But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have
left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe.
His humour was of that particular species, which does
honour to our atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple
of ranking him amongst one of the first-rate productions of
it, had not there appeared too many strong lines in it of a
family-likeness, which shewed that he derived the
singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind
or water, or any modifications or combinations of them
whatever: And I have, therefore, oft-times wondered, that my
father, tho' I believe he had his reasons for it, upon his
observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my course, when I
was a boy,—should never once endeavour to account for them
in this way: for all the Shandy Family were of an original
character throughout:—I mean the males,—the females had no
character at all,—except, indeed, my great aunt Dinah, who,
about sixty years ago, was married and got with child by the
coachman, for which my father, according to his hypothesis
of christian names, would often say, She might thank her
godfathers and godmothers.
It will seem strange,—and I would as soon think of
dropping a riddle in the reader's way, which is not my
interest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come
to pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after it
had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the
peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted,
between my father and my uncle Toby. One would have thought,
that the whole force of the misfortune should have spent and
wasted itself in the family at first,—as is generally the
case.—But nothing ever wrought with our family after the
ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this happened, it
might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions
are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done
the Shandy Family any good at all, it might lie waiting till
apt times and circumstances should give it an opportunity to
discharge its office.—Observe, I determine nothing upon
this.—My way is ever to point out to the curious, different
tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the
events I tell;—not with a pedantic Fescue,—or in the
decisive manner or Tacitus, who outwits himself and his
reader;—but with the officious humility of a heart devoted
to the assistance merely of the inquisitive;—to them I
write,—and by them I shall be read,—if any such reading as
this could be supposed to hold out so long,—to the very end
of the world.
Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved
for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and
in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the
cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to
operate, is what I am able to explain with great exactness,
and is as follows:
My uncle Toby Shandy, Madam, was a gentleman, who, with
the virtues which usually constitute the character of a man
of honour and rectitude,—possessed one in a very eminent
degree, which is seldom or never put into the catalogue; and
that was a most extreme and unparallel'd modesty of
nature;—though I correct the word nature, for this reason,
that I may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to a
hearing, and that is, Whether this modesty of his was
natural or acquir'd.—Whichever way my uncle Toby came by it,
'twas nevertheless modesty in the truest sense of it; and
that is, Madam, not in regard to words, for he was so
unhappy as to have very little choice in them,—but to
things;—and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and it
arose to such a height in him, as almost to equal, if such a
thing could be, even the modesty of a woman: That female
nicety, Madam, and inward cleanliness of mind and fancy, in
your sex, which makes you so much the awe of ours.
You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby had
contracted all this from this very source;—that he had spent
a great part of his time in converse with your sex, and that
from a thorough knowledge of you, and the force of imitation
which such fair examples render irresistible, he had
acquired this amiable turn of mind.
I wish I could say so,—for unless it was with his
sister-in-law, my father's wife and my mother—my uncle Toby
scarce exchanged three words with the sex in as many
years;—no, he got it, Madam, by a blow.—A blow!—Yes, Madam,
it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke off by a ball
from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of Namur, which
struck full upon my uncle Toby's groin.—Which way could that
effect it? The story of that, Madam, is long and
interesting;—but it would be running my history all upon
heaps to give it you here.—'Tis for an episode hereafter;
and every circumstance relating to it, in its proper place,
shall be faithfully laid before you:—'Till then, it is not
in my power to give farther light into this matter, or say
more than what I have said already,—That my uncle Toby was a
gentleman of unparallel'd modesty, which happening to be
somewhat subtilized and rarified by the constant heat of a
little family pride,—they both so wrought together within
him, that he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt
Dinah touch'd upon, but with the greatest emotion.—The least
hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into his
face;—but when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed
companies, which the illustration of his hypothesis
frequently obliged him to do,—the unfortunate blight of one
of the fairest branches of the family, would set my uncle
Toby's honour and modesty o'bleeding; and he would often
take my father aside, in the greatest concern imaginable, to
expostulate and tell him, he would give him any thing in the
world, only to let the story rest.
My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness
for my uncle Toby, that ever one brother bore towards
another, and would have done any thing in nature, which one
brother in reason could have desir'd of another, to have
made my uncle Toby's heart easy in this, or any other point.
But this lay out of his power.
—My father, as I told you was a philosopher in
grain,—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt Dinah's affair
was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the
retrogradation of the planets to Copernicus:—The
backslidings of Venus in her orbit fortified the Copernican
system, called so after his name; and the backslidings of my
aunt Dinah in her orbit, did the same service in
establishing my father's system, which, I trust, will for
ever hereafter be called the Shandean System, after his.
In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had
as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever;—and neither
he, nor, I dare say, Copernicus, would have divulged the
affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it
to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they
thought, to truth.—Amicus Plato, my father would say,
construing the words to my uncle Toby, as he went along,
Amicus Plato; that is, Dinah was my aunt;—sed magis amica
veritas—but Truth is my sister.
This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my
uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one
could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace
recorded,—and the other would scarce ever let a day pass to
an end without some hint at it.
For God's sake, my uncle Toby would cry,—and for my sake,
and for all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy,—do let this
story of our aunt's and her ashes sleep in peace;—how can
you,—how can you have so little feeling and compassion for
the character of our family?—What is the character of a
family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.—Nay, if you
come to that—what is the life of a family?—The life of a
family!—my uncle Toby would say, throwing himself back in
his arm chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one
leg—Yes, the life,—my father would say, maintaining his
point. How many thousands of 'em are there every year that
come cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)—and
considered as nothing but common air, in competition of an
hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my uncle Toby would
answer,—every such instance is downright Murder, let who
will commit it.—There lies your mistake, my father would
reply;—for, in Foro Scientiae there is no such thing as
Murder,—'tis only Death, brother.
My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any
other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen
bars of Lillebullero.—You must know it was the usual channel
thro' which his passions got vent, when any thing shocked or
surprized him:—but especially when any thing, which he
deem'd very absurd, was offered.
As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the
commentators upon them, that I remember, have thought proper
to give a name to this particular species of argument.—I
here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons.
First, That, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes,
it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every
other species of argument—as the Argumentum ad Verecundiam,
ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori, or any other argument
whatsoever:—And, secondly, That it may be said by my
children's children, when my head is laid to rest,—that
their learn'd grandfather's head had been busied to as much
purpose once, as other people's;—That he had invented a
name, and generously thrown it into the Treasury of the Ars
Logica, for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the
whole science. And, if the end of disputation is more to
silence than convince,—they may add, if they please, to one
of the best arguments too.
I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and
command, That it be known and distinguished by the name and
title of the Argumentum Fistulatorium, and no other;—and
that it rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinum and the
Argumentum ad Crumenam, and for ever hereafter be treated of
in the same chapter.
As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but
by the woman against the man;—and the Argumentum ad Rem,
which, contrarywise, is made use of by the man only against
the woman;—As these two are enough in conscience for one
lecture;—and, moreover, as the one is the best answer to the
other,—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of in
a place by themselves.
Chapter 1.XXII.
The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall,
who was Bishop of Exeter in King James the First's reign,
tells us in one of Decads, at the end of his divine art of
meditation, imprinted at London, in the year 1610, by John
Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, 'That it is an
abominable thing for a man to commend himself;'—and I really
think it is so.
And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a
masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be
found out;—I think it is full as abominable, that a man
should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with
the conceit of it rotting in his head.
This is precisely my situation.
For in this long digression which I was accidentally led
into, as in all
my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke
of
digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear,
been
over-looked by my reader,—not for want of penetration in
him,—but
because 'tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected
indeed, in a
digression;—and it is this: That tho' my digressions are all
fair, as
you observe,—and that I fly off from what I am about, as
far, and as
often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly
take care
to order affairs so that my main business does not stand
still in my
absence.
I was just going, for example, to have given you the
great out-lines of my uncle Toby's most whimsical
character;—when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across
us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very
heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you
perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went
on gently all the time;—not the great contours of it,—that
was impossible,—but some familiar strokes and faint
designations of it, were here and there touch'd on, as we
went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my
uncle Toby now than you was before.
By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a
species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into
it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance
with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is
progressive too,—and at the same time.
This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the
earth's moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with
her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the
year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of
seasons we enjoy;—though I own it suggested the thought,—as
I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and
discoveries have come from such trifling hints.
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;—they are
the life, the soul of reading!—take them out of this book,
for instance,—you might as well take the book along with
them;—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of
it; restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a
bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids
the appetite to fail.
All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management
of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the
reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this
matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a
digression,—from that moment, I observe, his whole work
stands stock still;—and if he goes on with his main
work,—then there is an end of his digression.
—This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning
of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the
adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have
so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive
movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine,
in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what's more, it
shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the
fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good
spirits.
Chapter 1.XXIII.
I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very
nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.—Accordingly I
set off thus:
If the fixture of Momus's glass in the human breast,
according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critick,
had taken place,—first, This foolish consequence would
certainly have followed,—That the very wisest and very
gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid
window-money every day of our lives.
And, secondly, that 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,—view'd the soul stark naked;—observed all her
motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from their
first engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her loose
in her frisks, her gambols, her capricios; and after some
notice of her more solemn deportment, consequent upon such
frisks, &c.—then taken your pen and ink and set down nothing
but what you had seen, and could have sworn to:—But this is
an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this
planet;—in the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not
better still for him;—for there the intense heat of the
country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity
to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red-hot
iron,—must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of
the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them for
the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them
both, all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom,
may be nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can
shew to the contrary, but one fine transparent body of clear
glass (bating the umbilical knot)—so that, till the
inhabitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the
rays of light, in passing through them, become so
monstrously refracted,—or return reflected from their
surfaces in such transverse lines to the eye, that a man
cannot be seen through;—his soul might as well, unless for
mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the umbilical
point gave her,—might, upon all other accounts, I say, as
well play the fool out o'doors as in her own house.
But this, as I said above, is not the case of the
inhabitants of this earth;—our minds shine not through the
body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of
uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would come to
the specific characters of them, we must go some other way
to work.
Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has
been forced to take, to do this thing with exactness.
Some, for instance, draw all their characters with
wind-instruments.—Virgil takes notice of that way in the
affair of Dido and Aeneas;—but it is as fallacious as the
breath of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I
am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical
exactness in their designations of one particular sort of
character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain
wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—I
dare not mention the name of the instrument in this
place;—'tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never
think of making a drawing by it;—this is aenigmatical, and
intended to be so, at least ad populum:—And therefore, I
beg, Madam, when you come here, that you read on as fast as
you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about it.
There are others again, who will draw a man's character
from no other helps in the world, but merely from his
evacuations;—but this often gives a very incorrect
outline,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions
too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound
one good figure out of them both.
I should have no objection to this method, but that I
think it must smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render'd
still more operose, by forcing you to have an eye to the
rest of his Non-naturals.—Why the most natural actions of a
man's life should be called his Non-naturals,—is another
question.
There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of
these expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but
from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed
from the honourable devices which the Pentagraphic Brethren
(Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures
mechanically, and in any proportion.) of the brush have
shewn in taking copies.—These, you must know, are your great
historians.
One of these you will see drawing a full length character
against the light;—that's illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard
upon the character of the man who sits.
Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in
the Camera;—that is most unfair of all, because, there you
are sure to be represented in some of your most ridiculous
attitudes.
To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you
my uncle Toby's character, I am determined to draw it by no
mechanical help whatever;—nor shall my pencil be guided by
any one wind-instrument which ever was blown upon, either on
this, or on the other side of the Alps;—nor will I consider
either his repletions or his discharges,—or touch upon his
Non-naturals; but, in a word, I will draw my uncle Toby's
character from his Hobby-Horse.
Chapter 1.XXIV.
If I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all
patience for my uncle Toby's character,—I would here
previously have convinced him that there is no instrument so
fit to draw such a thing with, as that which I have pitch'd
upon.
A man and his Hobby-Horse, tho' I cannot say that they
act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the
soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a
communication between them of some kind; and my opinion
rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner
of electrified bodies,—and that, by means of the heated
parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with
the back of the Hobby-Horse,—by long journies and much
friction, it so happens, that the body of the rider is at
length fill'd as full of Hobby-Horsical matter as it can
hold;—so that if you are able to give but a clear
description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty
exact notion of the genius and character of the other.
Now the Hobby-Horse which my uncle Toby always rode upon,
was in my opinion an Hobby-Horse well worth giving a
description of, if it was only upon the score of his great
singularity;—for you might have travelled from York to
Dover,—from Dover to Penzance in Cornwall, and from Penzance
to York back again, and not have seen such another upon the
road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever haste you had
been in, you must infallibly have stopp'd to have taken a
view of him. Indeed, the gait and figure of him was so
strange, and so utterly unlike was he, from his head to his
tail, to any one of the whole species, that it was now and
then made a matter of dispute,—whether he was really a
Hobby-Horse or no: But as the Philosopher would use no other
argument to the Sceptic, who disputed with him against the
reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, and
walking across the room;—so would my uncle Toby use no other
argument to prove his Hobby-Horse was a Hobby-Horse indeed,
but by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving
the world, after that, to determine the point as it thought
fit.
In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so much
pleasure, and he carried my uncle Toby so well,—that he
troubled his head very little with what the world either
said or thought about it.
It is now high time, however, that I give you a
description of him:—But to go on regularly, I only beg you
will give me leave to acquaint you first, how my uncle Toby
came by him.
Chapter 1.XXV.
The wound in my uncle Toby's groin, which he received at the
siege of Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was
thought expedient he should return to England, in order, if
possible, to be set to rights.
He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his
bed, and all of it to his room: and in the course of his
cure, which was all that time in hand, suffer'd unspeakable
miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the os
pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix
called the os illium,—both which bones were dismally
crush'd, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I
told you was broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(tho' it
was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to
think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle
Toby's groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone
itself, than to the projectile force of it,—which he would
often tell him was a great happiness.
My father at that time was just beginning business in
London, and had taken a house;—and as the truest friendship
and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers,—and that
my father thought my uncle Toby could no where be so well
nursed and taken care of as in his own house,—he assign'd
him the very best apartment in it.—And what was a much more
sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a
friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any
occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him up
stairs to see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by his
bed-side.
The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of
it;—my uncle's visitors at least thought so, and in their
daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that
belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that
subject,—and from that subject the discourse would generally
roll on to the siege itself.
These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle
Toby received great relief from them, and would have
received much more, but that they brought him into some
unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together,
retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an
expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe
they would have laid him in his grave.
What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were,—'tis
impossible for you to guess;—if you could,—I should blush;
not as a relation,—not as a man,—nor even as a woman,—but I
should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no small store
by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never
yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am
of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was
able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to
yourself, of what was to come in the next page,—I would tear
it out of my book.
Chapter 1.XXVI.
I have begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room
enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in which my
uncle Toby was involved, from the many discourses and
interrogations about the siege of Namur, where he received
his wound.
I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history
of King William's wars,—but if he has not,—I then inform
him, that one of the most memorable attacks in that siege,
was that which was made by the English and Dutch upon the
point of the advanced counterscarp, between the gate of St.
Nicolas, which inclosed the great sluice or water-stop,
where the English were terribly exposed to the shot of the
counter-guard and demi-bastion of St. Roch: The issue of
which hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the Dutch
lodged themselves upon the counter-guard,—and that the
English made themselves masters of the covered-way before
St. Nicolas-gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the
French officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis
sword in hand.
As this was the principal attack of which my uncle Toby
was an eye-witness at Namur,—the army of the besiegers being
cut off, by the confluence of the Maes and Sambre, from
seeing much of each other's operations,—my uncle Toby was
generally more eloquent and particular in his account of it;
and the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost
insurmountable difficulties he found in telling his story
intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences
and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,—the
glacis and covered-way,—the half-moon and ravelin,—as to
make his company fully comprehend where and what he was
about.
Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms;
so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to
explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions, that
my uncle Toby did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and
sometimes himself too.
To speak the truth, unless the company my father led up
stairs were tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle Toby was in
one of his explanatory moods, 'twas a difficult thing, do
what he could, to keep the discourse free from obscurity.
What rendered the account of this affair the more
intricate to my uncle Toby, was this,—that in the attack of
the counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas, extending
itself from the bank of the Maes, quite up to the great
water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut with such a
multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all
sides,—and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast
amongst them, that frequently he could neither get backwards
or forwards to save his life; and was oft-times obliged to
give up the attack upon that very account only.
These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle Toby Shandy more
perturbations than you would imagine; and as my father's
kindness to him was continually dragging up fresh friends
and fresh enquirers,—he had but a very uneasy task of it.
No doubt my uncle Toby had great command of himself,—and
could guard appearances, I believe, as well as most men;—yet
any one may imagine, that when he could not retreat out of
the ravelin without getting into the half-moon, or get out
of the covered-way without falling down the counterscarp,
nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into the
ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:—He
did so;—and the little and hourly vexations, which may seem
trifling and of no account to the man who has not read
Hippocrates, yet, whoever has read Hippocrates, or Dr. James
Mackenzie, and has considered well the effects which the
passions and affections of the mind have upon the
digestion—(Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?)—may
easily conceive what sharp paroxysms and exacerbations of
his wound my uncle Toby must have undergone upon that score
only.
—My uncle Toby could not philosophize upon it;—'twas
enough he felt it was so,—and having sustained the pain and
sorrows of it for three months together, he was resolved
some way or other to extricate himself.
He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the
anguish and nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him
to lie in no other position, when a thought came into his
head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and have it
pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the
fortification of the town and citadel of Namur, with its
environs, it might be a means of giving him ease.—I take
notice of his desire to have the environs along with the
town and citadel, for this reason,—because my uncle Toby's
wound was got in one of the traverses, about thirty toises
from the returning angle of the trench, opposite to the
salient angle of the demi-bastion of St. Roch:—so that he
was pretty confident he could stick a pin upon the identical
spot of ground where he was standing on when the stone
struck him.
All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him
from a world of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved
the happy means, as you will read, of procuring my uncle
Toby his Hobby-Horse.
Chapter 1.XXVII.
There is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of
making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things so
badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of refined taste
run it down: Nor is there any thing so likely to make them
do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is
full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest
of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no
such thing as a critick (by occupation) at table.
—I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have
left half a dozen places purposely open for them;—and in the
next place, I pay them all court.—Gentlemen, I kiss your
hands, I protest no company could give me half the
pleasure,—by my soul I am glad to see you—I beg only you
will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without
any ceremony, and fall on heartily.
I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of
carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh
open for them,—and in this very spot I stand on; but being
told by a Critick (tho' not by occupation,—but by nature)
that I had acquitted myself well enough, I shall fill it up
directly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be able to
make a great deal of more room next year.
—How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle Toby, who,
it seems, was a military man, and whom you have represented
as no fool,—be at the same time such a confused,
pudding-headed, muddle-headed, fellow, as—Go look.
So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn
it.—'Tis language unurbane,—and only befitting the man who
cannot give clear and satisfactory accounts of things, or
dive deep enough into the first causes of human ignorance
and confusion. It is moreover the reply valiant—and
therefore I reject it; for tho' it might have suited my
uncle Toby's character as a soldier excellently well,—and
had he not accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle
the Lillabullero, as he wanted no courage, 'tis the very
answer he would have given; yet it would by no means have
done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I write as a
man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my
illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that I must
sustain my character properly, and contrast it properly
too,—else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I should be
undone;—at this very moment that I am going here to fill up
one place against a critick,—I should have made an opening
for a couple.
—Therefore I answer thus:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read,
did you ever read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the
Human Understanding?—Don't answer me rashly—because many, I
know, quote the book, who have not read it—and many have
read it who understand it not:—If either of these is your
case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three words
what the book is.—It is a history.—A history! of who? what?
where? when? Don't hurry yourself—It is a history-book, Sir,
(which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what
passes in a man's own mind; and if you will say so much of
the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no
contemptible figure in a metaphysick circle.
But this by the way.
Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look
down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that
the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a man,
is threefold.
Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly,
slight and transient impressions made by the objects, when
the said organs are not dull. And thirdly, a memory like
unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received.—Call
down Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give you my cap and
bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that
Dolly herself should understand it as well as
Malbranch.—When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and
has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by
her right side;—take that opportunity to recollect that the
organs and faculties of perception can, by nothing in this
world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one
thing which Dolly's hand is in search of.—Your organs are
not so dull that I should inform you—'tis an inch, Sir, of
red seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly
fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over
hardened, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from
the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very well.
If Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a
temper too soft,—tho' it may receive,—it will not hold the
impression, how hard soever Dolly thrusts against it; and
last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble,
but applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings
the bell;—in any one of these three cases the print left by
the thimble will be as unlike the prototype as a brass-jack.
Now you must understand that not one of these was the
true cause of the confusion in my uncle Toby's discourse;
and it is for that very reason I enlarge upon them so long,
after the manner of great physiologists—to shew the world,
what it did not arise from.
What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a
fertile source of obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and
that is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed the
clearest and most exalted understandings.
It is ten to one (at Arthur's) whether you have ever read
the literary histories of past ages;—if you have, what
terrible battles, 'yclept logomachies, have they occasioned
and perpetuated with so much gall and ink-shed,—that a
good-natured man cannot read the accounts of them without
tears in his eyes.
Gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and
considered within thyself how much of thy own knowledge,
discourse, and conversation has been pestered and
disordered, at one time or other, by this, and this
only:—What a pudder and racket in Councils about (Greek);
and in the Schools of the learned about power and about
spirit;—about essences, and about quintessences;—about
substances, and about space.—What confusion in greater
Theatres from words of little meaning, and as indeterminate
a sense! when thou considerest this, thou wilt not wonder at
my uncle Toby's perplexities,—thou wilt drop a tear of pity
upon his scarp and his counterscarp;—his glacis and his
covered way;—his ravelin and his half-moon: 'Twas not by
ideas,—by Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words.
Chapter 1.XXVIII.
When my uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind, he
began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost
diligence, to the study of it; for nothing being of more
importance to him than his recovery, and his recovery
depending, as you have read, upon the passions and
affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest
care to make himself so far master of his subject, as to be
able to talk upon it without emotion.
In a fortnight's close and painful application, which, by
the bye, did my uncle Toby's wound, upon his groin, no
good,—he was enabled, by the help of some marginal documents
at the feet of the elephant, together with Gobesius's
military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the
Flemish, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity;
and before he was two full months gone,—he was right
eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the
advanced counterscarp with great order;—but having, by that
time, gone much deeper into the art, than what his first
motive made necessary, my uncle Toby was able to cross the
Maes and Sambre; make diversions as far as Vauban's line,
the abbey of Salsines, &c. and give his visitors as distinct
a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the gate
of St. Nicolas, where he had the honour to receive his
wound.
But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches,
increases ever with the acquisition of it. The more my uncle
Toby pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it!—by
the same process and electrical assimilation, as I told you,
through which I ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves,
by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at
length, to get all be-virtu'd—be-pictured,—be- butterflied,
and be-fiddled.
The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain of
science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his
thirst, so that before the first year of his confinement had
well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in Italy
or Flanders, of which, by one means or other, he had not
procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully
collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their
demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he
would read with that intense application and delight, that
he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his
dinner.
In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli and
Cataneo, translated from the Italian;—likewise Stevinus,
Moralis, the Chevalier de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter,
the Count de Pagan, the Marshal Vauban, Mons. Blondel, with
almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don
Quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and
barber invaded his library.
Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in
August, ninety-nine, my uncle Toby found it necessary to
understand a little of projectiles:—and having judged it
best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he began
with N. Tartaglia, who it seems was the first man who
detected the imposition of a cannon-ball's doing all that
mischief under the notion of a right line—This N. Tartaglia
proved to my uncle Toby to be an impossible thing.
—Endless is the search of Truth.
No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the
cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and
resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road the
ball did go: For which purpose he was obliged to set off
afresh with old Maltus, and studied him devoutly.—He
proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, by
certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found
the precise path to be a Parabola—or else an Hyperbola,—and
that the parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic section of
the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct
ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of
incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal
plane;—and that the semiparameter,—stop! my dear uncle
Toby—stop!—go not one foot farther into this thorny and
bewildered track,—intricate are the steps! intricate are the
mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which
the pursuit of this bewitching phantom Knowledge will bring
upon thee.—O my uncle;—fly—fly,—fly from it as from a
serpent.—Is it fit—goodnatured man! thou should'st sit up,
with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood
with hectic watchings?—Alas! 'twill exasperate thy
symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy
spirits—waste thy animal strength, dry up thy radical
moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,—impair
thy health,—and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.—O
my uncle! my uncle Toby.
Chapter 1.XXIX.
I would not give a groat for that man's knowledge in
pen-craft, who does not understand this,—That the best plain
narrative in the world, tacked very close to the last
spirited apostrophe to my uncle Toby—would have felt both
cold and vapid upon the reader's palate;—therefore I
forthwith put an end to the chapter, though I was in the
middle of my story.
—Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with
painters. Where an exact copying makes our pictures less
striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even more
pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty. This is
to be understood cum grano salis; but be it as it will,—as
the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the
apostrophe cool, than any thing else,—'tis not very material
whether upon any other score the reader approves of it or
not.
In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby
perceiving that the parameter and semi-parameter of the
conic section angered his wound, he left off the study of
projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the
practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which,
like a spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled
force.
It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon
the daily regularity of a clean shirt,—to dismiss his barber
unshaven,—and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to
dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it, as
not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it went on:
when, lo!—all of a sudden, for the change was quick as
lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his
recovery,—complained to my father, grew impatient with the
surgeon:—and one morning, as he heard his foot coming up
stairs, he shut up his books, and thrust aside his
instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the
protraction of the cure, which, he told him, might surely
have been accomplished at least by that time:—He dwelt long
upon the miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his
four years melancholy imprisonment;—adding, that had it not
been for the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best
of brothers,—he had long since sunk under his
misfortunes.—My father was by. My uncle Toby's eloquence
brought tears into his eyes;—'twas unexpected:—My uncle
Toby, by nature was not eloquent;—it had the greater
effect:—The surgeon was confounded;—not that there wanted
grounds for such, or greater marks of impatience,—but 'twas
unexpected too; in the four years he had attended him, he
had never seen any thing like it in my uncle Toby's
carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or
discontented word;—he had been all patience,—all submission.
—We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing
it;—but we often treble the force:—The surgeon was
astonished; but much more so, when he heard my uncle Toby go
on, and peremptorily insist upon his healing up the wound
directly,—or sending for Monsieur Ronjat, the king's
serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him.
The desire of life and health is implanted in man's
nature;—the love of liberty and enlargement is a
sister-passion to it: These my uncle Toby had in common with
his species—and either of them had been sufficient to
account for his earnest desire to get well and out of
doors;—but I have told you before, that nothing wrought with
our family after the common way;—and from the time and
manner in which this eager desire shewed itself in the
present case, the penetrating reader will suspect there was
some other cause or crotchet for it in my uncle Toby's
head:—There was so, and 'tis the subject of the next chapter
to set forth what that cause and crotchet was. I own, when
that's done, 'twill be time to return back to the parlour
fire-side, where we left my uncle Toby in the middle of his
sentence.
Chapter 1.XXX.
When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling
passion,—or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows
headstrong,—farewell cool reason and fair discretion!
My uncle Toby's wound was near well, and as soon as the
surgeon recovered his surprize, and could get leave to say
as much—he told him, 'twas just beginning to incarnate; and
that if no fresh exfoliation happened, which there was no
sign of,—it would be dried up in five or six weeks. The
sound of as many Olympiads, twelve hours before, would have
conveyed an idea of shorter duration to my uncle Toby's
mind.—The succession of his ideas was now rapid,—he broiled
with impatience to put his design in execution;—and so,
without consulting farther with any soul living,—which, by
the bye, I think is right, when you are predetermined to
take no one soul's advice,—he privately ordered Trim, his
man, to pack up a bundle of lint and dressings, and hire a
chariot-and-four to be at the door exactly by twelve o'clock
that day, when he knew my father would be upon 'Change.—So
leaving a bank-note upon the table for the surgeon's care of
him, and a letter of tender thanks for his brother's—he
packed up his maps, his books of fortification, his
instruments, &c. and by the help of a crutch on one side,
and Trim on the other,—my uncle Toby embarked for
Shandy-Hall.
The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration
was as follows:
The table in my uncle Toby's room, and at which, the
night before this change happened, he was sitting with his
maps, &c. about him—being somewhat of the smallest, for that
infinity of great and small instruments of knowledge which
usually lay crowded upon it—he had the accident, in reaching
over for his tobacco-box, to throw down his compasses, and
in stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he
threw down his case of instruments and snuffers;—and as the
dice took a run against him, in his endeavouring to catch
the snuffers in falling,—he thrust Monsieur Blondel off the
table, and Count de Pagon o'top of him.
'Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle Toby was,
to think of redressing these evils by himself,—he rung his
bell for his man Trim;—Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, prithee
see what confusion I have here been making—I must have some
better contrivance, Trim.—Can'st not thou take my rule, and
measure the length and breadth of this table, and then go
and bespeak me one as big again?—Yes, an' please your
Honour, replied Trim, making a bow; but I hope your Honour
will be soon well enough to get down to your country-seat,
where,—as your Honour takes so much pleasure in
fortification, we could manage this matter to a T.
I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle
Toby's, who went by the name of Trim, had been a corporal in
my uncle's own company,—his real name was James Butler,—but
having got the nick-name of Trim, in the regiment, my uncle
Toby, unless when he happened to be very angry with him,
would never call him by any other name.
The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a
wound on his left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of
Landen, which was two years before the affair of Namur;—and
as the fellow was well-beloved in the regiment, and a handy
fellow into the bargain, my uncle Toby took him for his
servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my uncle
Toby in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom,
barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to
last, waited upon him and served him with great fidelity and
affection.
My uncle Toby loved the man in return, and what attached
him more to him still, was the similitude of their
knowledge.—For Corporal Trim, (for so, for the future, I
shall call him) by four years occasional attention to his
Master's discourse upon fortified towns, and the advantage
of prying and peeping continually into his Master's plans,
&c. exclusive and besides what he gained Hobby-Horsically,
as a body-servant, Non Hobby Horsical per se;—had become no
mean proficient in the science; and was thought, by the cook
and chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature of
strong-holds as my uncle Toby himself.
I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal
Trim's character,—and it is the only dark line in it.—The
fellow loved to advise,—or rather to hear himself talk; his
carriage, however, was so perfectly respectful, 'twas easy
to keep him silent when you had him so; but set his tongue
a-going,—you had no hold of him—he was voluble;—the eternal
interlardings of your Honour, with the respectfulness of
Corporal Trim's manner, interceding so strong in behalf of
his elocution,—that though you might have been
incommoded,—you could not well be angry. My uncle Toby was
seldom either the one or the other with him,—or, at least,
this fault, in Trim, broke no squares with them. My uncle
Toby, as I said, loved the man;—and besides, as he ever
looked upon a faithful servant,—but as an humble friend,—he
could not bear to stop his mouth.—Such was Corporal Trim.
If I durst presume, continued Trim, to give your Honour
my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art
welcome, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby—speak,—speak what thou
thinkest upon the subject, man, without fear.—Why then,
replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head
like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his
forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I
think, quoth Trim, advancing his left, which was his lame
leg, a little forwards,—and pointing with his right hand
open towards a map of Dunkirk, which was pinned against the
hangings,—I think, quoth Corporal Trim, with humble
submission to your Honour's better judgment,—that these
ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make but a poor,
contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upon
paper, compared to what your Honour and I could make of it
were we in the country by ourselves, and had but a rood, or
a rood and a half of ground to do what we pleased with: As
summer is coming on, continued Trim, your Honour might sit
out of doors, and give me the nography—(Call it ichnography,
quoth my uncle,)—of the town or citadel, your Honour was
pleased to sit down before,—and I will be shot by your
Honour upon the glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to
your Honour's mind.—I dare say thou would'st, Trim, quoth my
uncle.—For if your Honour, continued the Corporal, could but
mark me the polygon, with its exact lines and angles—That I
could do very well, quoth my uncle.—I would begin with the
fosse, and if your Honour could tell me the proper depth and
breadth—I can to a hair's breadth, Trim, replied my uncle.—I
would throw out the earth upon this hand towards the town
for the scarp,—and on that hand towards the campaign for the
counterscarp.—Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby:—And
when I had sloped them to your mind,—an' please your Honour,
I would face the glacis, as the finest fortifications are
done in Flanders, with sods,—and as your Honour knows they
should be,—and I would make the walls and parapets with sods
too.—The best engineers call them gazons, Trim, said my
uncle Toby.—Whether they are gazons or sods, is not much
matter, replied Trim; your Honour knows they are ten times
beyond a facing either of brick or stone.—I know they are,
Trim in some respects,—quoth my uncle Toby, nodding his
head;—for a cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards,
without bringing any rubbish down with it, which might fill
the fosse, (as was the case at St. Nicolas's gate) and
facilitate the passage over it.
Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal
Trim, better than any officer in his Majesty's service;—but
would your Honour please to let the bespeaking of the table
alone, and let us but go into the country, I would work
under your Honour's directions like a horse, and make
fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all
their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it
should be worth all the world's riding twenty miles to go
and see it.
My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went
on;—but it was not a blush of guilt,—of modesty,—or of
anger,—it was a blush of joy;—he was fired with Corporal
Trim's project and description.—Trim! said my uncle Toby,
thou hast said enough.—We might begin the campaign,
continued Trim, on the very day that his Majesty and the
Allies take the field, and demolish them town by town as
fast as—Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no more. Your Honour,
continued Trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it)
this fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would—Say no
more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby—Besides, your Honour would
get not only pleasure and good pastime—but good air, and
good exercise, and good health,—and your Honour's wound
would be well in a month. Thou hast said enough, Trim,—quoth
my uncle Toby (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket)—I
like thy project mightily.—And if your Honour pleases, I'll
this moment go and buy a pioneer's spade to take down with
us, and I'll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple
of—Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up upon
one leg, quite overcome with rapture,—and thrusting a guinea
into Trim's hand,—Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more;—but
go down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper
this instant.
Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper,—to no
purpose:—Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's
head, he could not taste it.—Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get
me to bed.—'Twas all one.—Corporal Trim's description had
fired his imagination,—my uncle Toby could not shut his
eyes.—The more he considered it, the more bewitching the
scene appeared to him;—so that, two full hours before
day-light, he had come to a final determination and had
concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim's
decampment.
My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own,
in the village where my father's estate lay at Shandy, which
had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of
about one hundred pounds a-year. Behind this house, and
contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an
acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it
by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just
about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for;—so that as
Trim uttered the words, 'A rood and a half of ground to do
what they would with,'—this identical bowling-green
instantly presented itself, and became curiously painted all
at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby's fancy;—which was
the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least
of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke
of.
Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more
heat and expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this
self-same thing in private;—I say in private;—for it was
sheltered from the house, as I told you, by a tall yew
hedge, and was covered on the other three sides, from mortal
sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering shrubs:—so
that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute
to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle Toby's
mind.—Vain thought! however thick it was planted about,—or
private soever it might seem,—to think, dear uncle Toby, of
enjoying a thing which took up a whole rood and a half of
ground,—and not have it known!
How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this
matter,—with the history of their campaigns, which were no
way barren of events,—may make no uninteresting under-plot
in the epitasis and working-up of this drama.—At present the
scene must drop,—and change for the parlour fire-side.
Chapter 1.XXXI.
—What can they be doing? brother, said my father.—I think,
replied my uncle Toby,—taking, as I told you, his pipe from
his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it as he began his
sentence;—I think, replied he,—it would not be amiss,
brother, if we rung the bell.
Pray, what's all that racket over our heads,
Obadiah?—quoth my father;—my brother and I can scarce hear
ourselves speak.
Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow towards his left
shoulder,—my Mistress is taken very badly.—And where's
Susannah running down the garden there, as if they were
going to ravish her?—Sir, she is running the shortest cut
into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old
midwife.—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go
directly for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, with all our
services,—and let him know your mistress is fallen into
labour—and that I desire he will return with you with all
speed.
It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to
my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door,—as there is so
expert an operator as Dr. Slop so near,—that my wife should
persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers,
in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune
already, to the ignorance of an old woman;—and not only the
life of my child, brother,—but her own life, and with it the
lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot
out of her hereafter.
Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, my sister does it
to save the expence:—A pudding's end,—replied my father,—the
Doctor must be paid the same for inaction as action,—if not
better,—to keep him in temper.
—Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth
my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his heart,—but
Modesty.—My sister, I dare say, added he, does not care to
let a man come so near her.... I will not say whether my
uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;—'tis for his
advantage to suppose he had,—as, I think, he could have
added no One Word which would have improved it.
If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived
at the period's end—then the world stands indebted to the
sudden snapping of my father's tobacco-pipe for one of the
neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which
Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis.—Just Heaven! how does
the Poco piu and the Poco meno of the Italian artists;—the
insensible more or less, determine the precise line of
beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statue! How do the
slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the
fiddle-stick, et caetera,—give the true swell, which gives
the true pleasure!—O my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of
your language; and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon
what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend.
—'My sister, mayhap,' quoth my uncle Toby, 'does not
choose to let a man come so near her....' Make this
dash,—'tis an Aposiopesis,—Take the dash away, and write
Backside,—'tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out, and put Cover'd
way in, 'tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as fortification
ran so much in my uncle Toby's head, that if he had been
left to have added one word to the sentence,—that word was
it.
But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether
the snapping of my father's tobacco-pipe, so critically,
happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due
time.
Chapter 1.XXXII.
Tho' my father was a good natural philosopher,—yet he was
something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when
his tobacco-pipe snapp'd short in the middle,—he had nothing
to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces,
and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.—He did no
such thing;—he threw them with all the violence in the
world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,—he
started upon both his legs to do it.
This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his
reply to what my uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.
—'Not choose,' quoth my father, (repeating my uncle
Toby's words) 'to let a man come so near her!'—By Heaven,
brother Toby! you would try the patience of Job;—and I think
I have the plagues of one already without
it.—Why?—Where?—Wherein?—Wherefore?—Upon what account?
replied my uncle Toby: in the utmost astonishment.—To think,
said my father, of a man living to your age, brother, and
knowing so little about women!—I know nothing at all about
them,—replied my uncle Toby: And I think, continued he, that
the shock I received the year after the demolition of
Dunkirk, in my affair with widow Wadman;—which shock you
know I should not have received, but from my total ignorance
of the sex,—has given me just cause to say, That I neither
know nor do pretend to know any thing about 'em or their
concerns either.—Methinks, brother, replied my father, you
might, at least, know so much as the right end of a woman
from the wrong.
It is said in Aristotle's Master Piece, 'That when a man
doth think of any thing which is past,—he looketh down upon
the ground;—but that when he thinketh of something that is
to come, he looketh up towards the heavens.'
My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of neither, for he
look'd horizontally.—Right end! quoth my uncle Toby,
muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his two
eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice,
formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece—Right end of a
woman!—I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is
than the man in the moon;—and if I was to think, continued
my uncle Toby (keeping his eyes still fixed upon the bad
joint) this month together, I am sure I should not be able
to find it out.
Then, brother Toby, replied my father, I will tell you.
Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a
fresh pipe)—every thing in this world, my dear brother Toby,
has two handles.—Not always, quoth my uncle Toby.—At least,
replied my father, every one has two hands,—which comes to
the same thing.—Now, if a man was to sit down coolly, and
consider within himself the make, the shape, the
construction, come-at-ability, and convenience of all the
parts which constitute the whole of that animal, called
Woman, and compare them analogically—I never understood
rightly the meaning of that word,—quoth my uncle Toby.—
Analogy, replied my father, is the certain relation and
agreement which different—Here a devil of a rap at the door
snapped my father's definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in
two,—and, at the same time, crushed the head of as notable
and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the
womb of speculation;—it was some months before my father
could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:—And,
at this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the
subject of the dissertation itself,—(considering the
confusion and distresses of our domestick misadventures,
which are now coming thick one upon the back of another)
whether I shall be able to find a place for it in the third
volume or not.
Chapter 1.XXXIII.
It is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading
since my uncle Toby rung the bell, when Obadiah was ordered
to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife;—so
that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed
Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering
the emergency too, both to go and come;—though, morally and
truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get
on his boots.
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved
after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance
betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the
door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes,
thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon him to
insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather
probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of
duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the
train and succession of our ideas—and is the true scholastic
pendulum,—and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in
this matter,—abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all
other pendulums whatever.
I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but
poor eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the
man-midwife's house:—and that whilst Obadiah has been going
those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle Toby from
Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:—That I have
had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and have since
travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a
journey of near two hundred miles down into Yorkshire.—all
which put together, must have prepared the reader's
imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,—as
much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto
between the acts.
If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two
minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes
and thirteen seconds,—when I have said all I can about them;
and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically,
will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this
very moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book
apocryphal:—If I am thus pressed—I then put an end to the
whole objection and controversy about it all at once,—by
acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above threescore
yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;—and
indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and
was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new
chapter.
Chapter 1.XXXIV.
Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a
Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular
height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of
belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the
horse-guards.
Such were the out-lines of Dr. Slop's figure, which—if
you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have
not, I wish you would;—you must know, may as certainly be
caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as
three hundred.
Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of
Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot,
waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little
diminutive pony, of a pretty colour—but of
strength,—alack!—scarce able to have made an amble of it,
under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling
condition.—They were not.—Imagine to yourself, Obadiah
mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into
a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse
way.
Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this
description.
Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a
narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous
rate,—splashing and plunging like a devil thro' thick and
thin, as he approached, would not such a phaenomenon, with
such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round
its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr.
Slop in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's
comets?—To say nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of Obadiah
and the coach-horse.—In my idea, the vortex alone of 'em was
enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at
least the doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do
you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have
been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he
was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall, and had
approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five
yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the
garden-wall,—and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when
Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid,
furious,—pop,—full upon him!—Nothing, I think, in nature,
can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,—so
imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as Dr.
Slop was.
What could Dr. Slop do?—he crossed himself + —Pugh!—but
the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.—No matter; he had better have
kept hold of the pummel.—He had so;—nay, as it happened, he
had better have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself
he let go his whip,—and in attempting to save his whip
betwixt his knee and his saddle's skirt, as it slipped, he
lost his stirrup,—in losing which he lost his seat;—and in
the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews
what little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate
doctor lost his presence of mind. So that without waiting
for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to its destiny,
tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile and
manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence
from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have
been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches
deep in the mire.
Obadiah pull'd off his cap twice to Dr. Slop;—once as he
was falling,—and then again when he saw him
seated.—Ill-timed complaisance;—had not the fellow better
have stopped his horse, and got off and help'd him?—Sir, he
did all that his situation would allow;—but the Momentum of
the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah could not do it
all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. Slop,
before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the
last, when he did stop his beast, 'twas done with such an
explosion of mud, that Obadiah had better have been a league
off. In short, never was a Dr. Slop so beluted, and so
transubstantiated, since that affair came into fashion.
Chapter 1.XXXV.
When Dr. Slop entered the back parlour, where my father and
my uncle Toby were discoursing upon the nature of women,—it
was hard to determine whether Dr. Slop's figure, or Dr.
Slop's presence, occasioned more surprize to them; for as
the accident happened so near the house, as not to make it
worth while for Obadiah to remount him,—Obadiah had led him
in as he was, unwiped, unappointed, unannealed, with all his
stains and blotches on him.—He stood like Hamlet's ghost,
motionless and speechless, for a full minute and a half at
the parlour-door (Obadiah still holding his hand) with all
the majesty of mud. His hinder parts, upon which he had
received his fall, totally besmeared,—and in every other
part of him, blotched over in such a manner with Obadiah's
explosion, that you would have sworn (without mental
reservation) that every grain of it had taken effect.
Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle Toby to have
triumphed over my father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had
beheld Dr. Slop in that pickle, could have dissented from so
much, at least, of my uncle Toby's opinion, 'That mayhap his
sister might not care to let such a Dr. Slop come so near
her....' But it was the Argumentum ad hominem; and if my
uncle Toby was not very expert at it, you may think, he
might not care to use it.—No; the reason was,—'twas not his
nature to insult.
Dr. Slop's presence at that time, was no less
problematical than the mode of it; tho' it is certain, one
moment's reflexion in my father might have solved it; for he
had apprized Dr. Slop but the week before, that my mother
was at her full reckoning; and as the doctor had heard
nothing since, 'twas natural and very political too in him,
to have taken a ride to Shandy-Hall, as he did, merely to
see how matters went on.
But my father's mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in
the investigation; running, like the hypercritick's,
altogether upon the ringing of the bell and the rap upon the
door,—measuring their distance, and keeping his mind so
intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of
nothing else,—common-place infirmity of the greatest
mathematicians! working with might and main at the
demonstration, and so wasting all their strength upon it,
that they have none left in them to draw the corollary, to
do good with.
The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door,
struck likewise strong upon the sensorium of my uncle
Toby,—but it excited a very different train of thoughts;—the
two irreconcileable pulsations instantly brought Stevinus,
the great engineer, along with them, into my uncle Toby's
mind. What business Stevinus had in this affair,—is the
greatest problem of all:—It shall be solved,—but not in the
next chapter.
Chapter 1.XXXVI.
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think
mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no
one, who knows what he is about in good company, would
venture to talk all;—so no author, who understands the just
boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to
think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the
reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably,
and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as
yourself.
For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of
this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his
imagination as busy as my own.
'Tis his turn now;—I have given an ample description of
Dr. Slop's sad overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the
back-parlour;—his imagination must now go on with it for a
while.
Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. Slop has told his
tale—and in what words, and with what aggravations, his
fancy chooses;—Let him suppose, that Obadiah has told his
tale also, and with such rueful looks of affected concern,
as he thinks best will contrast the two figures as they
stand by each other.—Let him imagine, that my father has
stepped up stairs to see my mother.—And, to conclude this
work of imagination,—let him imagine the doctor
washed,—rubbed down, and condoled,—felicitated,—got into a
pair of Obadiah's pumps, stepping forwards towards the door,
upon the very point of entering upon action.
Truce!—truce, good Dr. Slop!—stay thy obstetrick
hand;—return it safe into thy bosom to keep it warm;—little
dost thou know what obstacles,—little dost thou think what
hidden causes, retard its operation!—Hast thou, Dr.
Slop,—hast thou been entrusted with the secret articles of
the solemn treaty which has brought thee into this
place?—Art thou aware that at this instant, a daughter of
Lucina is put obstetrically over thy head? Alas!—'tis too
true.—Besides, great son of Pilumnus! what canst thou
do?—Thou hast come forth unarm'd;—thou hast left thy
tire-tete,—thy new-invented forceps,—thy crotchet,—thy
squirt, and all thy instruments of salvation and
deliverance, behind thee,—By Heaven! at this moment they are
hanging up in a green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at
the bed's head!—Ring;—call;—send Obadiah back upon the
coach-horse to bring them with all speed.
—Make great haste, Obadiah, quoth my father, and I'll
give thee a crown! and quoth my uncle Toby, I'll give him
another.
Chapter 1.XXXVII.
Your sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle Toby,
addressing himself to Dr. Slop, (all three of them sitting
down to the fire together, as my uncle Toby began to
speak)—instantly brought the great Stevinus into my head,
who, you must know, is a favourite author with me.—Then,
added my father, making use of the argument Ad Crumenam,—I
will lay twenty guineas to a single crown-piece (which will
serve to give away to Obadiah when he gets back) that this
same Stevinus was some engineer or other—or has wrote
something or other, either directly or indirectly, upon the
science of fortification.
He has so,—replied my uncle Toby.—I knew it, said my
father, though, for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind
of connection there can be betwixt Dr. Slop's sudden coming,
and a discourse upon fortification;—yet I fear'd it.—Talk of
what we will, brother,—or let the occasion be never so
foreign or unfit for the subject,—you are sure to bring it
in. I would not, brother Toby, continued my father,—I
declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and
horn-works.—That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. Slop,
interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun.
Dennis the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or
the insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he
would grow testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in
upon by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad, he would
say, as a fillip upon the nose;—he saw no difference.
Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Dr.
Slop,—the curtins my brother Shandy mentions here, have
nothing to do with beadsteads;—tho', I know Du Cange says,
'That bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken their
name from them;'—nor have the horn-works he speaks of, any
thing in the world to do with the horn-works of cuckoldom:
But the Curtin, Sir, is the word we use in fortification,
for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the
two bastions and joins them—Besiegers seldom offer to carry
on their attacks directly against the curtin, for this
reason, because they are so well flanked. ('Tis the case of
other curtains, quoth Dr. Slop, laughing.) However,
continued my uncle Toby, to make them sure, we generally
choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to
extend them beyond the fosse or ditch:—The common men, who
know very little of fortification, confound the ravelin and
the half-moon together,—tho' they are very different
things;—not in their figure or construction, for we make
them exactly alike, in all points; for they always consist
of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges, not
straight, but in form of a crescent;—Where then lies the
difference? (quoth my father, a little testily.)—In their
situations, answered my uncle Toby:—For when a ravelin,
brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when
a ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a
ravelin;—it is a half-moon;—a half-moon likewise is a
half-moon, and no more, so long as it stands before its
bastion;—but was it to change place, and get before the
curtin,—'twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon, in
that case, is not a half-moon;—'tis no more than a
ravelin.—I think, quoth my father, that the noble science of
defence has its weak sides—as well as others.
As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh'd my father) which,
continued my uncle Toby, my brother was speaking of, they
are a very considerable part of an outwork;—they are called
by the French engineers, Ouvrage a corne, and we generally
make them to cover such places as we suspect to be weaker
than the rest;—'tis formed by two epaulments or
demi-bastions—they are very pretty,—and if you will take a
walk, I'll engage to shew you one well worth your trouble.—I
own, continued my uncle Toby, when we crown them,—they are
much stronger, but then they are very expensive, and take up
a great deal of ground, so that, in my opinion, they are
most of use to cover or defend the head of a camp; otherwise
the double tenaille—By the mother who bore us!—brother Toby,
quoth my father, not able to hold out any longer,—you would
provoke a saint;—here have you got us, I know not how, not
only souse into the middle of the old subject again:—But so
full is your head of these confounded works, that though my
wife is this moment in the pains of labour, and you hear her
cry out, yet nothing will serve you but to carry off the
man-midwife.—Accoucheur,—if you please, quoth Dr. Slop.—With
all my heart, replied my father, I don't care what they call
you,—but I wish the whole science of fortification, with all
its inventors, at the devil;—it has been the death of
thousands,—and it will be mine in the end.—I would not, I
would not, brother Toby, have my brains so full of saps,
mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons,
and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur, and of all the
towns in Flanders with it.
My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries;—not from
want of courage,—I have told you in a former chapter, 'that
he was a man of courage:'—And will add here, that where just
occasions presented, or called it forth,—I know no man under
whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter;—nor did this
arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his
intellectual parts;—for he felt this insult of my father's
as feelingly as a man could do;—but he was of a peaceful,
placid nature,—no jarring element in it,—all was mixed up so
kindly within him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart to
retaliate upon a fly.
—Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one
which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly
all dinner-time,—and which after infinite attempts, he had
caught at last, as it flew by him;—I'll not hurt thee, says
my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the
room, with the fly in his hand,—I'll not hurt a hair of thy
head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand
as he spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor devil, get thee
gone, why should I hurt thee?—This world surely is wide
enough to hold both thee and me.
I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether
it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my
nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole
frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;—or
how far the manner and expression of it might go towards
it;—or in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of
voice and harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find
a passage to my heart, I know not;—this I know, that the
lesson of universal good-will then taught and imprinted by
my uncle Toby, has never since been worn out of my mind: And
tho' I would not depreciate what the study of the Literae
humaniores, at the university, have done for me in that
respect, or discredit the other helps of an expensive
education bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad
since;—yet I often think that I owe one half of my
philanthropy to that one accidental impression.
This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a
whole volume upon the subject.
I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle
Toby's picture, by the instrument with which I drew the
other parts of it,—that taking in no more than the mere
Hobby-Horsical likeness:—this is a part of his moral
character. My father, in this patient endurance of wrongs,
which I mention, was very different, as the reader must long
ago have noted; he had a much more acute and quick
sensibility of nature, attended with a little soreness of
temper; tho' this never transported him to any thing which
looked like malignancy:—yet in the little rubs and vexations
of life, 'twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty
kind of peevishness:—He was, however, frank and generous in
his nature;—at all times open to conviction; and in the
little ebullitions of this subacid humour towards others,
but particularly towards my uncle Toby, whom he truly
loved:—he would feel more pain, ten times told (except in
the affair of my aunt Dinah, or where an hypothesis was
concerned) than what he ever gave.
The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them,
reflected light upon each other, and appeared with great
advantage in this affair which arose about Stevinus.
I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a
Hobby-Horse,—that a man's Hobby-Horse is as tender a part as
he has about him; and that these unprovoked strokes at my
uncle Toby's could not be unfelt by him.—No:—as I said
above, my uncle Toby did feel them, and very sensibly too.
Pray, Sir, what said he?—How did he behave?—O, Sir!—it
was great: For as soon as my father had done insulting his
Hobby-Horse,—he turned his head without the least emotion,
from Dr. Slop, to whom he was addressing his discourse, and
looking up into my father's face, with a countenance spread
over with so much good-nature;—so placid;—so fraternal;—so
inexpressibly tender towards him:—it penetrated my father to
his heart: He rose up hastily from his chair, and seizing
hold of both my uncle Toby's hands as he spoke:—Brother
Toby, said he:—I beg thy pardon;—forgive, I pray thee, this
rash humour which my mother gave me.—My dear, dear brother,
answered my uncle Toby, rising up by my father's help, say
no more about it;—you are heartily welcome, had it been ten
times as much, brother. But 'tis ungenerous, replied my
father, to hurt any man;—a brother worse;—but to hurt a
brother of such gentle manners,—so unprovoking,—and so
unresenting;—'tis base:—By Heaven, 'tis cowardly.—You are
heartily welcome, brother, quoth my uncle Toby,—had it been
fifty times as much.—Besides, what have I to do, my dear
Toby, cried my father, either with your amusements or your
pleasures, unless it was in my power (which it is not) to
increase their measure?
—Brother Shandy, answered my uncle Toby, looking
wistfully in his face,—you are much mistaken in this
point:—for you do increase my pleasure very much, in
begetting children for the Shandy family at your time of
life.—But, by that, Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy
increases his own.—Not a jot, quoth my father.
Chapter 1.XXXVIII.
My brother does it, quoth my uncle Toby, out of
principle.—In a family way, I suppose, quoth Dr.
Slop.—Pshaw!—said my father,—'tis not worth talking of.
Chapter 1.XXXIX.
At the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle Toby
were left both standing, like Brutus and Cassius, at the
close of the scene, making up their accounts.
As my father spoke the three last words,—he sat down;—my
uncle Toby exactly followed his example, only, that before
he took his chair, he rung the bell, to order Corporal Trim,
who was in waiting, to step home for Stevinus:—my uncle
Toby's house being no farther off than the opposite side of
the way.
Some men would have dropped the subject of Stevinus;—but
my uncle Toby had no resentment in his heart, and he went on
with the subject, to shew my father that he had none.
Your sudden appearance, Dr. Slop, quoth my uncle,
resuming the discourse, instantly brought Stevinus into my
head. (My father, you may be sure, did not offer to lay any
more wagers upon Stevinus's head.)—Because, continued my
uncle Toby, the celebrated sailing chariot, which belonged
to Prince Maurice, and was of such wonderful contrivance and
velocity, as to carry half a dozen people thirty German
miles, in I don't know how few minutes,—was invented by
Stevinus, that great mathematician and engineer.
You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth Dr.
Slop (as the fellow is lame) of going for Stevinus's account
of it, because in my return from Leyden thro' the Hague, I
walked as far as Schevling, which is two long miles, on
purpose to take a view of it.
That's nothing, replied my uncle Toby, to what the
learned Peireskius did, who walked a matter of five hundred
miles, reckoning from Paris to Schevling, and from Schevling
to Paris back again, in order to see it, and nothing else.
Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.
The more fool Peireskius, replied Dr. Slop. But mark,
'twas out of no contempt of Peireskius at all;—but that
Peireskius's indefatigable labour in trudging so far on
foot, out of love for the sciences, reduced the exploit of
Dr. Slop, in that affair, to nothing:—the more fool
Peireskius, said he again.—Why so?—replied my father, taking
his brother's part, not only to make reparation as fast as
he could for the insult he had given him, which sat still
upon my father's mind;—but partly, that my father began
really to interest himself in the discourse.—Why so?—said
he. Why is Peireskius, or any man else, to be abused for an
appetite for that, or any other morsel of sound knowledge:
For notwithstanding I know nothing of the chariot in
question, continued he, the inventor of it must have had a
very mechanical head; and tho' I cannot guess upon what
principles of philosophy he has atchieved it;—yet certainly
his machine has been constructed upon solid ones, be they
what they will, or it could not have answered at the rate my
brother mentions.
It answered, replied my uncle Toby, as well, if not
better; for, as Peireskius elegantly expresses it, speaking
of the velocity of its motion, Tam citus erat, quam erat
ventus; which, unless I have forgot my Latin, is, that it
was as swift as the wind itself.
But pray, Dr. Slop, quoth my father, interrupting my
uncle (tho' not without begging pardon for it at the same
time) upon what principles was this self-same chariot set
a-going?—Upon very pretty principles to be sure, replied Dr.
Slop:—And I have often wondered, continued he, evading the
question, why none of our gentry, who live upon large plains
like this of ours,—(especially they whose wives are not past
child-bearing) attempt nothing of this kind; for it would
not only be infinitely expeditious upon sudden calls, to
which the sex is subject,—if the wind only served,—but would
be excellent good husbandry to make use of the winds, which
cost nothing, and which eat nothing, rather than horses,
which (the devil take 'em) both cost and eat a great deal.
For that very reason, replied my father, 'Because they
cost nothing, and because they eat nothing,'—the scheme is
bad;—it is the consumption of our products, as well as the
manufactures of them, which gives bread to the hungry,
circulates trade,—brings in money, and supports the value of
our lands;—and tho', I own, if I was a Prince, I would
generously recompense the scientifick head which brought
forth such contrivances;—yet I would as peremptorily
suppress the use of them.
My father here had got into his element,—and was going on
as prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as my
uncle Toby had before, upon his of fortification;—but to the
loss of much sound knowledge, the destinies in the morning
had decreed that no dissertation of any kind should be spun
by my father that day,—for as he opened his mouth to begin
the next sentence,
Chapter 1.XL.
In popped Corporal Trim with Stevinus:—But 'twas too
late,—all the discourse had been exhausted without him, and
was running into a new channel.
—You may take the book home again, Trim, said my uncle
Toby, nodding to him.
But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling,—look
first into it, and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing
chariot in it.
Corporal Trim, by being in the service, had learned to
obey,—and not to remonstrate,—so taking the book to a
side-table, and running over the leaves; An' please your
Honour, said Trim, I can see no such thing;—however,
continued the Corporal, drolling a little in his turn, I'll
make sure work of it, an' please your Honour;—so taking hold
of the two covers of the book, one in each hand, and letting
the leaves fall down as he bent the covers back, he gave the
book a good sound shake.
There is something falling out, however, said Trim, an'
please your Honour;—but it is not a chariot, or any thing
like one:—Prithee, Corporal, said my father, smiling, what
is it then?—I think, answered Trim, stooping to take it
up,—'tis more like a sermon,—for it begins with a text of
scripture, and the chapter and verse;—and then goes on, not
as a chariot, but like a sermon directly.
The company smiled.
I cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle
Toby, for such a thing as a sermon to have got into my
Stevinus.
I think 'tis a sermon, replied Trim:—but if it please
your Honours, as it is a fair hand, I will read you a
page;—for Trim, you must know, loved to hear himself read
almost as well as talk.
I have ever a strong propensity, said my father, to look
into things which cross my way, by such strange fatalities
as these;—and as we have nothing better to do, at least till
Obadiah gets back, I shall be obliged to you, brother, if
Dr. Slop has no objection to it, to order the Corporal to
give us a page or two of it,—if he is as able to do it, as
he seems willing. An' please your honour, quoth Trim, I
officiated two whole campaigns, in Flanders, as clerk to the
chaplain of the regiment.—He can read it, quoth my uncle
Toby, as well as I can.—Trim, I assure you, was the best
scholar in my company, and should have had the next halberd,
but for the poor fellow's misfortune. Corporal Trim laid his
hand upon his heart, and made an humble bow to his master;
then laying down his hat upon the floor, and taking up the
sermon in his left hand, in order to have his right at
liberty,—he advanced, nothing doubting, into the middle of
the room, where he could best see, and be best seen by his
audience.
Chapter 1.XLI.
—If you have any objection,—said my father, addressing
himself to Dr. Slop. Not in the least, replied Dr. Slop;—for
it does not appear on which side of the question it is
wrote,—it may be a composition of a divine of our church, as
well as yours,—so that we run equal risques.—'Tis wrote upon
neither side, quoth Trim, for 'tis only upon Conscience, an'
please your Honours.
Trim's reason put his audience into good humour,—all but
Dr. Slop, who turning his head about towards Trim, looked a
little angry.
Begin, Trim,—and read distinctly, quoth my father.—I
will, an' please your Honour, replied the Corporal, making a
bow, and bespeaking attention with a slight movement of his
right hand.
Chapter 1.XLII.
—But before the Corporal begins, I must first give you a
description of his attitude;—otherwise he will naturally
stand represented, by your imagination, in an uneasy
posture,—stiff,—perpendicular,—dividing the weight of his
body equally upon both legs;—his eye fixed, as if on
duty;—his look determined,—clenching the sermon in his left
hand, like his firelock.—In a word, you would be apt to
paint Trim, as if he was standing in his platoon ready for
action,—His attitude was as unlike all this as you can
conceive.
He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent
forwards just so far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and
a half upon the plain of the horizon;—which sound orators,
to whom I address this, know very well to be the true
persuasive angle of incidence;—in any other angle you may
talk and preach;—'tis certain;—and it is done every day;—but
with what effect,—I leave the world to judge!
The necessity of this precise angle of 85 degrees and a
half to a mathematical exactness,—does it not shew us, by
the way, how the arts and sciences mutually befriend each
other?
How the duce Corporal Trim, who knew not so much as an
acute angle from an obtuse one, came to hit it so
exactly;—or whether it was chance or nature, or good sense
or imitation, &c. shall be commented upon in that part of
the cyclopaedia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental
parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the
bar, the coffee-house, the bed-chamber, and fire-side, fall
under consideration.
He stood,—for I repeat it, to take the picture of him in
at one view, with his body swayed, and somewhat bent
forwards,—his right leg from under him, sustaining
seven-eighths of his whole weight,—the foot of his left leg,
the defect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude,
advanced a little,—not laterally, nor forwards, but in a
line betwixt them;—his knee bent, but that not
violently,—but so as to fall within the limits of the line
of beauty;—and I add, of the line of science too;—for
consider, it had one eighth part of his body to bear up;—so
that in this case the position of the leg is
determined,—because the foot could be no farther advanced,
or the knee more bent, than what would allow him,
mechanically to receive an eighth part of his whole weight
under it, and to carry it too.
>This I recommend to painters;—need I add,—to orators!—I
think not; for unless they practise it,—they must fall upon
their noses.
So much for Corporal Trim's body and legs.—He held the
sermon loosely, not carelessly, in his left hand, raised
something above his stomach, and detached a little from his
breast;—his right arm falling negligently by his side, as
nature and the laws of gravity ordered it,—but with the palm
of it open and turned towards his audience, ready to aid the
sentiment in case it stood in need.
Corporal Trim's eyes and the muscles of his face were in
full harmony with the other parts of him;—he looked
frank,—unconstrained,— something assured,—but not bordering
upon assurance.
Let not the critic ask how Corporal Trim could come by
all this.—I've told him it should be explained;—but so he
stood before my father, my uncle Toby, and Dr. Slop,—so
swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and with such an
oratorical sweep throughout the whole figure,—a statuary
might have modelled from it;—nay, I doubt whether the oldest
Fellow of a College,—or the Hebrew Professor himself, could
have much mended it.
Trim made a bow, and read as follows:
The Sermon.
Hebrews xiii. 18.
—For we trust we have a good Conscience.
'Trust!—Trust we have a good conscience!'
(Certainly, Trim, quoth my father, interrupting him, you
give that sentence a very improper accent; for you curl up
your nose, man, and read it with such a sneering tone, as if
the Parson was going to abuse the Apostle.
He is, an' please your Honour, replied Trim. Pugh! said
my father, smiling.
Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Trim is certainly in the right; for
the writer (who I perceive is a Protestant) by the snappish
manner in which he takes up the apostle, is certainly going
to abuse him;—if this treatment of him has not done it
already. But from whence, replied my father, have you
concluded so soon, Dr. Slop, that the writer is of our
church?—for aught I can see yet,—he may be of any
church.—Because, answered Dr. Slop, if he was of ours,—he
durst no more take such a licence,—than a bear by his
beard:—If, in our communion, Sir, a man was to insult an
apostle,—a saint,—or even the paring of a saint's nail,—he
would have his eyes scratched out.—What, by the saint? quoth
my uncle Toby. No, replied Dr. Slop, he would have an old
house over his head. Pray is the Inquisition an ancient
building, answered my uncle Toby, or is it a modern one?—I
know nothing of architecture, replied Dr. Slop.—An' please
your Honours, quoth Trim, the Inquisition is the
vilest—Prithee spare thy description, Trim, I hate the very
name of it, said my father.—No matter for that, answered Dr.
Slop,—it has its uses; for tho' I'm no great advocate for
it, yet, in such a case as this, he would soon be taught
better manners; and I can tell him, if he went on at that
rate, would be flung into the Inquisition for his pains. God
help him then, quoth my uncle Toby. Amen, added Trim; for
Heaven above knows, I have a poor brother who has been
fourteen years a captive in it.—I never heard one word of it
before, said my uncle Toby, hastily:—How came he there,
Trim?—O, Sir, the story will make your heart bleed,—as it
has made mine a thousand times;—but it is too long to be
told now;—your Honour shall hear it from first to last some
day when I am working beside you in our fortifications;—but
the short of the story is this;—That my brother Tom went
over a servant to Lisbon,—and then married a Jew's widow,
who kept a small shop, and sold sausages, which somehow or
other, was the cause of his being taken in the middle of the
night out of his bed, where he was lying with his wife and
two small children, and carried directly to the Inquisition,
where, God help him, continued Trim, fetching a sigh from
the bottom of his heart,—the poor honest lad lies confined
at this hour; he was as honest a soul, added Trim, (pulling
out his handkerchief) as ever blood warmed.—
—The tears trickled down Trim's cheeks faster than he
could well wipe them away.—A dead silence in the room ensued
for some minutes.—Certain proof of pity!
Come Trim, quoth my father, after he saw the poor
fellow's grief had got a little vent,—read on,—and put this
melancholy story out of thy head:—I grieve that I
interrupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon again;—for if
the first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as thou sayest,
I have a great desire to know what kind of provocation the
apostle has given.
Corporal Trim wiped his face, and returned his
handkerchief into his pocket, and, making a bow as he did
it,—he began again.)
The Sermon.
Hebrews xiii. 18.
—For we trust we have a good Conscience.—
'Trust! trust we have a good conscience! Surely if there
is any thing in this life which a man may depend upon, and
to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the
most indisputable evidence, it must be this very
thing,—whether he has a good conscience or no.'
(I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. Slop.)
'If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to
the true state of this account:—he must be privy to his own
thoughts and desires;—he must remember his past pursuits,
and know certainly the true springs and motives, which, in
general, have governed the actions of his life.'
(I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. Slop.)
'In other matters we may be deceived by false
appearances; and, as the wise man complains, hardly do we
guess aright at the things that are upon the earth, and with
labour do we find the things that are before us. But here
the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;—is
conscious of the web she has wove;—knows its texture and
fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in
working upon the several designs which virtue or vice has
planned before her.'
(The language is good, and I declare Trim reads very
well, quoth my father.)
'Now,—as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge
which the mind has within herself of this; and the judgment,
either of approbation or censure, which it unavoidably makes
upon the successive actions of our lives; 'tis plain you
will say, from the very terms of the proposition,—whenever
this inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands
self-accused, that he must necessarily be a guilty man.—And,
on the contrary, when the report is favourable on his side,
and his heart condemns him not:—that it is not a matter of
trust, as the apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty
and fact, that the conscience is good, and that the man must
be good also.'
(Then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, I suppose,
quoth Dr. Slop, and the Protestant divine is in the right.
Sir, have patience, replied my father, for I think it will
presently appear that St. Paul and the Protestant divine are
both of an opinion.—As nearly so, quoth Dr. Slop, as east is
to west;—but this, continued he, lifting both hands, comes
from the liberty of the press.
It is no more at the worst, replied my uncle Toby, than
the liberty of the pulpit; for it does not appear that the
sermon is printed, or ever likely to be.
Go on, Trim, quoth my father.)
'At first sight this may seem to be a true state of the
case: and I make no doubt but the knowledge of right and
wrong is so truly impressed upon the mind of man,—that did
no such thing ever happen, as that the conscience of a man,
by long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures it
may) insensibly become hard;—and, like some tender parts of
his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by
degrees that nice sense and perception with which God and
nature endowed it:—Did this never happen;—or was it certain
that self-love could never hang the least bias upon the
judgment;—or that the little interests below could rise up
and perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and
encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness:—Could
no such thing as favour and affection enter this sacred
Court—Did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it;—or was ashamed
to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable
enjoyment: Or, lastly, were we assured that Interest stood
always unconcerned whilst the cause was hearing—and that
Passion never got into the judgment-seat, and pronounced
sentence in the stead of Reason, which is supposed always to
preside and determine upon the case:—Was this truly so, as
the objection must suppose;—no doubt then the religious and
moral state of a man would be exactly what he himself
esteemed it:—and the guilt or innocence of every man's life
could be known, in general, by no better measure, than the
degrees of his own approbation and censure.
'I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does
accuse him (as it seldom errs on that side) that he is
guilty;—and unless in melancholy and hypocondriac cases, we
may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always
sufficient grounds for the accusation.
'But the converse of the proposition will not hold
true;—namely, that whenever there is guilt, the conscience
must accuse; and if it does not, that a man is therefore
innocent.—This is not fact—So that the common consolation
which some good christian or other is hourly administering
to himself,—that he thanks God his mind does not misgive
him; and that, consequently, he has a good conscience,
because he hath a quiet one,—is fallacious;—and as current
as the inference is, and as infallible as the rule appears
at first sight, yet when you look nearer to it, and try the
truth of this rule upon plain facts,—you see it liable to so
much error from a false application;—the principle upon
which it goes so often perverted;—the whole force of it
lost, and sometimes so vilely cast away, that it is painful
to produce the common examples from human life, which
confirm the account.
'A man shall be vicious and utterly debauched in his
principles;—exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall
live shameless, in the open commission of a sin which no
reason or pretence can justify,—a sin by which, contrary to
all the workings of humanity, he shall ruin for ever the
deluded partner of his guilt;—rob her of her best dowry; and
not only cover her own head with dishonour;—but involve a
whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her sake.
Surely, you will think conscience must lead such a man a
troublesome life; he can have no rest night and day from its
reproaches.
'Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this time,
than break in upon him; as Elijah reproached the god
Baal,—this domestic god was either talking, or pursuing, or
was in a journey, or peradventure he slept and could not be
awoke.
'Perhaps He was gone out in company with Honour to fight
a duel: to pay off some debt at play;—or dirty annuity, the
bargain of his lust; Perhaps Conscience all this time was
engaged at home, talking aloud against petty larceny, and
executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes as his
fortune and rank of life secured him against all temptation
of committing; so that he lives as merrily;'—(If he was of
our church, tho', quoth Dr. Slop, he could not)—'sleeps as
soundly in his bed;—and at last meets death
unconcernedly;—perhaps much more so, than a much better
man.'
(All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. Slop, turning
to my father,—the case could not happen in our church.—It
happens in ours, however, replied my father, but too
often.—I own, quoth Dr. Slop, (struck a little with my
father's frank acknowledgment)—that a man in the Romish
church may live as badly;—but then he cannot easily die
so.—'Tis little matter, replied my father, with an air of
indifference,—how a rascal dies.—I mean, answered Dr. Slop,
he would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.—Pray
how many have you in all, said my uncle Toby,—for I always
forget?—Seven, answered Dr. Slop.—Humph!—said my uncle Toby;
tho' not accented as a note of acquiescence,—but as an
interjection of that particular species of surprize, when a
man in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing than he
expected.—Humph! replied my uncle Toby. Dr. Slop, who had an
ear, understood my uncle Toby as well as if he had wrote a
whole volume against the seven sacraments.—Humph! replied
Dr. Slop, (stating my uncle Toby's argument over again to
him)—Why, Sir, are there not seven cardinal virtues?—Seven
mortal sins?—Seven golden candlesticks?—Seven heavens?—'Tis
more than I know, replied my uncle Toby.—Are there not seven
wonders of the world?—Seven days of the creation?—Seven
planets?—Seven plagues?—That there are, quoth my father with
a most affected gravity. But prithee, continued he, go on
with the rest of thy characters, Trim.)
'Another is sordid, unmerciful,' (here Trim waved his
right hand) 'a strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable
either of private friendship or public spirit. Take notice
how he passes by the widow and orphan in their distress, and
sees all the miseries incident to human life without a sigh
or a prayer.' (An' please your honours, cried Trim, I think
this a viler man than the other.)
'Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such
occasions?—No; thank God there is no occasion, I pay every
man his own;—I have no fornication to answer to my
conscience;—no faithless vows or promises to make up;—I have
debauched no man's wife or child; thank God, I am not as
other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine,
who stands before me.
'A third is crafty and designing in his nature. View his
whole life;—'tis nothing but a cunning contexture of dark
arts and unequitable subterfuges, basely to defeat the true
intent of all laws,—plain dealing and the safe enjoyment of
our several properties.—You will see such a one working out
a frame of little designs upon the ignorance and
perplexities of the poor and needy man;—shall raise a
fortune upon the inexperience of a youth, or the
unsuspecting temper of his friend, who would have trusted
him with his life.
'When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look
back upon this black account, and state it over again with
his conscience—Conscience looks into the Statutes at
Large;—finds no express law broken by what he has
done;—perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and
chattels incurred;—sees no scourge waving over his head, or
prison opening his gates upon him:—What is there to affright
his conscience?—Conscience has got safely entrenched behind
the Letter of the Law; sits there invulnerable, fortified
with Cases and Reports so strongly on all sides;—that it is
not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.'
(Here Corporal Trim and my uncle Toby exchanged looks
with each other.—Aye, Aye, Trim! quoth my uncle Toby,
shaking his head,—these are but sorry fortifications,
Trim.—O! very poor work, answered Trim, to what your Honour
and I make of it.—The character of this last man, said Dr.
Slop, interrupting Trim, is more detestable than all the
rest; and seems to have been taken from some pettifogging
Lawyer amongst you:—Amongst us, a man's conscience could not
possibly continue so long blinded,—three times in a year, at
least, he must go to confession. Will that restore it to
sight? quoth my uncle Toby,—Go on, Trim, quoth my father, or
Obadiah will have got back before thou has got to the end of
thy sermon.—'Tis a very short one, replied Trim.—I wish it
was longer, quoth my uncle Toby, for I like it hugely.—Trim
went on.)
'A fourth man shall want even this refuge;—shall break
through all their ceremony of slow chicane;—scorns the
doubtful workings of secret plots and cautious trains to
bring about his purpose:—See the bare-faced villain, how he
cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders!—Horrid!—But indeed
much better was not to be expected, in the present case—the
poor man was in the dark!—his priest had got the keeping of
his conscience;—and all he would let him know of it, was,
That he must believe in the Pope;—go to Mass;—cross
himself;—tell his beads;—be a good Catholic, and that this,
in all conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven.
What;—if he perjures?—Why;—he had a mental reservation in
it.—But if he is so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you
represent him;—if he robs,—if he stabs, will not conscience,
on every such act, receive a wound itself?—Aye,—but the man
has carried it to confession;—the wound digests there, and
will do well enough, and in a short time be quite healed up
by absolution. O Popery! what hast thou to answer for!—when
not content with the too many natural and fatal ways, thro'
which the heart of man is every day thus treacherous to
itself above all things;—thou hast wilfully set open the
wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary
traveller, too apt, God knows, to go astray of himself, and
confidently speak peace to himself, when there is no peace.
'Of this the common instances which I have drawn out of
life, are too notorious to require much evidence. If any man
doubts the reality of them, or thinks it impossible for a
man to be such a bubble to himself,—I must refer him a
moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to
trust my appeal with his own heart.
'Let him consider in how different a degree of
detestation, numbers of wicked actions stand there, tho'
equally bad and vicious in their own natures;—he will soon
find, that such of them as strong inclination and custom
have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and
painted with all the false beauties which a soft and a
flattering hand can give them;—and that the others, to which
he feels no propensity, appear, at once, naked and deformed,
surrounded with all the true circumstances of folly and
dishonour.
'When David surprized Saul sleeping in the cave, and cut
off the skirt of his robe—we read his heart smote him for
what he had done:—But in the matter of Uriah, where a
faithful and gallant servant, whom he ought to have loved
and honoured, fell to make way for his lust,—where
conscience had so much greater reason to take the alarm, his
heart smote him not. A whole year had almost passed from
first commission of that crime, to the time Nathan was sent
to reprove him; and we read not once of the least sorrow or
compunction of heart which he testified, during all that
time, for what he had done.
'Thus conscience, this once able monitor,—placed on high
as a judge within us, and intended by our maker as a just
and equitable one too,—by an unhappy train of causes and
impediments, takes often such imperfect cognizance of what
passes,—does its office so negligently,—sometimes so
corruptly,—that it is not to be trusted alone; and therefore
we find there is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of
joining another principle with it, to aid, if not govern,
its determinations.
'So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of
infinite importance to you not to be misled in,—namely, in
what degree of real merit you stand either as an honest man,
an useful citizen, a faithful subject to your king, or a
good servant to your God,—call in religion and
morality.—Look, What is written in the law of God?—How
readest thou?—Consult calm reason and the unchangeable
obligations of justice and truth;—what say they?
'Let Conscience determine the matter upon these
reports;—and then if thy heart condemns thee not, which is
the case the apostle supposes,—the rule will be
infallible;'—(Here Dr. Slop fell asleep)—'thou wilt have
confidence towards God;—that is, have just grounds to
believe the judgment thou hast past upon thyself, is the
judgment of God; and nothing else but an anticipation of
that righteous sentence which will be pronounced upon thee
hereafter by that Being, to whom thou art finally to give an
account of thy actions.
'Blessed is the man, indeed, then, as the author of the
book of Ecclesiasticus expresses it, who is not pricked with
the multitude of his sins: Blessed is the man whose heart
hath not condemned him; whether he be rich, or whether he be
poor, if he have a good heart (a heart thus guided and
informed) he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful
countenance; his mind shall tell him more than seven
watch-men that sit above upon a tower on high.'—(A tower has
no strength, quoth my uncle Toby, unless 'tis flank'd.)—'in
the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a
thousand casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better
security for his behaviour than all the causes and
restrictions put together, which law-makers are forced to
multiply:—Forced, I say, as things stand; human laws not
being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity,
brought in to fence against the mischievous effects of those
consciences which are no law unto themselves; well
intending, by the many provisions made,—that in all such
corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks
of conscience will not make us upright,—to supply their
force, and, by the terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us
to it.'
(I see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been
composed to be preached at the Temple,—or at some Assize.—I
like the reasoning,—and am sorry that Dr. Slop has fallen
asleep before the time of his conviction:—for it is now
clear, that the Parson, as I thought at first, never
insulted St. Paul in the least;—nor has there been, brother,
the least difference between them.—A great matter, if they
had differed, replied my uncle Toby,—the best friends in the
world may differ sometimes.—True,—brother Toby quoth my
father, shaking hands with him,—we'll fill our pipes,
brother, and then Trim shall go on.
Well,—what dost thou think of it? said my father,
speaking to Corporal Trim, as he reached his tobacco-box.
I think, answered the Corporal, that the seven watch-men
upon the tower, who, I suppose, are all centinels there,—are
more, an' please your Honour, than were necessary;—and, to
go on at that rate, would harrass a regiment all to pieces,
which a commanding officer, who loves his men, will never
do, if he can help it, because two centinels, added the
Corporal, are as good as twenty.—I have been a commanding
officer myself in the Corps de Garde a hundred times,
continued Trim, rising an inch higher in his figure, as he
spoke,—and all the time I had the honour to serve his
Majesty King William, in relieving the most considerable
posts, I never left more than two in my life.—Very right,
Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,—but you do not consider, Trim,
that the towers, in Solomon's days, were not such things as
our bastions, flanked and defended by other works;—this,
Trim, was an invention since Solomon's death; nor had they
horn-works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his time;—or
such a fosse as we make with a cuvette in the middle of it,
and with covered ways and counterscarps pallisadoed along
it, to guard against a Coup de main:—So that the seven men
upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de
Garde, set there, not only to look out, but to defend
it.—They could be no more, an' please your Honour, than a
Corporal's Guard.—My father smiled inwardly, but not
outwardly—the subject being rather too serious, considering
what had happened, to make a jest of.—So putting his pipe
into his mouth, which he had just lighted,—he contented
himself with ordering Trim to read on. He read on as
follows:
'To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our
mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by
the eternal measures of right and wrong:—The first of these
will comprehend the duties of religion;—the second, those of
morality, which are so inseparably connected together, that
you cannot divide these two tables, even in imagination,
(tho' the attempt is often made in practice) without
breaking and mutually destroying them both.
I said the attempt is often made; and so it is;—there
being nothing more common than to see a man who has no sense
at all of religion, and indeed has so much honesty as to
pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest affront,
should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral
character,—or imagine he was not conscientiously just and
scrupulous to the uttermost mite.
'When there is some appearance that it is so,—tho' one is
unwilling even to suspect the appearance of so amiable a
virtue as moral honesty, yet were we to look into the
grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we should
find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his
motive.
'Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the
subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation
than either his interest, his pride, his ease, or some such
little and changeable passion as will give us but small
dependence upon his actions in matters of great distress.
'I will illustrate this by an example.
'I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I
usually call in,'—(There is no need, cried Dr. Slop,
(waking) to call in any physician in this case)—'to be
neither of them men of much religion: I hear them make a
jest of it every day, and treat all its sanctions with so
much scorn, as to put the matter past doubt.
Well;—notwithstanding this, I put my fortune into the hands
of the one:—and what is dearer still to me, I trust my life
to the honest skill of the other.
'Now let me examine what is my reason for this great
confidence. Why, in the first place, I believe there is no
probability that either of them will employ the power I put
into their hands to my disadvantage;—I consider that honesty
serves the purposes of this life:—I know their success in
the world depends upon the fairness of their characters.—In
a word, I'm persuaded that they cannot hurt me without
hurting themselves more.
'But put it otherwise, namely, that interest lay, for
once, on the other side; that a case should happen, wherein
the one, without stain to his reputation, could secrete my
fortune, and leave me naked in the world;—or that the other
could send me out of it, and enjoy an estate by my death,
without dishonour to himself or his art:—In this case, what
hold have I of either of them?—Religion, the strongest of
all motives, is out of the question;—Interest, the next most
powerful motive in the world, is strongly against me:—What
have I left to cast into the opposite scale to balance this
temptation?—Alas! I have nothing,—nothing but what is
lighter than a bubble—I must lie at the mercy of Honour, or
some such capricious principle—Strait security for two of
the most valuable blessings!—my property and myself.
'As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality
without religion;—so, on the other hand, there is nothing
better to be expected from religion without morality;
nevertheless, 'tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral
character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest
notion of himself in the light of a religious man.
'He shall not only be covetous, revengeful,
implacable,—but even wanting in points of common honesty;
yet inasmuch as he talks aloud against the infidelity of the
age,—is zealous for some points of religion,—goes twice a
day to church,—attends the sacraments,—and amuses himself
with a few instrumental parts of religion,—shall cheat his
conscience into a judgment, that, for this, he is a
religious man, and has discharged truly his duty to God: And
you will find that such a man, through force of this
delusion, generally looks down with spiritual pride upon
every other man who has less affectation of piety,—though,
perhaps, ten times more real honesty than himself.
'This likewise is a sore evil under the sun; and I
believe, there is no one mistaken principle, which, for its
time, has wrought more serious mischiefs.—For a general
proof of this,—examine the history of the Romish
church;'—(Well what can you make of that? cried Dr.
Slop)—'see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine,
bloodshed,'—(They may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr.
Slop)—have all been sanctified by a religion not strictly
governed by morality.
'In how many kingdoms of the world'—(Here Trim kept
waving his right-hand from the sermon to the extent of his
arm, returning it backwards and forwards to the conclusion
of the paragraph.)
'In how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading
sword of this misguided saint-errant, spared neither age or
merit, or sex, or condition?—and, as he fought under the
banners of a religion which set him loose from justice and
humanity, he shewed none; mercilessly trampled upon
both,—heard neither the cries of the unfortunate, nor pitied
their distresses.'
(I have been in many a battle, an' please your Honour,
quoth Trim, sighing, but never in so melancholy a one as
this,—I would not have drawn a tricker in it against these
poor souls,—to have been made a general officer.—Why? what
do you understand of the affair? said Dr. Slop, looking
towards Trim, with something more of contempt than the
Corporal's honest heart deserved.—What do you know, friend,
about this battle you talk of?—I know, replied Trim, that I
never refused quarter in my life to any man who cried out
for it;—but to a woman or a child, continued Trim, before I
would level my musket at them, I would loose my life a
thousand times.—Here's a crown for thee, Trim, to drink with
Obadiah to-night, quoth my uncle Toby, and I'll give Obadiah
another too.—God bless your Honour, replied Trim,—I had
rather these poor women and children had it.—thou art an
honest fellow, quoth my uncle Toby.—My father nodded his
head, as much as to say—and so he is.—
But prithee, Trim, said my father, make an end,—for I see
thou hast but a leaf or two left.
Corporal Trim read on.)
'If the testimony of past centuries in this matter is not
sufficient,—consider at this instant, how the votaries of
that religion are every day thinking to do service and
honour to God, by actions which are a dishonour and scandal
to themselves.
'To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into
the prisons of the Inquisition.'—(God help my poor brother
Tom.)—'Behold Religion, with Mercy and Justice chained down
under her feet,—there sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal,
propped up with racks and instruments of torment.
Hark!—hark! what a piteous groan!'—(Here Trim's face turned
as pale as ashes.)—'See the melancholy wretch who uttered
it'—(Here the tears began to trickle down)—'just brought
forth to undergo the anguish of a mock trial, and endure the
utmost pains that a studied system of cruelty has been able
to invent.'—(D..n them all, quoth Trim, his colour returning
into his face as red as blood.)—'Behold this helpless victim
delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with
sorrow and confinement.'—(Oh! 'tis my brother, cried poor
Trim in a most passionate exclamation, dropping the sermon
upon the ground, and clapping his hands together—I fear 'tis
poor Tom. My father's and my uncle Toby's heart yearned with
sympathy for the poor fellow's distress; even Slop himself
acknowledged pity for him.—Why, Trim, said my father, this
is not a history,—'tis a sermon thou art reading; prithee
begin the sentence again.)—'Behold this helpless victim
delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with
sorrow and confinement, you will see every nerve and muscle
as it suffers.
'Observe the last movement of that horrid engine!'—(I
would rather face a cannon, quoth Trim, stamping.)—'See what
convulsions it has thrown him into!—Consider the nature of
the posture in which he how lies stretched,—what exquisite
tortures he endures by it!'—(I hope 'tis not in
Portugal.)—''Tis all nature can bear! Good God! see how it
keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips!' (I
would not read another line of it, quoth Trim for all this
world;—I fear, an' please your Honours, all this is in
Portugal, where my poor brother Tom is. I tell thee, Trim,
again, quoth my father, 'tis not an historical account,—'tis
a description.—'Tis only a description, honest man, quoth
Slop, there's not a word of truth in it.—That's another
story, replied my father.—However, as Trim reads it with so
much concern,—'tis cruelty to force him to go on with
it.—Give me hold of the sermon, Trim,—I'll finish it for
thee, and thou may'st go. I must stay and hear it too,
replied Trim, if your Honour will allow me;—tho' I would not
read it myself for a Colonel's pay.—Poor Trim! quoth my
uncle Toby. My father went on.)
'—Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies
stretched,—what exquisite torture he endures by it!—'Tis all
nature can bear! Good God! See how it keeps his weary soul
hanging upon his trembling lips,—willing to take its
leave,—but not suffered to depart!—Behold the unhappy wretch
led back to his cell!'—(Then, thank God, however, quoth
Trim, they have not killed him.)—'See him dragged out of it
again to meet the flames, and the insults in his last
agonies, which this principle,—this principle, that there
can be religion without mercy, has prepared for him.'—(Then,
thank God,—he is dead, quoth Trim,—he is out of his
pain,—and they have done their worst at him.—O Sirs!—Hold
your peace, Trim, said my father, going on with the sermon,
lest Trim should incense Dr. Slop,—we shall never have done
at this rate.)
'The surest way to try the merit of any disputed notion
is, to trace down the consequences such a notion has
produced, and compare them with the spirit of
Christianity;—'tis the short and decisive rule which our
Saviour hath left us, for these and such like cases, and it
is worth a thousand arguments—By their fruits ye shall know
them.
'I will add no farther to the length of this sermon, than
by two or three short and independent rules deducible from
it.
'First, Whenever a man talks loudly against religion,
always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions,
which have got the better of his Creed. A bad life and a
good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbours, and
where they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other cause
but quietness sake.
'Secondly, When a man, thus represented, tells you in any
particular instance,—That such a thing goes against his
conscience,—always believe he means exactly the same thing,
as when he tells you such a thing goes against his
stomach;—a present want of appetite being generally the true
cause of both.
'In a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has not a
Conscience in every thing.
'And, in your own case, remember this plain distinction,
a mistake in which has ruined thousands,—that your
conscience is not a law;—No, God and reason made the law,
and have placed conscience within you to determine;—not,
like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his
own passions,—but like a British judge in this land of
liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully
declares that law which he knows already written.'
Finis.
Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, Trim, quoth my
father.—If he had spared his comments, replied Dr. Slop,—he
would have read it much better. I should have read it ten
times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my heart was so
full.—That was the very reason, Trim, replied my father,
which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast
done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father,
addressing himself to Dr. Slop, would take part in what they
deliver as deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their
compositions are fine;—(I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop)—I
maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such
subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole
world:—But alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir,
with sorrow, that, like French politicians in this respect,
what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field.—'Twere
a pity, quoth my uncle, that this should be lost. I like the
sermon well, replied my father,—'tis dramatick,—and there is
something in that way of writing, when skilfully managed,
which catches the attention.—We preach much in that way with
us, said Dr. Slop.—I know that very well, said my
father,—but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. Slop,
full as much as his assent, simply, could have pleased
him.—But in this, added Dr. Slop, a little piqued,—our
sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never introduce
any character into them below a patriarch or a patriarch's
wife, or a martyr or a saint.—There are some very bad
characters in this, however, said my father, and I do not
think the sermon a jot the worse for 'em.—But pray, quoth my
uncle Toby,—who's can this be?—How could it get into my
Stevinus? A man must be as great a conjurer as Stevinus,
said my father, to resolve the second question:—The first, I
think, is not so difficult;—for unless my judgment greatly
deceives me,—I know the author, for 'tis wrote, certainly,
by the parson of the parish.
The similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those
my father constantly had heard preached in his
parish-church, was the ground of his conjecture,—proving it
as strongly, as an argument a priori could prove such a
thing to a philosophic mind, That it was Yorick's and no
one's else:—It was proved to be so, a posteriori, the day
after, when Yorick sent a servant to my uncle Toby's house
to enquire after it.
It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds
of knowledge, had borrowed Stevinus of my uncle Toby, and
had carelesly popped his sermon, as soon as he had made it,
into the middle of Stevinus; and by an act of forgetfulness,
to which he was ever subject, he had sent Stevinus home, and
his sermon to keep him company.
Ill-fated sermon! Thou wast lost, after this recovery of
thee, a second time, dropped thru' an unsuspected fissure in
thy master's pocket, down into a treacherous and a tattered
lining,—trod deep into the dirt by the left hind-foot of his
Rosinante inhumanly stepping upon thee as thou
falledst;—buried ten days in the mire,—raised up out of it
by a beggar,—sold for a halfpenny to a
parish-clerk,—transferred to his parson,—lost for ever to
thy own, the remainder of his days,—nor restored to his
restless Manes till this very moment, that I tell the world
the story.
Can the reader believe, that this sermon of Yorick's was
preached at an assize, in the cathedral of York, before a
thousand witnesses, ready to give oath of it, by a certain
prebendary of that church, and actually printed by him when
he had done,—and within so short a space as two years and
three months after Yorick's death?—Yorick indeed, was never
better served in his life;—but it was a little hard to
maltreat him after, and plunder him after he was laid in his
grave.
However, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect
charity with Yorick,—and, in conscious justice, printed but
a few copies to give away;—and that I am told he could
moreover have made as good a one himself, had he thought
fit,—I declare I would not have published this anecdote to
the world;—nor do I publish it with an intent to hurt his
character and advancement in the church;—I leave that to
others;—but I find myself impelled by two reasons, which I
cannot withstand.
The first is, That in doing justice, I may give rest to
Yorick's ghost;—which—as the country-people, and some others
believe,—still walks.
The second reason is, That, by laying open this story to
the world, I gain an opportunity of informing it,—That in
case the character of parson Yorick, and this sample of his
sermons, is liked,—there are now in the possession of the
Shandy family, as many as will make a handsome volume, at
the world's service,—and much good may they do it.
Chapter 1.XLIII.
Obadiah gained the two crowns without dispute;—for he came
in jingling, with all the instruments in the green baize bag
we spoke of, flung across his body, just as Corporal Trim
went out of the room.
It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. Slop, (clearing up
his looks) as we are in a condition to be of some service to
Mrs. Shandy, to send up stairs to know how she goes on.
I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to
come down to us upon the least difficulty;—for you must
know, Dr. Slop, continued my father, with a perplexed kind
of a smile upon his countenance, that by express treaty,
solemnly ratified between me and my wife, you are no more
than an auxiliary in this affair,—and not so much as
that,—unless the lean old mother of a midwife above stairs
cannot do without you.—Women have their particular fancies,
and in points of this nature, continued my father, where
they bear the whole burden, and suffer so much acute pain
for the advantage of our families, and the good of the
species,—they claim a right of deciding, en Souveraines, in
whose hands, and in what fashion, they choose to undergo it.
They are in the right of it,—quoth my uncle Toby. But
Sir, replied Dr. Slop, not taking notice of my uncle Toby's
opinion, but turning to my father,—they had better govern in
other points;—and a father of a family, who wishes its
perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange this
prerogative with them, and give up some other rights in lieu
of it.—I know not, quoth my father, answering a letter too
testily, to be quite dispassionate in what he said,—I know
not, quoth he, what we have left to give up, in lieu of who
shall bring our children into the world, unless that,—of who
shall beget them.—One would almost give up any thing,
replied Dr. Slop.—I beg your pardon,—answered my uncle
Toby.—Sir, replied Dr. Slop, it would astonish you to know
what improvements we have made of late years in all branches
of obstetrical knowledge, but particularly in that one
single point of the safe and expeditious extraction of the
foetus,—which has received such lights, that, for my part
(holding up his hand) I declare I wonder how the world has—I
wish, quoth my uncle Toby, you had seen what prodigious
armies we had in Flanders.
Chapter 1.XLIV.
I have dropped the curtain over this scene for a minute,—to
remind you of one thing,—and to inform you of another.
What I have to inform you, comes, I own, a little out of
its due course;—for it should have been told a hundred and
fifty pages ago, but that I foresaw then 'twould come in pat
hereafter, and be of more advantage here than
elsewhere.—Writers had need look before them, to keep up the
spirit and connection of what they have in hand.
When these two things are done,—the curtain shall be
drawn up again, and my uncle Toby, my father, and Dr. Slop,
shall go on with their discourse, without any more
interruption.
First, then, the matter which I have to remind you of, is
this;—that from the specimens of singularity in my father's
notions in the point of Christian-names, and that other
previous point thereto,—you was led, I think, into an
opinion,—(and I am sure I said as much) that my father was a
gentleman altogether as odd and whimsical in fifty other
opinions. In truth, there was not a stage in the life of
man, from the very first act of his begetting,—down to the
lean and slippered pantaloon in his second childishness, but
he had some favourite notion to himself, springing out of
it, as sceptical, and as far out of the high-way of
thinking, as these two which have been explained.
—Mr. Shandy, my father, Sir, would see nothing in the
light in which others placed it;—he placed things in his own
light;—he would weigh nothing in common scales;—no, he was
too refined a researcher to lie open to so gross an
imposition.—To come at the exact weight of things in the
scientific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, should be
almost invisible, to avoid all friction from popular
tenets;—without this the minutiae of philosophy, which would
always turn the balance, will have no weight at all.
Knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in
infinitum;—that the grains and scruples were as much a part
of it, as the gravitation of the whole world.—In a word, he
would say, error was error,—no matter where it fell,—whether
in a fraction,—or a pound,—'twas alike fatal to truth, and
she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably
by a mistake in the dust of a butterfly's wing,—as in the
disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put
together.
He would often lament that it was for want of considering
this properly, and of applying it skilfully to civil
matters, as well as to speculative truths, that so many
things in this world were out of joint;—that the political
arch was giving way;—and that the very foundations of our
excellent constitution in church and state, were so sapped
as estimators had reported.
You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone
people. Why? he would ask, making use of the sorites or
syllogism of Zeno and Chrysippus, without knowing it
belonged to them.—Why? why are we a ruined people?—Because
we are corrupted.—Whence is it, dear Sir, that we are
corrupted?—Because we are needy;—our poverty, and not our
wills, consent.—And wherefore, he would add, are we
needy?—From the neglect, he would answer, of our pence and
our halfpence:—Our bank notes, Sir, our guineas,—nay our
shillings take care of themselves.
'Tis the same, he would say, throughout the whole circle
of the sciences;—the great, the established points of them,
are not to be broke in upon.—The laws of nature will defend
themselves;—but error—(he would add, looking earnestly at my
mother)—error, Sir, creeps in thro' the minute holes and
small crevices which human nature leaves unguarded.
This turn of thinking in my father, is what I had to
remind you of:—The point you are to be informed of, and
which I have reserved for this place, is as follows.
Amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which my
father had urged my mother to accept of Dr. Slop's
assistance preferably to that of the old woman,—there was
one of a very singular nature; which, when he had done
arguing the matter with her as a Christian, and came to
argue it over again with her as a philosopher, he had put
his whole strength to, depending indeed upon it as his
sheet-anchor.—It failed him, tho' from no defect in the
argument itself; but that, do what he could, he was not able
for his soul to make her comprehend the drift of it.—Cursed
luck!—said he to himself, one afternoon, as he walked out of
the room, after he had been stating it for an hour and a
half to her, to no manner of purpose;—cursed luck! said he,
biting his lip as he shut the door,—for a man to be master
of one of the finest chains of reasoning in nature,—and have
a wife at the same time with such a head-piece, that he
cannot hang up a single inference within side of it, to save
his soul from destruction.
This argument, though it was entirely lost upon my
mother,—had more weight with him, than all his other
arguments joined together:—I will therefore endeavour to do
it justice,—and set it forth with all the perspicuity I am
master of.
My father set out upon the strength of these two
following axioms:
First, That an ounce of a man's own wit, was worth a ton
of other people's; and,
Secondly, (Which by the bye, was the ground-work of the
first axiom,—tho' it comes last) That every man's wit must
come from every man's own soul,—and no other body's.
Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by
nature equal,—and that the great difference between the most
acute and the most obtuse understanding—was from no original
sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or
below another,—but arose merely from the lucky or unlucky
organization of the body, in that part where the soul
principally took up her residence,—he had made it the
subject of his enquiry to find out the identical place.
Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of
this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where Des
Cartes had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the
brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion for her
about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as
so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,—'twas no
bad conjecture;—and my father had certainly fallen with that
great philosopher plumb into the centre of the mistake, had
it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued him out of it, by
a story he told him of a Walloon officer at the battle of
Landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a
musket-ball,—and another part of it taken out after by a
French surgeon; and after all, recovered, and did his duty
very well without it.
If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is
nothing but the separation of the soul from the body;—and if
it is true that people can walk about and do their business
without brains,—then certes the soul does not inhabit there.
Q.E.D.
As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant
juice which Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze
physician affirms, in a letter to Bartholine, to have
discovered in the cellulae of the occipital parts of the
cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the
principal seat of the reasonable soul, (for, you must know,
in these latter and more enlightened ages, there are two
souls in every man living,—the one, according to the great
Metheglingius, being called the Animus, the other, the
Anima;)—as for the opinion, I say of Borri,—my father could
never subscribe to it by any means; the very idea of so
noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a being as
the Anima, or even the Animus, taking up her residence, and
sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole all day long, both summer
and winter, in a puddle,—or in a liquid of any kind, how
thick or thin soever, he would say, shocked his imagination;
he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing.
What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of
any, was that the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the
soul, and to which place all intelligences were referred,
and from whence all her mandates were issued,—was in, or
near, the cerebellum,—or rather somewhere about the medulla
oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by Dutch
anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the organs
of the seven senses concentered, like streets and winding
alleys, into a square.
So far there was nothing singular in my father's
opinion,—he had the best of philosophers, of all ages and
climates, to go along with him.—But here he took a road of
his own, setting up another Shandean hypothesis upon these
corner-stones they had laid for him;—and which said
hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty
and fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and
clearness of the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and
texture in the cerebellum itself; which opinion he favoured.
He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in
the act of propagation of each individual, which required
all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of
this incomprehensible contexture, in which wit, memory,
fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of
good natural parts, do consist;—that next to this and his
Christian-name, which were the two original and most
efficacious causes of all;—that the third cause, or rather
what logicians call the Causa sina qua non, and without
which all that was done was of no manner of
significance,—was the preservation of this delicate and
fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in
it by the violent compression and crush which the head was
made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us
into the world by that foremost.
—This requires explanation.
My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon
looking into Lithopaedus Senonesis de Portu difficili, (The
author is here twice mistaken; for Lithopaedus should be
wrote thus, Lithopaedii Senonensis Icon. The second mistake
is, that this Lithopaedus is not an author, but a drawing of
a petrified child. The account of this, published by
Athosius 1580, may be seen at the end of Cordaeus's works in
Spachius. Mr. Tristram Shandy has been led into this error,
either from seeing Lithopaedus's name of late in a catalogue
of learned writers in Dr..., or by mistaking Lithopaedus for
Trinecavellius,—from the too great similitude of the names.)
published by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, that the lax
and pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the
bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was
such,—that by force of the woman's efforts, which, in strong
labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of
470 pounds avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;—it so
happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was
compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical
piece of dough, such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in
order to make a pye of.—Good God! cried my father, what
havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine
and tender texture of the cerebellum!—Or if there is such a
juice as Borri pretends—is it not enough to make the
clearest liquid in the world both seculent and mothery?
But how great was his apprehension, when he farther
understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of
the head, not only injured the brain itself, or
cerebrum,—but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the
cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate
seat of the understanding!—Angels and ministers of grace
defend us! cried my father,—can any soul withstand this
shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and
tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads
are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,—all
perplexity,—all confusion within-side.
But when my father read on, and was let into the secret,
that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for
an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;—that
instead of the cerebrum being propelled towards the
cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled
simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of
hurt:—By heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to
drive out what little wit God has given us,—and the
professors of the obstetric art are listed into the same
conspiracy.—What is it to me which end of my son comes
foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and
his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has
conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as
proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your
begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing
you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.
When my father was gone with this about a month, there
was scarce a phaenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he
could not readily solve by it;—it accounted for the eldest
son being the greatest blockhead in the family.—Poor devil,
he would say,—he made way for the capacity of his younger
brothers.—It unriddled the observations of drivellers and
monstrous heads,—shewing a priori, it could not be
otherwise,—unless... I don't know what. It wonderfully
explained and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic
genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating
intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose
and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more
perpetual sunshine, &c.—which for aught he knew, might as
well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into
nothing, by one extreme,—as they are condensed in colder
climates by the other;—but he traced the affair up to its
spring-head;—shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had
laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the
creation;—their pleasures more;—the necessity of their pains
less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the
vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the
cerebellum was preserved;—nay, he did not believe, in
natural births, that so much as a single thread of the
net-work was broke or displaced,—so that the soul might just
act as she liked.
When my father had got so far,—what a blaze of light did
the accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the towering
geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon
this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no
injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head
against the pelvis;—no propulsion of the cerebrum towards
the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or os
coxygis on that;—and pray, what were the happy consequences?
Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a
name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before
ever the operation had a name;—your Scipio Africanus; your
Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,—who, had he lived,
would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:—These,
and many more who figured high in the annals of fame,—all
came side-way, Sir, into the world.
The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks
together in my father's head;—he had read, and was
satisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the
matrix, were not mortal;—so that the belly of the mother
might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the
child.—He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my
mother,—merely as a matter of fact; but seeing her turn as
pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the
operation flattered his hopes,—he thought it as well to say
no more of it,—contenting himself with admiring,—what he
thought was to no purpose to propose.
This was my father Mr. Shandy's hypothesis; concerning
which I have only to add, that my brother Bobby did as great
honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any one of
the great heroes we spoke of: For happening not only to be
christened, as I told you, but to be born too, when my
father was at Epsom,—being moreover my mother's first
child,—coming into the world with his head foremost,—and
turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,—my
father spelt all these together into his opinion: and as he
had failed at one end,—he was determined to try the other.
This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood,
who are not easily to be put out of their way,—and was
therefore one of my father's great reasons in favour of a
man of science, whom he could better deal with.
Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for my
father's purpose;—for though this new-invented forceps was
the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to be the
safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he had
scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very
thing which ran in my father's fancy;—tho' not with a view
to the soul's good in extracting by the feet, as was my
father's system,—but for reasons merely obstetrical.
This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and
Dr. Slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard
against my uncle Toby.—In what manner a plain man, with
nothing but common sense, could bear up against two such
allies in science,—is hard to conceive.—You may conjecture
upon it, if you please,—and whilst your imagination is in
motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what
causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my
uncle Toby got his modesty by the wound he received upon his
groin.—You may raise a system to account for the loss of my
nose by marriage-articles,—and shew the world how it could
happen, that I should have the misfortune to be called
Tristram, in opposition to my father's hypothesis, and the
wish of the whole family, Godfathers and Godmothers not
excepted.—These, with fifty other points left yet
unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;—but
I tell you beforehand it will be in vain, for not the sage
Alquise, the magician in Don Belianis of Greece, nor the no
less famous Urganda, the sorceress his wife, (were they
alive) could pretend to come within a league of the truth.
The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation
of these matters till the next year,—when a series of things
will be laid open which he little expects.
Chapter 1.XLV.
—'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth my uncle Toby, (repeating his
wish for Dr. Slop a second time, and with a degree of more
zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had
wished at first (Vide.))—'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth my uncle
Toby, 'you had seen what prodigious armies we had in
Flanders.'
My uncle Toby's wish did Dr. Slop a disservice which his
heart never intended any man,—Sir, it confounded him—and
thereby putting his ideas first into confusion, and then to
flight, he could not rally them again for the soul of him.
In all disputes,—male or female,—whether for honour, for
profit, or for love,—it makes no difference in the
case;—nothing is more dangerous, Madam, than a wish coming
sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: the safest
way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the
party wish'd at, instantly to get upon his legs—and wish the
wisher something in return, of pretty near the same
value,—so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as
you were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by
it.
This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter
of wishes.—
Dr. Slop did not understand the nature of this
defence;—he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop
to the dispute for four minutes and a half;—five had been
fatal to it:—my father saw the danger—the dispute was one of
the most interesting disputes in the world, 'Whether the
child of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a
head or with one:'—he waited to the last moment, to allow
Dr. Slop, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of
returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded,
and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye
which puzzled souls generally stare with—first in my uncle
Toby's face—then in his—then up—then down—then east—east and
by east, and so on,—coasting it along by the plinth of the
wainscot till he had got to the opposite point of the
compass,—and that he had actually begun to count the brass
nails upon the arm of his chair,—my father thought there was
no time to be lost with my uncle Toby, so took up the
discourse as follows.
Chapter 1.XLVI.
'—What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'—
Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his
head with his right hand, and with his left pulling out a
striped India handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in
order to rub his head, as he argued the point with my uncle
Toby.—
—Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I
will give you my reasons for it.
Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves
than, 'Whether my father should have taken off his wig with
his right hand or with his left,'—have divided the greatest
kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed
them, to totter upon their heads.—But need I tell you, Sir,
that the circumstances with which every thing in this world
is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and
shape!—and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or
that, make the thing to be, what it
is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent,
just as the case happens?
As my father's India handkerchief was in his right coat
pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand
to have got engaged: on the contrary, instead of taking off
his wig with it, as he did, he ought to have committed that
entirely to the left; and then, when the natural exigency my
father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his
handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have
done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat
pocket and taken it out;—which he might have done without
any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in any one
tendon or muscle of his whole body.
In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been
resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff
in his left hand—or by making some nonsensical angle or
other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)—his whole attitude had
been easy—natural—unforced: Reynolds himself, as great and
gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.
Now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a
devil of a figure my father made of himself.
In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, and in the
beginning of the reign of King George the first—'Coat
pockets were cut very low down in the skirt.'—I need say no
more—the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a
month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in
my father's situation.
Chapter 1.XLVII.
It was not an easy matter in any king's reign (unless you
were as lean a subject as myself) to have forced your hand
diagonally, quite across your whole body, so as to gain the
bottom of your opposite coat pocket.—In the year one
thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it
was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby
discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father's
approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind
those he had done duty in, before the gate of St.
Nicolas;—the idea of which drew off his attention so
intirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his
right hand to the bell to ring up Trim to go and fetch his
map of Namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to
measure the returning angles of the traverses of that
attack,—but particularly of that one, where he received his
wound upon his groin.
My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the
blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face—my uncle
Toby dismounted immediately.
—I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o'horseback.—
Chapter 1.XLVIII.
A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both
I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's
lining;—rumple the one,—you rumple the other. There is one
certain exception however in this case, and that is, when
you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin
made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a
sarcenet, or thin persian.
Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius,
Heracleotes, Antipater, Panaetius, and Possidonius amongst
the Greeks;—Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the
Romans;—Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne
amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good,
honest, unthinking Shandean people as ever lived, whose
names I can't recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins
were made after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and
crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged
the outside of them all to pieces;—in short, you might have
played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not
one of the insides of them would have been one button the
worse, for all you had done to them.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat
after this sort:—for never poor jerkin has been tickled off
at such a rate as it has been these last nine months
together,—and yet I declare, the lining to it,—as far as I
am a judge of the matter,—is not a three-penny piece the
worse;—pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust,
back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long-way, have
they been trimming it for me:—had there been the least
gumminess in my lining,—by heaven! it had all of it long ago
been frayed and fretted to a thread.
—You Messrs. the Monthly Reviewers!—how could you cut and
slash my jerkin as you did?—how did you know but you would
cut my lining too?
Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that
Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and
your affairs,—so God bless you;—only next month, if any one
of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as
some of you did last May (in which I remember the weather
was very hot)—don't be exasperated, if I pass it by again
with good temper,—(being determined as long as I live or
write) which in my case means the same thing) never to give
the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than my
uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all
dinner-time,—'Go,—go, poor devil,' quoth he,—'get thee
gone,—why should I hurt thee! This world is surely wide
enough to hold both thee and me.'
Chapter 1.XLIX.
Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the
prodigious suffusion of blood in my father's countenance,—by
means of which (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush
into his face, as I told you) he must have reddened,
pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints
and a half, if not a full octave above his natural
colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed
this, together with the violent knitting of my father's
brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the
whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a rage; and
taking that for granted,—had he been a lover of such kind of
concord as arises from two such instruments being put in
exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew'd up his, to the
same pitch;—and then the devil and all had broke loose—the
whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth
of Avison Scarlatti—con furia,—like mad.—Grant me
patience!—What has con furia,—con strepito,—or any other
hurly burly whatever to do with harmony?
Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity
of whose heart interpreted every motion of the body in the
kindest sense the motion would admit of, would have
concluded my father angry, and blamed him too. My uncle Toby
blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;—so
sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of
it, and looking all the time up in his face with
inexpressible good-will—my father, at length, went on as
follows.
Chapter 1.L.
'What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'
—Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as
honest a man, and with as good and as upright a heart as
ever God created;—nor is it thy fault, if all the children
which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought to be
begotten, come with their heads foremost into the world:—but
believe me, dear Toby, the accidents which unavoidably
way-lay them, not only in the article of our begetting
'em—though these, in my opinion, are well worth
considering,—but the dangers and difficulties our children
are beset with, after they are got forth into the world, are
enow—little need is there to expose them to unnecessary ones
in their passage to it.—Are these dangers, quoth my uncle
Toby, laying his hand upon my father's knee, and looking up
seriously in his face for an answer,—are these dangers
greater now o'days, brother, than in times past? Brother
Toby, answered my father, if a child was but fairly begot,
and born alive, and healthy, and the mother did well after
it,—our forefathers never looked farther.—My uncle Toby
instantly withdrew his hand from off my father's knee,
reclined his body gently back in his chair, raised his head
till he could just see the cornice of the room, and then
directing the buccinatory muscles along his cheeks, and the
orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty—he
whistled Lillabullero.
Chapter 1.LI.
Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero to my
father,—Dr. Slop was stamping, and cursing and damning at
Obadiah at a most dreadful rate,—it would have done your
heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile sin of
swearing, to have heard him, I am determined therefore to
relate the whole affair to you.
When Dr. Slop's maid delivered the green baize bag with
her master's instruments in it, to Obadiah, she very
sensibly exhorted him to put his head and one arm through
the strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so
undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him,
without any more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as
this, in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest
any thing should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed
Obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it off again: and
in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had
taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the
mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each
of which Obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn
together with all the strength of his body.
This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended; but
was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she
foresaw. The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was
tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the
bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah
could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible
jingle, what with the tire tete, forceps, and squirt, as
would have been enough, had Hymen been taking a jaunt that
way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when
Obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot
assayed to prick his coach-horse into a full gallop—by
Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.
As Obadiah had a wife and three children—the turpitude of
fornication, and the many other political ill consequences
of this jingling, never once entered his brain,—he had
however his objection, which came home to himself, and
weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest
patriots.—'The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear
himself whistle.'
Chapter 1.LII.
As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the
instrumental music he carried with him,—he very
considerately set his imagination to work, to contrive and
to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition
of enjoying it.
In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are
wanted, nothing is so apt to enter a man's head as his
hat-band:—the philosophy of this is so near the surface—I
scorn to enter into it.
As Obadiah's was a mixed case—mark, Sirs,—I say, a mixed
case; for it was obstetrical,—scrip-tical, squirtical,
papistical—and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in
it,—caballistical—and only partly musical;—Obadiah made no
scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which
offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and
griping them hard together with one hand, and with the
finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the
hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down
to the middle of it,—he tied and cross-tied them all fast
together from one end to the other (as you would cord a
trunk) with such a multiplicity of round-abouts and
intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every
intersection or point where the strings met,—that Dr. Slop
must have had three fifths of Job's patience at least to
have unloosed them.—I think in my conscience, that had
Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for
such a contest—and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started
together—there is no man living which had seen the bag with
all that Obadiah had done to it,—and known likewise the
great speed the Goddess can make when she thinks proper, who
would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind—which
of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother,
Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag
infallibly—at least by twenty knots.—Sport of small
accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be!
had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it
had,—thy affairs had not been so depress'd—(at least by the
depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the
fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them,
which have so often presented themselves in the course of
thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely,
so irrecoverably abandoned—as thou hast been forced to leave
them;—but 'tis over,—all but the account of 'em, which
cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the
world.
End of the first volume.
