T H E L I F E A N D O P I N I O N S O F TRISTRAM SHANDY, G<4entleman>4. Multitudinis imperit@ae non formido judicia ; meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis -2- in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, a seriis vicissim ad jocos transire. J<4OAN>4. S<4ARESBERIENSIS>4, <2Episcopus Lugdun>2. V O L. III. <4L O N D O N:>4 Printed for R. and J. D<4ODSLEY>4 in <2Pall-Mall>2; M.DCC.LXI. |||||||||| T H E L I F E and O P I N I O N S O F TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent. __________________________________________ C H A P. I. --`` <2<5I>5 Wish>2, Dr. <2Slop>2,'' quoth my uncle <2Toby>2 (repeating his wish for Dr. <2Slop>2 a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wish- ed it at first *) -- `` <2I wish>2, Dr. <2Slop>2,'' <2quoth>2 my uncle <2Toby>2, ``<2you had seen what ``prodigious armies we had in Flanders>2.'' <6* Vid. Vol. II, p. 159.>6 A 3 My |||||||||| [ 6 ] My uncle <2Toby>2's wish did Dr. <2Slop>2 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 unexpect- ed manner upon a man : the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is, for the party wished at, instantly to get up upon his legs--and wish the <2wisher>2 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 |||||||||| [ 7 ] This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.-- Dr. <2Slop>2 did not understand the nature of this defence ; -- he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the dis- pute 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. <2Slop>2, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of re- turning it ; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and continued look- ing with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare with, --first in my uncle <2Toby>2's face -- then in his -- then up--then down -- then A 4 east |||||||||| [ 8 ] 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 <2Toby>2, so took up the discourse as follows. C H A P. II. `` -- <5W>5 H A T prodigious armies you had in <2Flanders !>2''-- Brother <2Toby>2, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his right hand, and with his <2left>2 pulling out a striped <2India>2 handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as |||||||||| [ 9 ] as he argued the point with my uncle <2Toby>2. -- -- 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 conse- quence in themselves than, `` <2Whether my father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his left>2,''-- 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 the 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 |||||||||| [ 10 ] or not indifferent, just as the case hap- pens. As my father's <2India>2 handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged : on the contrary, in- stead 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, call'd out for his hand- kerchief, 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 |||||||||| [ 11 ] had been resolved to make a fool of him- self by holding the wig stiff in his left hand -- or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow joint, or arm- pit) -- his whole attitude had been easy-- natural--unforced : <2Reynolds>2 himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat. Now, as my father managed this mat- ter, -- consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself. -- In the latter end of Queen <2Anne>2's reign, and in the beginning of the reign of King <2George>2 the first -- ``<2Coat pockets were cut very low down in the skirt>2.''-- -- I need say no more -- the father of mis- chief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my father's situation. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 12 ] C H A P. III. <5I>5 T was not an easy matter in any king's reign, (unless you were as a lean a sub- ject 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 <2Toby> discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father's ap- proaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. <2Nicholas>2 ; -- the idea of which drew off his attention so entirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up <2Trim>2, to go and fetch his map of <2Namur>2, and his compasses and sector along |||||||||| [ 13 ] along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack, -- but particularly of that one, where he re- ceived his wound upon his groin. My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seem- ed to rush up into his face -- -- my uncle <2Toby>2 dismounted immediately. -- I did not apprehend your uncle <2Toby>2 was o' horseback. -- C H A P. IV. <5A>5 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 excep- tion however in this case, and that is, when |||||||||| [ 14 ] when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of a gum- taffeta, and the body-lining to it, of a sarcenet or thin persian. <2Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dyonisius Heracleotes, Antipater, Pan@aetius>2 and <2Possidonius>2 amongst the <2Greeks>2; -- <2Cato>2 and <2Varro>2 and <2Seneca>2 amongst the <2Romans>2 ; -- <2Pantenus>2 and <2Clemens Alexan- drinus>2 and <2Montaigne>2 amongst the Chris- tians ; and a score and a half of good ho- nest, unthinking, <2Shandean>2 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 out- sides of them all to pieces ; -- in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one |||||||||| [ 15 ] one of the insides of 'em 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 de- clare the lining to it, -- as far as I am a judge of the matter, it is not a three- penny piece the worse ; -- pell mell, hel- ter 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 gum- miness in my lining, -- by heaven ! it had all of it long ago been fray'd and fretted to a thread. -- You Messrs. the monthly Review- 2 ers ! |||||||||| [ 16 ] ers ! -- -- 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 pro- tection of that Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your af- fairs, -- 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 M<4AY>4, (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 <2Toby>2 gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all <2dinner time>2, -- `` Go, -- go poor devil,'' quoth he, `` -- get thee gone, -- why 3 ``should |||||||||| [ 17 ] ``should I hurt thee? This world is surely ``wide enough to hold both thee and me.'' C H A P. V. <5A>5 N Y man, madam, reasoning up- wards, and observing the prodi- gious suffusion of blood in my father's countenance,--by means of which, (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face, as I told you) he must have redden'd, pictorically and scientinti- cally speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural co- lour : -- any man, madam, but my uncle <2Toby>2, who had observed this, toge- ther with the violent knitting of my fa- ther's brows, and the extravagant contor- tion of his body during the whole affair, -- would have concluded my father in a rage ; and taking that for granted, -- V<4OL>4 B had |||||||||| [ 18 ] had he been a lover of such kind of con- cord as arises from two such instruments being put into exact tune,--he would in- stantly 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 -- <2con furia>2 , -- like mad. -- Grant me patience ! -- What has <2con furia>2, -- <2con strepito>2, -- or any other hurlyburly word whatever to do with harmony ? Any man, I say, madam, but my uncle <2Toby>2, the benignity of whose heart inter- preted 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 <2Toby>2 blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole ; -- so sitting still, till 4 my |||||||||| [ 19 ] my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good will--my fa- ther at length went on as follows. C H A P. VI -- ``<5W>5 H A T prodigious armies you had in <2Flanders !>2'' -- Brother <2Toby>2, quoth my uncle, 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 begot- ten, come with their heads foremost into the world : -- but believe me, dear <2Toby>2, the accidents which unavoidably way-lay them, not only in the article of our beget- ting 'em, -- though these in my opinion, B 2 are |||||||||| [ 20 ] 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 <2Toby>2, 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, bro- ther, than in times past ? Brother <2Toby>2, 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 further. -- My uncle <2Toby>2 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 cornish of the room, and then directing the buccina- tory muscles along his cheeks, and the orbi- |||||||||| [ 21 ] orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty -- he whistled <2Lillabullero>. C H A P. VII. <5W>5 H I L S T my uncle <2Toby>2 was whist- ling Lillabullero to my father,-- Dr. <2Slop>2 was stamping, and cursing and damning at <2Obadiah>2 at a most dreadful rate ; -- it would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever, of the vile fin of swearing to have heard him. -- I am determined therefore to re- late the whole affair to you. When Dr. <2Slop>2's maid delivered the green bays bag, with her master's instru- ments in it, to <2Obadiah>2, 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 B 3 bow- |||||||||| [ 22 ] 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 <2Obadiah>2 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, <2Oba- diah>2, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body. This answered all that <2Obadiah>2 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 |||||||||| [ 23 ] so much room to play in it, towards the bottom, (the shape of the bag being conical) that <2Obadiah>2could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the <2tire-t@^ete>2, <2forceps>2 and <2squirt>2, as would have been enough, had <2Hymen>2 been taking a jaunt that way, to have fright- ened him out of the country ; but when <2Obadiah>2 accelerated this motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his coach-horse into a full gallop -- by hea- ven ! Sir, -- the jingle was incredible. As <2Obadiah>2 had a wife and three chil- dren.-- 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 weigh- ed with him, as it has oft-times done with B 4 the |||||||||| [ 24 ] the greatest patriots. --`` <2The poor fel- low, Sir>2, <2was not able to hear himself whistle.''>2 C H A P. VIII. <5A>5S <2Obadiah>2 loved wind musick pre- ferably to all the instrumental mu- sick he carried with him, -- he very con- siderately set his imagination to work, to contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition of en- joying 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 <2Obadiah>2's was a mix'd case, -- mark, Sirs, --I say, a mix'd case ; for it was |||||||||| [ 25 ] was obstretical,--<2scrip->2tical, --squirtical, papistical,--and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in it,--caball-istical--and only partly musical ; -- <2Obadiah>2 made no scruple of availing himself of the first ex- pedient which offered ; -- so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and gripeing 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. <2Slop>2 must have had three fifths of <2Job>2's patience at least to have unloosed them.--I think in my con- science, that had N<4ATURE>4 been in one of her |||||||||| [26 ] her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest -- and she and Dr. <2Slop>2 both fairly started together -- there is no man living who had seen the bag with all that <2Obadiah>2 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, ma- dam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly -- at least by twenty <2knots>2. -- --Sport of small accidents, <2Trist- ram Shandy !>2 that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been made for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had, -- thy af- fairs had not been so depress'd <2-->2 (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 |||||||||| [ 27 ] 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. C H A P. IX. <5G>5 R E A T wits jump : for the mo- ment Dr. <2Slop>2 cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle <2Toby>2 about mid- wifery put him in mind of it) -- the very same thought occurred. -- 'Tis God's mercy, quoth he, (to himself) that Mrs. <2Shandy>2 has had so bad a time of it,-- else she might have been brought to bed se- ven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied. -- But here, |||||||||| [ 28 ] here, you must distinguish -- the thought floated only in Dr. <2Slop>2's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition ; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side. A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother's bed, did the proposition the very service I am speaking of. By all that's unfortunate, quoth Dr. <2Slop>2, un- less I make haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 29 ] C H A P. X. <5I>5N the case of <2knots>2, -- by which, in the first place, I would not be under- stood to mean slip-knots, -- because in the course of my life and opinions, -- my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the ca- tastrophe of my great uncle Mr. <2Ham- mond Shandy>2, --a little man, -- but of high fancy : -- he rushed into the duke of <2Monmouth>2's affair : -- nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots, called bow-knots ; -- there is so little address, or skill, or pa- tience, required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them. -- But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, 1 |||||||||| [ 30 ] good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made <2bona fide>2, as <2Obadiah>2 made his ;-- in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings through the annulus or noose made by the second <2implication>2 of them--to get them slipp'd and undone by -- -- I hope you ap- prehend me. In the case of these <2knots>2 then, and of the several obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting through life -- every hasty man can whip out his pen- knife and cut through them.--'Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most vir- tuous way, and which both reason and conscience dictate--is to take our teeth or our fingers to them. -- Dr. <2Slop>2 had lost his teeth--his favourite instrument, by |||||||||| [ 31 ] by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortu- nately slipping, he had formerly in a hard labour, knock'd out three of the best of them, with the handle of it :-- he tried his fingers <2-->2 alas ! the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close.-- The deuce take it ! I can make nothing of it either way, cried Dr. <2Slop>2. --The trampling over head near my mother's bed side increased. -- Pox take the fellow ! I shall never get the knots untied as long as I live.--My mother gave a groan -- Lend me your penknife--I must e'en cut the knots at last - - - - - pugh ! - - - psha ! - - - Lord ! I have cut my thumb quite across to the very bone -- curse the fel- low -- if there was not another man midwife within fifty miles--I am undone for this bout -- I wish the scoundrel hang'd----I wish he was shot-- I wish all |||||||||| [ 32 ] all the devils in hell had him for a block- head -- My father had a great respect for <2Oba- diah>2, and could not bear to hear him disposed of in such a manner -- he had moreover some little respect for him- self -- and could as ill bear with the in- dignity offer'd to himself in it. Had Dr. <2Slop>2 cut any part about him, but his thumb --my father had pass'd it by-- his prudence had triumphed : as it was, he was determined to have his revenge. Small curses, Dr. <2Slop>2, upon great oc- casions, quoth my father, (condoling with him first upon the accident) are but so much waste of our strength and soul's health to no manner of purpose.--I own it, |||||||||| [ 33 ] it, replied Dr. <2Slop>2. -- They are like sparrow shot, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, (sus- pending his whistling) fired against a bastion. --They serve, continued my father, to stir the humours--but carry off none of their acrimony:--for my own part, I seldom swear or curse at all -- I hold it bad--but if I fall into it, by surprize, I generally retain so much pre- sence of mind (right, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2) as to make it answer my purpose -- that is, I swear on, till I find myself easy. A wise and a just man however would always endeavour to proportion the vent given to these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within himself-- but to the size and ill intent of the of- fence upon which they are to fall. -- `` <2Injuries come only from the heart>2,''-- quoth my uncle <2Toby>2. For this reason, continued my father, with the most <2Cer->2 V<4OL>4 III. C <2vantick>2 |||||||||| [ 34 ] <2vantick>2 gravity, I have the greatest vene- ration in the world for that gentleman, who, in distrust of his own discretion in this point, sat down and composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to the highest provocations which could possibly happen to him, -- which forms being well consider'd by him, and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney piece, within his reach, ready for use.--I ne- ver apprehended, replied Dr. <2Slop>2, that such a thing was ever thought of, -- much less executed. I beg your par- don -- answered my father ; I was read- ing, though not using, one of them to my brother <2Toby>2 this morning, whilst he pour'd out the tea--'tis here upon the shelf over my head ; -- but if I remem- ber right, 'tis too violent for a cut of the thumb. ||||||||| [ 35 ] thumb.--Not at all, quoth Dr. <2Slop>2-- the devil take the fellow.--Then answered my father, 'Tis much at your service, Dr. <2Slop>2--on condition you will read it aloud ; --so rising up and reaching down a form of excommunication of the church of <2Rome>2, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his collec- tions) had procured out of the leger- book of the church of <2Rochester>2, writ by E<4RNULPHUS>4 the bishop -- with a most affected seriousness of look and voice, which might have cajoled E<4RNULPHUS>4 himself, -- he put it into Dr. <2Slop>2's hands. --Dr. <2Slop>2 wrapt his thumb up in the corner of his handkerchief, and with a wry face, though without any suspicion, read aloud, as follows, -- my uncle <2Toby>2 whistling <2Lillabullero>2, as loud as he could, all the time. C 2 C H A P. |||||||||| [ 36 ] Textus de Ecclesi@^a Roffensi, per Ernul- fum Episcopum. C A P. XXV. E X C O M M U N I C A T I O. <5E>5X auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Pa- tris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et sanctorum canonum, sanct@aeque et inte- merat@ae Virginis Dei genetricis Mari@ae, -- <6 As the genuineness of the consultation of the <2Sor- bonne>2 upon the question of baptism, was doubted by some, and denied by others, -- 'twas thought proper to print the original of this excommunica- tion ; for the copy of which Mr. <2Shandy>2 returns thanks to the chapter clerk of the dean and chapter of <2Rochester>2.>6 Atque |||||||||| [ 37 ] C H A P. XI. ``<5B>5Y the authority of God Almighty, `` the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ``and of the holy canons, and of the un- ``defiled Virgin <2Mary>2, mother and patro- ``ness of our Saviour.'' I think there is no necessity, quoth Dr. <2Slop>2, dropping the paper down to his knee, and addressing himself to my father,--as you have read it over, Sir, so lately, to read it aloud;-- and as Captain <2Shandy>2 seems to have no great inclination to hear it,--I may as well read it to myself. That's contrary to treaty, replied my father,--besides, there is something so whimsical, especially in the latter part of it, I should grieve to lose the pleasure of a second reading. Dr. <2Slop>2 did not altogether like it, -- but my uncle <2Toby>2 offering at that instant to give C 3 over |||||||||| [ 38 ] -- Atque omnium c@oelestium virtutum, angelorum, archangelorum, thronorum, dominationum, potestatuum, cherubin ac seraphin, & sanctorum pa- triarchum, prophetarum, & omnium apo- stolorum et evangelistarum, & sanctorum innocentum, qui in conspectu Agni soli digni |||||||||| [ 39 ] over whistling, and read it himself to them ; -- Dr. <2Slop>2 thought he might as well read it under the cover of my uncle <2Toby>2's whistling, -- as suffer my uncle <2Toby>2 to read it alone;--so raising up the paper to his face, and holding it quite parallel to it, in order to hide his chagrin, -- he read it aloud as follows, -- my uncle <2Toby>2 whistling Lillabullero, though not quite so loud as before. ``By the authority of God Almighty, ``the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and ``of the undefiled Virgin <2Mary>2, mother ``and patroness of our Saviour, and of ``all the celestial virtues, angels, arch- ``angels, thrones, dominions, powers, ``cherubins and seraphins, and of all the ``holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all ``the apostles and evangelists, and of the ``holy innocents, who in the sight of C 4 the |||||||||| [ 40 ] digni inventi sunt canticum cantare no- vum, et sanctorum martyrum, et sanc- torum confessorum, et sanctarum virgi- num, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum Dei, -- Excommunicamus, et <7<2vel>2 os s <2vel>2 os>7 anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc <7s>7 malefactorem, N. N. et a liminibus sanct@ae Dei ecclesi@ae sequestramus et @aeternis <7<2vel>2 i n>7 suppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum Dathan et Abiram, et cum his qui dixe- runt Domino Deo, Recede @`a nobis, scien- tiam viarum tuarum nolumus : et sicut aqu@^a ignis extinguitur, sic extinguatur <7<2vel>2 eorum>7 lucerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi re- <7n>7 spuerit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Male- |||||||||| [ 41 ] ``the holy Lamb, are found worthy to ``sing the new song of the holy martyrs ``and holy confessors, and of the holy ``virgins, and of all the saints together, ``with the holy and elect of God. -- ``May he,'' (<2Obadiah>2) ``be damn'd'' (for tying these knots.) -- ``We ex- ``communicate, and anathematise him, ``and from the thresholds of the holy ``church of God Almighty we sequester ``him, that he may be tormented, dis- ``posed and delivered over with <2Dathan>2 ``and <2Abiram>2, and with those who say ``unto the Lord God, Depart from us, ``we desire none of thy ways. And as ``fire is quenched with water, so let the ``light of him be put out for evermore, ``unless it shall repent him'' (Obadiah, of the knots which he has tied) ``and make ``satisfaction'' (for them.) Amen. ``May |||||||||| [ 42 ] <7os>7 Maledicat illum Deus Pater qui homi- <7os>7 nem creavit. Maledicat illum Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est. Maledicat <7os>7 illum Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo ef- <7os>7 fusus est. Maledicat illum sancta crux, quam Christus pro nostr@^a salute hostem triumphans, ascendit. <7os>7 Maledicat illum sancta Dei genetrix et perpetua Virgo Maria. Maledicat illum sanctus Michael, animarum susceptor sa- <7os>7 crarum. Maledicant illum omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et potestates, omnisque militia c@oelestis. Male- |||||||||| [ 43 ] ``May the Father who created man, ``curse him.--May the Son who suffer- ``ed for us, curse him.--May the Holy ``Ghost who was given to us in baptism, ``curse him (Obadiah.) -- May the holy ``cross which Christ for our salvation ``triumphing over his enemies, ascend- ``ed, -- curse him. ``May the holy and eternal <2Virgin>2 ``<2Mary>2, mother of God, curse him. -- ``May St. <2Michael>2 the advocate of holy ``souls, curse him.--May all the angels ``and archangels, principalities and ``powers, and all the heavenly armies, ``curse him.'' [Our armies swore ter- ribly in <2Flanders>2, cried my uncle <2Toby>2,-- but nothing to this. -- For my own part, I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.] ``May |||||||||| [ 44 ] <7os>7 Maledicat illum patriarcharum et pro- phetarum laudabilis numerus. Male- <7os>7 dicat illum sanctus Johannes pr@aecursor et Baptista Christi, et sanctus Petrus, et sanctus Paulus, atque sanctus Andreas, omnesque Christi apostoli, simul et c@aeteri discipuli, quatuor quoque evangelist@ae, qui sua pr@aedicatione mundum universum <7os>7 converterunt. Maledicat illum cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui Deo bonis operibus placitus inventus est. <7os>7 Maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, qu@ae mundi vana causa honoris Christi respuenda contempserunt. Male- <7os>7 dicant illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo dilecti inveniuntur. Male- 1 |||||||||| [ 45 ] ``May St. John the pr@ae-cursor, and ``St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter ``and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all ``other Christ's apostles, together curse ``him. And may the rest of his dis- ``ciples and four evangelists, who by ``their preaching converted the universal ``world, -- and may the holy and won- ``derful company of martyrs and con- ``fessors, who by their holy works are ``found pleasing to God Almighty, ``curse him (Obadiah.) ``May the holy choir of the holy vir- ``gins, who for the honour of Christ ``have despised the things of the world, ``damn him. -- May all the saints who ``from the beginning of the world to ``everlasting ages are found to be belov- ``ed of God, damn him. -- May the ``heavens |||||||||| [ 46 ] <7os>7 Maledicant illum c@oeli et terra, et om- nia sancta in eis manentia. <7n>7 <7n>7 Maledictus sit ubicunque fuerit, sive in domo, sive in agro, sive in vi@^a, sive in semit@^a, sive in silv@^a, sive in aqu@^a, sive in ecclesi@^a. Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, siti- endo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, |||||||||| [ 47 ] ``heavens and earth, and all the holy ``things remaining therein, damn him,'' (Obadiah) ``or her,'' (or whoever else had a hand in tying these knots.) ``May he (Obadiah) be damn'd where- ``ever he be,--whether in the house or ``the stables, the garden or the field, or ``the highway, or in the path, or in the ``wood, or in the water, or in the church. ``-- May he be cursed in living, in dying.'' [Here my uncle <2Toby>2 taking the advan- tage of a <2minim>2 in the second barr of his tune, kept whistling one continual note to the end of the sentence -- Dr. <2Slop>2 with his division of curses moving under him, like a running bass all the way.] ``May he be cursed in eating and drink- ``ing, in being hungry, in being thirsty, ``in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, ``in walking, in standing, in sitting, in 3 ``lying, |||||||||| [ 48 ] jacendo, operando, quiescendo, min- gendo, cacando, flebotomando. <7i>7 <7n>7 Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis. Maledictus sit intus et exterius. Maledictus sit in capillis ; maledictus sit in cerebro. Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in fronte, in auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus,in labris sive molibus, in labiis, in guttere, in humeris, in harnis, in brachiis, in ma- nubus, in digitis, in pectore, in corde, et |||||||||| [ 49 ] ``lying, in working, in resting, in pis- ``sing, in shitting, and in blood-letting.'' ``May he (<2Obadiah>2) be cursed in all ``the faculties of his body. ``May he be cursed inwardly and out- ``wardly. -- May he be cursed in the ``hair of his head. -- May he be cursed ``in his brains, and in his vertex,'' (that is a sad curse, quoth my father) ``in ``his temples, in his forehead, in his ``ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, ``in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his ``foreteeth and grinders, in his lips, in ``his throat, in his shoulders, in his ``wrists, in his arms, in his hands, ``in his fingers. ``May he be damn'd in his mouth, in V<4OL>4. III. D ``his |||||||||| [ 50 ] et in omnibus interioribus stomacho te- nus, in renibus, in inguinibus, in fe- more, in genitalibus, in coxis, in genu- bus, in cruribus, in pedibus, et in un- guibus. Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque ad plantam pedis--non sit in eo sanitas. Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto su@ae majestatis imperio |||||||||| [ 51 ] ``his breast, in his heart and purtenance, ``down to the very stomach. ``May he be cursed in his reins, and ``in his groin,'' (God in heaven forbid, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2) -- ``in his thighs, ``in his genitals,'' (my father shook his head) ``and in his hips, and in his knees, ``his legs, and feet, and toe-nails. ``May he be cursed in all the joints ``and articulations of his members, from ``the top of his head to the soal of his ``foot, may there be no soundness in ``him. ``May the Son of the living God, ``with all the glory of his Majesty''-- [Here my uncle <2Toby>2 throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud Whew--w--w-- something betwixt D 2 the |||||||||| |||||||||| [ 53 ] the interjectional whistle of <2Hey day !>2 and the word itself.-- --By the golden beard of <2Jupiter>2--and of <2Juno>2, (if her majesty wore one), and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and acquatick,--to say nothing of the beards of town - gods and country - gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines, (that is in case they wore 'em) -- all which beards, as <2Varro>2 tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the pagan establishment ; -- every beard of which claimed the rights and privi- leges of being stroked and sworn by, -- D 3 by |||||||||| [ 54 ] -- et insurgat adversus illum c@oelum cum omnibus virtutibus qu@ae in eo mo- ventur ad <2damnandum>2 eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Fiat, fiat. Amen. |||||||||| [ 55 ] by all these beards together then, -- I vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I would have given the better of them, as freely as ever <2Cid Ham et>2 offered his, -- only to have stood by, and heard my uncle <2Toby>2's accompanyment.] -- `` Curse him,'' -- continued Dr. <2Slop>2, -- ``and may heaven with ``all the powers which move therein, ``rise up against him, curse and damn ``him (Obadiah) unless he repent and ``make satisfaction. Amen. So be it, ``--so be it. Amen.'' I declare, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness. -- He is the father of curses, replied Dr. <2Slop>2. -- So am not I, replied my uncle.-- D 4 But |||||||||| [ 56 ] But he is cursed, and damn'd already, to all eternity, --replied Dr. <2Slop>2. I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2. Dr. <2Slop>2 drew up his mouth, and was just beginning to return my uncle <2Toby>2 the compliment of his Whu--u--u-- or interjectional whistle, -- when the door hastily opening in the next chap- ter but one -- put an end to the affair. C H A P. XII. <5N>5OW don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own ; and be- cause we have the spirit to swear them, --imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too. I'll |||||||||| [ 57 ] I'll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a connoisseur ; -- though I declare I ob- ject only to a connoisseur in swearing, -- as I would do to a connoisseur in paint- ing, &c. &c. the whole set of 'em are so hung round and <2befetish'd>2 with the bobs and trinkets of criticism, -- or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity, -- for I have fetch'd it as far as from the coast of <2Guinea>2 ; --their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick'd and tortured to death by 'em. -- And how did <2Garrick>2 speak the soliloquy last night ?--Oh, against all rule, my Lord, -- most ungrammatically ! be- twixt |||||||||| [ 58 ] twixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in <2number>2, <2case>2 and <2gender>2, he made a breach thus, -- stopping, as if the point wanted settling ; -- and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should go- vern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and three fifths by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time. -- Admirable grammarian ! ----- But in suspending his voice -- was the sense suspended likewise ? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm ? -- Was the eye silent ? Did you narrowly look ? -- I look'd only at the stop-watch, my Lord. -- Excellent observer ! And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about ? -- Oh ! 'tis out of all plumb, my Lord,-- quite an irregular thing ! -- not one of 3 the |||||||||| [ 59 ] the angles at the four corners was a right angle.-- I had my rule and compasses, &c. my Lord, in my pocket. -- Excellent critic ! --And for the epick poem, your lordship bid me look at ; -- upon tak- ing the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of <2Bossu>2's,-- 'tis out, my Lord, in every one of its dimensions. -- Admirable connoisseur ! --And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture, in your way back.-- --'Tis a melancholy daub ! my Lord ; not one principle of the <2pyramid>2 in any one group ! -- and what a price! -- for there is nothing of the colouring of <2Titian>2, -- the expression of <2Rubens>2, -- the grace of <2Raphael>2, -- the purity of <2Domi>2- |||||||||| [ 60 ] <2Dominichino>2,--the <2corregiescity>2 of <2Corregio>2, --the learning of <2Poussin>2,--the airs of <2Guido>2,-- the taste of the <2Carrachi>2's, -- or the grand contour of <2Angelo>2.-- Grant me patience, just heaven ! -- Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst,--the cant of criticism is the most tormenting ! I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagi- nation into his author's hands, --be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore. Great <2Apollo !>2 if thou art in a giving humour, -- give me,--I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with 2 a single |||||||||| [ 61 ] a single spark of thy own fire along with it, -- and send <2Mercury>2, with the <2rules and compasses>2, if he can be spared, with my compliments to -- no matter. Now to any one else, I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and impreca- tions, which we have been puffing off up- on the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past, as originals, -- ex- cept St. <2Paul>2's <2thumb>2, -- <2God's flesh and God's fish>2, which were oaths mo- narchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss ; and as kings oaths, 'tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;-- else, I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of <2Ernulphus>2, a thou- sand times : but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of |||||||||| [ 62 ] of the original ! -- It is thought to be no bad oath, -- and by itself passes very well -- ``<2G---d damn you>2.'' -- Set it beside <2Ernulphus>2's -- ``God Almighty the Father damn you,--God the Son damn you, -- God the Holy Ghost damn you,''--you see 'tis nothing.--There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to : besides, he is more copious in his in- vention, -- possess'd more of the excel- lencies of a swearer, -- had such a tho- rough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knit- tings of the joints, and articulations,-- that when <2Ernulphus>2 cursed, -- no part es- caped him.--'Tis true, there is something of a <2hardness>2 in his manner,--and, as in <2Michael Angelo>2, a want of <2grace>2, -- but then there is such a greatness og <2gusto !>2-- My father, who generally look'd upon every |||||||||| [ 63 ] every thing in a light very different from all mankind, -- would, after all, never allow this to be an original.--He con- sider'd rather <2Ernulphus>2's anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of <2swearing>2 in some milder pontificate, <2Ernulphus>2, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected to- gether all the laws of it;--for the same reason that <2Justinian>2, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor <2Tri- bonian>2 to collect the <2Roman>2 or civil laws all together into one code or digest,-- lest through the rust of time, --and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever. For this reason my father would oft- times affirm, there was not an oath, from the ||||||||| [ 64 ] the great and tremendous oath of <2William>2 the Conqueror, (<2By the splendour of God>2) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger, (<2Damn your eyes>2) which was not to be found in <2Ernulphus>2.-- In short, he would add,--l defy a man to swear <2out>2 of it. The hypothesis is, like most of my father's, singular and ingenious too; -- nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own. C H A P. XIII. --<5B>5 L E S S my soul ! -- my poor mistress is ready to faint, -- and her pains are gone,--and the drops are done, --and the bottle of julap is broke, --and the nurse has cut her arm, -- (and I, my thumb, cried Dr. <2Slop>2) and ||||||||| [ 65 ] and the child is where it was, continued <2Susannah>2, -- and the midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat. -- I'll look at it, quoth Dr. <2Slop>2.-- There is no need of that, replied <2Susan- nah>2, -- you had better look at my mis- tress, -- but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment. Human nature is the same in all pro- fessions. The midwife had just before been put over Dr. <2Slop>2's head.--He had not di- gested it. -- No, replied Dr. <2Slop>2, 'twould be full as proper, if the midwife came down to me .-- I like subordination, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, -- and but for it, V<4OL>4. E after |||||||||| [ 66 ] after the reduction of <2Lisle>2, I know not what might have become of the garrison of <2Ghent>2, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.--Nor, replied Dr. <2Slop>2 (parodying my uncle <2Toby>2's hobby-horsi- cal reflection, though full as hobby-hor- sically himself)--do l know, Captain <2Shandy>2, what might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at pre- sent, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to * * * * * * -- the appli- cation of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so <2a propos>2, that with- out it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the <2Shandy>2 family, as long as the <2Shandy>2 family had a name. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 67 ] C H A P. XIV. <5L>5 E T us go back to the * * * * * * -- in the last chapter. It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at <2Athens>2 and <2Rome>2, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you, <2in petto>2, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink'd- doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three- halfpenny pickle pot, -- but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.--Tho' if it was too young, and the oration as long as <2Tully>2's second <2Philippick>2, -- it must certainly have beshit the orator's E 2 mantle. |||||||||| [ 68 ] mantle. -- And then again, if too old, --it must have been unwieldy and in- commodious to his action, -- so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.--Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute, -- hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it,-- and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders, -- Oh, Sirs ! it has done wonders.--It has open'd the sluices, and turn'd the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles, --and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five and twenty yards of good purple |||||||||| [ 69 ] purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them, -- with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great stile of design. -- All which plainly shows, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within, and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of <2trunk-hose>2. -- We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. C H A P. XV. <5D>5R. <2Slop>2 was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumenta- tion : for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle <2Toby>2, -- 'twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him : for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new E 3 invented |||||||||| [ 70 ] invented <2forceps>2, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, where your reverences took so much notice of the * * * * * *, which had he managed, -- my uncle <2Toby>2 had certainly been overthrown : the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a raveline,-- Dr. <2Slop>2 would never have given them up ; -- and my uncle <2Toby>2 would as soon thought of flying, as taking them by force : but Dr. <2Slop>2 fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they sel- dom come alone in this life) in pulling out his <2forceps>2, his <2forceps>2 unfortunately drew out the <2squirt>2 along with it. When a proposition can be taken in two senses, --'tis a law in disputation That the respondent may reply to which of |||||||||| [ 71 ] of the two he pleases, or finds most con- venient for him. -- This threw the ad- vantage of the argument quite on my uncle <2Toby>2's side. -- ``Good God !'' cried my uncle <2Toby>2, `` <2are children brought into the world with a squirt ?>2'' C H A P. XVI. --<5U>5 P O N my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of the skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle <2Toby>2, -- and you have crush'd all my knuckles in- to the bargain with them, to a jelly. 'Tis your own fault, said Dr. <2Slop>2, -- you should have clinch'd your two fists toge- ther into the form of a child's head, as I told you, and sat firm.--I did so, an- swered my uncle <2Toby>2. -- -- Then the points of my forceps have not been suffi- E 4 ciently |||||||||| [ 72 ] ciently arm'd, or the rivet wants closing -- or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward, -- or possibly -- 'Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities, -- that the ex- periment was not first made upon my child's head piece. -- It would not have been a cherry stone the worse, an- swered Dr. <2Slop>2. I maintain it, said my uncle <2Toby>2, it would have broke the ce- rebellum, (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turned it all into a perfect posset. Pshaw ! replied Dr. <2Slop>2, a child's head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple, ; -- the su- tures give way, --and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after. -- Not you, said she.--I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father. Pray do, added my uncle <2Toby>2. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 73 ] C H A P. XVII. -- <5A>5 N D pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child's hip, as well as the child's head ? -- -- 'Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. <2Slop>2, (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are, -- 'tis a point very dif- ficult to know, -- and yet of the greatest consequence to be known ; -- because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head,-- there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. -- What the possibility was, Dr. <2Slop>2 whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle <2Toby>2. -- There is no such |||||||||| [ 74 ] such danger, continued he, with the head. --No, in truth, quoth my father, -- but when your possibility has taken place at the hip, -- you may as well take off the head too. -- It is morally impossible the reader should understand this, -- 'tis enough Dr. <2Slop>2 understood it ; -- so taking the green bays bag in his hand, with the help of <2Obadiah>2's pumps, he tripp'd pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door, -- and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old mid- wife, to my mother's apartment. C H A P. XVIII. <5I>5T is two hours, and ten minutes, -- and no more, -- cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. <2Slop>2 and <2Obadiah>2 1 |||||||||| [ 75 ] <2Obadiah>2 arrived, -- and I know not how it happens, brother <2Toby>2, -- but to my imagination it seems almost an age. -- Here -- pray, Sir, take hold of my cap,--nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too. -- Now, Sir, they are all at your service ; and I freely make you a present of 'em, on condition, you give me all your at- tention to this chapter. Though my father said, `` <2he knew not ``how it happen'd>2,''--yet he knew very well, how it happen'd ; -- and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind, to give my uncle <2Toby>2 a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of <2duration and>2 |||||||||| [ 76 ] <2and its simple modes>2, in order to shew my uncle <2Toby>2, by what mechanism and men- surations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of discourse from one thing to another, since Dr. <2Slop>2 had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period, to so inconceivable an ex- tent. -- `` I know not how it happens, -- cried my father, -- `` but it seems `` an age.'' --'Tis owing, entirely, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, to the succession of our ideas. My father, who had an itch in com- mon with all philosophers, of reasoning upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it too, --proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succes- sion of ideas, and had not the least appre- hension |||||||||| [ 77 ] hension of having it snatch'd out of his hands by my uncle <2Toby>2, who (honest man !) generally took every thing as it happened ; -- and who, of all men in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking ; -- the ideas of time and space, -- or how we came by those ideas,-- or of what stuff they were made, -- or whether they were born with us,-- or we pick'd them up afterwards as we went along, -- or whether we did it in frocks, -- or not till we had got into breeches,--with a thousand other inquiries and disputes about <4INFINITY,PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY>4, and so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theo- ries, so many fine heads have been turned and crack'd, -- never did my uncle <2Toby>2's the least injury at all ; my father knew it, -- and was no less surprised, than he was |||||||||| [ 78 ] was disappointed with my uncle's fortui- tous solution. Do you understand the theory of that affair ? replied my father. Not I, quoth my uncle. -- But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about. -- No more than my horse, replied my uncle <2Toby>2. Gracious heaven ! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two hands together, --there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother <2Toby>2, -- 'twere almost a pity to exchange it for a know- ledge.-- But I'll tell thee. -- To |||||||||| [ 79 ] To understand what <2time>2 is aright, without which we never can comprehend <2infinity>2, insomuch as one is a portion of the other, -- we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is, we have of <2duration>2, so as to give a satisfacto- ry account, how we came by it.--What is that to anybody ? quoth my uncle <2Toby>2. * <2For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind>2, continued my father, <2and observe attentively, you will perceive, bro- ther, that whilst you and I are talking to- gether, and thinking and smoaking our pipes : or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co existing with our think->2 <6* Vid. Locke.>6 |||||||||| [ 80 ] <2thinking>2, -- <2and so according to that preconceived>2 --You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle <2Toby>2.-- --'Tis owing to this, replied my fa- ther, that in our computations of <2time>2, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months, -- and of clocks ( I wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to us, and to those who belong to us, -- -- that 'twill be well, if in time to come, the <2succession of our ideas>2 be of any use or service to us at all. Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound man's head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which follow each other in train just like -- A train of artillery ? said my uncle <2Toby>2.--A train 4 of |||||||||| [ 81 ] of a fiddle stick ! -- quoth my father, -- which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle. -- I declare, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, mine are like a smoak-jack. -- Then, bro- ther <2Toby>2, I have nothing more to say to you upon the subject, said my father. C H A P. XIX. --<5W>5 H A T a conjuncture was here lost ! -- My father in one of his best explanatory moods,-- in eager pursuit of a metaphysic point in- to the very r egions where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encom- passed it about ; -- my uncle <2Toby>2 in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world ; --his head like a smoak-jack ; -- the funnel unswept, and the ideas V<4OL>4. F whirl- |||||||||| [ 82 ] whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter ! -- By the tomb stone of <2Lucian>2 -- if it is in being, -- if not, why then, by his ashes ! by the ashes of my dear <2Rabelais>2, and dearer <2Cervantes>2, -- my father and my uncle <2Toby>2's dis- course upon <4TIME>4 and <4ETERNITY>4, --was a discourse devoutly to be wished for ! and the petulancy of my father's humour in putting a stop to it, as he did, was a robbery of the <2Ontologic treasury>2, of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and great men, are ever likely to restore to it again. C H A P. XX <5T>5 H O' my father persisted in not going on with the discourse, -- yet he could not get my uncle <2Toby>2's smoak- jack |||||||||| [ 83 ] jack out of his head, -- piqued as he was at first with it ; -- there was something in the comparison at the bottom, which hit his fancy ; for which purpose resting his elbow upon the table, and reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand, --but looking first steadfast- ly in the fire, -- he began to commune with himself and philosophize about it : but his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse, -- the idea of the smoak-jack soon turned all his ideas upside down, -- so that he fell asleep al- most before he knew what he was about. As for my uncle <2Toby>2, his smoak-jack had not made a dozen revolutions, before F 2 he |||||||||| [ 84 ] he fell asleep also. -- Peace be with them both. -- Dr. <2Slop>2 is engaged with the midwife, and my mother above stairs. -- <2Trim>2 is busy in turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars to be employed in the siege of <2Messina>2 next sum- mer, -- and is this instant boring the touch holes with the point of a hot poker. -- All my heroes are off my hands ; --'tis the first time I have had a moment to spare,--and I'll make use of it, and write my preface. T H E |||||||||| [ 85 ] T H E <7A>7 U T H O R ' S <7P R E F A C E>7. <5N>5 O, I'll not say a word about it, -- here it is ; -- in publishing it, -- I have appealed to the world, --and to the world I leave it ;-- it must speak for itself. All I know of the matter is, -- when I sat down, my intent was to write a good book ; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold out, --a wise, aye, and a discreet, --taking care only, as I went along, to put into it all the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great author and bestower of them had thought fit originally to give F 3 me, |||||||||| [ 86 ] me, -- so that, as your worships see,-- 'tis just as God pleases. Now, <2Agalastes>2 (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be some wit in it, for aught he knows, -- but no judg- ment at all. And <2Triptolemus>2 and <2Phu- tatorius>2 agreeing thereto, ask, How is it possible there should ? for that wit and judgment in this world never go toge- ther ; inasmuch as they are two opera- tions differing from each other as wide as east is from west. -- So, says <2Locke>2, -- so are farting and hickuping, say I. But in answer to this, <2Didius>2 the great church lawyer, in his code <2de fartandi et illustrandi fallaciis>2, doth maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no argu- ment, -- nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism ; -- but you all, may it please your wor- ships, |||||||||| [ 87 ] ships, see the better for it, -- so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which if left swiming therein, might hinder a concep- tion and spoil all. Now, my dear Anti-Shandeans, and thrice able critics, and fellow-labourers, (for to you I write this Preface) -- and to you, most subtle statesman and dis- creet doctors (do --pull off your beards) renowned for gravity and wisdom ; -- <2Monopolos>2 my politician, -- <2Didius>2, my counsel ; <2Kysarcius>2, my friend ;--<2Phutato- rius>2, my guide;--<2Gastripheres>2, the preserv- er of my life ; <2Somnolentius>2, the balm and repose of it,--not forgetting all others as well sleeping as waking,--ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of no F 4 resent- |||||||||| [ 88 ] resentment to you, I lump all together. -- Believe me, right worthy, My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own too, in case the thing is not done already for us, -- is that the great gifts and endowments both of wit and judgment, with every thing which usually goes along with them, -- such as memory, fan- cy, genius, eloquence, quick parts, and what not, may this precious moment without stint or measure, let or hinder- ance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear it, --scum and sediment an' all ; (for I would not have a drop lost) into these veral receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains,--in such sort, that they might continue to be injected and tunn'd into, according to the true intent |||||||||| [ 89 ] intent and meaning of my wish, until every vessel of them, both great and small, be so replenished, saturated and fill'd up therewith, that no more, would it save a man's life, could possibly be got either in or out. Bless us !--what noble work we should make ! -- how should I tickle it off ! --- and what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing away for such readers ! -- and you, -- just heaven ! -- with what raptures would you sit and read, -- but oh ! --'tis too much, -- I am sick, -- I faint away deliciously at the thoughts of it ! --'tis more than nature can bear ! -- lay hold of me, -- I am giddy, -- I am stone blind, -- I'm dying,-- I am gone. -- -- Help ! Help ! Help ! -- But hold, -- I grow something better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when this is over, that as we shall all of us conti- 3 nue ||||||||| [ 90 ] nue to be great wits, -- we should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end : -- there would be so much satire and sarcasm, -- scoffing and flouting, with raillying and reparteeing of it, -- thrusting and parrying in one corner or another, -- there would be nothing but mischief amongst us.--Chaste stars ! what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with breaking of heads, and rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places, -- there would be no such thing as living for us. But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong ; and though we should abominate each other, ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we should neverthe- less, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and |||||||||| [ 91 ] and kindness, -- -- milk and honey, -- 'twould be a second land of promise,-- -- a paradise upon earth, if there was such a thing to be had,--so that upon the whole we should have done well enough. All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present, is how to bring the point itself to bear ; for as your worships well know, that of these heavenly emanations of <2wit>2 and <2judgment>2, which I have so bountifully wished both for your worships and myself, -- there is but a certain <2quantum>2 stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole race of mankind ; and such small <2modicums>2 of 'em are only sent forth into this wide world, circulating here and there in one by corner or another, -- and in such nar- row streams, and at such prodigious in- tervals from each other, that one would wonder |||||||||| [ 92 ] wonder how it holds out, or could be suf- ficient for the wants and emergencies of so many great states, and populous em- pires. Indeed there is one thing to be consi- dered, that in <2Nova Zembla, North Lap- land>2, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more di- rectly under the artick and antartick cir- cles, -- where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, within the narrow com- pass of his cave, -- -- where the spirits are compressed almost to nothing, -- -- and where the passions of a man, with every thing which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone itself ; -- there the least quan- tity of <2judgment>2 imaginable does the busi- ness, -- and of <2wit>2, -- there is a total and an absolute saving,--for as not one spark is |||||||||| [ 93 ] is wanted, -- so not one spark is given. Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! What a dismal thing would it have been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial chapter there, with so <2plentiful a lack>2 of wit and judgment about us ! for mercy's sake ! let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can south- wards into <2Norway>2, -- crossing over <2Swedeland>2, if you please, through the small triangular province of <2Angermania>2 to the lake of <2Bothnia>2; coasting along it through east and west <2Bothnia>2, down to <2Carelia>2, and so on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the <2Gulf>2 of <2Finland>2, and the north east of the <2Baltick>2, up to <2Petersbourg>2, and just stepping into <2Ingria>2 ; -- then stretching over directly from thence through |||||||||| [ 94 ] through the north parts of the <2Russian>2 empire--leaving <2Siberia>2 a little upon the left hand till we get into the very heart of <2Russian>2 and <2Asiatick Tartary>2. Now throughout this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have just left: -- for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very attentively, your may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a comfortable provi- sion of good plain <2houshold>2 judgment, which taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with,--and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the proper ballance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want occa- sions to put them to use. 2 Now, |||||||||| [ 95 ] Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuri- ant island, where you perceive the spring tide of our blood and humours runs high, --where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to go- vern and subject to reason,--the <2height>2 of our wit and the <2depth>2 of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the <2length>2 and <2breadth>2 of our necessities,--and accordingly, we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of de- cent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain. It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold, -- wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way ; -- so that sometimes for near half a century |||||||||| [ 96 ] century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment, either to be seen or heard of amongst us : --the small chan- nels of them shall seem quite dried up,-- then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury, --you would think they would ne- ver stop : -- and then it is, that in writ- ing and fighting, and twenty other gal- lant things, we drive all the world be- fore us. It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind of ar- gumentative process, which <2Suidas>2 calls <2dialectick induction>2, -- that I draw and set up this position as most true and veri- table. That of these two luminaries, so much of their irradiations are suffered from time |||||||||| [ 97 ] time to time to shine down upon us ; as he, whose infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity ; so that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insi- nuating <2How d'ye>2 of a caressing prefacer stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress into silence. For alas ! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it-- I tremble to think how many thou- sands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives, -- running their heads against posts, and knocking out V<4OL>4. III. G their |||||||||| [ 98 ] their brains without ever getting to their journies end ; -- some falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks,--others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned profession tilt- ing full butt against the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.-- -- Here the brethren, of another profession, who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way. -- What confusion ! -- what mistakes ! --fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears,--admirable !-- trusting to the passions excited in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart, -- instead of measuring them by a quadrant. In the foreground of this picture, a <2statesman>2 turning the political wheel, like a brute, |||||||||| [ 99 ] a brute, the wrong way round -- <2against>2 the stream of corruption,--by heaven !-- instead of <2with>2 it. In this corner, a son of the divine <2Esculapius>2, writing a book against pre- destination ; perhaps worse,--feeling his patient's pulse, instead of his apothecary's -- a brother of the faculty in the back ground upon his knees in tears,--drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness ; --offering a fee,--instead of taking one. In that spacious <4HALL>4, a coalition of the gown, from all the barrs of it, driving a a damned, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might and main, the wrong way ; -- kicking it <2out>2 of the great doors, instead of, <2in>2, -- and with such fury in their looks, and such a de- G 2 gree |||||||||| [ 100 ] gree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been origi- nally made for the peace and preservation of mankind :-- --perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them still, -- a li- tigated point fairly hung up ;-- --for in- stance, Whether <2John o'Nokes>2 his nose, could stand in <2Tom o'Stiles>2 his face, with- out a trespass, or not, -- rashly determin- ed by them in five and twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pro's and con's required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many months,-- and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours know, an <4ACTION>4 should be, with all the stratagems practicable there- in,--such as feints,--forced marches, -- surprizes,-- ambuscades, -- mask-batte- ries, and a thousand other strokes of ge- neralship which consist in catechising at all advantages on both sides, -- might rea- |||||||||| [ 101 ] reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profes- sion. As for the clergy-- -- No -- If I say a word against them, I'll be shot.-- I have no desire, -- and besides, if I had, -- I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, -- with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist my- self with so sad and melancholy an ac- count,-- and therefore, 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, -- and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least <2wit>2 are reported to be men of most <2judgment>2. -- But mark, -- G 3 I say, |||||||||| [ 102 ] I say, <2reported to be>2, --for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bar- gain. This by the help of the observations al- ready premised,and I hope already weigh- ed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith make ap- pear. I hate set dessertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the sil- liest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception, --when in all like- lihood, if you had looked about you, might |||||||||| [ 103 ] might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once, -- `` for what hinde- ``rance, hurt, or harm, doth the laudable ``desire of knowledge bring to any man, ``if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a ``winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, ``the lid of a goldsmith's crucible, an oyl ``bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair,'' -- I am this moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it, -- they are fasten'd on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun beams. G 4 I enter |||||||||| [ 104 ] I enter now directly upon the point. -- Here stands <2wit>2, -- and there stands <2judgment>2, close beside it, just like the two knobbs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this self same chair on which I am sitting. -- You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its <2frame>2, --as wit and judgment are of <2ours>2, -- and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order as we say in all such cases of duplicated embel- lishments, -- <2to answer one another>2. Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this matter,-- let us for a moment, take off one of these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the point or pinacle of the chair it now |||||||||| [ 105 ] now stands on ; -- nay, don't laugh at it.--But did you ever see in the whole course of your lives such a ridiculous bu- siness as this has made of it ? --Why, 'tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one, as in the other : -- do,--pray, get off your seats, only to take a view of it. -- Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition ? -- nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one sin- gle knobb which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any pur- pose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other ; -- and let me further ask, in case the chair was your own, if you would not in your consci- ences think, rather than be as it is, that 3 it |||||||||| [ 106 ] it would be ten times better without any knobb at all. Now these two knobs -- or top or- naments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature,--being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful, -- the most priz'd, -- the most calami- tous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at,-- for all these rea- sons put together, there is not a mor- tal amongst us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding,--or so ignorant of what will do him good therein, --who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass. Now |||||||||| [ 107 ] Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one,--unless they laid hold of the other, -- pray what do you think would be- come of them ? -- Why, Sirs, in spight of all their <2gravities>2, they must e'en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked :--this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are upon, -- so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perrywigs, had they not raised a <2hue>2 and <2cry>2 at the same time against the lawful owners. I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and arti- fice,--that the great <2Locke>2, who was sel- dom |||||||||| [ 108 ] dom outwitted by false sounds, -- was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of de- ceit, was rendered so general a one against the <2poor wits>2 in this matter, that the phi- losopher himself was deceived by it, -- it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors ; -- but this was not of the number ; so that instead of sitting down cooly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it; -- on the contra- ry, he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo'd it as boisterously as the rest. This has been made the <2Magna Charta>2 of stupidity ever since, -- but your reve- rences |||||||||| [ 109 ] rences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat ; -- which by the bye is one of the many and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to an- swer for hereafter. As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too freely,-- I beg leave to qualify what- ever has been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general de- claration --That I have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards,-- any further than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture -- for any purpose, -- peace be with them ; -- @hd mark only, -- I write not for them. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 110 ] C H A P. XXI <5E>VERY day for at least ten years to- gether did my father resolve to have it mended,--'tis not mended yet; -- no family but ours would have borne with it an hour,--and what is most asto- nishing, there was not a subject in the world upon which my father was so ele- gant, as upon that of door-hinges.-- And yet at the same time, he was certain- ly one of the greatest bubbles to them, I think, that history can produce : his rhe- toric and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.--Never did the parlour- door open -- but his philosophy or his principles fell a victim to it; -- three drops of oyl with a feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his ho- nour for ever. 1 --Incon- |||||||||| [ 111 ] -- Inconsistent soul that man is !-- languishing under wounds, which he has the power to heal !--his whole life a con- tradiction to his knowledge!--his reason, that precious gift of God to him--(instead of pouring in oyl) serving but to sharpen his sensibilities,--to multiply his pains and render him more melancholy and un- easy under them ! -- poor unhappy crea- ture, that he should do so ! -- are not the necessary causes of misery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow ; -- struggle against evils which cannot be avoided, and sub- mit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble they create him, would remove from his heart for ever ? By all that is good and virtuous! if there are three drops of oyl to be got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of |||||||||| [ 112 ] of <2Shandy-Hall>2,-- the parlour-door hinge shall be mended this reign. C H A P. XXII. <5W>5HEN corporal <2Trim>2 had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure ; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour. Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of <2hinges>2, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this. Had the parlour-door open'd and turn'd upon its hinges, as a door should do -- -- --Or |||||||||| [ 113 ] -- Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its hinges, -- (that is, in case things have all along gone well with your worship,-- otherwise I give up my simile) -- in this case, I say, there had been no danger ei- ther to master or man, in corporal <2Trim>2's peeping in: the moment, he had beheld my father and my uncle <2Toby>2 fast asleep, --the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm- chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was morally speaking so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submit- ted to upon its account, -- this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of be- V<4OL>4. H ing |||||||||| [ 114 ] ing unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly step'd in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it. `` <2When things move upon bad hinges>2, an' please your lordships, <2how can it be other- wise ?>2 Pray, what's the matter ? Who is there? cried my father, waking, the moment the door began to creak. -- I wish the smith would give a peep at that confound- ed hinge. --'Tis nothing, an' please your honour, said <2Trim>2, but two mor- tars I am bringing in. --They shan't make a clatter with them here, cried my father hastily. -- If Dr. <2Slop>2 has any drugs |||||||||| [ 115 ] drugs to pound, let him do it in the kitchen.-- May it please your honour, cried <2Trim>2,-- they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which <2Obadiah>2 told me your honour had left off wearing. -- By heaven ! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore,-- I have not one appointment belonging to me, which I set so much store by, as I do by these jack-boots, -- they were our great-grandfather's, brother <2Toby>2, -- they were <2hereditary>2. Then I fear, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, <2Trim>2 has cut off the entail. -- I have only cut off the tops, an' please your honour, cried <2Trim>2.--I hate <2perpetuities>2 as much as any man alive, cried my father, -- but these jack-boots, continued he, (smiling, though very angry at the same time) have been in the family, brother, H 2 ever |||||||||| [ 116 ] ever since the civil wars ; -- Sir <2Roger Shandy>2 wore them at the battle of <2Marston- Moor>2.-- I declare I would not have taken ten pounds for them. -- I'll pay you the money, brother <2Shandy>2, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2, looking at the two mortars with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand in- to his breeches-pocket, as he viewed them. -- I'll pay you the ten pounds this mo- ment with all my heart and soul. -- Brother <2Toby>2, replied my father, alter- ing his tone, you care not what money you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, 'tis but upon a <4SIEGE>4. -- Have I not a hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half-pay ? cried my uncle <2Toby>2. --What is that, replied my father, hastily, -- to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots ? -- twelve guineas for your <2pontoons>2; -- half as much for your |||||||||| [ 117 ] your <2Dutch>2-draw-bridge;--to say nothing ofthe train of little brass-artillery you be- spoke last week, with twenty other prepa- rations for the siege of <2Messina>2; believe me, dear brother <2Toby>2, continued my father, taking him kindly by the hand,--these mi- litary operations of yours are above your strength ;--you mean well, brother,--but they carry you into greater expences than you were first aware of, -- and take my word,--dear <2Toby>2, they will in the end quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you. -- What signifies it if they do, brother, replied my uncle <2Toby>2, so long as we know 'tis for the good of the nation. -- My father could not help smiling for his soul ;--his anger at the worst was ne- ver more than a spark,--and the zeal and simplicity of <2Trim>2, -- and the generous H 3 (tho' |||||||||| [ 118 ] (tho' hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle <2Toby>2, brought him into perfect good humour with them in an instant. Generous souls ! -- God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too, quoth my father to himself. C H A P. XXIII. <5A>5LL is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs, -- I hear not one foot stirring. -- Prithee, <2Trim>2, who is in the kitchen ? There is no one soul in the kitchen, answered <2Trim>2, making a low bow as he spoke, except Dr. <2Slop>2.--Confusion ! cried my father, (getting up upon his legs a second time) -- not one single thing has gone right this day ! had I faith in astrology, bro- ther, (which by the bye, my father had) 2 I would |||||||||| [ 119 ] I would have sworn some retrograde pla- net was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, and turning every indi- vidual thing in it out of its place.-- Why, I thought Dr. <2Slop>2 had been above stairs with my wife, and so said you. -- What can the fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen ? -- He is busy, an' please your honour, replied <2Trim>2, in making a bridge. -- 'Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2 ;--pray give my humble service to Dr. <2Slop>2, <2Trim>2, and tell him I thank him heartily. You must know, my uncle <2Toby>2 mis- took the bridge as widely as my father mistook the mortars ; -- but to under- stand how my uncle <2Toby>2 could mistake the bridge, -- I fear I must give you an exact account of the road which led to it; -- or to drop my metaphor, (for H 4 there |||||||||| [ 120 ] there is nothing more dishonest in an his- torian, than the use of one,) -- in or- der to conceive the probability of this er- ror in my uncle <2Toby>2 aright, I must give you some account of an adventure of <2Trim>2's, though much against my will. I say much against my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out of its place here ; for by right it should come in, either amongst the anecdotes of my uncle <2Toby>2's amours with widow <2Wad- man>2, in which corporal <2Trim>2 was no mean actor, --or else in the middle of his and my uncle <2Toby>2's campaigns on the bowl- ing green, -- for it will do very well in either place ; -- but then if I reserve it for either of those parts of my story,-- I ruin the story I'm upon, -- and if I tell it here -- I anticipate matters, and ruin it there. What |||||||||| [ 121 ] -- What would your worships have me to do in this case ? -- Tell it, Mr. <2Shandy>2, by all means. -- You are a fool, <2Tristram>2, if you do. O ye P<4OWERS>4 ! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)--which enable mor- tal man to tell a story worth the hearing, --that kindly shew him, where he is to begin it, -- and where he is to end it,-- what he is to put into it,--and what he is to leave out, -- how much of it he is to cast into shade, -- and whereabouts he is to throw his light !--Ye, who preside over this vast empire of biographical free- booters, and see how many scrapes and plunges your subjects hourly fall into ;-- will you do one thing ? I beg and beseech you, (in case you will |||||||||| [ 122 ] will do nothing better for us) that where- ever, in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several roads meet in one point, as they have done just here,-- that at least you set up a guide-post, in the center of them, in mere charity to di- rect an uncertain devil, which of the three he is to take. C H A P. XXIV. <5T>5HO' the shock my uncle <2Toby>2 re- ceived the year after the demoli- tion of <2Dunkirk>2, in his affair with widow <2Wadman>2, had fixed him in a resolution, never more to think of the sex, -- or of aught which belonged to it ;-- yet corpo- ral <2Trim>2 had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed in my uncle <2Toby>2's case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of circumstances which in- sensibly |||||||||| [ 123 ] sensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and strong citadel.--In <2Trim>2's case there was a concurrence of nothing in the world, but of him and <2Bridget>2 in the kitchen ; --though in truth, the love and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had my uncle <2Toby>2 em- ployed his time and genius in tagging of points, -- I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down his arms, and followed his example with pleasure. When therefore my uncle <2Toby>2 sat down before the mistress, -- corporal <2Trim>2 in- continently took ground before the maid. Now, my dear friend <2Garrick>2, whom I have so much cause to esteem and ho- nour,--(why, or wherefore, 'tis no mat- ter)--can it escape your penetration, -- I defy it, -- that so many play-wrights, and opificers |||||||||| [ 124 ] opificers of chit chat have ever since been working upon <2Trim>2's and my uncle <2Toby>2's pattern. -- I care not what <2Aristotle>2, or <2Pacuvius>2, or <2Bossu>2, or <2Ricaboni>2 say, -- (though I never read one of them) -- there is not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and madam <2Pompa- dour>2's <2vis>2 a <2vis>2, than betwixt a single amour, and an amour thus nobly dou- bled, and going upon all four, prancing throughout a grand drama.-- Sir, a sim- ple, single, silly affair of that kind, -- is quite lost in five acts, -- but that is neither here or there. After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my uncle <2To- by>2's quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which shall be given in its proper place, my uncle <2Toby>2, ho- nest man ! found it necessary to draw off his |||||||||| [ 125 ] his forces, and raise the siege somewhat indignantly. Corporal <2Trim>2, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself -- or with any one else,--the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust, --he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a block- ade; -- that is, he kept others off, -- for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met <2Bridget>2 in the vil- lage, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her, -- or (as circumstances directed), he would shake her by the hand,-- or ask her lovingly how she did,-- or would give her a rib- band, -- and now and then, though ne- ver but when it could be done with de- corum, would give <2Bridget>2 a -- Pre- |||||||||| [ 126 ] Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years ; that is, from the demolition of <2Dunkirk>2 in the year 13, to the latter end of my uncle <2Toby>2's cam- paign in the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks before the time I'm speak- ing of.--When <2Trim>2, as his custom was, after he had put my uncle <2Toby>2 to bed, going down one moon-shiny night to see that every thing was right at his fortifica- tions, -- in the lane separated from the bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly,-- he espied his <2Bridget>2. As the corporal thought there was no- thing in the world so well worth shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle <2Toby>2 had made, <2Trim>2 courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in : this was not done so private- ly, but that the foul-mouth'd trumpet of Fame |||||||||| [ 127 ] Fame carried it from ear to ear, till at length it reached my father's, with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my uncle <2Toby>2's curious draw-bridge, constructed and painted after the <2Dutch>2 fashion, and which went quite across the ditch,--was broke down, and some how or other crush'd all to pieces that very night. My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle <2Toby>2's hobby-horse,--he thought it the most ri- diculous horse that ever gentleman mount- ed, and indeed unless my uncle <2Toby>2 vexed him about it, could never think of it once, without smiling at it, -- so that it never could get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father's imagination beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his hu- mour |||||||||| [ 128 ] mour than any one which had yet befall'n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of en- tertainment to him. -- Well, -- but dear <2Toby !>2 my father would say, do tell us seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.--How can you teaze me so much about it ? my uncle <2Toby>2 would reply,--I have told it you twenty times, word for word as <2Trim>2 told it me. -- Pri- thee, how was it then, corporal ? my fa- ther would cry, turning to <2Trim>2.--It was a mere misfortune, an' please your ho- nour, -- I was shewing Mrs. <2Bridget>2 our fortifications, and in going too near the edge of the fosse, I unfortunately slip'd in.--Very well, <2Trim !>2 my father would cry,--(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod, -- but without inter- rupting him) -- and being link'd fast, an' please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. <2Bridget>2, I dragg'd her after 1 me, |||||||||| [ 129 ] me, by means of which she fell backwards soss against the bridge, -- and <2Trim>2's foot, (my uncle <2Toby>2 would cry, taking the story out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too. -- It was a thousand to one, my uncle <2Toby>2 would add, that the poor fellow did not break his leg. --Ay truly ! my father would say, -- a limb is soon broke, brother <2Toby>2, in such encounters. -- And so, an' please your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces. At other times, but especially when my uncle <2Toby>2 was so unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs or pe- tards, -- my father would exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon the V<4OL>4. III. I <4B A T->4 |||||||||| [ 130 ] <4BATTERING-RAMS>4 ofthe ancients, -- the <4VINEA>4which <2Alexander>2 made use of at the siege of <2Tyre>2. -- He would tell my uncle <2Toby>2 of the <4CATAPULT@AE>4 of the <2Syrians>2 which threw such monstrous stones so ma- ny hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation ;--he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the <4BALLISTA>4, which <2Mar- cellinus>2 makes so much rout about,-- the terrible effects of the <4PYRABOLI>4,--which cast fire, -- the danger of the <4TEREBRA>4 and <4SCORPIO>4, which cast javelins. --But what are these, he would say, to the de- structive machinery of corporal <2Trim ?>2-- Believe me, brother <2Toby>2, no bridge, or bastion, or sally port that ever was con- structed in this world, can hold out against such artillery. My uncle <2Toby>2 would never attempt 3 any |||||||||| [ 131 ] any defence against the force of this ridi- cule, but that of redoubling the vehe- mence of smoaking his pipe ; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suf- focating fit of violent coughing : my uncle <2Toby>2 leap'd up without feeling the pain upon his groin, -- and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother's chair, tap- ping his back with one hand, and hold- ing his head with the other, and from time to time, wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pull'd out of his pocket. -- The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle <2Toby>2 did these little offices, -- cut my father thro' his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him. -- May my brains be knock'd out with a battering ram or a catapulta, I care not which, I 2 quoth |||||||||| [ 132 ] quoth my father to himself, -- if ever I insult this worthy soul more. C H A P. XXV. <5T>4 H E draw-bridge being held irrepa- rable, <2Trim>2 was ordered directly to set about another, -- but not upon the same model ; for cardinal <2Alberoni>2's in- trigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle <2Toby>2 rightly foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out be- twixt <2Spain>2 and the Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all likelihood be either in <2Naples>2 or <2Scicily>2,--he determined upon an <2Italian>2 bridge,--(my uncle <2Toby>2, by the bye, was not far out in his conjectures) -- but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead as far of my uncle <2Toby>2 in the cabinet, as my uncle |||||||||| [ 133 ] uncle <2Toby>2 took it of him in the field, -- convinced him, that if the King of <2Spain>2 and the Emperor went together by the ears, that <2England>2 and <2France>2 and <2Hol- land>2 must, by force of their pre-engage- ments, all enter the lists too ;-- and if so, he would say, the combatants, bro- ther <2Toby>2, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of <2Flanders>2;--then what will you do with your <2Italian>2 bridge ? --We will go on with it then, upon the old model, cried my uncle <2Toby>2. When corporal <2Trim>2 had about half finished it in that stile,--my uncle <2Toby>2 found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered before. It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one I 3 half |||||||||| [ 134 ] half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other, to the other ; the ad- vantage of which was this, that by divid- ing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle <2Toby>2 to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare, -- but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable, -- for by this means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy's possession, -- and pray of what use is the other ? The natural remedy for this, was no doubt to have his bridge fast only at one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, and stand bolt up- right, -- but that was rejected for the reason given above. For |||||||||| [ 135 ] For a whole week after he was deter- mined in his mind to have one of that particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, to hinder a passage ; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage, -- of which sorts your worships might have seen three famous ones at <2Spires>2 before its destruction,--and one now at <2Brisac>2, if I mistake not ;-- but my father advising my uncle <2Toby>2, with great earnestness, to have nothing more to do with thrusting bridges,--and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it would but perpetuate the memory of the corporal's misfortune,-- he changed his mind, for that of the marquis <2d'H@^opital>2's invention, which the younger <2Bernouilli>2 has so well and learnedly described, as your worships may see, -- <2Act. Erud. Lips>2. an. 1695, -- to these a lead weight is an eter- nal ballance, and keeps watch as well as a I 4 couple |||||||||| [ 136 ] couple of centinels, inasmuch as the con- struction of them was a curve-line ap- proximating to a cycloid,-- if not a cy- cloid itself. My uncle <2Toby>2 understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in <2Eng- land>2,--but was not quite such a master of the cycloid ;--he talked however about it every day ; -- the bridge went not for- wards. --We'll ask somebody about is, cried my uncle <2Toby>2 to <2Trim>2. C H A P. XXVI. <5W>5 H E N <2Trim>2 came in and told my father, that Dr. <2Slop>2 was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge, -- my uncle <2Toby>2, -- the affair of the jack- boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain,--took it in- stantlv |||||||||| [ 137 ] stantly for granted that Dr. <2Slop>2 was mak- ing a model of the marquis <2d'H@^opital>2's bridge. --'Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle <2Toby>2 ; -- pray give my humble service to Dr. <2Slop>2, <2Trim>2, and tell him I thank him heartily. Had my uncle <2Toby>2's head been a <2Sa- voyard>2's box, and my father peeping in all the time at one end of it,-- it could not have given him a more distinct con- ception of the operations in my uncle <2Toby>2's imagination, than what he had ; so notwithstanding the catapulta and bat- tering-ram, and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to tri- umph.-- When <2Trim>2's answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and twisted it to pieces. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 138 ] C H A P. XXVII. -- <5T>5 H I S unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father -- God bless your honour, cried <2Trim>2, 'tis a bridge for master's nose.--In bring- ing him into the world with his vile in- struments, he has crush'd his nose, <2Su- sannah>2 says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of <2Susannah>2's stays, to raise it up. -- Lead me, brother <2Toby>2, cried my father, to my room this instant. C H A P, |||||||||| [ 139 ] C H A P. XXVIII. <5F>5 R O M the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of the world, and my opinions for its in- struction, has a cloud insensibly been gathering over my father.--A tide of little evils and distresses has been setting in against him.--Not one thing, as he observed himself, has gone right : and now is the storm thicken'd, and going to break, and pour down full upon his head. I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame of mind, that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.-- My nerves re- lax as I tell it. -- Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my |||||||||| [ 140 ] my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should not. -- And this mo- ment that I last dipp'd my pen into my ink, I could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and so- lemnity there appear'd in my manner of doing it. -- Lord ! how different from the rash jerks, and hare-brain'd squirts thou art wont, <2Tristram !>2 to transact it with in other humours, --dropping thy pen,--spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books, -- as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and thy furniture cost thee nothing. C H A P. XXIX. -- <5I>5 W O N'T go about to argue the point with you,--'tis so,--and I am |||||||||| [ 141 ] I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, `` That both man and woman `` bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I `` know, pleasure too) best in a horizon- `` tal position.'' The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself prostrate across his bed in the wildest disorder ima- ginable, but at the same time, in the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows, that ever the eye of pity dropp'd a tear for.--The palm of his right hand, as he fell upon the bed, re- ceiving his forehead, and covering the greatest part of both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way backwards) till his nose touch'd the quilt;-- his left arm hung insensible over the side of the bed, his knuckles re- clining upon the handle of the chamber pot, |||||||||| [ 142 ] pot, which peep'd out beyond the va- lance, --his right leg (his left being drawn up towards his body) hung half over the side of the bed, the edge of it pressing upon his shin bone. --He felt it not. A fix'd, inflexible sorrow took possession of every line of his face.--He sigh'd once, -- heaved his breast often,-- but utter'd not a word. An old set-stitch'd chair, valanced and fringed around with party-colour'd wor- sted bobs, stood at the bed's head, oppo- site to the side where my father's head re- clined. --My uncle <2Toby>2 sat him down in it. Before an affliction is digested,-- consolation ever comes too soon ;-- and after it is digested, -- it comes too late : so that you see, madam, there is but a mark |||||||||| [ 143 ] mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at : my uncle <2Toby>2 was always either on this side, or on that of it, and would often say, He believed in his heart, he could as soon hit the longitude ; for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he drew the cur- tain a little forwards, and having a tear at every one's service, -- he pull'd out a cambrick handkerchief, -- gave a low sigh, -- but held his peace. C H A P. XXX. -- `` <2<5A>5 L L is not gain that is got in>2- `` <2to the purse>2.''-- So that notwithstanding my father had the hap- piness of reading the oddest books in the universe, and had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking, that ever man |||||||||| [ 144 ] man in it was bless'd with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all, -- that it laid him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical distresses ; of which this particular one which he sunk under at present is as strong an example as can be given. No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child's nose, by the edge of a pair of forceps, -- however scientifically applied, -- would vex any man in the world, who was at so much pains in be- getting a child, as my father was, -- yet it will not account for the extrava- gance of his affliction, or will it justify the unchristian manner he abandoned and surrender'd himself up to it. To explain this, I must leave him upon the |||||||||| [ 145 ] the bed for half an hour, -- and my good uncle <2Toby>2 in his old fringed chair sitting beside him. C H A P. XXXI. -- <5I>5 T H I N K it a very unreason- able demand,-- cried my great grandfather, twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table. -- By this account, madam, you have but two thou- sand pounds fortune, and not a shilling more, -- and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it.-- --`` Because,'' replied my great grand- mother, `` you have little or no nose, `` Sir.''-- Now, before I venture to make use V<4OL>4. III. K of |||||||||| [ 146 ] of the word <2Nose>2 a second time,--to avoid all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all possible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be understood to mean by the term : being of opinion, that 'tis owing to the negligence and perverseness of writers, in despising this precaution, and to nothing else,--That all the polemi- cal writings in divinity, are not as clear and demonstrative as those upon a <2Will o' the-Wisp>2, or any other sound part of phi- losophy, and natural pursuit ; in order to which, what have you to do, before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of judgment,--but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most occasion for,-- changing it, Sir, as you |||||||||| [ 147 ] you would a guinea, into small coin ?-- which done,--let the father of confusion puzzle you, if he can ; or put a different idea either into your head, or your reader's head, if he knows how. In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as this I am engaged in,--the neglect is inexcusable ; and hea- ven is witness, how the world has re- venged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal strictures,-- and for depending so much as I have done, all along, upon the cleanliness of my reader's imaginations. -- Here are two senses, cried <2Eu- genius>2, as we walk'd along, pointing with the fore finger of his right hand to the word <2Crevice>2, in the fifty second page of the second volume of this book of books, K 2 --here |||||||||| [ 148 ] --here are two senses,-- quoth he.-- And here are two roads, replied I, turn- ing short upon him, --a dirty and a clean one,--which shall we take ?-- The clean,--by all means, replied <2Eu- genius. Eugenius>2, said I, stepping before him, and laying my hand upon his breast, -- to define-- is to distrust.-- Thus I triumph'd over <2Eugenius>2 ; but I triumph'd over him as I always do, like a fool.--'Tis my comfort however, I am not an obstinate one ; therefore I define a nose as follows, -- intreat- ing only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas 1 into |||||||||| [ 149 ] into their minds, than what I put into my definition. -- For by the word <2Nose>2, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word <2Nose>2 occurs,--I declare, by that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less. C H A P. XXXII. -- `` <5B>5 E C A U S E,'' quoth my grandmother, repeating the words again, --`` you have little or no `` nose, Sir''-- S'death ! cried my great grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose,--'tis not so small as that comes to ;--'tis a full inch longer than my father's.--Now, my great grandfather's nose was for all K 3 the |||||||||| [ 150 ] the world like unto the noses of all the men, women, and children, whom <2Pan- tagruel>2 found dwelling upon the island of E<4NNASIN>4.--By the way, if you would know the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people, --you must read the book ;--find it out your- self, you never can.-- --'Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs. --'Tis a full inch, continued my great grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his nose with his finger and thumb ; and repeating his assertion,--'tis a full inch longer, madam, than my father's--. You must mean your uncle's, replied my great grandmother. My |||||||||| [ 151 ] -- My great grandfather was con- vinced.--He untwisted the paper, and signed the article. C H A P. XXXIII. --<5W>5 H A T an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grand- father. My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving the mark, than there is upon the back of my hand.-- --Now, you must know, that my great grandmother outlived my grand- father twelve years ; so that my father K 4 had |||||||||| [ 152 ] had the jointure to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half yearly--(on <2Michael- mas>2 and <2Lady day>2) -- during all that time. No man discharged pecuniary obliga- tions with a better grace than my fa- ther.--And as far as the hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon the table, guinea by guinea, with that spirit- ed jerk of an honest welcome, which ge- nerous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down money : but as soon as ever he enter'd upon the odd fifty,--he generally gave a loud <2Hem !>2--rubb'd the side of his nose leisurely with the flat part of his fore finger, -- inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of his wig,--look'd at both sides of every guinea, as he parted with it,--and seldom could |||||||||| [ 153 ] could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples. Defend me, gracious heaven ! from those persecuting spirits who make no al- lowances for these workings within us.-- Never,--O never may I lay down in their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of education, and the prevalance of opinions long derived from ancestors ! For three generations at least, this <2te- net>2 in favour of long noses had gradually been taking root in our family.-- T<4RADITION>4 was all along on its side, and I<4NTEREST>4 was every half year stepping in to strengthen it ; so that the whimsi- cality of my father's brain was far from having |||||||||| [ 154 ] having the whole honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions. -- For in a great measure he might be said to have suck'd this in, with his mother's milk. He did his part however.--If education planted the mistake, (in case it was one) my father watered it, and ri- pened it to perfection. He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family in <2England>2 could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses. --And for the contrary rea- son, he would generally add, That it must be one of the greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly noses following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it 2 up |||||||||| [ 155 ] up into the best vacancies in the king- dom. --He would often boast that the <2Shandy>2 family rank'd very high in king <2Harry>2 the VIIIth's time, but owed its rise to no state engine,--he would say,-- but to that only ; -- but that, like other families, he would add, -- it had felt the turn of the wheel, and had never reco- vered the blow of my great grandfather's nose.--It was an ace of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head,--and as vile a one for an unfortunate family, as ever turn'd up trumps. --Fair and softly, gentle reader ! --where is thy fancy carrying thee? --If there is truth in man, by my great grandfather's nose, I mean the ex- ternal organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face, and |||||||||| [ 156 ] --and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third,--that is, mea- suring downwards from the setting on of the hair.-- --What a life of it has an author, at this pass ! C H A P. XXXIV. <5I>5 T is a singular blessing, that nature has form'd the mind of man with the same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, whichisobserved in old dogs, --`` of not learning new tricks.'' What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever exist- ed, be whisk'd into at once, did he read such |||||||||| [ 157 ] such books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change sides ! Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all this.--He pick'd up an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.--It becomes his own,-- and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up.-- I am aware, that <2Didius>2, the great civi- lian, will contest this point ; and cry out against me, Whence comes this man's right to this apple ? <2ex confesso>2, he will say,--things were in a state of na- ture.--The apple, as much <2Frank>2's apple, as <2John>2's. Pray, Mr. <2Shandy>2, what pa- tent has he to shew for it ? and how did it begin to be his ? was it, when he set his |||||||||| [ 158 ] his heart upon it ? or when he gather'd it ? or when he chew'd it ? or when he roasted it ? or when he peel'd ? or when he brought it home ? or when he digest- ed ?--or when he-- -- ? --. For 'tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made it not his,--that no subsequent act could. Brother <2Didius>2,<2Tribonius>2 will answer,-- (now <2Tribonius>2 the civilian and church lawyer's beard being three inches and a half and three eighths longer than <2Di- dius>2 his beard,--I'm glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so I give myself no fur- ther trouble about the answer.)--Brother <2Didius>2, <2Tribonius>2 will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the fragments of <2Gregorius>2 and <2Hermogenes>2's codes, and in all the codes from <2Justinian>2's down to the |||||||||| [ 159 ] the codes of <2Louis>2 and <2Des Eaux>2,--That the sweat of a man's brows, and the ex- sudations of a man's brains, are as much a man's own property, as the breeches upon his backside ;-- which said exsu- dations, <2&c>2. being dropp'd upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking it up ; and being moreover in- dissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly an- nex'd by the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried home, roasted, peel'd, eaten, digested, and so on ; -- 'tis evi- dent that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix'd up something which was his own, with the apple which was not his own, by which means he has ac- quired a property ;--or, in other words, the apple is <2John>2's apple. By the same learned chain of reason- ing |||||||||| [ 160 ] ing my father stood up for all his opi- nions : he had spared no pains in pick-0 ing them up, and the more they lay out of the common way, the better still was his title.--No mortal claim'd them : they had cost him moreover as much la- bour in cooking and digesting as in the case above, so that they might well and truely be said to be of his own goods and chattles.--Accordingly he held fast by 'em, both by teeth and claws, --would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on,--and in a word, would intrench and fortify them round with as many cir- cumvallations and breast-works, as my uncle <2Toby>2 would a citadel. There was one plaguy rub in the way of this, -- the scarcity of materials to make any thing of a defence with , in case of |||||||||| [ 161 ] of a smart attack ; inasmuch as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of great noses : by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible ! and I am quite lost in my understanding when I am considering what a treasure of pre- cious time and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects, -- and how many millions of books in all languages, and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so much tending to the unity and peace- making of the world. What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by ; and though my father would oft- times sport with my uncle <2Toby>2's li- brary, --which, by the bye, was ridi- culous enough, -- yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book V<4OL>4. III. L and |||||||||| [ 162 ] and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much care as my honest uncle <2Toby>2 had done those up- on military architecture.--'Tis true, a much less table would have held them, -- but that was not thy transgression, my dear uncle.-- Here,--but why here, -- rather than in any other part of my story, -- I am not able to tell ;--but here it is,--my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle <2Toby>2, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.--Here let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sentiments of love for thee, and veneratlon for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew's |||||||||| [ 163 ] nephew's bosom.-- Peace and com- fort rest for evermore upon thy head !-- Thou envied'st no man's comforts,-- insulted'st no man's opinions.--Thou blackened'st no man's character, -- devoured'st no man's bread : gently with faithful <2Trim>2 behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way ; -- for each one's service, thou hadst a tear, -- for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling. Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder,--thy path from thy door to thy bowling green shall never be grown up.--Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the <2Shandy>2 family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle <2Toby>2, shall never be demolish'd. L 2 C H A P. |||||||||| [ 164 ] C H A P. XXXV. <5M>5 Y father's collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curi- ous ; and consequently, he was some time in making it; he had the great good for- tune however to set off well, in getting <2Bruscambille>2's prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing,--for he gave no more for <2Bruscambille>2 than three half crowns ; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.--There are not three <2Bruscambilles>2 in <2Christendom,>2--said the stall-man, except what are chain'd up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the mo- ney as quick as lightning, -- took <2Brus- cambille>2 into his bosom, -- hyed home from |||||||||| [ 165 ] from <2Piccadilly>2 to <2Coleman>2-street with it, as he would have hyed home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from <2Bruscambille>2 all the way. To those who do not yet know of which gender <2Bruscambille>2 is, --inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either,--'twill be no objection against the simile,--to say, That when my father got home, he solaced himself with <2Bruscambille>2 after the manner, in which, 'tis ten to one, your worship solaced your- self with your first mistress, -- that is, from morning even unto night : which by the bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the inamorato,-- is of little, or no en- tertainment at all, to by-standers.--Take notice, I go no farther with the simile,-- my father's eye was greater than his L 3 appetite, |||||||||| [ 166 ] appetite,-- his zeal greater than his know- ledge, -- he cool'd -- his affections be- came divided, -- he got hold of <2Prig- nitz>2,--purchased <2Scroderus>2, <2Andrea Par@ae- us>2, <2Bouchet>2's Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned <2Hafen Slawkenbergius>2 ; of which, as I shall have much to say by and bye,--I will say nothing now. C H A P. XXXVI. <5O>5 F all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in sup- port of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disap- pointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between <2Pamphagus>2 and <2Cocles>2, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable <2Erasmus>2, upon the various uses and |||||||||| [ 167 ] and seasonable applications of long noses. --Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising-ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on, -- let me beg of you, like an un- back'd filly, <2to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it,--and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks>2, till like <2Tickletoby>2's mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt. -- You need not kill him.-- --And pray who was <2Tickletoby>2's mare ? -- 'tis just as discreditable and un- scholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year <2(ab urb. con.>2) the second Punic war broke out.--Who was <2Tickle->2 L 4 2's |||||||||| [ 168 ] <2toby>2's mare !--Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader ! read,--or by the know- ledge of the great saint <2Paraleipomenon>2 -- I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without <2much reading>2, by which your reverence knows, I mean <2much knowledge>2, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work !) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to un- raval the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 169 ] |||||||||| [ 170 ] |||||||||| [ 171 ] C H A P. XXXVII. ``<2<5N>5 I H I L me p@oenitet hujus nasi>2,'' quoth <2Pamphagus>2 ;--that is,-- `` My nose has been the making of me.' --`` <2Nec est cur p@oeniteat>2,'' replies <2Cocles>2; that is, `` How the duce should such a nose fail?'' The doctrine, you see, was laid down by <2Erasmus>2, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness ; but my father's dis- appointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact it- self; without any of that speculative sub- tilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which heaven had bestow'd upon man on purpose to investigate truth and fight for her on all sides. -- My father pish'd and pugh'd at first most terribly,-- 'tis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of <2Erasmus>2, my father soon came to himself, and read it |||||||||| [ 172 ] it over and over again with great appli- cation, studying every word and every syllable of it thro' and thro' in its most strict and literal interpretation,--he could still make nothing of it, that way. May- haps there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.--Learned men, bro- ther <2Toby>2, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.-- --I'll study the mystic and the allegoric sense,-- --here is some room to turn a man's self in,brother. My father read on.-- Now, I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enume- rated by <2Erasmus>2, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domes- tic conveniences also, for that in a case of distress, --and for want of a pair of bel- lows, it will do excellently well,<2ad excitan- dum focum,>2 (to stir up the fire.) Nature |||||||||| [ 173 ] Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep with- in him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge,--so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it. --I've got within a single letter, brother <2Toby>2, cried my father, of <2Erasmus>2 his mystic mean- ing.--You are near enough, brother, re- plied my uncle, in all conscience. -- Pshaw ! cried my father, scratching on,-- I might as well be seven miles off. -- I've done it,-- --said my father, snapping his fingers.-- See, my dear brother <2Toby>2, how I have mended the sense.--But you have marr'd a word, replied my uncle <2Toby>2.-- My father put on his spectacles, -- bit his lip,--and tore out the leaf in a passion. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 174 ] C H A P. XXXVIII. <5O>5 <2Slawkenbergius !>2 thou faithful ana- lyzer of my <2Disgr@'azias>2, -- thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns, which in one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of. --Tell me, <2Slawkenbergius !>2 what secret impulse was it ? what intonation of voice ? whence came it ? how did it sound in thy ears ?-- art thou sure thou heard'st it ? -- which first cried out to thee, --go, --go, <2Slaw- kenbergius !>2 dedicate the labours of thy life, -- neglect thy pastimes, -- call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature, -- macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand <4FOLIO>4 for them, upon the subject of their noses. How ||||||||||| [ 175 ] How the communication was conveyed into <2Slawkenbergius>2's sensorium, -- so that <2Slawkenbergius>2 should know whose finger touch'd the key, -- and whose hand it was that blew the bellows, -- as <2Hafen Slawkenbergius>2 has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years,--we can only raise conjectures. <2Slawkenbergius>2 was play'd upon, for aught I know, like one of <2Whitfield>2's disciples, --that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the two <2masters>2 it was, that had been practising upon his <2instrument>2, -- as to make all reasoning upon it needless. -- For in the account which <2Hafen Slawkenbergius>2 gives the world of his mo- tives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this |||||||||| [ 176 ] this one work.--Towards the end of his prolegomena, which by the bye should have come first, -- but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the analitical contents of the book, and the book itself,--he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down coolly, and consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and dis- tinguish the main end and design of his being ; --or, -- to shorten my trans- lation, for <2Slawkenbergius>2's book is in <2Latin>2, and not a little prolix in this pas- sage,--ever since I understood, quoth <2Slawkenbergius>2, any thing, -- or rather <2what was what>2, -- and could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone be- fore ; -- have I, <2Slawkenbergius>2, felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and an un- resistible |||||||||| [ 177 ] resistible call within me, to gird up my- self to this undertaking. And to do justice to <2Slawkenbergius>2, he has entered the list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it, than any one man who had ever entered it before him,--and indeed, in many re- spects, deserves to be <2en-nich'd>2 as a proto- type for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to model their books by, -- for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject,-- examined every part of it, <2dialectically>2, -- then brought it into full day ; dilucidat- ing it with all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could strike, -- or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him to cast upon it,--collating, collecting and compiling, -- begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had 3 been |||||||||| [ 178 ] been wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned : so that <2Slawkenbergius>2 his book may properly be considered, not only as a model,--but as a thorough-stitch'd <4DIGEST>4 and regular institute of <2noses>2 ; comprehending in it, all that is, or can be needful to be known about them. For this cause it is, that I forbear to speak of so many ( otherwise ) valuable books and treatises of my father's collect- ing, wrote either, plump upon noses, -- or collaterally touching them ; -- such for instance as <2Prignitz>2, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel houses in <2Silesia>2, which he had rummaged, -- has informed us, that the |||||||||| [ 179 ] the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or boney parts of human noses,in any <2given>2 tract of country, except <2Crim Tartary>2, where they are all crush'd down by the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them, -- are much nearer alike, than the world imagines ; -- the difference amongst them, being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking notice of, --but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilagenous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell'd, and driven by the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it, (bating the case of ideots, whom <2Prignitz>2, who had lived many years in <2Turky>2, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of heaven) -- it so V<4OL>4. M hap- |||||||||| [ 180 ] happens, and ever must, says <2Prignitz>2, that the excellency of the nose is in a di- rect arithmetical proportion to the excel- lency of the wearer's fancy. It is for the same reason, that is, be- cause 'tis all comprehended in <2Slawken- bergius>2, that I say nothing likewise of <2Scroderus (Andrea)>2 who all the world knows, set himself to oppugn <2Prignitz>2 with great violence, -- proving it in his own way, first <2logically>2 and then by a series of stubborn facts, `` That so far was <2Prignitz>2 from the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary,--the nose begat the fancy.'' -- The learned suspected <2Scroderus>2, of an indecent sophism in this, -- and <2Prig- nitz>2 cried out aloud in the dispute, that <2Scroderus>2 had shifted the idea upon him, 1 but |||||||||| [ 181 ] --but <2Scroderus>2 went on, maintaining his thesis.-- ALL PARAGRAPHBREAKS ON THIS PAGE ARE 1.5, NOT 2 RETURNS My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he should take in this affair ; when <2Ambrose Par@aeus>2 decided it in a moment, and by over- throwing the systems, both of <2Prignitz>2 and <2Scroderus>2, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at once. Be witness-- I don't acquaint the learned reader, -- in saying it, I mention it only to shew the learned, I know the fact myself.-- That this <2Ambrose Par@aeus>2 was chief surgeon and nose-mender to <2Francis>2 the ninth of <2France>2, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeed- M 2 ing |||||||||| [ 182 ] ing kings (I know not which) -- and that except in the slip he made in his story of <2Taliacotius>2's noses, and his manner of set- ting them on, -- he was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand. 1.5 AGAIN Now <2Ambrose Par@aeus>2 convinced my father, that the true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon which <2Prignitz>2 and <2Scroderus>2 had wasted so much learn- ing and fine parts,--was neither this nor that,-- but that the length and good- ness of the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse's breast, -- as the flatness and shortness of <2puisne>2 noses was, to the firmness and elas- tic repulsion of the same organ of nutri- tion |||||||||| [ 183 ] tion in the hale and lively, -- which, tho' happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb'd, so rebuff'd, so rebated, and so re- frigerated thereby, as never to arrive <2ad mensuram suam legitimam>2 ;-- but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother's breast,--by sinking in- to it, quoth <2Par@aeus>2, as into so much but- ter, the nose was comforted, nourish'd, plump'd up, refresh'd, refocillated, and set a growing for ever. I have but two things to observe of <2Par@aeus>2; first, that he proves and ex- plains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression :-- for which may his soul for ever rest in peace ! And, secondly, that besides the systems of <2Prignitz>2 and <2Scroderus>2, which <2Ambrose>2 M 3 <2Par@aeus>2 |||||||||| [ 184 ] <2Par@aeus>2 his hypothesis effectually over- threw, -- it overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family ; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my fa- ther and my mother, but turn'd likewise the whole house and every thing in it, except my uncle <2Toby>2, quite upside down. Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute be- tween a man and his wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street door ! My mother, you must know, -- but I have fifty things more necessary to let you know first,--I have a hundred dif- ficulties which I have promised to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domes- tic misadventures crouding in upon me thick |||||||||| [ 185 ] thick and three-fold, one upon the neck of another, -- a cow broke in (to- morrow morning) to my uncle <2Toby>2's for- tifications, and eat up two ratios and half of dried grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced his horn-work and co- vered way.--<2Trim>2 insists upon being tried by a court-martial,-- the cow to be shot, --<2Slop>2 to be <2crucifix'd>2,--myself to be <2tris- tram'd>2, and at my very baptism made a martyr of ;-- --poor unhappy devils that we all are !--I want swaddling, -- but there is no time to be lost in exclamations. -- I have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle <2Toby>2 in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour, and five and thirty mi- nutes are laps'd already. -- Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in, -- this certainly is the greatest, M 4 for |||||||||| [ 186 ] -- for I have <2Hafen Slawkenbergius>2's folio, Sir, to finish -- a dialogue between my father and my uncle <2Toby>2, upon the solu- tion of <2Prignitz>2, <2Scroderus>2, <2Ambrose Pa- r@aeus>2, <2Ponocrates>2, and <2Grangousier>2 to relate, --a tale out of <2Slawkenbergius>2 to trans- late, and all this in five minutes less, than no time at all ; -- such a head ! -- would to heaven ! my enemies only saw the in- side of it! C H A P. XXXIX. <5T>4 H E R E was not any one scene more entertaining in our family, --and to do it justice in this point ; -- and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the table close beside my ink-horn, on pur- pose to make my declaration to the world concerning this one article, the more so- lemn,-- that I believe in my soul, (un- less |||||||||| [ 187 ] less my love and partiality to my under- standing blinds me) the hand of the su- preme Maker and first Designer of all things, never made or put a family toge- ther, (in that period at least of it, which I have sat down to write the story of) -- where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatic a felicity as ours was, for this end ; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the S<4HANDY-FAMILY>4. Not any one of these was more divert- ing, I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours,-- than what frequently arose out of this self-same chapter of long noses, -- especially when my father's imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would |||||||||| [ 188 ] would serve him but to heat my uncle <2Toby>2's too. My uncle <2Toby>2 would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt ; and with infinite patience would sit smoaking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive <2Prignitz>2 and <2Scroderus>2's solutions into it. Whether they were above my uncle <2Toby>2's reason, --or contrary to it, -- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold, -- or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifica- tions to his seeing clearly into <2Prignitz>2 and <2Scroderus>2's doctrines, -- I say not, -- let school men --scullions, anatomists, and engi- |||||||||| [ 189 ] engineers, fight for it amongst them- selves.-- 'Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had every word of it to translate for the bene- fit of my uncle <2Toby>2, and render out of <2Slawkenbergius>2's <2Latin>2, of which, as he was no great master, his translation was not always of the purest,--and generally least so where 'twas most wanted,-- this naturally open'd a door to a second mis- fortune ; -- that in the warmer paroxisms of his zeal to open my uncle <2Toby>2's eyes -- my father's ideas run on, as much faster than the translation, as the trans- lation outmoved my uncle <2Toby>2's ;-- neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of my father's lecture. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 190 ] C H A P. XL. <5T>5 H E gift of ratiocination and mak- ing syllogisms, --I mean in man, --for in superior classes of beings, such as angels and spirits, -- 'tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by <4INTUITION>4;--and beings inferior, as your worships all know, -- --syllogize by their noses : though there is an island swimming in the sea, though not altogether at its ease, whose inhabitants, if my intel- ligence deceives me not, are so wonder- fully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too : -- but that's neither here nor there-- The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, --or the great and principal act |||||||||| [ 191 ] act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third ; (called the <2medius terminus)>2 just as a man, as <2Locke>2 well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by <2juxta-position>2. Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle <2Toby>2's de- portment,--what great attention he gave to every word,--and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonder- ful seriousness he contemplated the length of it, -- surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb, -- then foreright, -- then this way, and then |||||||||| [ 192 ] then that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings, -- he would have con- cluded my uncle <2Toby>2 had got hold of the <2medius terminus>2 ; and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order as my father laid them before him. This by the bye, was more than my father wanted, -- his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophic lectures, -- was to enable my uncle <2Toby>2 not to <2discuss>2, -- but <2com- prehend>2 -- to <2hold>2 the grains and scru- ples of learning,--not to <2weigh>2 them. -- My uncle <2Toby>2, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other. C H A P. |||||||||| [ 193 ] C H A P. XLI. <5'T>5 IS a pity, cried my father one win- ter's night, after a three hours painful translation of <2Slawkenbergius>2,--'tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mo- ther's thread-paper into the book for a mark, as he spoke -- that truth, bro- ther <2Toby>2, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnessess, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.-- Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle <2Toby>2's fancy, during the time of my father's ex- planation of <2Prignitz>2 to him,-- --having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green ; -- his bo- dy might as well have taken a turn there too, |||||||||| [ 194 ] too,--so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the <2medius terminus>2 -- my uncle <2Toby>2 was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pro's and con's, as if my father had been translating <2Hafen Slawkenbergius>2 from the <2Latin>2 tongue into the <2Cherokee>2. But the word <2siege>2, like a talismanic power, in my father's metaphor, wafting back my uncle <2Toby>2's fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch, -- he open'd his ears, -- and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit, -- my father with great pleasure began his sentence again, -- changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it. 2 'Tis |||||||||| [ 195 ] 'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother <2Toby>2, -- considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.--Can noses be dissolved ? repli- ed my uncle <2Toby>2. -- --My father thrust back his chair, --rose up,--put on his hat, -- took four long strides to the door, -- jerked it open, -- thrust his head half way out, -- shut the door again, -- took no notice of the bad hinge,-- returned to the table, -- pluck'd my mother's thread-paper out of <2Slawkenbergius>2's book, -- went hastily to his bureau, -- walk'd slowly back, twist- ing my mother's thread-paper about his thumb, --unbutton'd his waistcoat, -- threw my mother's thread-paper into the fire, -- bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill'd his mouth with bran, -- confound- ed it ;-- but mark!-- the oath of confu- V
    4. III. N sion |||||||||| [ 196 ] sion was levell'd at my uncle <2Toby>2's brain, --which was e'en confused enough al- ready, -- the curse came charged only with the bran, -- the bran, may it please your honours, --was no more than pow- der to the ball. 'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long ; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on't, and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my father's mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle <2Toby>2's questions. -- Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many dif- ferent places all at one time, -- he could not have exerted more mechanical func- tions in fewer seconds,--or started half so much, |||||||||| [ 197 ] much, as with one single <2qu@aere>2 of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobbyhorsical career. 'Twas all one to my uncle <2Toby>2, -- he smoaked his pipe on, with unvaried com- posure,--his heart never intended offence to his brother, -- and as his head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay, -- he always gave my father the credit of cooling by himself. -- He was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present case. By all that's good ! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and tak- ing the oath out of <2Ernulphus>2's digest of curses,-- (though to do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. <2Slop>2 in the affair of <2Ernulphus>2) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth.) -- By all that's good and great ! brother N 2 <2Toby>2 |||||||||| [ 198 ] <2Toby>2, said my father, if it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do, -- you would put a man beside all temper.--Why, by the <2so- lutions>2 of noses, of which I was telling you, I meant as you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different kinds of know- ledge have given the world, of the causes of short and long noses.--There is no cause but one, replied my uncle <2Toby>2, -- why one man's nose is longer than ano- ther's, but because that God pleases to have it so.--That is <2Grangousier>2's solution, said my father. -- 'Tis he, continued my uncle <2Toby>2, looking up, and not regard- ing my father's interruption, who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom. --'Tis a pious account, cried my |||||||||| [ 199 ] my father, but not philosophical,-- there is more religion in it than sound science. 'Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle <2Toby>2's character, --that he feared God, and reverenced religion. -- So the mo- ment my father finished his remark, -- my uncle <2Toby>2 fell a whistling <2Lillabul- lero>2, with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.-- What is become of my wife's thread- paper ? C H A P. XLII. <5N>5 O matter, -- as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of some consequence to my mother,-- of none to my father, as a mark in <2Slaw- kenbergius>2. <2Slawkenbergius>2 in every page of him was a rich treasury of inexhaustible knowledge to my father, -- he could not open |||||||||| [ 200 ] open him amiss ; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were lost, -- should the wisdom and policies of go- vernments, he would say, through dis- use, ever happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote, or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also, -- and <2Slawkenbergius>2 only left,--there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again. A treasure therefore was he indeed ! an institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else, --at <2matin>2, noon, and vespers was <2Hafen Slawkenber- gius>2 his recreation and delight : 'twas for ever in his hands, -- you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon's prayer- book,--so worn, so glazed, so contrited 4 and |||||||||| [ 201 ] and attrited was it with fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other. I am not such a bigot to <2Slawkenber- gius>2, as my father ; -- there is a fund in him, no doubt ; but in my opinion, the best, I don't say the most profitable, but the most amusing part of <2Hafem Slawkenbergius>2, is his tales, -- and, con- sidering he was a <2German>2, many of them told not without fancy : -- these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad comtaining ten tales.--Philosophy is not built upon tales ; and therefore 'twas certainly wrong in <2Slawkenbergius>2 to send them into the world by that name ;--there are a few of them in his eighth,ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem rather playful and spor- tive, than speculative, -- but in general they |||||||||| [ 202 ] they are to be looked upon by the learn- ed as a detail of so many independent facts, all of them turning round some- how or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and collected by him with great fidelity, and added to his work as so ma- ny illustrations upon the doctrines of noses. As we have leisure enough upon our hands,-- if you give me leave, madam, I'll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad. T<4HE>4 E<4ND OF THE>4 T<4HIRD>4 V<4OLUME>4.