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The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

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Title: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

Author: Laurence Sterne


        
Release date: October 1, 1997 [eBook #1079]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

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Credits: Sue Asscher, Stephen Radcliffe and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN ***

THE
LIFE AND OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN

by Laurence Sterne

Contents

 Volume I.
 Volume II.
 Volume III.
 Volume IV.

Laurence Sterne

Ταράσσει τοὺς Ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ Πράγματα,
Ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν Πραγμάτων Δόγματα.



TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
M r.   P I T T.

S I R,

NEVER poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication,
than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the
kingdom, and in a retir’d thatch’d house, where I live in a constant
endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other
evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man
smiles,——but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this
Fragment of Life.

I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it—(not
under your Protection,—it must protect itself, but)—into the country
with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can
conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain—I shall think myself
as happy as a minister of state;——perhaps much happier than any one
(one only excepted) that I have read or heard of.

_I am, GREAT SIR,
(and, what is more to your Honour)
I am, GOOD SIR,
Your Well-wisher, and
most humble Fellow-subject_,

T H E  A U T H O R.




THE
LIFE and OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

C H A P.   I

I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they
were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about
when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon
what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational
Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and
temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his
mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of
his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions
which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all
this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have
made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the
reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so
inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I
dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from
father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may
take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense,
his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions
and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so
that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a
half-penny matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by
treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road
of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are
once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive
them off it.

_Pray my Dear_, quoth my mother, _have you not forgot to wind up the
clock?—Good G—!_ cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking
care to moderate his voice at the same time,——_Did ever woman, since
the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?_
Pray, what was your father saying?————Nothing.

C H A P. II

———Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see,
either good or bad.——Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very
unseasonable question at least,—because it scattered and dispersed the
animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in
hand with the _HOMUNCULUS_, and conducted him safe to the place
destined for his reception.

The HOMUNCULUS, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may
appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;—to the
eye of reason in scientific research, he stands confess’d—a BEING
guarded and circumscribed with rights.——The minutest philosophers, who
by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being
inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the
HOMUNCULUS is created by the same hand,—engender’d in the same course
of nature,—endow’d with the same loco-motive powers and faculties with
us:—That he consists as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins,
arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands,
genitals, humours, and articulations;—is a Being of as much
activity,—and in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our
fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of _England._—He may be
benefitted,—he may be injured,—he may obtain redress; in a word, he has
all the claims and rights of humanity, which _Tully, Puffendorf_, or
the best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation.

Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way
alone!—or that through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller,
my little Gentleman had got to his journey’s end miserably spent;—his
muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread;—his own animal
spirits ruffled beyond description,—and that in this sad disorder’d
state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series
of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months
together.—I tremble to think what a foundation had been laid for a
thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the
physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly
to rights.

C H A P.   III

TO my uncle Mr. _Toby Shandy_ do I stand indebted for the preceding
anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher,
and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft,
and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my
uncle _Toby_ well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable
obliquity, (as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and
justifying the principles upon which I had done it,—the old gentleman
shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than
reproach,—he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified
in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me,
That I should neither think nor act like any other man’s child:—_But
alas!_ continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a
tear which was trickling down his cheeks, _My Tristram’s misfortunes
began nine months before ever he came into the world._

—My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, but she knew no more than
her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, Mr. _Toby Shandy_, who
had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well.

C H A P. IV

I KNOW there are readers in the world, as well as many other good
people in it, who are no readers at all,—who find themselves ill at
ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of
every thing which concerns you.

It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a
backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I
have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are
likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right,
will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men
whatever,—be no less read than the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ itself—and in
the end, prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays
should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;—I find it
necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must
beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which
cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the
way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in
it, as _Horace_ says, _ab Ovo._

_Horace_, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that
gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;—(I forget
which,) besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. _Horace’s_
pardon;—for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself
neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived.

To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I
can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part
of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, ’tis wrote only for the
curious and inquisitive.

——————Shut the door.—————— I was begot in the night betwixt the first
_Sunday_ and the first _Monday_ in the month of _March_, in the year of
our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I
was.—But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing
which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote
known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better
clearing up this point.

My father, you must know, who was originally a _Turkey_ merchant, but
had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die
upon, his paternal estate in the county of ——, was, I believe, one of
the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of
business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen
of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he
had made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first
_Sunday-night_ of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as
ever the _Sunday-night_ came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we
had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—And being
somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been
speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family
concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my
uncle _Toby_, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no
more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure,
fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me
to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which
have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor
mother could never hear the said clock wound up,——but the thoughts of
some other things unavoidably popped into her head—_& vice
versa:_——Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious _Locke_, who
certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men,
affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of
prejudice whatsoever.

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now
lies upon the table, “That on _Lady-day_, which was on the 25th of the
same month in which I date my geniture,——my father set upon his journey
to _London_, with my eldest brother _Bobby_, to fix him at
_Westminster_ school;” and, as it appears from the same authority,
“That he did not get down to his wife and family till the _second week_
in _May_ following,”—it brings the thing almost to a certainty.
However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it
beyond all possibility of a doubt.

———But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all _December, January_,
and _February?_——Why, Madam,—he was all that time afflicted with a
Sciatica.

C H A P. V

ON the fifth day of _November_, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as
near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have
expected,—was I _Tristram Shandy_, Gentleman, brought forth into this
scurvy and disastrous world of ours.—I wish I had been born in the
Moon, or in any of the planets, (except _Jupiter_ or _Saturn_, because
I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse
with me in any of them (though I will not answer for _Venus_) than it
has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—which, o’ my conscience, with
reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and
clippings of the rest;——not but the planet is well enough, provided a
man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could
any how contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of
dignity or power;——but that is not my case;——and therefore every man
will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;———for which
cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever
was made;—for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my
breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an
asthma I got in scating against the wind in _Flanders;_—I have been the
continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not
wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great
or signal evil;——yet with all the good temper in the world I affirm it
of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner
where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me
with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever
small HERO sustained.

C H A P. VI

IN the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly _when_ I
was born; but I did not inform you _how. No_, that particular was
reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;—besides, Sir, as you and I
are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been
proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself
all at once.

—You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write
not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your
knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the
one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed
farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning
betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in
fault, will terminate in friendship.—_O diem praeclarum!_—then nothing
which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious
in its telling. Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should
think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out—bear
with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:—Or, if I
should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,—or should sometimes
put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass
along,—don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a
little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on,
either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,—only keep
your temper.

C H A P. VII

IN the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a
thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with
the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment
in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own
efforts, and a great deal to those of dame Nature,—had acquired, in her
way, no small degree of reputation in the world:—by which word _world_,
need I in this place inform your worship, that I would be understood to
mean no more of it, than a small circle described upon the circle of
the great world, of four _English_ miles diameter, or thereabouts, of
which the cottage where the good old woman lived is supposed to be the
centre?—She had been left it seems a widow in great distress, with
three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was
at that time a person of decent carriage,—grave deportment,—a woman
moreover of few words and withal an object of compassion, whose
distress, and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly
lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and
having often lamented an inconvenience to which her husband’s flock had
for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no such thing as a
midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case have been
never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding; which
said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to
fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at
all; it came into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a
kindness to the whole parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get
her a little instructed in some of the plain principles of the
business, in order to set her up in it. As no woman thereabouts was
better qualified to execute the plan she had formed than herself, the
gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and having great influence
over the female part of the parish, she found no difficulty in
effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth, the parson join’d
his interest with his wife’s in the whole affair, and in order to do
things as they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law
to practise, as his wife had given by institution,—he cheerfully paid
the fees for the ordinary’s licence himself, amounting in the whole, to
the sum of eighteen shillings and four pence; so that betwixt them
both, the good woman was fully invested in the real and corporal
possession of her office, together with all its _rights, members, and
appurtenances whatsoever._

These last words, you must know, were not according to the old form in
which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, which in like
cases had heretofore been granted to the sisterhood. But it was
according to a neat _Formula_ of _Didius_ his own devising, who having
a particular turn for taking to pieces, and new framing over again all
kind of instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty
amendment, but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in the
neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in order to have this
wham-wham of his inserted.

I own I never could envy _Didius_ in these kinds of fancies of his:—But
every man to his own taste.—Did not Dr. _Kunastrokius_, that great man,
at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing
of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though
he had tweezers always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that, Sir,
have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting _Solomon_
himself,—have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES;—their running
horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their
trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,—their maggots and their
butterflies?—and so long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and
quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get
up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

C H A P. VIII

—_De gustibus non est disputandum;_—that is, there is no disputing
against HOBBY-HORSES; and for my part, I seldom do; nor could I with
any sort of grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; for
happening, at certain intervals and changes of the moon, to be both
fiddler and painter, according as the fly stings:—Be it known to you,
that I keep a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor
do I care who knows it) I frequently ride out and take the air;—though
sometimes, to my shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer journies
than what a wise man would think altogether right.—But the truth is,—I
am not a wise man;—and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in
the world, it is not much matter what I do: so I seldom fret or fume at
all about it: Nor does it much disturb my rest, when I see such great
Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow;—such, for instance, as
my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so on, all
of a row, mounted upon their several horses,—some with large stirrups,
getting on in a more grave and sober pace;——others on the contrary,
tucked up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring
and scampering it away like so many little party-coloured devils
astride a mortgage,—and as if some of them were resolved to break their
necks.——So much the better—say I to myself;—for in case the worst
should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well
without them; and for the rest,——why——God speed them——e’en let them
ride on without opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed
this very night—’tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse
mounted by one half before tomorrow morning.

Not one of these instances therefore can be said to break in upon my
rest.——But there is an instance, which I own puts me off my guard, and
that is, when I see one born for great actions, and what is still more
for his honour, whose nature ever inclines him to good ones;—when I
behold such a one, my Lord, like yourself, whose principles and conduct
are as generous and noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason, a
corrupt world cannot spare one moment;—when I see such a one, my Lord,
mounted, though it is but for a minute beyond the time which my love to
my country has prescribed to him, and my zeal for his glory
wishes,—then, my Lord, I cease to be a philosopher, and in the first
transport of an honest impatience, I wish the HOBBY-HORSE, with all his
fraternity, at the Devil.

    “My Lord,
I MAINTAIN this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its singularity in
the three great essentials of matter, form and place: I beg, therefore,
you will accept it as such, and that you will permit me to lay it, with
the most respectful humility, at your Lordship’s feet—when you are upon
them,—which you can be when you please;—and that is, my Lord, whenever
there is occasion for it, and I will add, to the best purposes too. I
have the honour to be,

_My Lord,
Your Lordship’s most obedient,
and most devoted_,
_and most humble servant_,
TRISTRAM SHANDY.”

C H A P. IX

I SOLEMNLY declare to all mankind, that the above dedication was made
for no one Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate,—Duke, Marquis, Earl,
Viscount, or Baron, of this, or any other Realm in Christendom;——nor
has it yet been hawked about, or offered publicly or privately,
directly or indirectly, to any one person or personage, great or small;
but is honestly a true Virgin-Dedication untried on, upon any soul
living.

I labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any offence or
objection which might arise against it from the manner in which I
propose to make the most of it;—which is the putting it up fairly to
public sale; which I now do.

——Every author has a way of his own in bringing his points to bear;—for
my own part, as I hate chaffering and higgling for a few guineas in a
dark entry;—I resolved within myself, from the very beginning, to deal
squarely and openly with your Great Folks in this affair, and try
whether I should not come off the better by it.

If therefore there is any one Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron,
in these his Majesty’s dominions, who stands in need of a tight,
genteel dedication, and whom the above will suit, (for by the bye,
unless it suits in some degree, I will not part with it)——it is much at
his service for fifty guineas;——which I am positive is twenty guineas
less than it ought to be afforded for, by any man of genius.

My Lord, if you examine it over again, it is far from being a gross
piece of daubing, as some dedications are. The design, your Lordship
sees, is good,—the colouring transparent,—the drawing not amiss;—or to
speak more like a man of science,—and measure my piece in the painter’s
scale, divided into 20,—I believe, my Lord, the outlines will turn out
as 12,—the composition as 9,—the colouring as 6,—the expression 13 and
a half,—and the design,—if I may be allowed, my Lord, to understand my
own _design_, and supposing absolute perfection in designing, to be as
20,—I think it cannot well fall short of 19. Besides all this,—there is
keeping in it, and the dark strokes in the HOBBY-HORSE, (which is a
secondary figure, and a kind of back-ground to the whole) give great
force to the principal lights in your own figure, and make it come off
wonderfully;—and besides, there is an air of originality in the _tout
ensemble._

Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid into the hands of
Mr. _Dodsley_, for the benefit of the author; and in the next edition
care shall be taken that this chapter be expunged, and your Lordship’s
titles, distinctions, arms, and good actions, be placed at the front of
the preceding chapter: All which, from the words, _De gustibus non est
disputandum_, and whatever else in this book relates to HOBBY-HORSES,
but no more, shall stand dedicated to your Lordship.—The rest I
dedicate to the Moon, who, by the bye, of all the PATRONS or MATRONS I
can think of, has most power to set my book a-going, and make the world
run mad after it.

_Bright Goddess_,
If thou art not too busy with CANDID and Miss CUNEGUND’S affairs,—take
_Tristram Shandy’s_ under thy protection also.

C H A P. X

WHATEVER degree of small merit the act of benignity in favour of the
midwife might justly claim, or in whom that claim truly rested,—at
first sight seems not very material to this history;——certain however
it was, that the gentlewoman, the parson’s wife, did run away at that
time with the whole of it: And yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking
but that the parson himself, though he had not the good fortune to hit
upon the design first,—yet, as he heartily concurred in it the moment
it was laid before him, and as heartily parted with his money to carry
it into execution, had a claim to some share of it,—if not to a full
half of whatever honour was due to it.

The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise.

Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to give a probable
guess at the grounds of this procedure.

Be it known then, that, for about five years before the date of the
midwife’s licence, of which you have had so circumstantial an
account,—the parson we have to do with had made himself a country-talk
by a breach of all decorum, which he had committed against himself, his
station, and his office;—and that was in never appearing better, or
otherwise mounted, than upon a lean, sorry, jackass of a horse, value
about one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all description of
him, was full brother to _Rosinante_, as far as similitude congenial
could make him; for he answered his description to a hair-breadth in
every thing,—except that I do not remember ’tis any where said, that
_Rosinante_ was broken-winded; and that, moreover, _Rosinante_, as is
the happiness of most _Spanish_ horses, fat or lean,—was undoubtedly a
horse at all points.

I know very well that the HERO’S horse was a horse of chaste
deportment, which may have given grounds for the contrary opinion: But
it is as certain at the same time that _Rosinante’_s continency (as may
be demonstrated from the adventure of the _Yanguesian_ carriers)
proceeded from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the
temperance and orderly current of his blood.—And let me tell you,
Madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the world, in
behalf of which you could not say more for your life.

Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice to every
creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work,—I could not
stifle this distinction in favour of Don _Quixote’_s horse;——in all
other points, the parson’s horse, I say, was just such another, for he
was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade, as HUMILITY herself
could have bestrided.

In the estimation of here and there a man of weak judgment, it was
greatly in the parson’s power to have helped the figure of this horse
of his,—for he was master of a very handsome demi-peaked saddle,
quilted on the seat with green plush, garnished with a double row of
silver-headed studs, and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a
housing altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging of
black lace, terminating in a deep, black, silk fringe, _poudré
d’or_,—all which he had purchased in the pride and prime of his life,
together with a grand embossed bridle, ornamented at all points as it
should be.——But not caring to banter his beast, he had hung all these
up behind his study door: and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted
him with just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the figure and value
of such a steed might well and truly deserve.

In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring visits
to the gentry who lived around him,—you will easily comprehend, that
the parson, so appointed, would both hear and see enough to keep his
philosophy from rusting. To speak the truth, he never could enter a
village, but he caught the attention of both old and young.——Labour
stood still as he pass’d——the bucket hung suspended in the middle of
the well,—the spinning-wheel forgot its round,——even chuck-farthing and
shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got out of sight; and
as his movement was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough
upon his hands to make his observations,—to hear the groans of the
serious,—and the laughter of the light-hearted; all which he bore with
excellent tranquillity.—His character was,—he loved a jest in his
heart—and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say
he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which
he so strongly saw himself: So that to his friends, who knew his foible
was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in
bantering the extravagance of his humour,—instead of giving the true
cause,—he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as he
never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being
altogether as spare a figure as his beast,—he would sometimes insist
upon it, that the horse was as good as the rider deserved;—that they
were, centaur-like,—both of a piece. At other times, and in other
moods, when his spirits were above the temptation of false wit,—he
would say, he found himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with
great gravity, would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat
horse, without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his
pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not
only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits.

At different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite reasons
for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to
one of mettle;—for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and
meditate as delightfully _de vanitate mundi et fugâ sæculi_, as with
the advantage of a death’s-head before him;—that, in all other
exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along,—to as
much account as in his study;—that he could draw up an argument in his
sermon,—or a hole in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the
other;—that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and
judgment, were two incompatible movements.—But that upon his steed—he
could unite and reconcile every thing,—he could compose his sermon—he
could compose his cough,——and, in case nature gave a call that way, he
could likewise compose himself to sleep.—In short, the parson upon such
encounters would assign any cause but the true cause,—and he with-held
the true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did
honour to him.

But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this
gentleman’s life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle
were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it
what you will,—to run into the opposite extreme.—In the language of the
county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and
generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his
stable always ready for saddling: and as the nearest midwife, as I told
you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile
country,—it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week
together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was
not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more
distressful than the last;—as much as he loved his beast, he had never
a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this; that his
horse was either clapp’d, or spavin’d, or greaz’d;—or he was
twitter-bon’d, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had
befallen him, which would let him carry no flesh;—so that he had every
nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,—and a good horse to
purchase in his stead.

What the loss in such a balance might amount to, _communibus annis_, I
would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffick, to
determine;—but let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it
for many years without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill
accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under
consideration; and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his
mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expences, but
withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other
act of generosity in his parish: Besides this, he considered that with
half the sum thus galloped away, he could do ten times as much
good;—and what still weighed more with him than all other
considerations put together, was this, that it confined all his charity
into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least
wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his
parish; reserving nothing for the impotent,—nothing for the
aged,—nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called
forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness and affliction dwelt
together.

For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and there
appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it;—and
these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his
steed upon any application whatever,—or else be content to ride the
last poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and
infirmities, to the very end of the chapter.

As he dreaded his own constancy in the first—he very chearfully betook
himself to the second; and though he could very well have explained it,
as I said, to his honour,—yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit
above it; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the
laughter of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story,
which might seem a panegyrick upon himself.

I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this
reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I
think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight
of _La Mancha_, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more,
and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the
greatest hero of antiquity.

But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in view was to
shew the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.—For you must
know, that so long as this explanation would have done the parson
credit,—the devil a soul could find it out,—I suppose his enemies would
not, and that his friends could not.——But no sooner did he bestir
himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expences of the
ordinary’s licence to set her up,—but the whole secret came out; every
horse he had lost, and two horses more than ever he had lost, with all
the circumstances of their destruction, were known and distinctly
remembered.—The story ran like wild-fire.—“The parson had a returning
fit of pride which had just seized him; and he was going to be well
mounted once again in his life; and if it was so, ’twas plain as the
sun at noon-day, he would pocket the expence of the licence ten times
told, the very first year:—So that every body was left to judge what
were his views in this act of charity.”

What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,—or
rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other
people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own,
and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound
asleep.

About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made
entirely easy upon that score,—it being just so long since he left his
parish,—and the whole world at the same time behind him,—and stands
accountable to a Judge of whom he will have no cause to complain.

But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: Order them as
they will, they pass thro’ a certain medium, which so twists and
refracts them from their true directions——that, with all the titles to
praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are
nevertheless forced to live and die without it.

Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful example.——But to
know by what means this came to pass,—and to make that knowledge of use
to you, I insist upon it that you read the two following chapters,
which contain such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry
its moral along with it.—When this is done, if nothing stops us in our
way, we will go on with the midwife.

C H A P. XI

Yorick was this parson’s name, and, what is very remarkable in it, (as
appears from a most ancient account of the family, wrote upon strong
vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt
for near,—I was within an ace of saying nine hundred years;——but I
would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however
indisputable in itself,——and therefore I shall content myself with only
saying——It had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or
transposition of a single letter, for I do not know how long; which is
more than I would venture to say of one half of the best surnames in
the kingdom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone as
many chops and changes as their owners.—Has this been owing to the
pride, or to the shame of the respective proprietors?—In honest truth,
I think sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the
temptation has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day
so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to
stand up and swear, “That his own great grandfather was the man who did
either this or that.”

This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of
the _Yorick’_s family, and their religious preservation of these
records I quote, which do farther inform us, That the family was
originally of _Danish_ extraction, and had been transplanted into
England as early as in the reign of _Horwendillus_, king of _Denmark_,
in whose court, it seems, an ancestor of this Mr. _Yorick_’s, and from
whom he was lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of
his death. Of what nature this considerable post was, this record saith
not;—it only adds, That, for near two centuries, it had been totally
abolished, as altogether unnecessary, not only in that court, but in
every other court of the Christian world.

It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than
that of the king’s chief Jester;—and that _Hamlet_’s _Yorick_, in our
_Shakespeare_, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon
authenticated facts, was certainly the very man.

I have not the time to look into _Saxo-Grammaticus_’s _Danish_ history,
to know the certainty of this;—but if you have leisure, and can easily
get at the book, you may do it full as well yourself.

I had just time, in my travels through _Denmark_ with Mr. _Noddy_’s
eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as governor, riding
along with him at a prodigious rate thro’ most parts of Europe, and of
which original journey performed by us two, a most delectable narrative
will be given in the progress of this work. I had just time, I say, and
that was all, to prove the truth of an observation made by a long
sojourner in that country;——namely, “That nature was neither very
lavish, nor was she very stingy in her gifts of genius and capacity to
its inhabitants;—but, like a discreet parent, was moderately kind to
them all; observing such an equal tenor in the distribution of her
favours, as to bring them, in those points, pretty near to a level with
each other; so that you will meet with few instances in that kingdom of
refined parts; but a great deal of good plain houshold understanding
amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a share;” which
is, I think, very right.

With us, you see, the case is quite different:—we are all ups and downs
in this matter;—you are a great genius;—or ’tis fifty to one, Sir, you
are a great dunce and a blockhead;—not that there is a total want of
intermediate steps,—no,—we are not so irregular as that comes to;—but
the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this
unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this
kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more
so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to _Yorick_’s
extraction, who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts
I could ever get of him, seemed not to have had one single drop of
_Danish_ blood in his whole crasis; in nine hundred years, it might
possibly have all run out:——I will not philosophize one moment with you
about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:—That instead of
that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would
have looked for, in one so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as
mercurial and sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in
all his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and _gaité de cœur_
about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put
together. With all this sail, poor _Yorick_ carried not one ounce of
ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of
twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a
romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon his first setting
out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul
ten times in a day of somebody’s tackling; and as the grave and more
slow-paced were oftenest in his way,——you may likewise imagine, ’twas
with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled. For
aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom
of such _Fracas:_——For, to speak the truth, _Yorick_ had an invincible
dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity;—not to gravity as
such;—for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or
serious of mortal men for days and weeks together;—but he was an enemy
to the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it
appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly: and then, whenever it
fell in his way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it
much quarter.

Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was
an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind
too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest,
well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in
one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In
the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was
no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was
design, and consequently deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of
the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that,
with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what
a _French_ wit had long ago defined it,—_viz. A mysterious carriage of
the body to cover the defects of the mind;_—which definition of
gravity, _Yorick_, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be
wrote in letters of gold.

But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised in the
world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other
subject of discourse where policy is wont to impress restraint.
_Yorick_ had no impression but one, and that was what arose from the
nature of the deed spoken of; which impression he would usually
translate into plain _English_ without any periphrasis;—and too oft
without much distinction of either person, time, or place;—so that when
mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding——he never
gave himself a moment’s time to reflect who was the hero of the
piece,——what his station,——or how far he had power to hurt him
hereafter;—but if it was a dirty action,—without more ado,—The man was
a dirty fellow,—and so on.—And as his comments had usually the ill fate
to be terminated either in a _bon mot_, or to be enlivened throughout
with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to _Yorick_’s
indiscretion. In a word, tho’ he never sought, yet, at the same time,
as he seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and
without much ceremony;——he had but too many temptations in life, of
scattering his wit and his humour,—his gibes and his jests about
him.——They were not lost for want of gathering.

What were the consequences, and what was _Yorick_’s catastrophe
thereupon, you will read in the next chapter.

C H A P. XII

THE _Mortgager_ and _Mortgagee_ differ the one from the other, not more
in length of purse, than the _Jester_ and _Jestee_ do, in that of
memory. But in this the comparison between them runs, as the scholiasts
call it, upon all-four; which, by the bye, is upon one or two legs more
than some of the best of _Homer_’s can pretend to;—namely, That the one
raises a sum, and the other a laugh at your expence, and thinks no more
about it. Interest, however, still runs on in both cases;—the
periodical or accidental payments of it, just serving to keep the
memory of the affair alive; till, at length, in some evil hour, pop
comes the creditor upon each, and by demanding principal upon the spot,
together with full interest to the very day, makes them both feel the
full extent of their obligations.

As the reader (for I hate your _ifs_) has a thorough knowledge of human
nature, I need not say more to satisfy him, that my HERO could not go
on at this rate without some slight experience of these incidental
mementos. To speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a
multitude of small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding
_Eugenius_’s frequent advice, he too much disregarded; thinking, that
as not one of them was contracted thro’ any malignancy;—but, on the
contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere jocundity of humour, they
would all of them be cross’d out in course.

_Eugenius_ would never admit this; and would often tell him, that one
day or other he would certainly be reckoned with; and he would often
add, in an accent of sorrowful apprehension,—to the uttermost mite. To
which _Yorick_, with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often
answer with a pshaw!—and if the subject was started in the fields,—with
a hop, skip, and a jump at the end of it; but if close pent up in the
social chimney-corner, where the culprit was barricado’d in, with a
table and a couple of arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a
tangent,—_Eugenius_ would then go on with his lecture upon discretion
in words to this purpose, though somewhat better put together.

Trust me, dear _Yorick_, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or
later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit can
extricate thee out of.——In these sallies, too oft, I see, it happens,
that a person laughed at, considers himself in the light of a person
injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and
when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckons up his friends,
his family, his kindred and allies,——and musters up with them the many
recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger;—’tis
no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes,—thou hast
got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm
of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou
wilt never be convinced it is so.

I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least
spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies—I believe
and know them to be truly honest and sportive:—But consider, my dear
lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and
thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make
merry with the other:——whenever they associate for mutual defence,
depend upon it, they will carry on the war in such a manner against
thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily sick of it, and of thy
life too.

Revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at
thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set
right.——The fortunes of thy house shall totter,—thy character, which
led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it,—thy faith
questioned,—thy works belied,—thy wit forgotten,—thy learning trampled
on. To wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, CRUELTY and COWARDICE,
twin ruffians, hired and set on by MALICE in the dark, shall strike
together at all thy infirmities and mistakes:——The best of us, my dear
lad, lie open there,——and trust me,——trust me, _Yorick, when to gratify
a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an
helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy matter to pick up
sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to
offer it up with._

_Yorick_ scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his destiny read
over to him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory
look attending it, that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride
his tit with more sobriety.—But, alas, too late!—a grand confederacy
with ***** and ***** at the head of it, was formed before the first
prediction of it.—The whole plan of the attack, just as _Eugenius_ had
foreboded, was put in execution all at once,—with so little mercy on
the side of the allies,—and so little suspicion in _Yorick_, of what
was carrying on against him,—that when he thought, good easy man! full
surely preferment was o’ripening,—they had smote his root, and then he
fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him.

_Yorick_, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some
time; till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the
calamities of the war,—but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which
it was carried on,—he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his
spirits in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was
generally thought, quite broken-hearted.

What inclined _Eugenius_ to the same opinion was as follows:

A few hours before _Yorick_ breathed his last, _Eugenius_ stept in with
an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his
drawing _Yorick_’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, _Yorick_
looking up in his face took hold of his hand,—and after thanking him
for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it
was their fate to meet hereafter,—he would thank him again and
again,—he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the
slip for ever.—I hope not, answered _Eugenius_, with tears trickling
down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke.—I
hope not, _Yorick_, said he.——_Yorick_ replied, with a look up, and a
gentle squeeze of _Eugenius_’s hand, and that was all,—but it cut
_Eugenius_ to his heart.—Come,—come, _Yorick_, quoth _Eugenius_, wiping
his eyes, and summoning up the man within him,—my dear lad, be
comforted,—let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this
crisis when thou most wants them;——who knows what resources are in
store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee!——_Yorick_ laid
his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head;—For my part,
continued _Eugenius_, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,—I
declare I know not, _Yorick_, how to part with thee, and would gladly
flatter my hopes, added _Eugenius_, chearing up his voice, that there
is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, and that I may live to
see it.—I beseech thee, _Eugenius_, quoth _Yorick_, taking off his
night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,—his right being still
grasped close in that of _Eugenius_,—I beseech thee to take a view of
my head.—I see nothing that ails it, replied _Eugenius._ Then, alas! my
friend, said _Yorick_, let me tell you, that ’tis so bruised and
mis-shapened with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others have
so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might say with _Sancho
Pança_, that should I recover, and “Mitres thereupon be suffered to
rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit
it.”——_Yorick_’s last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready
to depart as he uttered this:——yet still it was uttered with something
of a _Cervantick_ tone;——and as he spoke it, _Eugenius_ could perceive
a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;——faint
picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as _Shakespeare_ said of
his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar!

_Eugenius_ was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was
broke: he squeezed his hand,——and then walked softly out of the room,
weeping as he walked. _Yorick_ followed _Eugenius_ with his eyes to the
door,—he then closed them, and never opened them more.

tombstone

He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of ———,
under a plain marble slab, which his friend _Eugenius_, by leave of his
executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of
inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy.

Alas, poor YORICK!

Ten times a day has _Yorick_’s ghost the consolation to hear his
monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive
tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him;——a foot-way
crossing the church-yard close by the side of his grave,—not a
passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it,—and sighing
as he walks on,

Alas, poor YORICK!

C H A P. XIII

IT is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted
from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him,
merely to put him in mind that there is such a body still in the world,
and whom, upon the best judgment I can form upon my own plan at
present, I am going to introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh
matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall out betwixt
the reader and myself, which may require immediate dispatch;——’twas
right to take care that the poor woman should not be lost in the mean
time;—because when she is wanted, we can no way do without her.

I think I told you that this good woman was a person of no small note
and consequence throughout our whole village and township;—that her
fame had spread itself to the very out-edge and circumference of that
circle of importance, of which kind every soul living, whether he has a
shirt to his back or no,——has one surrounding him;—which said circle,
by the way, whenever ’tis said that such a one is of great weight and
importance in the _world_,——I desire may be enlarged or contracted in
your worship’s fancy, in a compound ratio of the station, profession,
knowledge, abilities, height and depth (measuring both ways) of the
personage brought before you.

In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four or five
miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish, but extended
itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets in the skirts of the
next parish; which made a considerable thing of it. I must add, That
she was, moreover, very well looked on at one large grange-house, and
some other odd houses and farms within two or three miles, as I said,
from the smoke of her own chimney:——But I must here, once for all,
inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d
in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other
pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of the
twentieth volume,—not to swell the work,—I detest the thought of such a
thing;—but by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to
such passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be either
of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my
life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the
meaning of the word) by all the _world_;——which, betwixt you and me,
and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in _Great Britain_, and of
all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the
contrary,—I am determined shall be the case.—I need not tell your
worship, that all this is spoke in confidence.

C H A P. XIV

UPON looking into my mother’s marriage settlement, in order to satisfy
myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we
could proceed any farther in this history;—I had the good fortune to
pop upon the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half
straight forwards,—it might have taken me up a month;—which shews
plainly, that when a man sits down to write a history,—tho’ it be but
the history of _Jack Hickathrift_ or _Tom Thumb_, he knows no more than
his heels what lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his
way,—or what a dance he may be led, by one excursion or another, before
all is over. Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a
muleteer drives on his mule,—straight forward;——for instance, from
_Rome_ all the way to _Loretto_, without ever once turning his head
aside, either to the right hand or to the left,——he might venture to
foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s end;——but
the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the
least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to
make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways
avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually
soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at
than he can fly; he will moreover have various
    Accounts to reconcile:
    Anecdotes to pick up:
    Inscriptions to make out:
    Stories to weave in:
    Traditions to sift:
    Personages to call upon:
    Panegyricks to paste up at this door;

Pasquinades at that:——All which both the man and his mule are quite
exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be
look’d into, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies,
which justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:——In
short there is no end of it;——for my own part, I declare I have been at
it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could,—and am not
yet born:—I have just been able, and that’s all, to tell you _when_ it
happen’d, but not _how_;—so that you see the thing is yet far from
being accomplished.

These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no conception of when I
first set out;—but which, I am convinced now, will rather increase than
diminish as I advance,—have struck out a hint which I am resolved to
follow;——and that is,—not to be in a hurry;—but to go on leisurely,
writing and publishing two volumes of my life every year;——which, if I
am suffered to go on quietly, and can make a tolerable bargain with my
bookseller, I shall continue to do as long as I live.

C H A P. XV

THE article in my mother’s marriage-settlement, which I told the reader
I was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it,
I think proper to lay before him,—is so much more fully express’d in
the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be
barbarity to take it out of the lawyer’s hand:—It is as follows.

“And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said _Walter Shandy_,
merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had,
and, by God’s blessing, to be well and truly solemnized and consummated
between the said _Walter Shandy_ and _Elizabeth Mollineux_ aforesaid,
and divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him
thereunto specially moving,—doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent,
conclude, bargain, and fully agree to and with _John Dixon_, and _James
Turner_, Esqrs. the above-named Trustees, &c. &c.—to wit,—That in case
it should hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to
pass,—That the said _Walter Shandy_, merchant, shall have left off
business before the time or times, that the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_
shall, according to the course of nature, or otherwise, have left off
bearing and bringing forth children;—and that, in consequence of the
said _Walter Shandy_ having so left off business, he shall in despight,
and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said
_Elizabeth Mollineux_,—make a departure from the city of _London_, in
order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at _Shandy Hall_, in the
county of ——, or at any other country-seat, castle, hall,
mansion-house, messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter
to be purchased, or upon any part or parcel thereof:—That then, and as
often as the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_ shall happen to be enceint with
child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon
the body of the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, during her said
coverture,—he the said _Walter Shandy_ shall, at his own proper cost
and charges, and out of his own proper monies, upon good and reasonable
notice, which is hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said
_Elizabeth Mollineux_’s full reckoning, or time of supposed and
computed delivery,—pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of one hundred and
twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to _John Dixon_, and _James
Turner_, Esqrs. or assigns,—upon TRUST and confidence, and for and unto
the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose following:—That is to
say,—That the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid
into the hands of the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, or to be otherwise
applied by them the said Trustees, for the well and truly hiring of one
coach, with able and sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of
the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, and the child or children which she
shall be then and there enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of
_London_; and for the further paying and defraying of all other
incidental costs, charges, and expences whatsoever,—in and about, and
for, and relating to, her said intended delivery and lying-in, in the
said city or suburbs thereof. And that the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_
shall and may, from time to time, and at all such time and times as are
here covenanted and agreed upon,—peaceably and quietly hire the said
coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and regress throughout
her journey, in and from the said coach, according to the tenor, true
intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let, suit, trouble,
disturbance, molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture, eviction,
vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.—And that it shall
moreover be lawful to and for the said _Elizabeth Mollineux_, from time
to time, and as oft or often as she shall well and truly be advanced in
her said pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipulated and agreed
upon,—to live and reside in such place or places, and in such family or
families, and with such relations, friends, and other persons within
the said city of _London_, as she at her own will and pleasure,
notwithstanding her present coverture, and as if she was a _femme sole_
and unmarried,—shall think fit.—And this Indenture further witnesseth,
That for the more effectually carrying of the said covenant into
execution, the said _Walter Shandy_, merchant, doth hereby grant,
bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said _John Dixon_, and
_James Turner_, Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and assigns, in their
actual possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of bargain and
sale for a year to them the said _John Dixon_, and _James Turner_,
Esqrs. by him the said _Walter Shandy_, merchant, thereof made; which
said bargain and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the
date of these presents, and by force and virtue of the statute for
transferring of uses into possession,—All that the manor and lordship
of _Shandy_, in the county of ——, with all the rights, members, and
appurtenances thereof; and all and every the messuages, houses,
buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts,
garths, cottages, lands, meadows, feedings, pastures, marshes, commons,
woods, underwoods, drains, fisheries, waters, and
water-courses;—together with all rents, reversions, services,
annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of frankpledge, escheats,
reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and chattels of felons and fugitives,
felons of themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and
all other royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions,
privileges and hereditaments whatsoever.—And also the advowson,
donation, presentation, and free disposition of the rectory or
parsonage of _Shandy_ aforesaid, and all and every the tenths, tythes,
glebe-lands.”——In three words,——“My mother was to lay in, (if she chose
it) in _London._”

But in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair play on the
part of my mother, which a marriage-article of this nature too
manifestly opened a door to, and which indeed had never been thought of
at all, but for my uncle _Toby Shandy_;—a clause was added in security
of my father which was this:—“That in case my mother hereafter should,
at any time, put my father to the trouble and expence of a _London_
journey, upon false cries and tokens;——that for every such instance,
she should forfeit all the right and title which the covenant gave her
to the next turn;——but to no more,—and so on, _toties quoties_, in as
effectual a manner, as if such a covenant betwixt them had not been
made.”—This, by the way, was no more than what was reasonable;—and yet,
as reasonable as it was, I have ever thought it hard that the whole
weight of the article should have fallen entirely, as it did, upon
myself.

But I was begot and born to misfortunes;—for my poor mother, whether it
was wind or water—or a compound of both,—or neither;—or whether it was
simply the mere swell of imagination and fancy in her;—or how far a
strong wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment;—in
short, whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way
becomes me to decide. The fact was this, That in the latter end of
September 1717, which was the year before I was born, my mother having
carried my father up to town much against the grain,—he peremptorily
insisted upon the clause;—so that I was doom’d, by marriage-articles,
to have my nose squeez’d as flat to my face, as if the destinies had
actually spun me without one.

How this event came about,—and what a train of vexatious
disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from
the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single member,—shall
be laid before the reader all in due time.

C H A P. XVI

MY father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother
into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty
or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze
himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he
said might every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him
more than every thing else was, the provoking time of the year,—which,
as I told you, was towards the end of _September_, when his wall-fruit
and green gages especially, in which he was very curious, were just
ready for pulling:——“Had he been whistled up to _London_, upon a _Tom
Fool_’s errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not
have said three words about it.”

For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy
blow he had sustain’d from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had
fully reckon’d upon in his mind, and register’d down in his
pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case _Bobby_ should
fail him. “The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a
wise man, than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put
together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,——he did not mind it a
rush.”

From _Stilton_, all the way to _Grantham_, nothing in the whole affair
provoked him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish
figure they should both make at church, the first _Sunday_;——of which,
in the satirical vehemence of his wit, now sharpen’d a little by
vexation, he would give so many humorous and provoking
descriptions,—and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights
and attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;—that my mother
declared, these two stages were so truly tragi-comical, that she did
nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one end to the other of
them all the way.

From _Grantham_, till they had cross’d the _Trent_, my father was out
of all kind of patience at the vile trick and imposition which he
fancied my mother had put upon him in this affair—“Certainly,” he would
say to himself, over and over again, “the woman could not be deceived
herself——if she could,——“what weakness!”—tormenting word!—which led his
imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play’d the duce
and all with him;——for sure as ever the word _weakness_ was uttered,
and struck full upon his brain—so sure it set him upon running
divisions upon how many kinds of weaknesses there were;——that there was
such a thing as weakness of the body,——as well as weakness of the
mind,—and then he would do nothing but syllogize within himself for a
stage or two together, How far the cause of all these vexations might,
or might not, have arisen out of himself.

In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out
of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose
up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an
uneasy journey of it down.——In a word, as she complained to my uncle
_Toby_, he would have tired out the patience of any flesh alive.

C H A P. XVII

THOUGH my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none of the
best of moods,—pshawing and pishing all the way down,—yet he had the
complaisance to keep the worst part of the story still to
himself;—which was the resolution he had taken of doing himself the
justice, which my uncle _Toby_’s clause in the marriage-settlement
empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which I was begot,
which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of
his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a little
chagrin’d and out of temper,——took occasion as they lay chatting
gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to come,——to let her
know that she must accommodate herself as well as she could to the
bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in
of her next child in the country, to balance the last year’s journey.

My father was a gentleman of many virtues,—but he had a strong spice of
that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.—’Tis
known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in
a bad one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew ’twas
to no purpose to make any remonstrance,—so she e’en resolved to sit
down quietly, and make the most of it.

C H A P. XVIII

AS the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my
mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures
accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or
thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the
midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week
was well got round, as the famous Dr. _Manningham_ was not to be had,
she had come to a final determination in her mind,——notwithstanding
there was a scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of
us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings book upon
the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the
blunders of the sisterhood itself,——but had likewise super-added many
curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus in cross
births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into
the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely
determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul’s hand but
this old woman’s only.—Now this I like;——when we cannot get at the very
thing we wish——never to take up with the next best in degree to it:—no;
that’s pitiful beyond description;—it is no more than a week from this
very day, in which I am now writing this book for the edification of
the world;—which is _March_ 9, 1759,——that my dear, dear _Jenny_,
observing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of
five-and-twenty shillings a yard,—told the mercer, she was sorry she
had given him so much trouble;—and immediately went and bought herself
a yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard.—’Tis the duplication of one and
the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the honour of it,
somewhat, in my mother’s case, was, that she could not heroine it into
so violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation might have
wished, because the old midwife had really some little claim to be
depended upon,—as much, at least, as success could give her; having, in
the course of her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought
every mother’s son of them into the world without any one slip or
accident which could fairly be laid to her account.

These facts, tho’ they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy
some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father’s spirits
in relation to this choice.—To say nothing of the natural workings of
humanity and justice—or of the yearnings of parental and connubial
love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible
in a case of this kind;——he felt himself concerned in a particular
manner, that all should go right in the present case;—from the
accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and
child in lying-in at _Shandy-Hall_.——He knew the world judged by
events, and would add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by
loading him with the whole blame of it.——“Alas o’day;—had Mrs.
_Shandy_, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just
to lye-in and come down again;—which they say, she begged and prayed
for upon her bare knees,——and which, in my opinion, considering the
fortune which Mr. _Shandy_ got with her,—was no such mighty matter to
have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been
alive at this hour.”

This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;—and yet, it was not
merely to shelter himself,—nor was it altogether for the care of his
offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this
point;—my father had extensive views of things,——and stood moreover, as
he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread
he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to.

He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had
unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen
_Elizabeth_’s reign down to his own time, that the current of men and
money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,—set
in so strong,—as to become dangerous to our civil rights,—though, by
the bye,——a _current_ was not the image he took most delight in,—a
_distemper_ was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down
into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the same in
the body national as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits
were driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways
down;——a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both
cases.

There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by
_French_ politicks or _French_ invasions;——nor was he so much in pain
of a consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated
humours in our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was
imagined;—but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go
off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;—and then he would say, _The Lord
have mercy upon us all._

My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,—without
the remedy along with it.

“Was I an absolute prince,” he would say, pulling up his breeches with
both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, “I would appoint able
judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of
every fool’s business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid
hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home,
and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer’s
sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from
constable to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of
their legal settlements. By this means I shall take care, that my
metropolis totter’d not thro’ its own weight;—that the head be no
longer too big for the body;—that the extremes, now wasted and pinn’d
in, be restored to their due share of nourishment, and regain with it
their natural strength and beauty:—I would effectually provide, That
the meadows and corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and
sing;—that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such
weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of
my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now
taking from them.”

“Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen’s seats,” he would ask,
with some emotion, as he walked across the room, “throughout so many
delicious provinces in _France_? Whence is it that the few remaining
_Chateaus_ amongst them are so dismantled,—so unfurnished, and in so
ruinous and desolate a condition?——Because, Sir” (he would say) “in
that kingdom no man has any country-interest to support;—the little
interest of any kind which any man has any where in it, is concentrated
in the court, and the looks of the Grand Monarch: by the sunshine of
whose countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every _French_
man lives or dies.”

Another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to guard
against the least evil accident in my mother’s lying-in in the
country,——was, That any such instance would infallibly throw a balance
of power, too great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in
his own, or higher stations;——which, with the many other usurped rights
which that part of the constitution was hourly establishing,—would, in
the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick government
established in the first creation of things by God.

In this point he was entirely of Sir _Robert Filmer_’s opinion, That
the plans and institutions of the greatest monarchies in the eastern
parts of the world, were, originally, all stolen from that admirable
pattern and prototype of this houshold and paternal power;—which, for a
century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into a
mix’d government;——the form of which, however desirable in great
combinations of the species,——was very troublesome in small ones,—and
seldom produced any thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.

For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,—my father was
for having the man-midwife by all means,—my mother, by no means. My
father begg’d and intreated, she would for once recede from her
prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;—my
mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to
choose for herself,—and have no mortal’s help but the old woman’s.—What
could my father do? He was almost at his wit’s end;——talked it over
with her in all moods;—placed his arguments in all lights;—argued the
matter with her like a christian,—like a heathen,—like a husband,—like
a father,—like a patriot,—like a man:—My mother answered every thing
only like a woman; which was a little hard upon her;—for as she could
not assume and fight it out behind such a variety of characters,—’twas
no fair match:—’twas seven to one.—What could my mother do?—She had the
advantage (otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small
reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and
enabled her to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an
advantage,——that both sides sung _Te Deum._ In a word, my mother was to
have the old woman,—and the operator was to have licence to drink a
bottle of wine with my father and my uncle _Toby Shandy_ in the back
parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas.

I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in
the breast of my fair reader;—and it is this,——Not to take it
absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which I have
dropp’d in it,——“That I am a married man.”—I own, the tender
appellation of my dear, dear _Jenny_,—with some other strokes of
conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally
enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a
determination against me.—All I plead for, in this case, Madam, is
strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to
yourself,—as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till
you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at present can be
produced against me.—Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam,
as to desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear _Jenny_ is
my kept mistress;—no,—that would be flattering my character in the
other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has
no kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, for
some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth,
should know how this matter really stands.—It is not impossible, but
that my dear, dear _Jenny!_ tender as the appellation is, may be my
child.—Consider,—I was born in the year eighteen.—Nor is there any
thing unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that my dear _Jenny_
may be my friend.—Friend!—My friend.—Surely, Madam, a friendship
between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without———Fy! Mr.
_Shandy:_—Without any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious
sentiment which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference
of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of
the best _French_ Romances;—it will really, Madam, astonish you to see
with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment,
which I have the honour to speak of, is dress’d out.

C H A P. XIX

I WOULD sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry,
than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father’s great
good sense,——knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious
too in philosophy,—wise also in political reasoning,—and in polemical
(as he will find) no way ignorant,—could be capable of entertaining a
notion in his head, so out of the common track,—that I fear the reader,
when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a cholerick
temper, will immediatly throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh
most heartily at it;—and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he
will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant;
and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of christian
names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what
superficial minds were capable of conceiving.

His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of
magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly
impressed upon our characters and conduct.

The hero of _Cervantes_ argued not the point with more
seriousness,——nor had he more faith,——or more to say on the powers of
necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,—or on DULCINEA’s name, in
shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of TRISMEGISTUS
or ARCHIMEDES, on the one hand—or of NYKY and SIMKIN on the other. How
many CÆSARS and POMPEYS, he would say, by mere inspiration of the
names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many, he would add,
are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not
their characters and spirits been totally depressed and NICODEMUS’D
into nothing?

I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened) my father
would say—that you do not heartily subscribe to this opinion of
mine,—which, to those, he would add, who have not carefully sifted it
to the bottom,—I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning
in it;——and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character,
I am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you,
not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal
upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this
matter;——you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of
education as most men;—and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into
you,—of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely
because it wants friends. Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and
open temper you have so much to expect.—Your BILLY, Sir!—would you, for
the world, have called him JUDAS?—Would you, my dear Sir, he would say,
laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,—and in
that soft and irresistible _piano_ of voice, which the nature of the
_argumentum ad hominem_ absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a _Jew_
of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you
his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration
of him?——O my God! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper
right, Sir,—you are incapable of it;——you would have trampled upon the
offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter’s head with
abhorrence.

Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with that
generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole transaction,
is really noble;—and what renders it more so, is the principle of
it;—the workings of a parent’s love upon the truth and conviction of
this very hypothesis, namely, That was your son called JUDAS,—the
forbid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have
accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made a
miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example.

I never knew a man able to answer this argument.—But, indeed, to speak
of my father as he was;—he was certainly irresistible;—both in his
orations and disputations;—he was born an
orator;—Θεοδίδακτος.—Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of
Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him,—and, withal, he had so
shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent,——that
NATURE might have stood up and said,—“This man is eloquent.”—In short,
whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the question, ’twas
hazardous in either case to attack him.—And yet, ’tis strange, he had
never read _Cicero_, nor _Quintilian de Oratore_, nor _Isocrates_, nor
_Aristotle_, nor _Longinus_, amongst the antients;—nor _Vossius_, nor
_Skioppius_, nor _Ramus_, nor _Farnaby_, amongst the moderns;—and what
is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or
spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon
_Crackenthorp_ or _Burgersdicius_ or any _Dutch_ logician or
commentator;—he knew not so much as in what the difference of an
argument _ad ignorantiam_, and an argument _ad hominem_ consisted; so
that I well remember, when he went up along with me to enter my name at
_Jesus College_ in ****,—it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy
tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society,—that a man who
knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able to work
after that fashion with them.

To work with them in the best manner he could, was what my father was,
however, perpetually forced upon;——for he had a thousand little
sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend——most of which notions,
I verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and
of a _vive la Bagatelle_; and as such he would make merry with them for
half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss
them till another day.

I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the
progress and establishment of my father’s many odd opinions,—but as a
warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such
guests, who, after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years,
into our brains,—at length claim a kind of settlement there,——working
sometimes like yeast;—but more generally after the manner of the gentle
passion, beginning in jest,—but ending in downright earnest.

Whether this was the case of the singularity of my father’s notions—or
that his judgment, at length, became the dupe of his wit;—or how far,
in many of his notions, he might, though odd, be absolutely right;—the
reader, as he comes at them, shall decide. All that I maintain here,
is, that in this one, of the influence of christian names, however it
gained footing, he was serious;—he was all uniformity;—he was
systematical, and, like all systematic reasoners, he would move both
heaven and earth, and twist and torture every thing in nature to
support his hypothesis. In a word I repeat it over again;—he was
serious;—and, in consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience
whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have known
better,——as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed
upon their child,—or more so, than in the choice of _Ponto_ or _Cupid_
for their puppy-dog.

This, he would say, look’d ill;—and had, moreover, this particular
aggravation in it, viz. That when once a vile name was wrongfully or
injudiciously given, ’twas not like the case of a man’s character,
which, when wrong’d, might hereafter be cleared;——and, possibly, some
time or other, if not in the man’s life, at least after his death,—be,
somehow or other, set to rights with the world: But the injury of this,
he would say, could never be undone;—nay, he doubted even whether an
act of parliament could reach it:——He knew as well as you, that the
legislature assumed a power over surnames;—but for very strong reasons,
which he could give, it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a
step farther.

It was observable, that tho’ my father, in consequence of this opinion,
had, as I have told you, the strongest likings and dislikings towards
certain names;—that there were still numbers of names which hung so
equally in the balance before him, that they were absolutely
indifferent to him. _Jack, Dick_, and _Tom_ were of this class: These
my father called neutral names;—affirming of them, without a satire,
That there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and
good men, since the world began, who had indifferently borne them;—so
that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary
directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other’s effects;
for which reason, he would often declare, He would not give a
cherry-stone to choose amongst them. _Bob_, which was my brother’s
name, was another of these neutral kinds of christian names, which
operated very little either way; and as my father happen’d to be at
_Epsom_, when it was given him,—he would oft-times thank Heaven it was
no worse. _Andrew_ was something like a negative quantity in Algebra
with him;—’twas worse, he said, than nothing.—_William_ stood pretty
high:——_Numps_ again was low with him:—and _Nick_, he said, was the
DEVIL.

But of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion
for TRISTRAM;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of
any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in
_rerum natura_, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the
midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was
frequently involved,——he would sometimes break off in a sudden and
spirited EPIPHONEMA, or rather EROTESIS, raised a third, and sometimes
a full fifth above the key of the discourse,——and demand it
categorically of his antagonist, Whether he would take upon him to say,
he had ever remembered,——whether he had ever read,—or even whether he
had ever heard tell of a man, called _Tristram_, performing any thing
great or worth recording?—No,—he would say,—TRISTRAM!—The thing is
impossible.

What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish
this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle
speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he gives them
proper vent:—It was the identical thing which my father did:—for in the
year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the
pains of writing an express DISSERTATION simply upon the word
_Tristram_,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the
grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.

When this story is compared with the title-page,—Will not the gentle
reader pity my father from his soul?—to see an orderly and
well-disposed gentleman, who tho’ singular,—yet inoffensive in his
notions,—so played upon in them by cross purposes;——to look down upon
the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems
and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against
him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly been
plann’d and pointed against him, merely to insult his speculations.——In
a word, to behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles,
ten times in a day suffering sorrow;—ten times in a day calling the
child of his prayers TRISTRAM!—Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which,
to his ears, was unison to _Nincompoop_, and every name vituperative
under heaven.——By his ashes! I swear it,—if ever malignant spirit took
pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,—it
must have been here;—and if it was not necessary I should be born
before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account
of it.

C H A P. XX

——How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter?
I told you in it, _That my mother was not a papist._——Papist! You told
me no such thing, Sir.—Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that
I told you as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could
tell you such a thing.—Then, Sir, I must have miss’d a page.—No, Madam,
you have not miss’d a word.—Then I was asleep, Sir.—My pride, Madam,
cannot allow you that refuge.—Then, I declare, I know nothing at all
about the matter.—That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your charge;
and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that you immediately
turn back, that is as soon as you get to the next full stop, and read
the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the
lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of
motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she
returns back:—’Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into
thousands besides herself,—of reading straight forwards, more in quest
of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a
book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly
impart with them——The mind should be accustomed to make wise
reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the
habitude of which made _Pliny_ the younger affirm, “That he never read
a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.” The stories of
_Greece_ and _Rome_, run over without this turn and application,—do
less service, I affirm it, than the history of _Parismus_ and
_Parismenus_, or of the Seven Champions of _England_, read with it.

———But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over again the chapter,
Madam, as I desired you?—You have: And did you not observe the passage,
upon the second reading, which admits the inference?—Not a word like
it! Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the
chapter, where I take upon me to say, “It was _necessary_ I should be
born before I was christen’d.” Had my mother, Madam, been a Papist,
that consequence did not follow.[1]

It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to
the Republick of letters;—so that my own is quite swallowed up in the
consideration of it,—that this self-same vile pruriency for fresh
adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and
humour,—and so wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of
our concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more carnal
parts of a composition will go down:—The subtle hints and sly
communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards,—the heavy
moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much
lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the
ink-horn.

I wish the male-reader has not pass’d by many a one, as quaint and
curious as this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. I
wish it may have its effects;—and that all good people, both male and
female, from example, may be taught to think as well as read.

MEMOIRE presenté à Messieurs les
Docteurs de SORBONNE[2]

_UN Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente à Messieurs les Docteurs de_
SORBONNE, _qu’il y a des cas, quoique très rares, où une mere ne
sçauroit accoucher, & même où l’enfant est tellement renfermé dans le
sein de sa mere, qu’il ne fait parôitre aucune partie de son corps, ce
qui seroit un cas, suivant les Rituels, de lui conférer, du moins sous
condition, le baptême. Le Chirurgien, qui consulte, prétend, par le
moyen d’une_ petite canulle, _de pouvoir baptiser immediatement
l’enfant, sans faire aucun tort à la mere.——Il demand si ce moyen,
qu’il vient de proposer, est permis & légitime, & s’il peut s’en servir
dans les cas qu’il vient d’exposer._

R E P O N S E

_LE Conseil estime, que la question proposée souffre de grandes
difficultés. Les Théologiens posent d’un côté pour principe, que le
baptême, qui est une naissance spirituelle, suppose une premiere
naissance; il faut être né dans le monde, pour renaître en_ Jesus
Christ, _comme ils l’enseignent. S._ Thomas, 3 part. quæst. 88 artic.
11. _suit cette doctrine comme une verité constante; l’on ne peut, dit
ce S. Docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont renférmes dans le sein de
leurs meres, & S._ Thomas _est fondé sur ce, que les enfans ne sont
point nés, & ne peuvent être comptés parmi les autres hommes; d’où il
conclud, qu’ils ne peuvent être l’objet d’une action extérieure, pour
reçevoir par leur ministére, les sacremens nécessaires au salut:_ Pueri
in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut cum aliis
hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici actioni humanæ, ut per
eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem. _Les rituels
ordonnent dans la pratique ce que les théologiens ont établi sur les
mêmes matiéres, & ils deffendent tous d’une maniére uniforme, de
baptiser les enfans qui sont renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres,
s’ils ne sont paroître quelque partie de leurs corps. Le concours des
théologiens, & des rituels, qui sont les régles des diocéses, paroit
former une autorité qui termine la question presente; cependant le
conseil de conscience considerant d’un côté, que le raisonnement des
théologiens est uniquement fondé sur une raison de convenance, & que la
deffense des rituels suppose que l’on ne peut baptiser immediatement
les enfans ainsi renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, ce qui est
contre la supposition presente; & d’un autre côté, considerant que lés
mêmes théologiens enseignent, que l’on peut risquer les sacremens que_
Jesus Christ _a établis comme des moyens faciles, mais nécessaires pour
sanctifier les hommes; & d’ailleurs estimant, que les enfans renfermés
dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient être capables de salut,
parcequ’ils sont capables de damnation;—pour ces considerations, & en
egard à l’expose, suivant lequel on assure avoir trouvé un moyen
certain de baptiser ces enfans ainsi renfermés, sans faire aucun tort à
la mere, le Conseil estime que l’on pourroit se servir du moyen
proposé, dans la confiance qu’il a, que Dieu n’a point laissé ces
sortes d’enfans sans aucuns secours, & supposant, comme il est exposé,
que le moyen dont il s’agit est propre à leur procurer le baptême;
cependant comme il s’agiroit, en autorisant la pratique proposée, de
changer une regle universellement établie, le Conseil croit que celui
qui consulte doit s’addresser à son evêque, & à qui il appartient de
juger de l’utilité, & du danger du moyen proposé, & comme, sous le bon
plaisir de l’evêque, le Conseil estime qu’il faudroit recourir au Pape,
qui a le droit d’expliquer les régles de l’eglise, & d’y déroger dans
le cas, ou la loi ne sçauroit obliger, quelque sage & quelque utile que
paroisse la maniére de baptiser dont il s’agit, le Conseil ne pourroit
l’approver sans le concours de ces deux autorités. On conseile au moins
à celui qui consulte, de s’addresser à son evêque, & de lui faire part
de la presente décision, afin que, si le prelat entre dans les raisons
sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignés s’appuyent, il puisse être
autorisé dans le cas de nécessité, ou il risqueroit trop d’attendre que
la permission fût demandée & accordée d’employer le moyen qu’il propose
si avantageux au salut de l’enfant. Au reste, le Conseil, en estimant
que l’on pourroit s’en servir, croit cependant, que si les enfans dont
il s’agit, venoient au monde, contre l’esperance de ceux qui se
seroient servis du méme moyen, il seroit nécessaire de les baptiser_
sous condition; _& en cela le Conseil se conforme à tous les rituels,
qui en autorisant le baptême d’un enfant qui fait paroître quelque
partie de son corps, enjoignent néantmoins, & ordonnent de le baptiser_
sous condition, _s’il vient heureusement au monde._

Déliberé en _Sorbonne_, le 10 _Avril_, 1733.

A. LE MOYNE.
L. DE ROMIGNY.
DE MARCILLY.

Mr. _Tristram Shandy_’s compliments to Messrs. _Le Moyne, De Romigny_,
and _De Marcilly_; hopes they all rested well the night after so
tiresome a consultation.—He begs to know, whether after the ceremony of
marriage, and before that of consummation, the baptizing all the
HOMUNCULI at once, slapdash, by _injection_, would not be a shorter and
safer cut still; on condition, as above, That if the HOMUNCULI do well,
and come safe into the world after this, that each and every of them
shall be baptized again (_sous condition_)——And provided, in the second
place, That the thing can be done, which Mr. _Shandy_ apprehends it
may, _par le moyen d’une_ petite canulle, and _sans faire aucune tort
au pere._

 [1] The _Romish_ Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases
 of danger, _before_ it is born;—but upon this proviso, That some part
 or other of the child’s body be seen by the baptizer:——But the Doctors
 of the _Sorbonne_, by a deliberation held amongst them, _April_ 10,
 1733,—have enlarged the powers of the midwives, by determining, That
 though no part of the child’s body should appear,—that baptism shall,
 nevertheless, be administered to it by injection,—_par le moyen d’une
 petite canulle_,—Anglicè _a squirt._—’Tis very strange that St.
 _Thomas Aquinas_, who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying
 and untying the knots of school-divinity,—should, after so much pains
 bestowed upon this,—give up the point at last, as a second _La chose
 impossible_,—“Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St.
 _Thomas!_) baptizari possunt _nullo modo._”—O _Thomas! Thomas!_

    If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism
    _by injection_, as presented to the Doctors of the _Sorbonne_, with
    their consultation thereupon, it is as follows.

 [2] Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366.

C H A P. XXI

——I WONDER what’s all that noise, and running backwards and forwards
for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing himself, after an hour
and a half’s silence, to my uncle _Toby_,——who, you must know, was
sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smoaking his social pipe all
the time, in mute contemplation of a new pair of black plush-breeches
which he had got on:—What can they be doing, brother?—quoth my
father,—we can scarce hear ourselves talk.

I think, replied my uncle _Toby_, taking his pipe from his mouth, and
striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left
thumb, as he began his sentence,——I think, says he:——But to enter
rightly into my uncle _Toby_’s sentiments upon this matter, you must be
made to enter first a little into his character, the out-lines of which
I shall just give you, and then the dialogue between him and my father
will go on as well again.

Pray what was that man’s name,—for I write in such a hurry, I have no
time to recollect or look for it,——who first made the observation,
“That there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?” Whoever he
was, ’twas a just and good observation in him.—But the corollary drawn
from it, namely, “That it is this which has furnished us with such a
variety of odd and whimsical characters;”—that was not his;—it was
found out by another man, at least a century and a half after him: Then
again,—that this copious store-house of original materials, is the true
and natural cause that our Comedies are so much better than those of
_France_, or any others that either have, or can be wrote upon the
Continent:——that discovery was not fully made till about the middle of
King _William_’s reign,—when the great _Dryden_, in writing one of his
long prefaces, (if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed
toward the latter end of queen _Anne_, the great _Addison_ began to
patronize the notion, and more fully explained it to the world in one
or two of his Spectators;—but the discovery was not his.—Then, fourthly
and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our climate, producing so
strange an irregularity in our characters,——doth thereby, in some sort,
make us amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with when the
weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,—that observation is my
own;—and was struck out by me this very rainy day, _March_ 26, 1759,
and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning.

Thus—thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of
our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps
of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical,
physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, ænigmatical,
technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with
fifty other branches of it, (most of ’em ending as these do, in _ical_)
have for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping
upwards towards that Ἀκμὴ of their perfections, from which, if we may
form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, we
cannot possibly be far off.

When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of
writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of writing will put an end to
all kind of reading;—and that in time, _As war begets poverty; poverty
peace_,——must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and
then——we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be
exactly where we started.

———Happy! Thrice happy times! I only wish that the æra of my begetting,
as well as the mode and manner of it, had been a little alter’d,—or
that it could have been put off, with any convenience to my father or
mother, for some twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in
the literary world might have stood some chance.——

But I forget my uncle _Toby_, whom all this while we have left knocking
the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe.

His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our
atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst
one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there appeared too
many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he
derived the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind
or water, or any modifications or combinations of them whatever: And I
have, therefore, oft-times wondered, that my father, tho’ I believe he
had his reasons for it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity,
in my course, when I was a boy,—should never once endeavour to account
for them in this way: for all the SHANDY FAMILY were of an original
character throughout:——I mean the males,—the females had no character
at all,—except, indeed, my great aunt DINAH, who, about sixty years
ago, was married and got with child by the coachman, for which my
father, according to his hypothesis of christian names, would often
say, She might thank her godfathers and godmothers.

It will seem strange,——and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle
in the reader’s way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon
guessing how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many
years after it had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of
the peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my
father and my uncle _Toby._ One would have thought, that the whole
force of the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the
family at first,—as is generally the case.—But nothing ever wrought
with our family after the ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this
happened, it might have something else to afflict it; and as
afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done
the SHANDY FAMILY any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times
and circumstances should give it an opportunity to discharge its
office.——Observe, I determine nothing upon this.——My way is ever to
point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at
the first springs of the events I tell;—not with a pedantic
_Fescue_,—or in the decisive manner or _Tacitus_, who outwits himself
and his reader;—but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to
the assistance merely of the inquisitive;—to them I write,——and by them
I shall be read,——if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold
out so long,—to the very end of the world.

Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father
and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what direction it
exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between
them, after it began to operate, is what I am able to explain with
great exactness, and is as follows:

My uncle TOBY SHANDY, Madam, was a gentleman, who, with the virtues
which usually constitute the character of a man of honour and
rectitude,—possessed one in a very eminent degree, which is seldom or
never put into the catalogue; and that was a most extreme and
unparallel’d modesty of nature;——though I correct the word nature, for
this reason, that I may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to
a hearing, and that is, Whether this modesty of his was natural or
acquir’d.——Whichever way my uncle _Toby_ came by it, ’twas nevertheless
modesty in the truest sense of it; and that is, Madam, not in regard to
words, for he was so unhappy as to have very little choice in them,—but
to things;——and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and it arose to
such a height in him, as almost to equal, if such a thing could be,
even the modesty of a woman: That female nicety, Madam, and inward
cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your sex, which makes you so much the
awe of ours.

You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle _Toby_ had contracted all this
from this very source;—that he had spent a great part of his time in
converse with your sex, and that from a thorough knowledge of you, and
the force of imitation which such fair examples render irresistible, he
had acquired this amiable turn of mind.

I wish I could say so,—for unless it was with his sister-in-law, my
father’s wife and my mother——my uncle _Toby_ scarce exchanged three
words with the sex in as many years;——no, he got it, Madam, by a
blow.——A blow!—Yes, Madam, it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke
off by a ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of Namur,
which struck full upon my uncle _Toby_’s groin.—Which way could that
effect it? The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;—but it
would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.——’Tis
for an episode hereafter; and every circumstance relating to it, in its
proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you:—’Till then, it is
not in my power to give farther light into this matter, or say more
than what I have said already,——That my uncle _Toby_ was a gentleman of
unparallel’d modesty, which happening to be somewhat subtilized and
rarified by the constant heat of a little family pride,——they both so
wrought together within him, that he could never bear to hear the
affair of my aunt DINAH touch’d upon, but with the greatest
emotion.——The least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into
his face;—but when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed
companies, which the illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged
him to do,—the unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the
family, would set my uncle _Toby_’s honour and modesty o’bleeding; and
he would often take my father aside, in the greatest concern
imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give him any thing in
the world, only to let the story rest.

My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle
_Toby_, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done
any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir’d of
another, to have made my uncle _Toby_’s heart easy in this, or any
other point. But this lay out of his power.

——My father, as I told you was a philosopher in
grain,—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt _Dinah_’s affair was a
matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the
planets to _Copernicus_:—The backslidings of _Venus_ in her orbit
fortified the _Copernican_ system, called so after his name; and the
backslidings of my aunt _Dinah_ in her orbit, did the same service in
establishing my father’s system, which, I trust, will for ever
hereafter be called the _Shandean System_, after his.

In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a
sense of shame as any man whatever;——and neither he, nor, I dare say,
_Copernicus_, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have
taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they
owed, as they thought, to truth.—_Amicus Plato_, my father would say,
construing the words to my uncle _Toby_, as he went along, _Amicus
Plato_; that is, DINAH was my aunt;—_sed magis amica veritas_—but TRUTH
is my sister.

This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the
source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the
tale of family disgrace recorded,——and the other would scarce ever let
a day pass to an end without some hint at it.

For God’s sake, my uncle _Toby_ would cry,——and for my sake, and for
all our sakes, my dear brother _Shandy_,—do let this story of our
aunt’s and her ashes sleep in peace;——how can you,——how can you have so
little feeling and compassion for the character of our family?——What is
the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would
reply.——Nay, if you come to that—what is the life of a family?——The
life of a family!—my uncle _Toby_ would say, throwing himself back in
his arm chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg——Yes,
the life,——my father would say, maintaining his point. How many
thousands of ’em are there every year that come cast away, (in all
civilized countries at least)——and considered as nothing but common
air, in competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my
uncle _Toby_ would answer,—every such instance is downright MURDER, let
who will commit it.——There lies your mistake, my father would
reply;——for, in _Foro Scientiæ_ there is no such thing as MURDER,——’tis
only DEATH, brother.

My uncle _Toby_ would never offer to answer this by any other kind of
argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of
_Lillebullero._——You must know it was the usual channel thro’ which his
passions got vent, when any thing shocked or surprized him:——but
especially when any thing, which he deem’d very absurd, was offered.

As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon
them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name to this
particular species of argument.—I here take the liberty to do it
myself, for two reasons. First, That, in order to prevent all confusion
in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every
other species of argument———as the _Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex
Absurdo, ex Fortiori_, or any other argument whatsoever:——And,
secondly, That it may be said by my children’s children, when my head
is laid to rest,——that their learn’d grandfather’s head had been busied
to as much purpose once, as other people’s;—That he had invented a
name, and generously thrown it into the TREASURY of the _Ars Logica_,
for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. And,
if the end of disputation is more to silence than convince,—they may
add, if they please, to one of the best arguments too.

I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it
be known and distinguished by the name and title of the _Argumentum
Fistulatorium_, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the
_Argumentum Baculinum_ and the _Argumentum ad Crumenam_, and for ever
hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the _Argumentum Tripodium_, which is never used but by the woman
against the man;—and the _Argumentum ad Rem_, which, contrarywise, is
made use of by the man only against the woman;—As these two are enough
in conscience for one lecture;——and, moreover, as the one is the best
answer to the other,—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of
in a place by themselves.

C H A P. XXII

THE learned Bishop _Hall_, I mean the famous Dr. _Joseph Hall_, who was
Bishop of _Exeter_ in King _James_ the First’s reign, tells us in one
of _Decads_, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at
_London_, in the year 1610, by _John Beal_, dwelling in
_Aldersgate-street_, “That it is an abominable thing for a man to
commend himself;”——and I really think it is so.

And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind
of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out;—I think it is
full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out
of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head.

This is precisely my situation.

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in
all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of
digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been
over-looked by my reader,—not for want of penetration in him,—but
because ’tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a
digression;—and it is this: That tho’ my digressions are all fair, as
you observe,—and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as
often too, as any writer in _Great Britain_; yet I constantly take care
to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my
absence.

I was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of
my uncle _Toby_’s most whimsical character;—when my aunt _Dinah_ and
the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles
into the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this,
you perceive that the drawing of my uncle _Toby_’s character went on
gently all the time;—not the great contours of it,—that was
impossible,—but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it,
were here and there touch’d on, as we went along, so that you are much
better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you was before.

By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself;
two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were
thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is
digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time.

This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth’s moving
round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her
elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that
variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;—though I own it suggested
the thought,—as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and
discoveries have come from such trifling hints.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the
soul of reading!—take them out of this book, for instance,—you might as
well take the book along with them;—one cold eternal winter would reign
in every page of it; restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a
bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite
to fail.

All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as
to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author,
whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a
digression,—from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock
still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of
his digression.

——This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning of this, you
see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it
with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the
digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that
the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more,
it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain
of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

C H A P. XXIII

I HAVE a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very
nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.—Accordingly I set off
thus:

If the fixture of _Momus_’s glass in the human breast, according to the
proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had taken place,——first, This
foolish consequence would certainly have followed,—That the very wisest
and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid
window-money every day of our lives.

And, secondly, that had the said glass been there set up, nothing more
would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man’s character, but
to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical
bee-hive, and look’d in,—view’d the soul stark naked;—observed all her
motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from their first
engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her loose in her frisks,
her gambols, her capricios; and after some notice of her more solemn
deportment, consequent upon such frisks, &c.——then taken your pen and
ink and set down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn
to:—But this is an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this
planet;—in the planet _Mercury_ (belike) it may be so, if not better
still for him;——for there the intense heat of the country, which is
proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than
equal to that of red-hot iron,—must, I think, long ago have vitrified
the bodies of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them
for the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them both,
all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom, may be nothing
else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the contrary, but
one fine transparent body of clear glass (bating the umbilical knot)—so
that, till the inhabitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the
rays of light, in passing through them, become so monstrously
refracted,——or return reflected from their surfaces in such transverse
lines to the eye, that a man cannot be seen through;—his soul might as
well, unless for mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the
umbilical point gave her,—might, upon all other accounts, I say, as
well play the fool out o’doors as in her own house.

But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this
earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a
dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would
come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to
work.

Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to
take, to do this thing with exactness.

Some, for instance, draw all their characters with
wind-instruments.—_Virgil_ takes notice of that way in the affair of
_Dido_ and _Æneas_;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and,
moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the
_Italians_ pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of
one particular sort of character among them, from the _forte_ or
_piano_ of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is
infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this
place;—’tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making
a drawing by it;—this is ænigmatical, and intended to be so, at least
_ad populum_:—And therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come here, that you
read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about
it.

There are others again, who will draw a man’s character from no other
helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;—but this often
gives a very incorrect outline,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of
his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other,
compound one good figure out of them both.

I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must
smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render’d still more operose, by
forcing you to have an eye to the rest of his _Non-naturals._—Why the
most natural actions of a man’s life should be called his
Non-naturals,—is another question.

There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these
expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various
ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices
which the Pentagraphic Brethren[3] of the brush have shewn in taking
copies.—These, you must know, are your great historians.

One of these you will see drawing a full length character _against the
light_;—that’s illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard upon the character of the
man who sits.

Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the
_Camera_;—that is most unfair of all, because, _there_ you are sure to
be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes.

To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle
_Toby_’s character, I am determined to draw it by no mechanical help
whatever;—nor shall my pencil be guided by any one wind-instrument
which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the
_Alps_;—nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges,—or
touch upon his Non-naturals; but, in a word, I will draw my uncle
_Toby_’s character from his HOBBY-HORSE.

 [3] Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures
 mechanically, and in any proportion.

C H A P. XXIV

IF I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience
for my uncle _Toby_’s character,——I would here previously have
convinced him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing
with, as that which I have pitch’d upon.

A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act
exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each
other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some
kind; and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of
the manner of electrified bodies,—and that, by means of the heated
parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back
of the HOBBY-HORSE,—by long journies and much friction, it so happens,
that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of
HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold;—so that if you are able to give
but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty
exact notion of the genius and character of the other.

Now the HOBBY-HORSE which my uncle _Toby_ always rode upon, was in my
opinion an HOBBY-HORSE well worth giving a description of, if it was
only upon the score of his great singularity;—for you might have
travelled from _York_ to _Dover_,—from _Dover_ to _Penzance_ in
_Cornwall_, and from _Penzance_ to _York_ back again, and not have seen
such another upon the road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever
haste you had been in, you must infallibly have stopp’d to have taken a
view of him. Indeed, the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so
utterly unlike was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the
whole species, that it was now and then made a matter of
dispute,——whether he was really a HOBBY-HORSE or no: But as the
Philosopher would use no other argument to the Sceptic, who disputed
with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his
legs, and walking across the room;—so would my uncle _Toby_ use no
other argument to prove his HOBBY-HORSE was a HOBBY-HORSE indeed, but
by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world, after
that, to determine the point as it thought fit.

In good truth, my uncle _Toby_ mounted him with so much pleasure, and
he carried my uncle _Toby_ so well,——that he troubled his head very
little with what the world either said or thought about it.

It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of him:—But
to go on regularly, I only beg you will give me leave to acquaint you
first, how my uncle _Toby_ came by him.

C H A P. XXV

THE wound in my uncle _Toby_’s groin, which he received at the siege of
_Namur_, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient
he should return to _England_, in order, if possible, to be set to
rights.

He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of
it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that time
in hand, suffer’d unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of
exfoliations from the _os pubis_, and the outward edge of that part of
the _coxendix_ called the _os illium_,——both which bones were dismally
crush’d, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was
broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(tho’ it was pretty large) which
inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it
had done my uncle _Toby_’s groin, was more owing to the gravity of the
stone itself, than to the projectile force of it,—which he would often
tell him was a great happiness.

My father at that time was just beginning business in _London_, and had
taken a house;—and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted
between the two brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle _Toby_
could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own
house,——he assign’d him the very best apartment in it.—And what was a
much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a
friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but
he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his
brother _Toby_, and chat an hour by his bed-side.

The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it;—my uncle’s
visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from
the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the
discourse to that subject,—and from that subject the discourse would
generally roll on to the siege itself.

These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle _Toby_ received
great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that
they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three
months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon
an expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe they
would have laid him in his grave.

What these perplexities of my uncle _Toby_ were,——’tis impossible for
you to guess;—if you could,—I should blush; not as a relation,—not as a
man,—nor even as a woman,—but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as
I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader
has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am
of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to
form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was
to come in the next page,—I would tear it out of my book.

C H A P. XXVI

I HAVE begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to
explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle _Toby_ was
involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege
of _Namur_, where he received his wound.

I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of King
_William_’s wars,—but if he has not,—I then inform him, that one of the
most memorable attacks in that siege, was that which was made by the
_English_ and _Dutch_ upon the point of the advanced counterscarp,
between the gate of _St. Nicolas_, which inclosed the great sluice or
water-stop, where the _English_ were terribly exposed to the shot of
the counter-guard and demi-bastion of _St. Roch_: The issue of which
hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the _Dutch_ lodged
themselves upon the counter-guard,—and that the _English_ made
themselves masters of the covered-way before _St. Nicolas_-gate,
notwithstanding the gallantry of the _French_ officers, who exposed
themselves upon the glacis sword in hand.

As this was the principal attack of which my uncle _Toby_ was an
eye-witness at _Namur_,——the army of the besiegers being cut off, by
the confluence of the _Maes_ and _Sambre_, from seeing much of each
other’s operations,——my uncle _Toby_ was generally more eloquent and
particular in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in,
arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling
his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences
and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,—the glacis and
covered-way,—the half-moon and ravelin,—as to make his company fully
comprehend where and what he was about.

Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms; so that you
will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in
opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle _Toby_ did oft-times
puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too.

To speak the truth, unless the company my father led up stairs were
tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle _Toby_ was in one of his
explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep
the discourse free from obscurity.

What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle
_Toby_, was this,—that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the
gate of _St. Nicolas_, extending itself from the bank of the _Maes_,
quite up to the great water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut with
such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all
sides,—and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast amongst them,
that frequently he could neither get backwards or forwards to save his
life; and was oft-times obliged to give up the attack upon that very
account only.

These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle _Toby Shandy_ more perturbations
than you would imagine; and as my father’s kindness to him was
continually dragging up fresh friends and fresh enquirers,——he had but
a very uneasy task of it.

No doubt my uncle _Toby_ had great command of himself,—and could guard
appearances, I believe, as well as most men;—yet any one may imagine,
that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into
the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down the
counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into the
ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:—He did so;—and
the little and hourly vexations, which may seem trifling and of no
account to the man who has not read _Hippocrates_, yet, whoever has
read _Hippocrates_, or Dr. _James Mackenzie_, and has considered well
the effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the
digestion—(Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?)—may easily
conceive what sharp paroxysms and exacerbations of his wound my uncle
_Toby_ must have undergone upon that score only.

—My uncle _Toby_ could not philosophize upon it;—’twas enough he felt
it was so,—and having sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three
months together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate
himself.

He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and
nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other
position, when a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase
such a thing, and have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of
the fortification of the town and citadel of _Namur_, with its
environs, it might be a means of giving him ease.—I take notice of his
desire to have the environs along with the town and citadel, for this
reason,—because my uncle _Toby_’s wound was got in one of the
traverses, about thirty toises from the returning angle of the trench,
opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of _St. Roch_:——so
that he was pretty confident he could stick a pin upon the identical
spot of ground where he was standing on when the stone struck him.

All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him from a world
of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved the happy means, as you
will read, of procuring my uncle _Toby_ his HOBBY-HORSE.

C H A P. XXVII

THERE is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an
entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your
criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there any
thing so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the
party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon
the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such
thing as a critick (by occupation) at table.

——I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have left half a
dozen places purposely open for them;—and in the next place, I pay them
all court.—Gentlemen, I kiss your hands, I protest no company could
give me half the pleasure,—by my soul I am glad to see you———I beg only
you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any
ceremony, and fall on heartily.

I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of carrying my
complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for them,—and in
this very spot I stand on; but being told by a Critick (tho’ not by
occupation,—but by nature) that I had acquitted myself well enough, I
shall fill it up directly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be
able to make a great deal of more room next year.

———How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle _Toby_, who, it seems,
was a military man, and whom you have represented as no fool,—be at the
same time such a confused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed, fellow, as—Go
look.

So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn it.—’Tis language
unurbane,—and only befitting the man who cannot give clear and
satisfactory accounts of things, or dive deep enough into the first
causes of human ignorance and confusion. It is moreover the reply
valiant—and therefore I reject it; for tho’ it might have suited my
uncle _Toby_’s character as a soldier excellently well,—and had he not
accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the _Lillabullero_, as
he wanted no courage, ’tis the very answer he would have given; yet it
would by no means have done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I
write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my
illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that I must sustain my
character properly, and contrast it properly too,—else what would
become of me? Why, Sir, I should be undone;—at this very moment that I
am going here to fill up one place against a critick,—I should have
made an opening for a couple.

——Therefore I answer thus:

Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever
read such a book as _Locke_’s Essay upon the Human
Understanding?——Don’t answer me rashly—because many, I know, quote the
book, who have not read it—and many have read it who understand it
not:—If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will
tell you in three words what the book is.—It is a history.—A history!
of who? what? where? when? Don’t hurry yourself—It is a history-book,
Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a
man’s own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more,
believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick
circle.

But this by the way.

Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the
bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and
confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold.

Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and
transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are not
dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what
it has received.—Call down _Dolly_ your chamber-maid, and I will give
you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain
that _Dolly_ herself should understand it as well as _Malbranch._——When
_Dolly_ has indited her epistle to _Robin_, and has thrust her arm into
the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right side;—take that
opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception
can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by
that one thing which _Dolly_’s hand is in search of.—Your organs are
not so dull that I should inform you—’tis an inch, Sir, of red
seal-wax.

When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if _Dolly_ fumbles too
long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not
receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont
to imprint it. Very well. If _Dolly_’s wax, for want of better, is
bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,—tho’ it may receive,—it will not
hold the impression, how hard soever _Dolly_ thrusts against it; and
last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied
thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;——in any one
of these three cases the print left by the thimble will be as unlike
the prototype as a brass-jack.

Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the
confusion in my uncle _Toby_’s discourse; and it is for that very
reason I enlarge upon them so long, after the manner of great
physiologists—to shew the world, what it did _not_ arise from.

What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of
obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and that is the unsteady uses of
words, which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted
understandings.

It is ten to one (at _Arthur_’s) whether you have ever read the
literary histories of past ages;—if you have, what terrible battles,
’yclept logomachies, have they occasioned and perpetuated with so much
gall and ink-shed,—that a good-natured man cannot read the accounts of
them without tears in his eyes.

Gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and considered within
thyself how much of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation has
been pestered and disordered, at one time or other, by this, and this
only:—What a pudder and racket in COUNCILS about χδια and υωοςασις; and
in the SCHOOLS of the learned about power and about spirit;—about
essences, and about quintessences;——about substances, and about
space.——What confusion in greater THEATRES from words of little
meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou
wilt not wonder at my uncle _Toby_’s perplexities,—thou wilt drop a
tear of pity upon his scarp and his counterscarp;—his glacis and his
covered way;—his ravelin and his half- moon: ’Twas not by ideas,—by
Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words.

C H A P. XXVIII

WHEN my uncle _Toby_ got his map of _Namur_ to his mind, he began
immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the
study of it; for nothing being of more importance to him than his
recovery, and his recovery depending, as you have read, upon the
passions and affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest
care to make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to
talk upon it without emotion.

In a fortnight’s close and painful application, which, by the bye, did
my uncle _Toby_’s wound, upon his groin, no good,—he was enabled, by
the help of some marginal documents at the feet of the elephant,
together with _Gobesius_’s military architecture and pyroballogy,
translated from the _Flemish_, to form his discourse with passable
perspicuity; and before he was two full months gone,—he was right
eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the advanced
counterscarp with great order;—but having, by that time, gone much
deeper into the art, than what his first motive made necessary, my
uncle _Toby_ was able to cross the _Maes_ and _Sambre_; make diversions
as far as _Vauban_’s line, the abbey of _Salsines_, &c. and give his
visitors as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of
the gate of _St. Nicolas_, where he had the honour to receive his
wound.

But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with
the acquisition of it. The more my uncle _Toby_ pored over his map, the
more he took a liking to it!—by the same process and electrical
assimilation, as I told you, through which I ween the souls of
connoisseurs themselves, by long friction and incumbition, have the
happiness, at length, to get all
be-virtu’d—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and be-fiddled.

The more my uncle _Toby_ drank of this sweet fountain of science, the
greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the
first year of his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a
fortified town in _Italy_ or _Flanders_, of which, by one means or
other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and
carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their
demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he would read
with that intense application and delight, that he would forget
himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner.

In the second year my uncle _Toby_ purchased _Ramelli_ and _Cataneo_,
translated from the _Italian_;—likewise _Stevinus, Moralis_, the
Chevalier _de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter_, the Count _de Pagan_,
the Marshal _Vauban_, Mons. _Blondel_, with almost as many more books
of military architecture, as Don _Quixote_ was found to have of
chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library.

Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in _August_,
ninety-nine, my uncle _Toby_ found it necessary to understand a little
of projectiles:—and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from
the fountain-head, he began with _N. Tartaglia_, who it seems was the
first man who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball’s doing all that
mischief under the notion of a right line—This _N. Tartaglia_ proved to
my uncle _Toby_ to be an impossible thing.

——Endless is the search of Truth.

No sooner was my uncle _Toby_ satisfied which road the cannon-ball did
not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to
enquire and find out which road the ball did go: For which purpose he
was obliged to set off afresh with old _Maltus_, and studied him
devoutly.—He proceeded next to _Galileo_ and _Torricellius_, wherein,
by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the
precise path to be a PARABOLA—or else an HYPERBOLA,—and that the
parameter, or _latus rectum_, of the conic section of the said path,
was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct _ratio_, as the whole
line to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech
upon an horizontal plane;—and that the semiparameter,——stop! my dear
uncle _Toby_——stop!—go not one foot farther into this thorny and
bewildered track,—intricate are the steps! intricate are the mazes of
this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this
bewitching phantom KNOWLEDGE will bring upon thee.—O my
uncle;—fly—fly,—fly from it as from a serpent.——Is it fit——goodnatured
man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights
baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——Alas! ’twill exasperate thy
symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy
animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive
habit of body,——impair thy health,——and hasten all the infirmities of
thy old age.—O my uncle! my uncle _Toby._

C H A P. XXIX

I WOULD not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pen-craft, who
does not understand this,——That the best plain narrative in the world,
tacked very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle
_Toby_——would have felt both cold and vapid upon the reader’s
palate;—therefore I forthwith put an end to the chapter, though I was
in the middle of my story.

——Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters. Where
an exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less
evil; deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than
beauty. This is to be understood _cum grano salis_; but be it as it
will,—as the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the
apostrophe cool, than any thing else,—’tis not very material whether
upon any other score the reader approves of it or not.

In the latter end of the third year, my uncle _Toby_ perceiving that
the parameter and semi-parameter of the conic section angered his
wound, he left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and
betook himself to the practical part of fortification only; the
pleasure of which, like a spring held back, returned upon him with
redoubled force.

It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily
regularity of a clean shirt,——to dismiss his barber unshaven,——and to
allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning
himself so little about it, as not to ask him once in seven times
dressing, how it went on: when, lo!—all of a sudden, for the change was
quick as lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his
recovery,——complained to my father, grew impatient with the
surgeon:——and one morning, as he heard his foot coming up stairs, he
shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in order to
expostulate with him upon the protraction of the cure, which, he told
him, might surely have been accomplished at least by that time:—He
dwelt long upon the miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his
four years melancholy imprisonment;——adding, that had it not been for
the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of brothers,—he had
long since sunk under his misfortunes.——My father was by. My uncle
_Toby_’s eloquence brought tears into his eyes;——’twas unexpected:——My
uncle _Toby_, by nature was not eloquent;—it had the greater
effect:——The surgeon was confounded;——not that there wanted grounds for
such, or greater marks of impatience,—but ’twas unexpected too; in the
four years he had attended him, he had never seen any thing like it in
my uncle _Toby_’s carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or
discontented word;——he had been all patience,—all submission.

—We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it;—but we
often treble the force:—The surgeon was astonished; but much more so,
when he heard my uncle Toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his
healing up the wound directly,—or sending for Monsieur _Ronjat_, the
king’s serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him.

The desire of life and health is implanted in man’s nature;——the love
of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it: These my uncle
_Toby_ had in common with his species—and either of them had been
sufficient to account for his earnest desire to get well and out of
doors;——but I have told you before, that nothing wrought with our
family after the common way;——and from the time and manner in which
this eager desire shewed itself in the present case, the penetrating
reader will suspect there was some other cause or crotchet for it in my
uncle _Toby_’s head:——There was so, and ’tis the subject of the next
chapter to set forth what that cause and crotchet was. I own, when
that’s done, ’twill be time to return back to the parlour fire-side,
where we left my uncle _Toby_ in the middle of his sentence.

C H A P. XXX

WHEN a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or,
in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows headstrong,——farewell cool
reason and fair discretion!

My uncle _Toby_’s wound was near well, and as soon as the surgeon
recovered his surprize, and could get leave to say as much——he told
him, ’twas just beginning to incarnate; and that if no fresh
exfoliation happened, which there was no sign of,—it would be dried up
in five or six weeks. The sound of as many Olympiads, twelve hours
before, would have conveyed an idea of shorter duration to my uncle
_Toby_’s mind.——The succession of his ideas was now rapid,—he broiled
with impatience to put his design in execution;——and so, without
consulting farther with any soul living,—which, by the bye, I think is
right, when you are predetermined to take no one soul’s advice,——he
privately ordered _Trim_, his man, to pack up a bundle of lint and
dressings, and hire a chariot-and-four to be at the door exactly by
twelve o’clock that day, when he knew my father would be upon
’Change.——So leaving a bank-note upon the table for the surgeon’s care
of him, and a letter of tender thanks for his brother’s—he packed up
his maps, his books of fortification, his instruments, &c. and by the
help of a crutch on one side, and _Trim_ on the other,——my uncle _Toby_
embarked for _Shandy-Hall._

The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as
follows:

The table in my uncle _Toby_’s room, and at which, the night before
this change happened, he was sitting with his maps, &c. about him—being
somewhat of the smallest, for that infinity of great and small
instruments of knowledge which usually lay crowded upon it—he had the
accident, in reaching over for his tobacco-box, to throw down his
compasses, and in stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he
threw down his case of instruments and snuffers;—and as the dice took a
run against him, in his endeavouring to catch the snuffers in
falling,——he thrust Monsieur _Blondel_ off the table, and Count _de
Pagon_ o’top of him.

’Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle _Toby_ was, to think of
redressing these evils by himself,—he rung his bell for his man
_Trim_;——_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, prithee see what confusion I
have here been making—I must have some better contrivance,
_Trim._—Can’st not thou take my rule, and measure the length and
breadth of this table, and then go and bespeak me one as big
again?——Yes, an’ please your Honour, replied _Trim_, making a bow; but
I hope your Honour will be soon well enough to get down to your
country-seat, where,—as your Honour takes so much pleasure in
fortification, we could manage this matter to a T.

I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle _Toby_’s, who
went by the name of _Trim_, had been a corporal in my uncle’s own
company,—his real name was _James Butler_,—but having got the nick-name
of _Trim_, in the regiment, my uncle _Toby_, unless when he happened to
be very angry with him, would never call him by any other name.

The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his
left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of _Landen_, which was two
years before the affair of _Namur_;—and as the fellow was well-beloved
in the regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle _Toby_
took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my
uncle _Toby_ in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom, barber,
cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to last, waited upon
him and served him with great fidelity and affection.

My uncle _Toby_ loved the man in return, and what attached him more to
him still, was the similitude of their knowledge.——For Corporal _Trim_,
(for so, for the future, I shall call him) by four years occasional
attention to his Master’s discourse upon fortified towns, and the
advantage of prying and peeping continually into his Master’s plans,
&c. exclusive and besides what he gained HOBBY-HORSICALLY, as a
body-servant, _Non Hobby Horsical per se_;——had become no mean
proficient in the science; and was thought, by the cook and
chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature of strong-holds as my uncle
_Toby_ himself.

I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal _Trim_’s
character,——and it is the only dark line in it.—The fellow loved to
advise,—or rather to hear himself talk; his carriage, however, was so
perfectly respectful, ’twas easy to keep him silent when you had him
so; but set his tongue a-going,—you had no hold of him—he was
voluble;—the eternal interlardings of _your Honour_, with the
respectfulness of Corporal _Trim_’s manner, interceding so strong in
behalf of his elocution,—that though you might have been
incommoded,——you could not well be angry. My uncle _Toby_ was seldom
either the one or the other with him,—or, at least, this fault, in
_Trim_, broke no squares with them. My uncle _Toby_, as I said, loved
the man;——and besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful servant,—but
as an humble friend,—he could not bear to stop his mouth.——Such was
Corporal _Trim._

If I durst presume, continued _Trim_, to give your Honour my advice,
and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, _Trim_, quoth my
uncle _Toby_—speak,——speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man,
without fear.—Why then, replied _Trim_, (not hanging his ears and
scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back
from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—I think,
quoth _Trim_, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little
forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map of
_Dunkirk_, which was pinned against the hangings,——I think, quoth
Corporal _Trim_, with humble submission to your Honour’s better
judgment,——that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make
but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upon
paper, compared to what your Honour and I could make of it were we in
the country by ourselves, and had but a rood, or a rood and a half of
ground to do what we pleased with: As summer is coming on, continued
_Trim_, your Honour might sit out of doors, and give me the
nography—(Call it ichnography, quoth my uncle,)——of the town or
citadel, your Honour was pleased to sit down before,—and I will be shot
by your Honour upon the glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to your
Honour’s mind.——I dare say thou would’st, _Trim_, quoth my uncle.—For
if your Honour, continued the Corporal, could but mark me the polygon,
with its exact lines and angles—That I could do very well, quoth my
uncle.—I would begin with the fossé, and if your Honour could tell me
the proper depth and breadth—I can to a hair’s breadth, _Trim_, replied
my uncle.—I would throw out the earth upon this hand towards the town
for the scarp,—and on that hand towards the campaign for the
counterscarp.—Very right, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_:—And when I had
sloped them to your mind,——an’ please your Honour, I would face the
glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in _Flanders_, with
sods,——and as your Honour knows they should be,—and I would make the
walls and parapets with sods too.—The best engineers call them gazons,
_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby._—Whether they are gazons or sods, is not
much matter, replied _Trim_; your Honour knows they are ten times
beyond a facing either of brick or stone.——I know they are, _Trim_ in
some respects,——quoth my uncle _Toby_, nodding his head;—for a
cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any
rubbish down with it, which might fill the fossé, (as was the case at
_St. Nicolas_’s gate) and facilitate the passage over it.

Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal _Trim_, better
than any officer in his Majesty’s service;——but would your Honour
please to let the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into
the country, I would work under your Honour’s directions like a horse,
and make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their
batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all
the world’s riding twenty miles to go and see it.

My uncle _Toby_ blushed as red as scarlet as _Trim_ went on;—but it was
not a blush of guilt,—of modesty,—or of anger,—it was a blush of
joy;—he was fired with Corporal _Trim_’s project and
description.—_Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_, thou hast said enough.—We
might begin the campaign, continued _Trim_, on the very day that his
Majesty and the Allies take the field, and demolish them town by town
as fast as—_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, say no more. Your Honour,
continued _Trim_, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this
fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would——Say no more, _Trim_,
quoth my uncle _Toby_——Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure
and good pastime—but good air, and good exercise, and good health,—and
your Honour’s wound would be well in a month. Thou hast said enough,
_Trim_,—quoth my uncle _Toby_ (putting his hand into his
breeches-pocket)——I like thy project mightily.—And if your Honour
pleases, I’ll this moment go and buy a pioneer’s spade to take down
with us, and I’ll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple of——Say
no more, _Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, leaping up upon one leg, quite
overcome with rapture,—and thrusting a guinea into _Trim_’s
hand,—_Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, say no more;—but go down, _Trim_,
this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.

_Trim_ ran down and brought up his master’s supper,—to no
purpose:—_Trim_’s plan of operation ran so in my uncle _Toby_’s head,
he could not taste it.—_Trim_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, get me to
bed.—’Twas all one.—Corporal _Trim_’s description had fired his
imagination,—my uncle _Toby_ could not shut his eyes.—The more he
considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him;—so that,
two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final determination
and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal _Trim_’s
decampment.

My uncle _Toby_ had a little neat country-house of his own, in the
village where my father’s estate lay at _Shandy_, which had been left
him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds
a-year. Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden
of about half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off
from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about
as much ground as Corporal _Trim_ wished for;—so that as _Trim_ uttered
the words, “A rood and a half of ground to do what they would
with,”—this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and
became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle
_Toby_’s fancy;—which was the physical cause of making him change
colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree
I spoke of.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and
expectation, than my uncle _Toby_ did, to enjoy this self-same thing in
private;—I say in private;—for it was sheltered from the house, as I
told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three
sides, from mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering
shrubs:—so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute
to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle _Toby_’s mind.—Vain
thought! however thick it was planted about,——or private soever it
might seem,—to think, dear uncle _Toby_, of enjoying a thing which took
up a whole rood and a half of ground,—and not have it known!

How my uncle _Toby_ and Corporal _Trim_ managed this matter,—with the
history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,——may
make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this
drama.—At present the scene must drop,—and change for the parlour
fire-side.

C H A P. XXXI

——WHAT can they be doing? brother, said my father.—I think, replied my
uncle _Toby_,—taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and
striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;——I think,
replied he,—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.

Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, _Obadiah?_——quoth my
father;——my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

Sir, answered _Obadiah_, making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my
Mistress is taken very badly.—And where’s _Susannah_ running down the
garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?——Sir, she is running
the shortest cut into the town, replied _Obadiah_, to fetch the old
midwife.—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly
for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife, with all our services,——and let him
know your mistress is fallen into labour——and that I desire he will
return with you with all speed.

It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle
_Toby_, as _Obadiah_ shut the door,——as there is so expert an operator
as Dr. _Slop_ so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in
this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who
has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and
not only the life of my child, brother,——but her own life, and with it
the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of
her hereafter.

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle _Toby_, my sister does it to save the
expence:—A pudding’s end,—replied my father,——the Doctor must be paid
the same for inaction as action,—if not better,—to keep him in temper.

——Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle
_Toby_, in the simplicity of his heart,—but MODESTY.—My sister, I dare
say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. I will
not say whether my uncle _Toby_ had completed the sentence or not;—’tis
for his advantage to suppose he had,——as, I think, he could have added
no ONE WORD which would have improved it.

If, on the contrary, my uncle _Toby_ had not fully arrived at the
period’s end—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of
my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that
ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the
_Aposiopesis._——Just Heaven! how does the _Poco piu_ and the _Poco
meno_ of the _Italian_ artists;—the insensible MORE OR LESS, determine
the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statue!
How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the
fiddle-stick, _et cætera_,—give the true swell, which gives the true
pleasure!—O my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of your language; and
never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your
eloquence and your fame depend.

——“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle _Toby_, “does not choose to let a
man come so near her ****” Make this dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis,—Take
the dash away, and write _Backside_,—’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out,
and put _Cover’d way_ in, ’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as
fortification ran so much in my uncle _Toby_’s head, that if he had
been left to have added one word to the sentence,——that word was it.

But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether the snapping
of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident
or anger, will be seen in due time.

C H A P. XXXII

THO’ my father was a good natural philosopher,—yet he was something of
a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe
snapp’d short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have
taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of
the fire.——He did no such thing;——he threw them with all the violence
in the world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,—he started
upon both his legs to do it.

This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my
uncle _Toby_ was saying, proved it was so.

—“Not choose,” quoth my father, (repeating my uncle _Toby_’s words) “to
let a man come so near her!”——By Heaven, brother _Toby!_ you would try
the patience of _Job_;—and I think I have the plagues of one already
without it.——Why?——Where?——Wherein?——Wherefore?——Upon what account?
replied my uncle _Toby_: in the utmost astonishment.—To think, said my
father, of a man living to your age, brother, and knowing so little
about women!——I know nothing at all about them,—replied my uncle
_Toby_: And I think, continued he, that the shock I received the year
after the demolition of _Dunkirk_, in my affair with widow
_Wadman_;—which shock you know I should not have received, but from my
total ignorance of the sex,—has given me just cause to say, That I
neither know nor do pretend to know any thing about ’em or their
concerns either.—Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at
least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong.

It is said in _Aristotle’s Master Piece_, “That when a man doth think
of any thing which is past,—he looketh down upon the ground;——but that
when he thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards
the heavens.”

My uncle _Toby_, I suppose, thought of neither, for he look’d
horizontally.—Right end! quoth my uncle _Toby_, muttering the two words
low to himself, and fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them,
upon a small crevice, formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece——Right
end of a woman!——I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is
than the man in the moon;——and if I was to think, continued my uncle
_Toby_ (keeping his eyes still fixed upon the bad joint) this month
together, I am sure I should not be able to find it out.

Then, brother _Toby_, replied my father, I will tell you.

Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh
pipe)—every thing in this world, my dear brother _Toby_, has two
handles.——Not always, quoth my uncle _Toby._——At least, replied my
father, every one has two hands,——which comes to the same thing.——Now,
if a man was to sit down coolly, and consider within himself the make,
the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience of all
the parts which constitute the whole of that animal, called Woman, and
compare them analogically—I never understood rightly the meaning of
that word,—quoth my uncle _Toby._—

ANALOGY, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which
different——Here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father’s
definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,—and, at the same time,
crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was
engendered in the womb of speculation;—it was some months before my
father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:—And, at
this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the subject of the
dissertation itself,—(considering the confusion and distresses of our
domestick misadventures, which are now coming thick one upon the back
of another) whether I shall be able to find a place for it in the third
volume or not.

C H A P. XXXIII

IT is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle
_Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and
go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with
reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically
speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and
come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce
had time to get on his boots.

If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to
take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of
the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more
than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon
him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather
probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and
of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our
ideas——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a
scholar, I will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the
jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.

I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight
miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house:—and
that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have
brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into
_England_:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and
have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a
journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire._—all which put
together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance
of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a
song, or a concerto between the acts.

If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and
thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen
seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea,
though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically,
rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which,
before, was a book apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an end
to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by
acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from
the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. _Slop_;—and indeed he gave a
dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a
tragical one too.

Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter.

C H A P. XXXIV

IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor
_Slop_, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a
breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done
honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.

Such were the out-lines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, which—if you have read
_Hogarth_’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you
would;——you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to
the mind by three strokes as three hundred.

Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. _Slop_’s
figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon
the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour——but of
strength,——alack!——scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such
a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.——They were
not.——Imagine to yourself, _Obadiah_ mounted upon a strong monster of a
coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable
speed the adverse way.

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

Had Dr. _Slop_ beheld _Obadiah_ a mile off, posting in a narrow lane
directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,—splashing and plunging
like a devil thro’ thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a
phænomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it,
round its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr.
_Slop_ in his situation, than the _worst_ of _Whiston_’s comets?—To say
nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of _Obadiah_ and the coach-horse.—In
my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was enough to have involved and
carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor’s pony, quite away with
it. What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr.
_Slop_ have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that
he was advancing thus warily along towards _Shandy-Hall_, and had
approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a
sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the
dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when _Obadiah_ and his coach-horse
turned the corner, rapid, furious,—pop,—full upon him!—Nothing, I
think, in nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a
rencounter,—so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as
Dr. _Slop_ was.

What could Dr. _Slop_ do?——he crossed himself +—Pugh!—but the doctor,
Sir, was a Papist.—No matter; he had better have kept hold of the
pummel.—He had so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing
at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,——and in attempting
to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it
slipped, he lost his stirrup,——in losing which he lost his seat;——and
in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what
little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his
presence of mind. So that without waiting for _Obadiah_’s onset, he
left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in
the stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other
consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have
been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in
the mire.

_Obadiah_ pull’d off his cap twice to Dr. _Slop_;—once as he was
falling,—and then again when he saw him seated.——Ill-timed
complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and got
off and help’d him?—Sir, he did all that his situation would allow;—but
the MOMENTUM of the coach-horse was so great, that _Obadiah_ could not
do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. _Slop_,
before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when he
did stop his beast, ’twas done with such an explosion of mud, that
_Obadiah_ had better have been a league off. In short, never was a Dr.
_Slop_ so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came
into fashion.

C H A P. XXXV

WHEN Dr. _Slop_ entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle
_Toby_ were discoursing upon the nature of women,——it was hard to
determine whether Dr. _Slop_’s figure, or Dr. _Slop_’s presence,
occasioned more surprize to them; for as the accident happened so near
the house, as not to make it worth while for _Obadiah_ to remount
him,——_Obadiah_ had led him in as he was, _unwiped, unappointed,
unannealed_, with all his stains and blotches on him.—He stood like
_Hamlet_’s ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full minute and a
half at the parlour-door (_Obadiah_ still holding his hand) with all
the majesty of mud. His hinder parts, upon which he had received his
fall, totally besmeared,——and in every other part of him, blotched over
in such a manner with _Obadiah_’s explosion, that you would have sworn
(without mental reservation) that every grain of it had taken effect.

Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle _Toby_ to have triumphed over
my father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. _Slop_ in that
pickle, could have dissented from so much, at least, of my uncle
_Toby_’s opinion, “That mayhap his sister might not care to let such a
Dr. _Slop_ come so near her ****” But it was the _Argumentum ad
hominem_; and if my uncle _Toby_ was not very expert at it, you may
think, he might not care to use it.——No; the reason was,—’twas not his
nature to insult.

Dr. _Slop_’s presence at that time, was no less problematical than the
mode of it; tho’ it is certain, one moment’s reflexion in my father
might have solved it; for he had apprized Dr. _Slop_ but the week
before, that my mother was at her full reckoning; and as the doctor had
heard nothing since, ’twas natural and very political too in him, to
have taken a ride to _Shandy-Hall_, as he did, merely to see how
matters went on.

But my father’s mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in the
investigation; running, like the hypercritick’s, altogether upon the
ringing of the bell and the rap upon the door,—measuring their
distance, and keeping his mind so intent upon the operation, as to have
power to think of nothing else,——common-place infirmity of the greatest
mathematicians! working with might and main at the demonstration, and
so wasting all their strength upon it, that they have none left in them
to draw the corollary, to do good with.

The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, struck likewise
strong upon the sensorium of my uncle _Toby_,—but it excited a very
different train of thoughts;—the two irreconcileable pulsations
instantly brought _Stevinus_, the great engineer, along with them, into
my uncle _Toby_’s mind. What business _Stevinus_ had in this affair,—is
the greatest problem of all:——It shall be solved,—but not in the next
chapter.

C H A P. XXXVI

WRITING, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is
but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is
about in good company, would venture to talk all;——so no author, who
understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would
presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the
reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him
something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.

For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind,
and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my
own.

’Tis his turn now;—I have given an ample description of Dr. _Slop_’s
sad overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the back-parlour;—his
imagination must now go on with it for a while.

Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. _Slop_ has told his tale—and in
what words, and with what aggravations, his fancy chooses;—Let him
suppose, that _Obadiah_ has told his tale also, and with such rueful
looks of affected concern, as he thinks best will contrast the two
figures as they stand by each other.—Let him imagine, that my father
has stepped up stairs to see my mother.—And, to conclude this work of
imagination,—let him imagine the doctor washed,—rubbed down, and
condoled,—felicitated,—got into a pair of _Obadiah_’s pumps, stepping
forwards towards the door, upon the very point of entering upon action.

Truce!—truce, good Dr. _Slop!_—stay thy obstetrick hand;——return it
safe into thy bosom to keep it warm;——little dost thou know what
obstacles,——little dost thou think what hidden causes, retard its
operation!——Hast thou, Dr. _Slop_,—hast thou been entrusted with the
secret articles of the solemn treaty which has brought thee into this
place?—Art thou aware that at this instant, a daughter of _Lucina_ is
put obstetrically over thy head? Alas!—’tis too true.—Besides, great
son of _Pilumnus!_ what canst thou do? Thou hast come forth
unarm’d;—thou hast left thy _tire-téte_,—thy new-invented
_forceps_,—thy _crotchet_,—thy _squirt_, and all thy instruments of
salvation and deliverance, behind thee,—By Heaven! at this moment they
are hanging up in a green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at the
bed’s head!—Ring;—call;—send _Obadiah_ back upon the coach-horse to
bring them with all speed.

——Make great haste, _Obadiah_, quoth my father, and I’ll give thee a
crown! and quoth my uncle _Toby_, I’ll give him another.

C H A P. XXXVII

YOUR sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing
himself to Dr. _Slop_, (all three of them sitting down to the fire
together, as my uncle _Toby_ began to speak)—instantly brought the
great _Stevinus_ into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite
author with me.—Then, added my father, making use of the argument _Ad
Crumenam_,—I will lay twenty guineas to a single crown-piece (which
will serve to give away to _Obadiah_ when he gets back) that this same
_Stevinus_ was some engineer or other—or has wrote something or other,
either directly or indirectly, upon the science of fortification.

He has so,—replied my uncle _Toby._—I knew it, said my father, though,
for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind of connection there can be
betwixt Dr. _Slop_’s sudden coming, and a discourse upon
fortification;—yet I fear’d it.—Talk of what we will, brother,——or let
the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for the subject,—you are sure
to bring it in. I would not, brother _Toby_, continued my father,——I
declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and
horn-works.—That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. _Slop_,
interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun.

_Dennis_ the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the
insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he would grow
testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious
discourse, was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the nose;——he saw
no difference.

Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to Dr. _Slop_,—the
curtins my brother _Shandy_ mentions here, have nothing to do with
beadsteads;—tho’, I know _Du Cange_ says, “That bed-curtains, in all
probability, have taken their name from them;”—nor have the horn-works
he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the horn-works of
cuckoldom: But the _Curtin_, Sir, is the word we use in fortification,
for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two
bastions and joins them—Besiegers seldom offer to carry on their
attacks directly against the curtin, for this reason, because they are
so well _flanked._ ( ’Tis the case of other curtains, quoth Dr. _Slop_,
laughing.) However, continued my uncle _Toby_, to make them sure, we
generally choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to
extend them beyond the fossé or ditch:——The common men, who know very
little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon
together,—tho’ they are very different things;—not in their figure or
construction, for we make them exactly alike, in all points; for they
always consist of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges,
not straight, but in form of a crescent;——Where then lies the
difference? (quoth my father, a little testily.)—In their situations,
answered my uncle _Toby:_—For when a ravelin, brother, stands before
the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a ravelin stands before a
bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin;—it is a half-moon;—a
half-moon likewise is a half-moon, and no more, so long as it stands
before its bastion;——but was it to change place, and get before the
curtin,—’twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon, in that case, is
not a half-moon;—’tis no more than a ravelin.——I think, quoth my
father, that the noble science of defence has its weak sides——as well
as others.

—As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh’d my father) which, continued my
uncle _Toby_, my brother was speaking of, they are a very considerable
part of an outwork;——they are called by the _French_ engineers,
_Ouvrage à corne_, and we generally make them to cover such places as
we suspect to be weaker than the rest;—’tis formed by two epaulments or
demi-bastions—they are very pretty,—and if you will take a walk, I’ll
engage to shew you one well worth your trouble.—I own, continued my
uncle _Toby_, when we crown them,—they are much stronger, but then they
are very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, so that, in my
opinion, they are most of use to cover or defend the head of a camp;
otherwise the double tenaille—By the mother who bore us!——brother
_Toby_, quoth my father, not able to hold out any longer,——you would
provoke a saint;——here have you got us, I know not how, not only souse
into the middle of the old subject again:—But so full is your head of
these confounded works, that though my wife is this moment in the pains
of labour, and you hear her cry out, yet nothing will serve you but to
carry off the man-midwife.——_Accoucheur_,—if you please, quoth Dr.
_Slop._—With all my heart, replied my father, I don’t care what they
call you,—but I wish the whole science of fortification, with all its
inventors, at the devil;—it has been the death of thousands,—and it
will be mine in the end.—I would not, I would not, brother _Toby_, have
my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes,
ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of _Namur_,
and of all the towns in _Flanders_ with it.

My uncle _Toby_ was a man patient of injuries;—not from want of
courage,—I have told you in a former chapter, “that he was a man of
courage:”—And will add here, that where just occasions presented, or
called it forth,—I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner
taken shelter;——nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness
of his intellectual parts;—for he felt this insult of my father’s as
feelingly as a man could do;—but he was of a peaceful, placid
nature,—no jarring element in it,—all was mixed up so kindly within
him; my uncle _Toby_ had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

—Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed
about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which
after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—I’ll
not hurt thee, says my uncle _Toby_, rising from his chair, and going
across the room, with the fly in his hand,—I’ll not hurt a hair of thy
head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he
spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I
hurt thee?——This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that
the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity,
which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most
pleasurable sensation;—or how far the manner and expression of it might
go towards it;—or in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of
voice and harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage
to my heart, I know not;—this I know, that the lesson of universal
good-will then taught and imprinted by my uncle _Toby_, has never since
been worn out of my mind: And tho’ I would not depreciate what the
study of the _Literæ humaniores_, at the university, have done for me
in that respect, or discredit the other helps of an expensive education
bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad since;—yet I often think that
I owe one half of my philanthropy to that one accidental impression.

This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume
upon the subject.

I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle _Toby_’s picture,
by the instrument with which I drew the other parts of it,—that taking
in no more than the mere HOBBY-HORSICAL likeness:—this is a part of his
moral character. My father, in this patient endurance of wrongs, which
I mention, was very different, as the reader must long ago have noted;
he had a much more acute and quick sensibility of nature, attended with
a little soreness of temper; tho’ this never transported him to any
thing which looked like malignancy:—yet in the little rubs and
vexations of life, ’twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty
kind of peevishness:——He was, however, frank and generous in his
nature;——at all times open to conviction; and in the little ebullitions
of this subacid humour towards others, but particularly towards my
uncle _Toby_, whom he truly loved:——he would feel more pain, ten times
told (except in the affair of my aunt _Dinah_, or where an hypothesis
was concerned) than what he ever gave.

The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them, reflected
light upon each other, and appeared with great advantage in this affair
which arose about _Stevinus._

I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a HOBBY-HORSE,—that a man’s
HOBBY-HORSE is as tender a part as he has about him; and that these
unprovoked strokes at my uncle _Toby_’s could not be unfelt by
him.——No:——as I said above, my uncle _Toby_ did feel them, and very
sensibly too.

Pray, Sir, what said he?—How did he behave?—O, Sir!—it was great: For
as soon as my father had done insulting his HOBBY-HORSE,——he turned his
head without the least emotion, from Dr. _Slop_, to whom he was
addressing his discourse, and looking up into my father’s face, with a
countenance spread over with so much good-nature;——so placid;——so
fraternal;——so inexpressibly tender towards him:—it penetrated my
father to his heart: He rose up hastily from his chair, and seizing
hold of both my uncle _Toby_’s hands as he spoke:—Brother _Toby_, said
he:—I beg thy pardon;——forgive, I pray thee, this rash humour which my
mother gave me.——My dear, dear brother, answered my uncle _Toby_,
rising up by my father’s help, say no more about it;—you are heartily
welcome, had it been ten times as much, brother. But ’tis ungenerous,
replied my father, to hurt any man;——a brother worse;——but to hurt a
brother of such gentle manners,—so unprovoking,—and so
unresenting;——’tis base:——By Heaven, ’tis cowardly.—You are heartily
welcome, brother, quoth my uncle _Toby_,——had it been fifty times as
much.——Besides, what have I to do, my dear _Toby_, cried my father,
either with your amusements or your pleasures, unless it was in my
power (which it is not) to increase their measure?

——Brother _Shandy_, answered my uncle _Toby_, looking wistfully in his
face,——you are much mistaken in this point:—for you do increase my
pleasure very much, in begetting children for the _Shandy_ family at
your time of life.—But, by that, Sir, quoth Dr. _Slop_, Mr. _Shandy_
increases his own.—Not a jot, quoth my father.

C H A P. XXXVIII

MY brother does it, quoth my uncle _Toby_, out of _principle._——In a
family way, I suppose, quoth Dr. _Slop._——Pshaw!—said my father,—’tis
not worth talking of.

C H A P. XXXIX

AT the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle _Toby_ were left
both standing, like _Brutus_ and _Cassius_, at the close of the scene,
making up their accounts.

As my father spoke the three last words,——he sat down;—my uncle _Toby_
exactly followed his example, only, that before he took his chair, he
rung the bell, to order Corporal _Trim_, who was in waiting, to step
home for _Stevinus_:—my uncle _Toby_’s house being no farther off than
the opposite side of the way.

Some men would have dropped the subject of _Stevinus_;—but my uncle
_Toby_ had no resentment in his heart, and he went on with the subject,
to shew my father that he had none.

Your sudden appearance, Dr. _Slop_, quoth my uncle, resuming the
discourse, instantly brought _Stevinus_ into my head. (My father, you
may be sure, did not offer to lay any more wagers upon _Stevinus_’s
head.)——Because, continued my uncle _Toby_, the celebrated sailing
chariot, which belonged to Prince _Maurice_, and was of such wonderful
contrivance and velocity, as to carry half a dozen people thirty
_German_ miles, in I don’t know how few minutes,——was invented by
_Stevinus_, that great mathematician and engineer.

You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth Dr. _Slop_ (as
the fellow is lame) of going for _Stevinus_’s account of it, because in
my return from _Leyden_ thro’ the _Hague_, I walked as far as
_Schevling_, which is two long miles, on purpose to take a view of it.

That’s nothing, replied my uncle _Toby_, to what the learned
_Peireskius_ did, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning
from _Paris_ to _Schevling_, and from _Schevling_ to _Paris_ back
again, in order to see it,—and nothing else.

Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.

The more fool _Peireskius_, replied Dr. _Slop._ But mark, ’twas out of
no contempt of _Peireskius_ at all;——but that _Peireskius_’s
indefatigable labour in trudging so far on foot, out of love for the
sciences, reduced the exploit of Dr. _Slop_, in that affair, to
nothing:—the more fool _Peireskius_, said he again.—Why so?—replied my
father, taking his brother’s part, not only to make reparation as fast
as he could for the insult he had given him, which sat still upon my
father’s mind;——but partly, that my father began really to interest
himself in the discourse.——Why so?——said he. Why is _Peireskius_, or
any man else, to be abused for an appetite for that, or any other
morsel of sound knowledge: For notwithstanding I know nothing of the
chariot in question, continued he, the inventor of it must have had a
very mechanical head; and tho’ I cannot guess upon what principles of
philosophy he has atchieved it;—yet certainly his machine has been
constructed upon solid ones, be they what they will, or it could not
have answered at the rate my brother mentions.

It answered, replied my uncle _Toby_, as well, if not better; for, as
_Peireskius_ elegantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity of its
motion, _Tam citus erat, quam erat ventus_; which, unless I have forgot
my Latin, is, _that it was as swift as the wind itself._

But pray, Dr. _Slop_, quoth my father, interrupting my uncle (tho’ not
without begging pardon for it at the same time) upon what principles
was this self-same chariot set a-going?—Upon very pretty principles to
be sure, replied Dr. _Slop_:—And I have often wondered, continued he,
evading the question, why none of our gentry, who live upon large
plains like this of ours,—(especially they whose wives are not past
child-bearing) attempt nothing of this kind; for it would not only be
infinitely expeditious upon sudden calls, to which the sex is
subject,—if the wind only served,—but would be excellent good husbandry
to make use of the winds, which cost nothing, and which eat nothing,
rather than horses, which (the devil take ’em) both cost and eat a
great deal.

For that very reason, replied my father, “Because they cost nothing,
and because they eat nothing,”—the scheme is bad;—it is the consumption
of our products, as well as the manufactures of them, which gives bread
to the hungry, circulates trade,—brings in money, and supports the
value of our lands;—and tho’, I own, if I was a Prince, I would
generously recompense the scientifick head which brought forth such
contrivances;—yet I would as peremptorily suppress the use of them.

My father here had got into his element,—and was going on as
prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as my uncle _Toby_ had
before, upon his of fortification;—but to the loss of much sound
knowledge, the destinies in the morning had decreed that no
dissertation of any kind should be spun by my father that day,——for as
he opened his mouth to begin the next sentence,

C H A P. XL

IN popped Corporal _Trim_ with _Stevinus_:—But ’twas too late,—all the
discourse had been exhausted without him, and was running into a new
channel.

—You may take the book home again, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_,
nodding to him.

But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling,—look first into it,
and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing chariot in it.

Corporal _Trim_, by being in the service, had learned to obey,—and not
to remonstrate,—so taking the book to a side-table, and running over
the leaves; An’ please your Honour, said _Trim_, I can see no such
thing;—however, continued the Corporal, drolling a little in his turn,
I’ll make sure work of it, an’ please your Honour;—so taking hold o

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