But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum,—but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding!——Angels and ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,——can any soul withstand this shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,——all perplexity,——all confusion within-side.
But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;—that instead of the cerebrum being propelled towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of hurt:——By heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us,——and the professors of the obstetric art are lifted into the same conspiracy.—What is it to me which end of my son comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.
When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;—it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.——Poor devil, he would say,—he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.——It unriddled the observations of drivellers and monstrous heads,——shewing à priori, it could not be otherwise,——unless **** I don’t know what. It wonderfully explained and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sunshine, &c.—which for aught he knew, might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,—as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;——but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;—shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;—their pleasures more;—the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organisation of the cerebellum was preserved;——nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced,——so that the soul might just act as she liked.
When my father had got so far,———what a blaze of light did the accounts of the Cæsarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;——no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or the os coxygis on that;———and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Cæsar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a name;——your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,—who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:——These, and many more who figured high in the annals of fame,—all came side-way, Sir, into the world.
The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks together in my father’s head;——he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the matrix, were not mortal;—so that the belly of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the child.—He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my mother,———merely as a matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his hopes,—he thought it as well to say no more of it,——contenting himself with admiring,—what he thought was to no purpose to propose.
This was my father Mr. Shandy’s hypothesis; concerning which I have only to add, that my brother Bobby did as great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke of: For happening not only to be christened, as I told you, but to be born too, when my father was at Epsom,——being moreover my mother’s first child,—coming into the world with his head foremost,—and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,——my father spelt all these together into his opinion: and as he had failed at one end,—he was determined to try the other.
This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not easily to be put out of their way,——and was therefore one of my father’s great reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could better deal with.
Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for my father’s purpose;——for though this new-invented forceps was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to be the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very thing which ran in my father’s fancy;——tho’ not with a view to the soul’s good in extracting by the feet, as was my father’s system,—but for reasons merely obstetrical.
This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle Toby.——In what manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up against two such allies in science,—is hard to conceive.—You may conjecture upon it, if you please,——and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my uncle Toby got his modesty by the wound he received upon his groin.—You may raise a system to account for the loss of my nose by marriage-articles,—and shew the world how it could happen, that I should have the misfortune to be called Tristam, in opposition to my father’s hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, Godfathers and Godmothers not excepted.—These, with fifty other points left yet unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;——but I tell you beforehand it will be in vain, for not the sage Alquife, the magician in Don Belianis of Greece, nor the no less famous Urganda, the sorceress his wife, (were they alive), could pretend to come within a league of the truth.
The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of these matters till the next year,——when a series of things will be laid open which he little expects.
1. The author is here twice mistaken; for Lithopædus should be wrote thus, Lithopædii Senonensis Icon. The second mistake is, that this Lithopædus is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child. The account of this, published by Athosius 1580, may be seen at the end of Cordæus’s works in Spachius. Mr. Tristram Shandy has been led into this error, either from seeing Lithopædus’s name of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr. ——, or by mistaking Lithopædus for Trinecavellius,——from the too great similitude of the names.
BOOK III
Multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia; meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis———in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, a seriis vicissim ad jocos transire.
—Joan. Saresberiensis, Episcopus Lugdun.
CHAPTER I
——“I WISH, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby, (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished at first1)——“I wish, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby, “you had seen what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.”
My uncle Toby’s wish did Dr. Slop a disservice which his heart never intended any man,—Sir, it confounded him——and thereby putting his ideas first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them again for the soul of him.
In all disputes,——male or female,——whether for honour, for profit, or for love,—it makes no difference in the case;—nothing is more dangerous, Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the party wish’d at, instantly to get upon his legs—and wish the wisher something in return, of pretty near the same value,——so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it.
This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.—
Dr. Slop did not understand the nature of this defence;—he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four minutes and a half;—five had been fatal to it:—my father saw the danger—the dispute was one of the most interesting disputes in the world, “Whether the child of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a head or with one:”—he waited to the last moment, to allow Dr. Slop, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare with—first in my uncle Toby’s face—then in his—then up—then down—then east—east and by east, and so on,——coasting it along by the plinth of the wainscot till he had got to the opposite point of the compass,——and that he had actually begun to count the brass nails upon the arm of his chair,—my father thought there was no time to be lost with my uncle Toby, so took up the discourse as follows.
CHAPTER II
“—What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!”——
Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped India handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as he argued the point with my uncle Toby.——
——Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you my reasons for it.
Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “Whether my father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his left,”——have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.——But need I tell you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape!—and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens?
As my father’s India handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on the contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken it out;——which he might have done without any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his whole body
In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand——or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or arm-pit)—his whole attitude had been easy—natural—unforced: Reynolds himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.
Now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself.
In the latter end of Queen Anne’s reign, and in the beginning of the reign of King George the first—“Coat pockets were cut very low down in the skirt.”—I need say no more—the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my father’s situation.
CHAPTER III
It was not an easy matter in any king’s reign (unless you were as lean a subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.——In the year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father’s approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicolas;——the idea of which drew off his attention so entirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up Trim to go and fetch his map of Namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,—but particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin.
My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face——my uncle Toby dismounted immediately.
——I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o’ horseback.———
CHAPTER IV
A man’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin’s lining;—rumple the one,—you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet, or thin persian.
Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes, Antipater, Panætius, and Posidonius amongst the Greeks;——Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;——Pantæonus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can’t recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to pieces;——in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:——for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,——and yet I declare, the lining to it,———as far as I am a judge of the matter,——is not a three-penny piece the worse;—pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long way, have they been trimming it for me:—had there been the least gumminess in my lining,—by heaven! it had all of it long ago been frayed and fretted to a thread.
———You Messrs. the Monthly reviewers!———how could you cut and slash my jerkin as you did?——how did you know but you would cut my lining too?
Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,—so God bless you;—only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as some of you did last May (in which I remember the weather was very hot)—don’t be exasperated, if I pass it by again with good temper,—being determined as long as I live or write (which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz’d about his nose all dinner-time,———“Go,—go, poor devil,” quoth he,—“get thee gone,—why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.”
CHAPTER V
Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion of blood in my father’s countenance,—by means of which (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father’s brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put in exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew’d up his, to the same pitch;—and then the devil and all had broke loose—the whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison Scarlatti—con furia,—like mad.—Grant me patience!——What has con furia,——con strepito,——or any other hurly burly whatever to do with harmony?
Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed him too. My uncle Toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;——so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good-will——my father, at length, went on as follows.
CHAPTER VI
“What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!”——Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as honest a man, and with as good and as upright a heart as ever God created;—nor is it thy fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into the world:——but believe me, dear Toby, the accidents which unavoidably waylay them, not only in the article of our begetting ’em——though these, in my opinion, are well worth considering,——but the dangers and difficulties our children are beset with, after they are got forth into the world, are enow—little need is there to expose them to unnecessary ones in their passage to it.——Are these dangers, quoth my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon my father’s knee, and looking up seriously in his face for an answer,——are these dangers greater now o’ days, brother, than in times past? Brother Toby, answered my father, if a child was but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the mother did well after it,—our forefathers never looked farther.——My uncle Toby instantly withdrew his hand from off my father’s knee, reclined his body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see the cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory muscles along his cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty—he whistled Lillabullero.
CHAPTER VII
Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero to my father,—Dr. Slop was stamping, and cursing and damning at Obadiah at a most dreadful rate,———it would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile sin of swearing, to have heard him; I am determined therefore to relate the whole affair to you.
When Dr. Slop’s maid delivered the green bays bag with her master’s instruments in it, to Obadiah, she very sensibly exhorted him to put his head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as this, in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest anything should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed Obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which Obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body.
This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended; but was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the tire tête, forceps, and squirt, as would have been enough, had Hymen been taking a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when Obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his coach-horse into a full gallop——by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.
As Obadiah had a wife and three children——the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain,——he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest patriots.——“The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear himself whistle.”
CHAPTER VIII
As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music he carried with him,—he very considerately set his imagination to work, to contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition of enjoying it.
In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, nothing is so apt to enter a man’s head as his hat-band:——the philosophy of this is so near the surface——I scorn to enter into it.
As Obadiah’s was a mix’d case——mark, Sirs,——I say, a mixed case; for it was obstetrical,——scriptical, squirtical, papistical——and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in it,——caballistical——and only partly musical;—Obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,—he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of roundabouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the strings met,—that Dr. Slop must have had three-fifths of Job’s patience at least to have unloosed them.—I think in my conscience, that had Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest——and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started together——there is no man living who had seen the bag with all that Obadiah had done to it,——and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind—which of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother, Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly——at least by twenty knots.——Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had,——thy affairs had not been so depress’d—(at least by the depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned—as thou hast been forced to leave them;——but ’tis over,——all but the account of ’em, which cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the world.
CHAPTER IX
Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle Toby about midwifery put him in mind of it)—the very same thought occurred.—’Tis God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy has had so bad a time of it,——else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied.——But here you must distinguish—the thought floated only in Dr. Slop’s mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side.
A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother’s bed, did the proposition the very service I am speaking of. By all that’s unfortunate, quoth Dr. Slop, unless I make haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is.
CHAPTER X
In the case of knots,—by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy,—a little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of Monmouth’s affair:——nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his;——in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them—to get them slipp’d and undone by.—I hope you apprehend me.
In the case of these knots then, and of the several obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting through life——every hasty man can whip out his penknife and cut through them.——’Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which both reason and conscience dictate——is to take our teeth or our fingers to them.——Dr. Slop had lost his teeth—his favourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of it:———he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close.——The duce take it! I can make nothing of it either way, cried Dr. Slop.——The trampling overhead near my mother’s bedside increased.—Pox take the fellow! I shall never get the knots untied as long as I live.——My mother gave a groan.——Lend me your penknife——I must e’en cut the knots at last——pugh!——psha!—Lord! I have cut my thumb quite across to the very bone——curse the fellow—if there was not another man-midwife within fifty miles——I am undone for this bout—I wish the scoundrel hang’d—I wish he was shot——I wish all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead!———
My father had a great respect for Obadiah, and could not bear to hear him disposed of in such a manner—he had moreover some little respect for himself—and could as ill bear with the indignity offered to himself in it.
Had Dr. Slop cut any part about him, but his thumb——my father had pass’d it by—his prudence had triumphed: as it was, he was determined to have his revenge.
Small curses, Dr. Slop, upon great occasions, quoth my father (condoling with him first upon the accident), are but so much waste of our strength and soul’s health to no manner of purpose.—I own it, replied Dr. Slop.—They are like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle Toby (suspending his whistling), fired against a bastion.——They serve, continued my father, to stir the humours——but carry off none of their acrimony:—for my own part, I seldom swear or curse at all—I hold it bad——but if I fall into it by surprize, I generally retain so much presence of mind (right, quoth my uncle Toby) as to make it answer my purpose——that is, I swear on till I find myself easy. A wise and a just man however would always endeavour to proportion the vent given to these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within himself—but to the size and ill intent of the offence upon which they are to fall.—“Injuries come only from the heart,”—quoth my uncle Toby. For this reason, continued my father, with the most Cervantick gravity, I have the greatest veneration in the world for that gentleman, who, in distrust of his own discretion in this point, sat down and composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to the highest provocation which could possibly happen to him——which forms being well considered by him, and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece, within his reach, ready for use.—I never apprehended, replied Dr. Slop, that such a thing was ever thought of——much less executed. I beg your pardon, answered my father; I was reading, though not using, one of them to my brother Toby this morning, whilst he pour’d out the tea—’tis here upon the shelf over my head;—but if I remember right, ’tis too violent for a cut of the thumb.—Not at all, quoth Dr. Slop—the devil take the fellow.——Then, answered my father, ’Tis much at your service, Dr. Slop—on condition you will read it aloud;——so rising up and reaching down a form of excommunication of the church of Rome, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his collections) had procured out of the leger-book of the church of Rochester, writ by Ernulphus the bishop——with a most affected seriousness of look and voice, which might have cajoled Ernulphus himself—he put it into Dr. Slop’s hands.——Dr. Slop wrapt his thumb up in the corner of his handkerchief, and with a wry face, though without any suspicion, read aloud, as follows———my uncle Toby whistling Lillabullero as loud as he could all the time.
Textus de Ecclesiâ Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum.
CAP. XI
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CHAPTER XI |
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Ex auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et sanctorum canonum, sanctæque et intemeratæ Virginis Dei genetricis Mariæ,— |
“By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour.” |
I think there is no necessity, quoth Dr. Slop, dropping the paper down to his knee, and addressing himself to my father——as you have read it over, Sir, so lately, to read it aloud——and as Captain Shandy seems to have no great inclination to hear it———I may as well read it to myself. That’s contrary to treaty, replied my father:———besides, there is something so whimsical, especially in the latter part of it, I should grieve to lose the pleasure of a second reading. Dr. Slop did not altogether like it,———but my uncle Toby offering at that instant to give over whistling, and read it himself to them;———Dr. Slop thought he might as well read it under the cover of my uncle Toby’s whistling———as suffer my uncle Toby to read it alone;——so raising up the paper to his face, and holding it quite parallel to it, in order to hide his chagrin———he read it aloud as follows————my uncle Toby whistling Lillabullero, though not quite so loud as before.
[Here my uncle Toby, throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud Whew—w—w————something betwixt the interjectional whistle of Hay-day! and the word itself.———
——By the golden beard of Jupiter—and of Juno (if her majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatick—to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they wore them)———all which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the Pagan establishment;——every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being stroken and sworn by—by all these beards together then——I vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I would have given the better of them, as freely as ever Cid Hamet offered his——to have stood by, and heard my uncle Toby’s accompanyment.]
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——et insurgat adversus illum cœlum cum omnibus virtutibus quæ in eo moventur ad damnandum eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Fiat, fiat. Amen. |
——“curse him!” continued Dr. Slop,—“and may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him” (Obadiah) “unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. So be it,—so be it. Amen.” |
I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the father of curses, replied Dr. Slop.——So am not I, replied my uncle.——But he is cursed, and damn’d already, to all eternity, replied Dr. Slop.
I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby.
Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was just beginning to return my uncle Toby the compliment of his Whu—u—u—or interjectional whistle——when the door hastily opening in the next chapter but one——put an end to the affair.
CHAPTER XII
Now don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them,——imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.
I’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a connoisseur:——though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in swearing,——as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c., &c., the whole set of ’em are so hung round and befetish’d with the bobs and trinkets of criticism,——or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity,——for I have fetch’d it as far as from the coast of Guiney;—their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em.
—And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?—Oh, against all rule, my lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;—and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and three-fifths by a stop-watch, my lord, each time,—Admirable grammarian!——But in suspending his voice——was the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm?——Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look?———I look’d only at the stop-watch, my lord.—Excellent observer!
And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?——Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my lord,——quite an irregular thing!—not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle.—I had my rule and compasses, &c., my lord, in my pocket.—Excellent critick!
——And for the epick poem your lordship bid me look at——upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu’s——’tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions.—Admirable connoisseur!
——And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in your way back?—’Tis a melancholy daub! my lord; not one principle of the pyramid in any one group!——and what a price!——for there is nothing of the colouring of Titian—the expression of Rubens—the grace of Raphael—the purity of Dominichino—the corregiescity of Corregio—the learning of Poussin—the airs of Guido—the taste of the Carrachis—or the grand contour of Angela.—Grant me patience, just Heaven!—Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst——the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands——be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.
Great Apollo! if thou art in a giving humour—give me—I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it——and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to—no matter.
Now to any one else I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and imprecations which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past as originals——except St. Paul’s thumb——God’s flesh and God’s fish, which were oaths monarchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings’ oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;—else I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of Ernulphus a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!—It is thought to be no bad oath——and by itself passes very well—“G—d damn you.”—Set it beside Ernulphus’s——“God Almighty the Father damn you—God the Son damn you—God the Holy Ghost damn you”—you see ’tis nothing.—There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention—possess’d more of the excellencies of a swearer——had such a thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and articulations,——that when Ernulphus cursed—no part escaped him.—’Tis true there is something of a hardness in his manner——and, as in Michael Angelo, a want of grace——but then there is such a greatness of gusto!
My father, who generally look’d upon everything in a light very different from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an original.——He considered rather, Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;—for the same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest——lest, through the rust of time——and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition—they should be lost to the world for ever.
For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath, from the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror (By the splendour of God) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (Damn your eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus.—In short, he would add—I defy a man to swear out of it.
The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious too;——nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own.
CHAPTER XIII
——Bless my soul!—my poor mistress is ready to faint——and her pains are gone—and the drops are done—and the bottle of julap is broke——and the nurse has cut her arm—(and I, my thumb, cried Dr. Slop,) and the child is where it was, continued Susannah,—and the midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat.—I’ll look at it, quoth Dr. Slop.—There is no need of that, replied Susannah,—you had better look at my mistress—but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment.
Human nature is the same in all professions.
The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop’s head—He had not digested it,—No, replied Dr. Slop, ’twould be full as proper, if the midwife came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby,—and but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.—Nor, replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby’s hobby-horsical reflection; though full as hobby-horsical himself)———do I know, Captain Shandy, what might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to ******———the application of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so à propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a name.
CHAPTER XIV
Let us go back to the ******——in the last chapter.
It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot—but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long as Tully’s second Philippick—it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.—And then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldy and incommodious to his action—so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.—Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute——hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it——and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders—Oh Sirs! it has done wonders—It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation.
These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles——and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them—with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great style of design.—All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.——We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.
CHAPTER XV
Dr. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle Toby—’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the ***, which had he managed——my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,——Dr. Slop would never have given them up;—and my uncle Toby would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.
When a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.——“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”
CHAPTER XVI
—Upon my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby—and you have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. Slop——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm. I did so, answered my uncle Toby.——Then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut in my thumb has made me a little aukward—or possibly—’Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head-piece.———It would not have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered Dr. Slop.—I maintain it, said my uncle Toby, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into a perfect posset.———Pshaw! replied Dr. Slop, a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;—the sutures give way—and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.—Not you, said she.——I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.
Pray do, added my uncle Toby.
CHAPTER XVII
——And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?———’Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * *
——What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle Toby.——There is no such danger, continued he, with the head.—No, in truth, quoth my father—but when your possibility has taken place at the hip—you may as well take off the head too.
——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis enough Dr. Slop understood it;——so taking the green bays bag in his hand, with the help of Obadiah’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door———and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments.
CHAPTER XVIII
It is two hours, and ten minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived—and I know not how it happens, brother Toby—but to my imagination it seems almost an age.
——Here—pray, Sir, take hold of my cap—nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too.
Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter.
Though my father said, “he knew not how it happen’d,”—yet he knew very well how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and its simple modes, in order to shew my uncle Toby by what mechanism and mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to another, since Dr. Slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period to so inconceivable an extent.——“I know not how it happens—cried my father,—but it seems an age.”
——’Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas.
My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of reasoning upon everything which happened, and accounting for it too—proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succession of ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having it snatch’d out of his hands by my uncle Toby, who (honest man!) generally took everything as it happened;——and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking;—the ideas of time and space—or how we came by those ideas—or of what stuff they were made——or whether they were born with us—or we picked them up afterwards as we went along—or whether we did it in frocks——or not till we had got into breeches—with a thousand other inquiries and disputes about INFINITY, PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY, and so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theories so many fine heads have been turned and cracked——never did my uncle Toby’s the least injury at all; my father knew it—and was no less surprized than he was disappointed, with my uncle’s fortuitous solution.
Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.
Not I, quoth my uncle.
—But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about?—
No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.
Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two hands together——there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby——’twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.—But I’ll tell thee.——
To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other——we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is we have of duration, so as to give a satisfactory account how we came by it.——What is that to anybody? quoth my uncle Toby. 3For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and thinking, and smoking our pipes, or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or anything else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co-existing with our thinking——and so according to that preconceived———You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle Toby.
———’Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months——and of clocks (I wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to us, and to those who belong to us——that ’twill be well, if in time to come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service to us at all.
Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which follow each other in train just like———A train of artillery? said my uncle Toby——A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my father—which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.—I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoak-jack.———Then, brother Toby, I have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my father.
CHAPTER XIX
——What a conjecture was here lost!——My father in one of his best explanatory moods—in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into the very regions, where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it about;—my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world;—his head like a smoak-jack;——the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter!—By the tomb-stone of Lucian——if it is in being——if not, why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes!———my father and my uncle Toby’s discourse upon TIME and ETERNITY——was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my father’s humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the Ontologic Treasury of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to restore to it again.
CHAPTER XX
Tho’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse—yet he could not get my uncle Toby’s smoak-jack out of his head—piqued as he was at first with it;—there was something in the comparison at the bottom, which hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon the table, and reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand——but looking first stedfastly in the fire——he began to commune with himself, and philosophize about it: but his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse———the idea of the smoak-jack soon turned all his ideas upside down—so that he fell asleep almost before he knew what he was about.
As for my uncle Toby, his smoak-jack had not made a dozen revolutions, before he fell asleep also.——Peace be with them both!——Dr. Slop is engaged with the midwife and my mother above stairs.——Trim is busy in turning an old pair of jackboots into a couple of mortars, to be employed in the siege of Messina next summer—and is this instant boring the touch-holes with the point of a hot poker.——All my heroes are off my hands;—’tis the first time I have had a moment to spare—and I’ll make use of it, and write my preface.
THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE
No, I’ll not say a word about it——here it is;—in publishing it—I have appealed to the world——and to the world I leave it;—it must speak for itself.
All I know of the matter is—when I sat down, my intent was to write a good book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold out—a wise, aye, and a discreet—taking care only, as I went along, to put into it all the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great Author and Bestower of them had thought fit originally to give me———so that, as your worships see—’tis just as God pleases.
Now, Agelastes (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be some wit in it, for aught he knows——but no judgment at all. And Triptolemus and Phutatorius agreeing thereto, ask, How is it possible there should? for that wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east from west———So, says Locke——so are farting and hickuping, say I. But in answer to this, Didius the great church lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis, doth maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no argument——nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a syllogism;——but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it———so that the main good these things do is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which, if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.
Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice able criticks, and fellow-labourers (for to you I write this Preface)———and to you, most subtle statesmen and discreet doctors (do—pull off your beards) renowned for gravity and wisdom;——Monopolus, my politician—Didius, my counsel; Kysarcius, my friend;—Phutatorius, my guide;——Gastripheres, the preserver of my life; Somnolentius, the balm and repose of it——not forgetting all others, as well sleeping as waking, ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of no resentment to you, I lump all together.———Believe me, right worthy,
My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own too, in case the thing is not done already for us——is, that the great gifts and endowments both of wit and judgment, with everything which usually goes along with them———such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick parts, and what not, may this precious moment, without stint or measure, let or hindrance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear it—scum and sediment and all (for I would not have a drop lost) into the several receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains———in such sort, that they might continue to be injected and tunn’d into, according to the true intent and meaning of my wish, until every vessel of them, both great and small, be so replenish’d, saturated, and filled up therewith, that no more, would it save a man’s life, could possibly be got either in or out.