Bless us!—what noble work we should make!——how should I tickle it off!——and what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing away for such readers!——and you—just heaven!——with what raptures would you sit and read—but oh!—’tis too much——I am sick——I faint away deliciously at the thoughts of it—’tis more than nature can bear!—lay hold of me——I am giddy—I am stone blind—I’m dying—I am gone.—Help! Help! Help!—But hold—I grow something better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great wits—we should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end:——there would be so much satire and sarcasm——scoffing and flouting, with raillying and reparteeing of it—thrusting and parrying in one corner or another——there would be nothing but mischief among us——Chaste stars! what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places—there would be no such thing as living for us.
But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and though we should abominate each other ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, milk and honey—’twould be a second land of promise—a paradise upon earth, if there was such a thing to be had—so that upon the whole we should have done well enough.
All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present, is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships well know, that of these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so bountifully wished both for your worships and myself—there is but a certain quantum stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole race of mankind; and such small modicums of ’em are only sent forth into this wide world, circulating here and there in one bye corner or another—and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from each other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could be sufficient for the wants and emergencies of so many great estates, and populous empires.
Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the arctick and antarctick circles, where the whole province of a man’s concernments lies for near nine months together within the narrow compass of his cave—where the spirits are compressed almost to nothing—and where the passions of a man, with everything which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone itself—there the least quantity of judgment imaginable does the business—and of wit——there is a total and an absolute saving—for as not one spark is wanted—so not one spark is given. Angels and ministers of grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us! For mercy’s sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into Norway—crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothnia; coasting along it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the Gulf of Finland, and the north-east of the Baltick, up to Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria;—then stretching over directly from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire—leaving Siberia a little upon the left hand, till we got into the very heart of Russian and Asiatick Tartary.
Now throughout this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have just left:—for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a comfortable provision of good plain household judgment, which, taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with———and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the proper balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want occasions to put them to use.
Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and humours runs high———where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason———the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities———and accordingly we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of descent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.
It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us:——the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up——then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury——you would think they would never stop:——and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before us.
It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction———that I draw and set up this position as most true and veritable;
That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which dispenses everything in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d’ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives——running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting to their journies end;——some falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks——others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned profession tilting full but against the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.—Here the brethren of another profession, who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way.—What confusion!—what mistakes!——fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears—admirable!—trusting to the passions excited—in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart——instead of measuring them by a quadrant.
In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round——against the stream of corruption—by Heaven!——instead of with it.
In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against predestination; perhaps worse—feeling his patient’s pulse, instead of his apothecary’s——a brother of the Faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in tears—drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;—offering a fee—instead of taking one.
In that spacious HALL, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it, driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might and main, the wrong way!——kicking it out of the great doors, instead of in——and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the peace and preservation of mankind:——perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them still———a litigated point fairly hung up;———for instance, Whether John o’Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o’Stiles his face, without a trespass, or not—rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many months——and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours know an ACTION should be, with all the stratagems practicable therein,———such as feints,——forced marches,——surprizes——ambuscades——mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides———might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession.
As for the Clergy———No——if I say a word against them, I’ll be shot.——I have no desire;—and besides, if I had—I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject——with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account—and therefore ’tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up——and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.——But mark—I say, reported to be—for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.
This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith make appear.
I hate set dissertations——and above all things in the world, ’tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your reader’s conception—when in all likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once—“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”—I am this moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?—they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun-beams.
I enter now directly upon the point.
—Here stands wit—and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like the two knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on which I am sitting.
—You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame—as wit and judgment are of ours—and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments————to answer one another.
Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this matter—let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on—nay, don’t laugh at it,—but did you ever see, in the whole course of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?—Why, ’tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in the other:——do——pray, get off your seats only to take a view of it.——Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?—nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?—and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all?
Now these two knobs———or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature——being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful——the most priz’d—the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at—for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding——or so ignorant of what will do him good therein—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.
Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one—unless they laid hold of the other,——pray what do you think would become of them?——Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e’en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked——this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are upon——so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time against the lawful owners.
I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and artifice——that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds———was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it—it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;——but this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it——on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the rest.
This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since——but your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat:——which by the bye is one of the many and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.
As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too freely———I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration——That I have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards, any farther than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture—for any purpose——peace be with them!— mark only——I write not for them.
CHAPTER XXI
Every day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have it mended—’tis not mended yet;—no family but ours would have borne with it an hour——and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in the world upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-hinges.——And yet at the same time, he was certainly one of the greatest bubbles to them, I think, that history can produce: his rhetorick and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.—Never did the parlour-door open—but his philosophy or his principles fell a victim to it;——three drops of oil with a feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his honour for ever.
——Inconsistent soul that man is!——languishing under wounds, which he has the power to heal!—his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge!—his reason, that precious gift of God to him—(instead of pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his sensibilities—to multiply his pains, and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them—Poor unhappy creature, that he should do so!——Are not the necessary causes of misery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow;—struggle against evils which cannot be avoided, and submit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble they create him would remove from his heart for ever?
By all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops of oil to be got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of Shandy Hall———the parlour door hinge shall be mended this reign.
CHAPTER XXII
When Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour.
Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of hinges, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this.
Had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door should do—
Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its hinges——(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your worship,—otherwise I give up my simile)—in this case, I say, there had been no danger either to master or man, in Corporal Trim’s peeping in: the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast asleep—the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it.
“When things move upon bad hinges, an’ please your lordships, how can it be otherwise?”
Pray what’s the matter? Who is there? cried my father, waking, the moment the door began to creak.——I wish the smith would give a peep at that confounded hinge.——’Tis nothing, an’ please your honour, said Trim, but two mortars I am bringing in.—They shan’t make a clatter with them here, cried my father hastily.—If Dr. Slop has any drugs to pound, let him do it in the kitchen.—May it please your honour, cried Trim, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which Obadiah told me your honour had left off wearing.—By Heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore——I have not one appointment belonging to me, which I set so much store by as I do by these jack-boots——they were our great grandfather’s, brother Toby—they were hereditary. Then I fear, quoth my uncle Toby, Trim has cut off the entail.—I have only cut off the tops, an’ please your honour, cried Trim——I hate perpetuities as much as any man alive, cried my father——but these jack-boots, continued he (smiling, though very angry at the same time) have been in the family, brother, ever since the civil wars;——Sir Roger Shandy wore them at the battle of Marston-Moor.—I declare I would not have taken ten pounds for them.——I’ll pay you the money, brother Shandy, quoth my uncle Toby, looking at the two mortars with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his breeches pocket as he viewed them——I’ll pay you the ten pounds this moment with all my heart and soul.——
Brother Toby, replied my father, altering his tone, you care not what money you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, ’tis but upon a SIEGE.——Have I not one hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half pay? cried my uncle Toby.—What is that—replied my father hastily—to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots?—twelve guineas for your pontoons?—half as much for your Dutch draw-bridge?—to say nothing of the train of little brass artillery you bespoke last week, with twenty other preparations for the siege of Messina: believe me, dear brother Toby, continued my father, taking him kindly by the hand—these military operations of yours are above your strength;—you mean well, brother——but they carry you into greater expences than you were first aware of;—and take my word, dear Toby, they will in the end quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you.—What signifies it if they do, brother, replied my uncle Toby, so long as we know ’tis for the good of the nation?——
My father could not help smiling for his soul—his anger at the worst was never more than a spark;—and the zeal and simplicity of Trim—and the generous (though hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby, brought him into perfect good humour with them in an instant.
Generous souls!—God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too! quoth my father to himself.
CHAPTER XXIII
All is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs—I hear not one foot stirring.—Prithee, Trim, who’s in the kitchen? There is no one soul in the kitchen, answered Trim, making a low bow as he spoke, except Dr. Slop.—Confusion! cried my father (getting up upon his legs a second time)—not one single thing was gone right this day! had I faith in astrology, brother (which, by the bye, my father had), I would have sworn some retrograde planet was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, and turning every individual thing in it out of its place.——Why, I thought Dr. Slop had been above stairs with my wife, and so said you.——What can the fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen!—He is busy, an’ please your honour, replied Trim, in making a bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby:———pray, give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.
You must know, my uncle Toby mistook the bridge—as widely as my father mistook the mortars;——but to understand how my uncle Toby could mistake the bridge—I fear I must give you an exact account of the road which led to it;—or to drop my metaphor (for there is nothing more dishonest in an historian than the use of one)——in order to conceive the probability of this error in my uncle Toby aright, I must give you some account of an adventure of Trim’s, though much against my will, I say much against my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out of its place here; for by right it should come in, either amongst the anecdotes of my uncle Toby’s amours with widow Wadman, in which corporal Trim was no mean actor—or else in the middle of his and my uncle Toby’s campaigns on the bowling-green—for it will do very well in either place;—but then if I reserve it for either of those parts of my story——I ruin the story I’m upon;——and if I tell it here—I anticipate matters, and ruin it there.
—What would your worships have me to do in this case?
—Tell it, Mr. Shandy, by all means.—You are a fool, Tristram, if you do.
O ye powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)—which enable mortal man to tell a story worth the hearing———that kindly shew him, where he is to begin it—and where he is to end it——what he is to put into it——and what he is to leave out—how much of it he is to cast into a shade—and whereabouts he is to throw his light!—Ye, who preside over this vast empire of biographical freebooters, and see how many scrapes and plunges your subjects hourly fall into;——will you do one thing?
I beg and beseech you (in case you will do nothing better for us) that wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several roads meet in one point, as they have done just here——that at least you set up a guide-post in the centre of them, in mere charity, to direct an uncertain devil which of the three he is to take.
CHAPTER XXIV
Tho’ the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman, had fixed him in a resolution never more to think of the sex—or of aught which belonged to it;—yet corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed in my uncle Toby’s case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and strong citadel.——In Trim’s case there was a concurrence of nothing in the world, but of him and Bridget in the kitchen;—though in truth, the love and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had my uncle Toby employed his time and genius in tagging of points——I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down his arms, and followed his example with pleasure. When therefore my uncle Toby sat down before the mistress—corporal Trim incontinently took ground before the maid.
Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much cause to esteem and honour—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no matter)—can it escape your penetration—I defy it—that so many playwrights, and opificers of chit-chat have ever since been working upon Trim’s and my uncle Toby’s pattern.——I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, or Ricaboni say—(though I never read one of them)——there is not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and madam Pompadour’s vis-à-vis; than betwixt a single amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing throughout a grand drama——Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind—is quite lost in five acts;—but that is neither here nor there.
After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my uncle Toby’s quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which shall be given in its proper place, my uncle Toby, honest man! found it necessary to draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat indignantly.
Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself——or with any one else——the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust——he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;—that is, he kept others off;—for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her—or (as circumstances directed) he would shake her by the hand—or ask her lovingly how she did—or would give her a ribbon—and now-and-then, though never but when it could be done with decorum, would give Bridget a—
Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years; that is, from the demolition of Dunkirk in the year 13, to the latter end of my uncle Toby’s campaign in the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks before the time I’m speaking of.——When Trim, as his custom was, after he had put my uncle Toby to bed, going down one moonshiny night to see that everything was right at his fortifications——in the lane separated from the bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly—he espied his Bridget.
As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle Toby had made, Trim courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: this was not done so privately, but that the foul-mouth’d trumpet of Fame carried it from ear to ear, till at length it reach’d my father’s, with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my uncle Toby’s curious drawbridge, constructed and painted after the Dutch fashion, and which went quite across the ditch—was broke down, and somehow or other crushed all to pieces that very night.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle Toby’s hobby-horse, he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever gentleman mounted; and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it, could never think of it once, without smiling at it——so that it could never get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of entertainment to him.——Well——but dear Toby! my father would say, do tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——How can you tease me so much about it? my uncle Toby would reply—I have told it you twenty times, word for word as Trim told it me.—Prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would cry, turning to Trim.—It was a mere misfortune, an’ please your honour;——I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications, and in going too near the edge of the fosse, I unfortunately slipp’d in——Very well, Trim! my father would cry——(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod—but without interrupting him)——and being link’d fast, an’ please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me, by means of which she fell backwards soss against the bridge——and Trim’s foot (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—It was a thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not break his leg.———Ay truly, my father would say——a limb is soon broke, brother Toby, in such encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards—my father would exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon the BATTERING-RAMS of the ancients—the VINEA which Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.—He would tell my uncle Toby of the CATAPULTÆ of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation:—he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the BALLISTA which Marcellinus makes so much rout about!—the terrible effects of the PYROBOLI, which cast fire;——the danger of the TEREBRA and SCORPIO, which cast javelins.——But what are these, would he say, to the destructive machinery of corporal Trim?——Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge, or bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold out against such artillery.
My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle Toby leap’d up without feeling the pain upon his groin—and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother’s chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pulled out of his pocket.——The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle Toby did these little offices—cut my father thro’ his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.——May my brains be knock’d out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to himself—if ever I insult this worthy soul more!
CHAPTER XXV
The draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered directly to set about another———but not upon the same model: for cardinal Alberoni’s intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle Toby rightly foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt Spain and the Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all likelihood be either in Naples or Sicily——he determined upon an Italian bridge—(my uncle Toby, by the bye, was not far out of his conjectures)——but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead as far of my uncle Toby in the cabinet, as my uncle Toby took it of him in the field———convinced him, that if the king of Spain and the Emperor went together by the ears, England and France and Holland must, by force of their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;——and if so, he would say, the combatants, brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old prizefighting stage of Flanders;—then what will you do with your Italian bridge?
—We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle Toby.
When Corporal Trim had about half finished it in that style——my uncle Toby found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered before. It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle Toby to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;——for by this means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession——and pray of what use is the other?
The natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his bridge fast only at one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, and stand bolt upright———but that was rejected for the reason given above.
For a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one of that particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, to hinder a passage; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage—of which sorts your worship might have seen three famous ones at Spires before its destruction—and one now at Brisac, if I mistake not;—but my father advising my uncle Toby, with great earnestness, to have nothing more to do with thrusting bridges—and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it would but perpetuate the memory of the Corporal’s misfortune—he changed his mind for that of the marquis d’Hôpital’s invention, which the younger Bernouilli has so well and learnedly described, as your worships may see———Act. Erud. Lips. an. 1695—to these a lead weight is an eternal balance, and keeps watch as well as a couple of centinels, inasmuch as the construction of them was a curve line approximating to a cycloid———if not a cycloid itself.
My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in England—but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;——he talked however about it every day——the bridge went not forwards.——We’ll ask somebody about it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim.
CHAPTER XXVI
When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge—my uncle Toby——the affair of the jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain——took it instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d’Hôpital’s bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby;—pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.
Had my uncle Toby’s head been a Savoyard’s box, and my father peeping in all the time at one end of it——it could not have given him a more distinct conception of the operations of my uncle Toby’s imagination, than what he had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph——
When Trim’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and twisted it to pieces.
CHAPTER XXVII
——This unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father——God bless your honour, cried Trim, ’tis a bridge for master’s nose.——In bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose, Susannah says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah’s stays, to raise it up.
——Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.
CHAPTER XXVIII
From the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of the world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly been gathering over my father.——A tide of little evils and distresses has been setting in against him.—Not one thing, as he observed himself, has gone right: and now is the storm thicken’d and going to break, and pour down full upon his head.
I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.——My nerves relax as I tell it.——Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should not.——And this moment that I last dipp’d my pen into my ink, I could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity there appear’d in my manner of doing it.——Lord! how different from the rash jerks and hair-brain’d squirts thou art wont, Tristram, to transact it with in other humours—dropping thy pen——spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books—as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing!
CHAPTER XXIX
——I won’t go about to argue the point with you—’tis so——and I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, “That both man and woman bear pain or sorrow (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.”
The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself prostrate across the bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the same time in the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows, that ever the eye of pity dropp’d a tear for.——The palm of his right hand, as he fell upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and covering the greatest part of both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way backwards) till his nose touch’d the quilt;——his left arm hung insensible over the side of the bed, his knuckles reclining upon the handle of the chamber-pot, which peep’d out beyond the valance—his right leg (his left being drawn up towards his body) hung half over the side of the bed, the edge of it pressing upon his shin-bone—He felt it not. A fix’d, inflexible sorrow took possession of every line of his face.—He sigh’d once——heaved his breast often—but uttered not a word.
An old set-stitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around with party-coloured worsted bobs, stood at the bed’s head, opposite to the side where my father’s head reclined.—My uncle Toby sat him down in it.
Before an affliction is digested—consolation ever comes too soon;—and after it is digested—it comes too late: so that you see, madam, there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at: my uncle Toby was always either on this side, or on that of it, and would often say, he believed in his heart he could as soon hit the longitude; for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he drew the curtain a little forwards, and having a tear at every one’s service——he pull’d out a cambrick handkerchief——gave a low sigh——but held his peace.
CHAPTER XXX
——“All is not gain that is got into the purse.”—So that notwithstanding my father had the happiness of reading the oddest books in the universe, and had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking that ever man in it was bless’d with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all———that it laid him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical distresses; of which this particular one, which he sunk under at present, is as strong an example as can be given.
No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child’s nose, by the edge of a pair of forceps—however scientifically applied—would vex any man in the world, who was at so much pains in begetting a child, as my father was—yet it will not account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor will it justify the unchristian manner he abandoned and surrendered him self up to.
To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour—and my uncle Toby in his old fringed chair sitting beside him.
CHAPTER XXXI
——I think it a very unreasonable demand—cried my great-grandfather, twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table.——By this account, madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a shilling more—and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it.———
—“Because,” replied my great-grandmother, “you have little or no nose, Sir.”—
Now before I venture to make use of the word Nose a second time—to avoid all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all possible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be understood to mean by the term: being of opinion, that ’tis owing to the negligence and perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else——that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear and demonstrative as those upon a Will o’ the Wisp, or any other sound part of philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do, before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of judgment——but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most occasion for——changing it, Sir, as you would a guinea, into small coin?—which done—let the father of confusion puzzle you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your reader’s head, if he knows how.
In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as this I am engaged in—the neglect is inexcusable; and Heaven is witness, how the world has revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal strictures—and for depending so much as I have done, all along, upon the cleanliness of my readers’ imaginations.
——Here are two senses, cried Eugenius, as we walk’d along, pointing with the forefinger of his right hand to the word Crevice, in the one hundred and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this book of books;———here are two senses—quoth he—And here are two roads, replied I, turning short upon him——a dirty and a clean one——which shall we take?—The clean, by all means, replied Eugenius. Eugenius, said I, stepping before him, and laying my hand upon his breast——to define—is to distrust.——Thus I triumph’d over Eugenius; but I triumph’d over him as I always do, like a fool.——’Tis my comfort, however, I am not an obstinate one: therefore
I define a nose as follows—intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my definition—For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs—I declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.
CHAPTER XXXII
——“Because,” quoth my great-grandmother, repeating the words again—“you have little or no nose, Sir.”———
S’death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose,—’tis not so small as that comes to;——’tis a full inch longer than my father’s.—Now, my great-grandfather’s nose was for all the world like unto the noses of all the men, women, and children, whom Pantagruel found dwelling upon the island of Ennasin.———By the way, if you would know the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people——you must read the book;——find it out yourself, you never can.——
—’Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.
—’Tis a full inch, continued my grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his nose with his finger and thumb; and repeating his assertion——’tis a full inch longer, madam, than my father’s——You must mean your uncle’s, replied my great-grandmother.
———My great-grandfather was convinced.—He untwisted the paper, and signed the article.
CHAPTER XXXIII
——What an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.
My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving the mark, than there is upon the back of my hand.
—Now, you must know, that my great-grandmother outlived my grandfather twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half-yearly—(on Michaelmas and Lady-day),—during all that time.
No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my father.———And as far as a hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon the table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome, which generous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down money: but as soon as ever he enter’d upon the odd fifty—he generally gave a loud Hem! rubb’d the side of his nose leisurely with the flat part of his fore finger——inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of his wig—look’d at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it——and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.
Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no allowances for these workings within us.—Never—O never may I lay down in their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors!
For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses had gradually been taking root in our family.———Tradition was all along on its side, and Interest was every half-year stepping in to strengthen it; so that the whimsicality of my father’s brain was far from having the whole honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.—For in a great measure he might be said to have suck’d this in with his mother’s milk. He did his part however.——If education planted the mistake (in case it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.
He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.—And for the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly noses, following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.———He would often boast that the Shandy family rank’d very high in King Harry the VIIIth’s time, but owed its rise to no state engine—he would say—but to that only;——but that, like other families, he would add——it had felt the turn of the wheel, and had never recovered the blow of my great-grandfather’s nose.——It was an ace of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head—and as vile a one for an unfortunate family as ever turn’d up trumps.
———Fair and softly, gentle reader!———where is thy fancy carrying thee?——If there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather’s nose, I mean the external organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face——and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third——that is, measured downwards from the setting on of the hair.——
——What a life of it has an author, at this pass!
CHAPTER XXXIV
It is a singular blessing, that nature has form’d the mind of man with the same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is observed in old dogs—“of not learning new tricks.”
What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever existed be whisk’d into at once, did he read such books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change sides!
Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all this—He pick’d up an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.—It becomes his own—and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up.
I am aware that Didius, the great civilian, will contest this point; and cry out against me, Whence comes this man’s right to this apple? ex confesso, he will say—things were in a state of nature—The apple, as much Frank’s apple as John’s. Pray, Mr. Shandy, what patent has he to shew for it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he set his heart upon it? or when he gathered it? or when he chew’d it? or when he roasted it? or when he peel’d, or when he brought it home? or when he digested?—or when he——?——For ’tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made it not his—that no subsequent act could.
Brother Didius, Tribonius will answer—(now Tribonius the civilian and church lawyer’s beard being three inches and a half and three eighths longer than Didius his beard—I’m glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so I give myself no farther trouble about the answer).—Brother Didius, Tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the fragments of Gregorius and Hermogines’s codes, and in all the codes from Justinian’s down to the codes of Louis and Des Eaux—That the sweat of a man’s brows, and the exsudations of a man’s brains, are as much a man’s own property as the breeches upon his backside;—which said exsudations, &c., being dropp’d upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex’d, by the picker up, to the thing pick’d up, carried home, roasted, peel’d, eaten, digested, and so on;——’tis evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix’d up something which was his own, with the apple which was not his own, by which means he has acquired a property;—or, in other words, the apple is John’s apple.
By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they lay out of the common way, the better still was his title.——No mortal claimed them; they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting as in the case above, so that they might well and truly be said to be of his own goods and chattles.—Accordingly he held fast by ’em, both by teeth and claws—would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on—and, in a word, would intrench and fortify them round with as many circumvallations and breast-works, as my uncle Toby would a citadel.
There was one plaguy rub in the way of this——the scarcity of materials to make anything of a defence with, in case of a smart attack; inasmuch as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I am considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects—and how many millions of books in all languages, and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world. What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by; and though my father would oft-times sport with my uncle Toby’s library—which, by the bye, was ridiculous enough—yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much care as my honest uncle Toby had done those upon military architecture.——’Tis true, a much less table would have held them—but that was not thy transgression, my dear uncle.—
Here——but why here——rather than in any other part of my story——I am not able to tell:———but here it is———my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.——Here let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and veneration for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew’s bosom.——Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head!—Thou enviedst no man’s comforts——insultedst no man’s opinions——Thou blackenedst no man’s character—devouredst no man’s bread: gently, with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way:—for each one’s sorrow thou hadst a tear,—for each man’s need, thou hadst a shilling.
Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder—thy path from thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown up.——Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall never be demolish’d.
CHAPTER XXXV
My father’s collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good fortune however, to set off well, in getting Bruscambille’s prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing—for he gave no more for Bruscambille than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.——There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom—said the stall-man, except what are chain’d up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as lightning——took Bruscambille into his bosom——hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way.
To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille is———inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either———’twill be no objection against the simile—to say, That when my father got home, he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, ’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress———that is, from morning even unto night: which, by the bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the inamorato—is of little or no entertainment at all to by-standers.——Take notice, I go no farther with the simile—my father’s eye was greater than his appetite—his zeal greater than his knowledge—he cool’d—his affections became divided——he got hold of Prignitz—purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paræus, Bouchet’s Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much to say by and by—I will say nothing now.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.———Now don’t let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on—let me beg of you, like an unback’d filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it—and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till, like Tickletoby’s mare, you break a strap or a crupper and throw his worship into the dirt.—You need not kill him.—
—And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare?—’tis just as discreditable and unscholarlike a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.—Who was Tickletoby’s mare?——Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read—or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon—I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.