part I
somewhat question it)—that my father, before that time, had actually wrote that remarkable character in the _Tristra-pædia_, which to me is the most original and entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the _chapter upon sash-windows_, with a bitter _Philippick_ at the end of it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.—I have but two reasons for thinking otherwise.
First, Had the matter been taken into consideration, before the event happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash window for good an’ all;—which, considering with what difficulty he composed books,—he might have done with ten times less trouble, than he could have wrote the chapter: this argument I foresee holds good against his writing a chapter, even after the event; but ’tis obviated under the second reason, which I have the honour to offer to the world in support of my opinion, that my father did not write the chapter upon sash-windows and chamber-pots, at the time supposed,—and it is this.
——That, in order to render the _Tristra-pædia_ complete,—I wrote the
## chapter myself.
C H A P. XXVII
MY father put on his spectacles—looked,—took them off,—put them into the case—all in less than a statutable minute; and without opening his lips, turned about and walked precipitately down stairs: my mother imagined he had stepped down for lint and basilicon; but seeing him return with a couple of folios under his arm, and _Obadiah_ following him with a large reading-desk, she took it for granted ’twas an herbal, and so drew him a chair to the bedside, that he might consult upon the case at his ease.
——If it be but right done,—said my father, turning to the _Section—de sede vel subjecto circumcisionis_,—for he had brought up _Spenser de Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus_—and _Maimonides_, in order to confront and examine us altogether.——
——If it be but right done, quoth he:—only tell us, cried my mother, interrupting him, what herbs?——For that, replied my father, you must send for Dr. _Slop._
My mother went down, and my father went on, reading the section as follows,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—Very well,—said my father, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—nay, if it has that convenience——and so without stopping a moment to settle it first in his mind, whether the _Jews_ had it from the _Egyptians_, or the _Egyptians_ from the _Jews_,—he rose up, and rubbing his forehead two or three times across with the palm of his hand, in the manner we rub out the footsteps of care, when evil has trod lighter upon us than we foreboded,—he shut the book, and walked down stairs.—Nay, said he, mentioning the name of a different great nation upon every step as he set his foot upon it—if the EGYPTIANS,—the SYRIANS,—the PHOENICIANS,—the ARABIANS,—the CAPPADOCIANS,——if the COLCHI, and TROGLODYTES did it——if SOLON and PYTHAGORAS submitted,—what is TRISTRAM?——Who am I, that I should fret or fume one moment about the matter?
C H A P. XXVIII
DEAR _Yorick_, said my father smiling (for _Yorick_ had broke his rank with my uncle _Toby_ in coming through the narrow entry, and so had stept first into the parlour)—this _Tristram_ of ours, I find, comes very hardly by all his religious rites.—Never was the son of _Jew, Christian, Turk_, or _Infidel_ initiated into them in so oblique and slovenly a manner.—But he is no worse, I trust, said _Yorick._—There has been certainly, continued my father, the deuce and all to do in some part or other of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine was formed.—That, you are a better judge of than I, replied _Yorick._—Astrologers, quoth my father, know better than us both:—the trine and sextil aspects have jumped awry,—or the opposite of their ascendents have not hit it, as they should,—or the lords of the genitures (as they call them) have been at _bo-peep_,—or something has been wrong above, or below with us.
’Tis possible, answered _Yorick._—But is the child, cried my uncle _Toby_, the worse?—The _Troglodytes_ say not, replied my father. And your theologists, _Yorick_, tell us—Theologically? said _Yorick_,—or speaking after the manner of apothecaries?[25]—statesmen?[26]—or washer-women?[27]
——I’m not sure, replied my father,—but they tell us, brother _Toby_, he’s the better for it.——Provided, said _Yorick_, you travel him into _Egypt._—Of that, answered my father, he will have the advantage, when he sees the _Pyramids._——
Now every word of this, quoth my uncle _Toby_, is _Arabic_ to me.——I wish, said _Yorick_, ’twas so, to half the world.
—ILUS,[28] continued my father, circumcised his whole army one morning.—Not without a court martial? cried my uncle _Toby._——Though the learned, continued he, taking no notice of my uncle _Toby_’s remark, but turning to _Yorick_,—are greatly divided still who _Ilus_ was;—some say _Saturn;_—some the Supreme Being;—others, no more than a brigadier general under _Pharaoh-neco._——Let him be who he will, said my uncle _Toby_, I know not by what article of war he could justify it.
The controvertists, answered my father, assign two-and-twenty different reasons for it:—others, indeed, who have drawn their pens on the opposite side of the question, have shewn the world the futility of the greatest part of them.—But then again, our best polemic divines—I wish there was not a polemic divine, said _Yorick_, in the kingdom;—one ounce of practical divinity—is worth a painted ship-load of all their reverences have imported these fifty years.—Pray, Mr. _Yorick_, quoth my uncle _Toby_,—do tell me what a polemic divine is?——The best description, captain _Shandy_, I have ever read, is of a couple of ’em, replied _Yorick_, in the account of the battle fought single hands betwixt _Gymnast_ and captain _Tripet;_ which I have in my pocket.——I beg I may hear it, quoth my uncle _Toby_ earnestly.—You shall, said _Yorick._—And as the corporal is waiting for me at the door,—and I know the description of a battle will do the poor fellow more good than his supper,—I beg, brother, you’ll give him leave to come in.—With all my soul, said my father.——_Trim_ came in, erect and happy as an emperor; and having shut the door, _Yorick_ took a book from his right-hand coat-pocket, and read, or pretended to read, as follows.
[25] Χαλεπῆς νόσου, καὶ δυσιάτου ἀπαλλαγὴν, ἣν ἄνθρακα καλοῦσιν.—PHILO
[26] Τὰ τεμνόμενα τῶν ἐθνῶν τολυγονώτατα, καὶ πολυανθρωπότατα εἶναι.
[27] Καθαριότητος εἵνεκεν.—BOCHART.
[28] Ὁ Ἶλος, τὰ αἰδοῖα περιτέμνεται, ταὐτὸ ποιῆσαι καὶ τοὺς ἅμ’ αυτῷ συμμάχους καταναγκάσας.—SANCHUNIATHO.
C H A P. XXIX
——“which words being heard by all the soldiers which were there, divers of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for the assailant: all this did _Gymnast_ very well remark and consider; and therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his short sword by this thigh) shifting his feet in the stirrup, and performing the stirrup-leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he forthwith launched himself aloft into the air, and placed both his feet together upon the saddle, standing upright, with his back turned towards his horse’s head,—Now, (said he) my case goes forward. Then suddenly in the same posture wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and turning to the left-hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just into his former position, without missing one jot.——Ha! said _Tripet_, I will not do that at this time,—and not without cause. Well, said _Gymnast_, I have failed,—I will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility, turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another striking gambol as before; which done, he set his right hand thumb upon the bow of the saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and upholding his whole weight upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and whirled himself about three times: at the fourth, reversing his body, and overturning it upside down, and foreside back, without _touching any thing_, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s two ears, and then giving himself a jerking swing, he seated himself upon the crupper—”
(This can’t be fighting, said my uncle _Toby._——The corporal shook his head at it.——Have patience, said _Yorick._)
“Then (_Tripet_) pass’d his right leg over his saddle, and placed himself _en croup._—But, said he, ’twere better for me to get into the saddle; then putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper before him, and there-upon leaning himself, as upon the only supporters of his body, he incontinently turned heels over head in the air, and strait found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle in a tolerable seat; then springing into the air with a summerset, he turned him about like a wind-mill, and made above a hundred frisks, turns, and demi-pommadas.”—Good God! cried _Trim_, losing all patience,—one home thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.——I think so too, replied _Yorick._——
I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father.
C H A P. XXX
——No,—I think I have advanced nothing, replied my father, making answer to a question which _Yorick_ had taken the liberty to put to him,—I have advanced nothing in the _Tristra-pædia_, but what is as clear as any one proposition in _Euclid._—Reach me, _Trim_, that book from off the scrutoir:—it has oft-times been in my mind, continued my father, to have read it over both to you, _Yorick_, and to my brother _Toby_, and I think it a little unfriendly in myself, in not having done it long ago:——shall we have a short chapter or two now,—and a chapter or two hereafter, as occasions serve; and so on, till we get through the whole? My uncle _Toby_ and _Yorick_ made the obeisance which was proper; and the corporal, though he was not included in the compliment, laid his hand upon his breast, and made his bow at the same time.——The company smiled. _Trim_, quoth my father, has paid the full price for staying out the _entertainment._——He did not seem to relish the play, replied _Yorick._——’Twas a Tom-fool-battle, an’ please your reverence, of captain _Tripet_ ’s and that other officer, making so many summersets, as they advanced;——the _French_ come on capering now and then in that way,—but not quite so much.
My uncle _Toby_ never felt the consciousness of his existence with more complacency than what the corporal’s, and his own reflections, made him do at that moment;——he lighted his pipe,——_Yorick_ drew his chair closer to the table,—_Trim_ snuff’d the candle,—my father stirr’d up the fire,—took up the book,—cough’d twice, and begun.
C H A P. XXXI
THE first thirty pages, said my father, turning over the leaves,—are a little dry; and as they are not closely connected with the subject,——for the present we’ll pass them by: ’tis a prefatory introduction, continued my father, or an introductory preface (for I am not determined which name to give it) upon political or civil government; the foundation of which being laid in the first conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the species——I was insensibly led into it.——’Twas natural, said _Yorick._
The original of society, continued my father, I’m satisfied is, what _Politian_ tells us, _i.e._ merely conjugal; and nothing more than the getting together of one man and one woman;—to which, (according to _Hesiod_) the philosopher adds a servant:—but supposing in the first beginning there were no men servants born——he lays the foundation of it, in a man,—a woman—and a bull.——I believe ’tis an ox, quoth _Yorick_, quoting the passage ([Greek text])——A bull must have given more trouble than his head was worth.—But there is a better reason still, said my father (dipping his pen into his ink); for the ox being the most patient of animals, and the most useful withal in tilling the ground for their nourishment,—was the properest instrument, and emblem too, for the new joined couple, that the creation could have associated with them.—And there is a stronger reason, added my uncle _Toby_, than them all for the ox.—My father had not power to take his pen out of his ink-horn, till he had heard my uncle _Toby_’s reason.—For when the ground was tilled, said my uncle _Toby_, and made worth inclosing, then they began to secure it by walls and ditches, which was the origin of fortification.——True, true, dear _Toby_, cried my father, striking out the bull, and putting the ox in his place.
My father gave _Trim_ a nod, to snuff the candle, and resumed his discourse.
——I enter upon this speculation, said my father carelessly, and half shutting the book, as he went on, merely to shew the foundation of the natural relation between a father and his child; the right and jurisdiction over whom he acquires these several ways—
1st, by marriage.
2d, by adoption.
3d, by legitimation.
And 4th, by procreation; all which I consider in their order.
I lay a slight stress upon one of them, replied _Yorick_——the act, especially where it ends there, in my opinion lays as little obligation upon the child, as it conveys power to the father.—You are wrong,—said my father argutely, and for this plain reason * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.—I own, added my father, that the offspring, upon this account, is not so under the power and jurisdiction of the mother.—But the reason, replied _Yorick_, equally holds good for her.—She is under authority herself, said my father:—and besides, continued my father, nodding his head, and laying his finger upon the side of his nose, as he assigned his reason,—_she is not the principal agent_, Yorick.—In what, quoth my uncle _Toby?_ stopping his pipe.—Though by all means, added my father (not attending to my uncle _Toby_), “The son ought to pay her respect,” as you may read, _Yorick_, at large in the first book of the Institutes of _Justinian_, at the eleventh title and the tenth section.—I can read it as well, replied _Yorick_, in the Catechism.
C H A P. XXXII
TRIM can repeat every word of it by heart, quoth my uncle _Toby._—Pugh! said my father, not caring to be interrupted with _Trim_’s saying his Catechism. He can, upon my honour, replied my uncle _Toby._—Ask him, Mr. _Yorick_, any question you please.——
—The fifth Commandment, _Trim_,—said _Yorick_, speaking mildly, and with a gentle nod, as to a modest Catechumen. The corporal stood silent.—You don’t ask him right, said my uncle _Toby_, raising his voice, and giving it rapidly like the word of command:——The fifth———cried my uncle _Toby._—I must begin with the first, an’ please your honour, said the corporal.——
—_Yorick_ could not forbear smiling.—Your reverence does not consider, said the corporal, shouldering his stick like a musket, and marching into the middle of the room, to illustrate his position,—that ’tis exactly the same thing, as doing one’s exercise in the field.—
“_Join your right-hand to your firelock_,” cried the corporal, giving the word of command, and performing the motion.—
“_Poise your firelock_,” cried the corporal, doing the duty still both of adjutant and private man.
“_Rest your firelock;_”—one motion, an’ please your reverence, you see leads into another.—If his honour will begin but with the _first_—
THE FIRST—cried my uncle _Toby_, setting his hand upon his side—* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.
THE SECOND—cried my uncle _Toby_, waving his tobacco-pipe, as he would have done his sword at the head of a regiment.—The corporal went through his _manual_ with exactness; and having _honoured his father and mother_, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the room.
Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest, and has wit in it, and instruction too,—if we can but find it out.
—Here is the _scaffold work_ of INSTRUCTION, its true point of folly, without the BUILDING behind it.
—Here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governors, gerund-grinders, and bear-leaders to view themselves in, in their true dimensions.—
Oh! there is a husk and shell, _Yorick_, which grows up with learning, which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling away!
—SCIENCES MAY BE LEARNED BY ROTE BUT WISDOM NOT.
_Yorick_ thought my father inspired.—I will enter into obligations this moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt _Dinah_’s legacy in charitable uses (of which, by the bye, my father had no high opinion), if the corporal has any one determinate idea annexed to any one word he has repeated.—Prithee, _Trim_, quoth my father, turning round to him,—What dost thou mean, by “_honouring thy father and mother?_”
Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a day out of my pay, when they grow old.—And didst thou do that, _Trim_? said _Yorick._—He did indeed, replied my uncle _Toby._—Then, _Trim_, said _Yorick_, springing out of his chair, and taking the corporal by the hand, thou art the best commentator upon that part of the _Decalogue;_ and I honour thee more for it, corporal _Trim_, than if thou hadst had a hand in the _Talmud_ itself.
C H A P. XXXIIIV
O BLESSED health! cried my father, making an exclamation, as he turned over the leaves to the next chapter, thou art before all gold and treasure; ’tis thou who enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers to receive instruction and to relish virtue.—He that has thee, has little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as to want thee,—wants every thing with thee.
I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important head, said my father, into a very little room, therefore we’ll read the chapter quite through.
My father read as follows:
“The whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture”—You have proved that matter of fact, I suppose, above, said _Yorick._ Sufficiently, replied my father.
In saying this, my father shut the book,—not as if he resolved to read no more of it, for he kept his fore-finger in the chapter:——nor pettishly,—for he shut the book slowly; his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper-side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower side of it, without the least compressive violence.——
I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding to _Yorick_, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter.
Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth had wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret of all health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the _radical heat_ and the _radical moisture_,—and that he had managed the point so well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon radical heat or radical moisture, throughout the whole chapter,—or a single syllable in it, _pro_ or _con_, directly or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal œconomy——
“O thou eternal Maker of all beings!”—he would cry, striking his breast with his right hand (in case he had one)—“Thou whose power and goodness can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree of excellence and perfection,—What have we MOONITES done?”
C H A P. XXXIV
WITH two strokes, the one at _Hippocrates_, the other at Lord _Verulam_, did my father achieve it.
The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the _Ars longa_,—and _Vita brevis._——Life short, cried my father,—and the art of healing tedious! And who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the ignorance of quacks themselves,—and the stage-loads of chymical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which, in all ages, they have first flatter’d the world, and at last deceived it?
——O my lord _Verulam!_ cried my father, turning from _Hippocrates_, and making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest,—What shall I say to thee, my great lord _Verulam?_ What shall I say to thy internal spirit,—thy opium, thy salt-petre,——thy greasy unctions,—thy daily purges,—thy nightly clysters, and succedaneums?
——My father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing: how he dealt with his lordship’s opinion,——you shall see;——but when—I know not:——we must first see what his lordship’s opinion was.
C H A P. XXXV
“THE two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life, says lord _Verulam_, are first——
“The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame wastes the body down to death:—And secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to ashes:—which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions of life.”
This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning before you got up.——
Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of the air without;—but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no spicula could enter;——nor could any one get out.——This put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy distempers—a course of clysters was requisite to carry off redundant humours,—and render the system complete.
What my father had to say to my lord of _Verulam_’s opiates, his salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you shall read,—but not to-day—or to-morrow: time presses upon me,—my reader is impatient—I must get forwards——You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you chuse it), as soon as ever the _Tristra-pædia_ is published.——
Sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and established his own.——
C H A P. XXXVI
THE whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence again, depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within us;—the least imaginable skill had been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the school-men confounded the task, merely (as _Van Helmont_, the famous chymist, has proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and fat of animal bodies.
Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of _Aristotle_, “_Quod omne animal post coitum est_ triste.”
Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, but whether _vice versa_, is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the other decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat, which causes an unnatural dryness——or an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies.——So that if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught to avoid running into fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his destruction,——’twill be all that is needful to be done upon that head.——
C H A P. XXXVII
THE description of the siege of _Jericho_ itself, could not have engaged the attention of my uncle _Toby_ more powerfully than the last chapter;—his eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it;—he never mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, but my uncle _Toby_ took his pipe out of his mouth, and shook his head; and as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal to come close to his chair, to ask him the following question,—_aside._— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. It was at the siege of _Limerick_, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow.
The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to my father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the siege of _Limerick_ was raised, upon the very account you mention.——Now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother _Toby?_ cried my father, mentally.——By Heaven! continued he, communing still with himself, it would puzzle an _Œdipus_ to bring it in point.——
I believe, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and cinnamon with which I plyed your honour off;—And the geneva, _Trim_, added my uncle _Toby_, which did us more good than all——I verily believe, continued the corporal, we had both, an’ please your honour, left our lives in the trenches, and been buried in them too.——The noblest grave, corporal! cried my uncle _Toby_, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier could wish to lie down in.——But a pitiful death for him! an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.
All this was as much _Arabick_ to my father, as the rites of the _Colchi_ and _Troglodites_ had been before to my uncle _Toby;_ my father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile.
My uncle _Toby_, turning to _Yorick_, resumed the case at _Limerick_, more intelligibly than he had begun it,—and so settled the point for my father at once.
C H A P. XXXVIII
IT was undoubtedly, said my uncle _Toby_, a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux was upon us in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture, must, as I conceive it, inevitably have got the better.——My father drew in his lungs top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth again, as slowly as he possibly could.——
——It was Heaven’s mercy to us, continued my uncle _Toby_, which put it into the corporal’s head to maintain that due contention betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was.——Upon my honour, added my uncle _Toby_, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother _Shandy_, twenty toises.—If there was no firing, said _Yorick._
Well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word——Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy—————————————_Yorick_, foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father’s breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.——Prithee, _Trim_, said _Yorick_, without staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture?
With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the corporal, making a bow to my uncle _Toby_—Speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle _Toby._—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my slave,—added my uncle _Toby_, turning to my father.——
The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus.
C H A P. XXXIX
JUST as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled Dr. _Slop._—’Tis not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.——
Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and what has this whelp of mine to say to the matter?
Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system which Dr. _Slop_ had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—He sat down.
Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, in a manner which could not go unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’Twill end in a _phimosis_, replied Dr. _Slop._
I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle _Toby_—returning his pipe into his mouth.——Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical lecture.—The corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr. _Slop_, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words.
C H A P. XL
THE city of _Limerick_, the siege of which was begun under his majesty king _William_ himself, the year after I went into the army—lies, an’ please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.—’Tis quite surrounded, said my uncle _Toby_, with the _Shannon_, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified places in _Ireland._——
I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. _Slop_, of beginning a medical lecture.—’Tis all true, answered _Trim._—Then I wish the faculty would follow the cut of it, said _Yorick._—’Tis all cut through, an’ please your reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a puddle,—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water;—nor was that enough, for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.——
And what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal _Trim_, cried my father, from all these premises?
I infer, an’ please your worship, replied _Trim_, that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but ditch-water—and that the radical heat, of those who can go to the expence of it, is burnt brandy,—the radical heat and moisture of a private man, an’ please your honour, is nothing but ditch-water—and a dram of geneva——and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the vapours—we know not what it is to fear death.
I am at a loss, Captain _Shandy_, quoth Doctor _Slop_, to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology or divinity.—_Slop_ had not forgot _Trim_’s comment upon the sermon.—
It is but an hour ago, replied _Yorick_, since the corporal was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour.——
The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor _Slop_, turning to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being—as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally in my opinion by _consubstantials, impriments_, and _occludents._——Now this poor fellow, continued Dr. _Slop_, pointing to the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this nice point.——That he has,—said my father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—I’m sure of it—quoth _Yorick._——
C H A P. XLI
DOCTOR _Slop_ being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the _Tristra-pædia._——Come! cheer up, my lads; I’ll shew you land——for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelve-month.—Huzza!—
C H A P. XLII
——FIVE years with a bib under his chin;
Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to _Malachi;_
A year and a half in learning to write his own name;
Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at Greek and Latin;
Four years at his _probations_ and his _negations_—the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great _Julius Scaliger_ within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and _Peter Damianus_, lord bishop of _Ostia_, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And _Baldus_ himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when _Eudamidas_, the son of _Archidamas_, heard _Xenocrates_ at seventy-five disputing about _wisdom_, that he asked gravely,—_If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time will he have to make use of it?_
_Yorick_ listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost atoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when you imitate him.
I am convinced, _Yorick_, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a North-west passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.——But, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, _Yorick_, has not a parent to point it out.
——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the _auxiliary verbs_, Mr. _Yorick._
Had _Yorick_ trod upon _Virgil_ ’s snake, he could not have looked more surprised.—I am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and I reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befel the republic of letters, That those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas, in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done——So that, except _Raymond Lullius_, and the elder _Pelegrini_, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, _pro_ and _con_, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him.—I should be glad, said _Yorick_, interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father.
The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and not the better;——but be that as it may,—when the mind has done that with it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at rest,—until a second idea enters;—and so on.
Now the use of the _Auxiliaries_ is, at once to set the soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions.
You excite my curiosity greatly, said _Yorick._
For my own part, quoth my uncle _Toby_, I have given it up.——The _Danes_, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the left at the siege of _Limerick_, were all auxiliaries.——And very good ones, said my uncle _Toby._—But the auxiliaries, _Trim_, my brother is talking about,—I conceive to be different things.——
——You do? said my father, rising up.
C H A P. XLIII
MY father took a single turn across the room, then sat down, and finished the chapter.
The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are, _am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used;_ or _is wont._—And these varied with tenses, _present, past, future_, and _conjugated_ with the verb _see_,—or with these questions added to them;—_Is it? Was it? Will it be? Would it be? May it be? Might it be?_ And these again put negatively, _Is it not? Was it not? Ought it not?_—Or affirmatively,—_It is; It was; It ought to be._ Or chronologically,—_Has it been always? Lately? How long ago?_—Or hypothetically,—_If it was? If it was not?_ What would follow?—If the _French_ should beat the _English?_ If the _Sun_ go out of the _Zodiac?_
Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter his brain, how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from it.——Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to _Trim_, who stood at the back of his chair:—No, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.——But thou couldst discourse about one, _Trim_, said my father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle _Toby_, if the corporal never saw one?——’Tis the fact I want, replied my father,—and the possibility of it is as follows.
A WHITE BEAR! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?
Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?)
If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a white bear, what then?
If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted?—described? Have I never dreamed of one?
Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth?
—Is the white bear worth seeing?—
—Is there no sin in it?—
Is it better than a BLACK ONE?
C H A P. XLIV
——WE’LL not stop two moments, my dear Sir,—only, as we have got through these five volumes[29], (do, Sir, sit down upon a set——they are better than nothing) let us just look back upon the country we have pass’d through.——
——What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it!
Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number of Jack Asses?——How they view’d and review’d us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley!——and when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of sight—good God! what a braying did they all set up together!
——Prithee, shepherd! who keeps all those Jack Asses? * * *
——Heaven be their comforter——What! are they never curried?——Are they never taken in in winter?——Bray bray—bray. Bray on,—the world is deeply your debtor;——louder still—that’s nothing:—in good sooth, you are ill-used:——Was I a Jack Asse, I solemnly declare, I would bray in G-sol-re-ut from morning, even unto night.
[29] In the first edition, the sixth volume began with this chapter.
C H A P. XLV
WHEN my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an’ all,—and in a kind of triumph redelivered it into _Trim_’s hand, with a nod to lay it upon the ’scrutoire, where he found it.——_Tristram_, said he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same way;——every word, _Yorick_, by this means, you see, is converted into a thesis or an hypothesis;—every thesis and hypothesis have an off-spring of propositions;—and each proposition has its own consequences and conclusions; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings.——The force of this engine, added my father, is incredible in opening a child’s head.——’Tis enough, brother _Shandy_, cried my uncle _Toby_, to burst it into a thousand splinters.——
I presume, said _Yorick_, smiling,—it must be owing to this,—(for let logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted for sufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)——That the famous _Vincent Quirino_, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of which the Cardinal _Bembo_ has given the world so exact a story,—should be able to paste up in the public schools at _Rome_, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand five hundred and fifty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most abstruse theology;—and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents.——What is that, cried my father, to what is told us of _Alphonsus Tostatus_, who, almost in his nurse’s arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?——What shall we say of the great _Piereskius?_—That’s the very man, cried my uncle _Toby_, I once told you of, brother _Shandy_, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from _Paris_ to _Shevling_, and from _Shevling_ back again, merely to see _Stevinus_’s flying chariot.——He was a very great man! added my uncle _Toby_ (meaning _Stevinus_)—He was so, brother _Toby_, said my father (meaning _Piereskius_)——and had multiplied his ideas so fast, and increased his knowledge to such a prodigious stock, that, if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning him, which we cannot withhold here, without shaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever—at seven years of age, his father committed entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of five years old,—with the sole management of all his concerns.—Was the father as wise as the son? quoth my uncle _Toby:_—I should think not, said _Yorick:_—But what are these, continued my father—(breaking out in a kind of enthusiasm)—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood in _Grotius, Scioppius, Heinsius, Politian, Pascal, Joseph Scaliger, Ferdinand de Cordouè_, and others—some of which left off their _substantial forms_ at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning without them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote tragedies at eight;—_Ferdinand de Cordouè_ was so wise at nine,—’twas thought the Devil was in him;—and at _Venice_ gave such proofs of his knowledge and goodness, that the monks imagined he was _Antichrist_, or nothing.——Others were masters of fourteen languages at ten,—finished the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics, at eleven,—put forth their commentaries upon _Servius_ and _Martianus Capella_ at twelve,—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity:——but you forget the great _Lipsius_, quoth _Yorick_, who composed a work[30] the day he was born:——They should have wiped it up, said my uncle _Toby_, and said no more about it.
[30] Nous aurions quelque interêt, says _Baillet_, de montrer qu’il n’a rien de ridicule s’il étoit veritable, au moins dans le sens énigmatique que _Nicius Erythræus_ a tâ hé de lui donner. Cet auteur dit que pour comprendre comme _Lipse_, il a pû composer un ouvrage le premier jour de sa vie, il faut s’imaginer, que ce premier jour n’est pas celui de sa naissance charnelle, mais celui au quel il a commencé d’user de la raison; il veut que ç’ait été à l’âge de _neuf_ ans; et il nous veut persuader que ce fut en cet âge, que _Lipse_ fit un poëme.——Le tour est ingénieux, &c. &c.
C H A P. XLVI
WHEN the cataplasm was ready, a scruple of _decorum_ had unseasonably rose up in _Susannah_’s conscience, about holding the candle, whilst _Slop_ tied it on; _Slop_ had not treated _Susannah_’s distemper with anodynes,—and so a quarrel had ensued betwixt them.
——Oh! oh!——said _Slop_, casting a glance of undue freedom in _Susannah_’s face, as she declined the office;——then, I think I know you, madam——You know me, Sir! cried _Susannah_ fastidiously, and with a toss of her head, levelled evidently, not at his profession, but at the doctor himself,——you know me! cried _Susannah_ again.——Doctor _Slop_ clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his nostrils;——_Susannah_’s spleen was ready to burst at it;——’Tis false, said _Susannah._—Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said _Slop_, not a little elated with the success of his last thrust,——If you won’t hold the candle, and look—you may hold it and shut your eyes:—That’s one of your popish shifts, cried _Susannah:_—’Tis better, said _Slop_, with a nod, than no shift at all, young woman;——I defy you, Sir, cried _Susannah_, pulling her shift sleeve below her elbow.
It was almost impossible for two persons to assist each other in a surgical case with a more splenetic cordiality.
_Slop_ snatched up the cataplasm——_Susannah_ snatched up the candle;——A little this way, said _Slop;_ _Susannah_ looking one way, and rowing another, instantly set fire to _Slop_’s wig, which being somewhat bushy and unctuous withal, was burnt out before it was well kindled.——You impudent whore! cried _Slop_,—(for what is passion, but a wild beast?)—you impudent whore, cried _Slop_, getting upright, with the cataplasm in his hand;——I never was the destruction of any body’s nose, said _Susannah_,—which is more than you can say:——Is it? cried _Slop_, throwing the cataplasm in her face;——Yes, it is, cried _Susannah_, returning the compliment with what was left in the pan.
C H A P. XLVII
DOCTOR _Slop_ and _Susannah_ filed cross-bills against each other in the parlour; which done, as the cataplasm had failed, they retired into the kitchen to prepare a fomentation for me;—and whilst that was doing, my father determined the point as you will read.
C H A P. XLVIII
YOU see ’tis high time, said my father, addressing himself equally to my uncle _Toby_ and _Yorick_, to take this young creature out of these women’s hands, and put him into those of a private governor. _Marcus Antoninus_ provided fourteen governors all at once to superintend his son _Commodus_’s education,—and in six weeks he cashiered five of them;—I know very well, continued my father, that _Commodus_’s mother was in love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which accounts for a great many of _Commodus_’s cruelties when he became emperor;—but still I am of opinion, that those five whom _Antoninus_ dismissed, did _Commodus_’s temper, in that short time, more hurt than the other nine were able to rectify all their lives long.
Now as I consider the person who is to be about my son, as the mirror in which he is to view himself from morning to night, by which he is to adjust his looks, his carriage, and perhaps the inmost sentiments of his heart;—I would have one, _Yorick_, if possible, polished at all points, fit for my child to look into.——This is very good sense, quoth my uncle _Toby_ to himself.
——There is, continued my father, a certain mien and motion of the body and all its parts, both in acting and speaking, which argues a man _well within;_ and I am not at all surprised that _Gregory_ of _Nazianzum_, upon observing the hasty and untoward gestures of _Julian_, should foretel he would one day become an apostate;——or that St. _Ambrose_ should turn his _Amanuensis_ out of doors, because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a flail;——or that _Democritus_ should conceive _Protagoras_ to be a scholar, from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, the small twigs inwards.——There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.
It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make choice of shall neither[31] lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;——or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or pick it, or blow it with his fingers.——
He shall neither walk fast,—or slow, or fold his arms,—for that is laziness;—or hang them down,—for that is folly; or hide them in his pocket, for that is nonsense.——
He shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle—or bite, or cut his nails, or hawk, or spit, or snift, or drum with his feet or fingers in company;——nor (according to _Erasmus_) shall he speak to any one in making water,—nor shall he point to carrion or excrement.——Now this is all nonsense again, quoth my uncle _Toby_ to himself.——
I will have him, continued my father, cheerful, faceté, jovial; at the same time, prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, acute, argute, inventive, quick in resolving doubts and speculative questions;——he shall be wise, and judicious, and learned:——And why not humble, and moderate, and gentle-tempered, and good? said _Yorick:_——And why not, cried my uncle _Toby_, free, and generous, and bountiful, and brave?——He shall, my dear _Toby_, replied my father, getting up and shaking him by his hand.—Then, brother _Shandy_, answered my uncle _Toby_, raising himself off the chair, and laying down his pipe to take hold of my father’s other hand,—I humbly beg I may recommend poor _Le Fever_’s son to you;——a tear of joy of the first water sparkled in my uncle _Toby_’s eye, and another, the fellow to it, in the corporal’s, as the proposition was made;——you will see why when you read _Le Fever_’s story:——fool that I was! nor can I recollect (nor perhaps you) without turning back to the place, what it was that hindered me from letting the corporal tell it in his own words;—but the occasion is lost,—I must tell it now in my own.
[31] Vid. _Pellegrina._
C H A P. XLIX
THE STORY OF LE FEVER
IT was some time in the summer of that year in which _Dendermond_ was taken by the allies,—which was about seven years before my father came into the country,—and about as many, after the time, that my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ had privately decamped from my father’s house in town, in order to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest fortified cities in _Europe_——when my uncle _Toby_ was one evening getting his supper, with _Trim_ sitting behind him at a small sideboard,—I say, sitting—for in consideration of the corporal’s lame knee (which sometimes gave him exquisite pain)—when my uncle _Toby_ dined or supped alone, he would never suffer the corporal to stand; and the poor fellow’s veneration for his master was such, that, with a proper artillery, my uncle _Toby_ could have taken _Dendermond_ itself, with less trouble than he was able to gain this point over him; for many a time when my uncle _Toby_ supposed the corporal’s leg was at rest, he would look back, and detect him standing behind him with the most dutiful respect: this bred more little squabbles betwixt them, than all other causes for five-and-twenty years together—But this is neither here nor there—why do I mention it?——Ask my pen,—it governs me,—I govern not it.
He was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord of a little inn in the village came into the parlour, with an empty phial in his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack; ’Tis for a poor gentleman,—I think, of the army, said the landlord, who has been taken ill at my house four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste any thing, till just now, that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast,——_I think_, says he, taking his hand from his forehead, _it would comfort me._——
——If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing—added the landlord,—I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so ill.——I hope in God he will still mend, continued he,—we are all of us concerned for him.
Thou art a good-natured soul, I will answer for thee, cried my uncle _Toby;_ and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman’s health in a glass of sack thyself,—and take a couple of bottles with my service, and tell him he is heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do him good.
Though I am persuaded, said my uncle _Toby_, as the landlord shut the door, he is a very compassionate fellow—_Trim_,—yet I cannot help entertaining a high opinion of his guest too; there must be something more than common in him, that in so short a time should win so much upon the affections of his host;——And of his whole family, added the corporal, for they are all concerned for him.——Step after him, said my uncle _Toby_,—do _Trim_,—and ask if he knows his name.
——I have quite forgot it truly, said the landlord, coming back into the parlour with the corporal,—but I can ask his son again:——Has he a son with him then? said my uncle _Toby._—A boy, replied the landlord, of about eleven or twelve years of age;—but the poor creature has tasted almost as little as his father; he does nothing but mourn and lament for him night and day:——He has not stirred from the bed-side these two days.
My uncle _Toby_ laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from before him, as the landlord gave him the account; and _Trim_, without being ordered, took away, without saying one word, and in a few minutes after brought him his pipe and tobacco.
——Stay in the room a little, said my uncle _Toby._
_Trim!_——said my uncle _Toby_, after he lighted his pipe, and smoak’d about a dozen whiffs.——_Trim_ came in front of his master, and made his bow;—my uncle _Toby_ smoak’d on, and said no more.——Corporal! said my uncle _Toby_—the corporal made his bow.——My uncle _Toby_ proceeded no farther, but finished his pipe.
_Trim!_ said my uncle _Toby_, I have a project in my head, as it is a bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a visit to this poor gentleman.——Your honour’s roquelaure, replied the corporal, has not once been had on, since the night before your honour received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate of St. _Nicholas;_—and besides, it is so cold and rainy a night, that what with the roquelaure, and what with the weather, ’twill be enough to give your honour your death, and bring on your honour’s torment in your groin. I fear so, replied my uncle _Toby;_ but I am not at rest in my mind, _Trim_, since the account the landlord has given me.——I wish I had not known so much of this affair,—added my uncle _Toby_,—or that I had known more of it:——How shall we manage it? Leave it, an’t please your honour, to me, quoth the corporal;——I’ll take my hat and stick and go to the house and reconnoitre, and act accordingly; and I will bring your honour a full account in an hour.——Thou shalt go, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, and here’s a shilling for thee to drink with his servant.——I shall get it all out of him, said the corporal, shutting the door.
My uncle _Toby_ filled his second pipe; and had it not been, that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line, as a crooked one,—he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor _Le Fever_ and his boy the whole time he smoaked it.
C H A P. L
THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED
IT was not till my uncle _Toby_ had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, that corporal _Trim_ returned from the inn, and gave him the following account.
I despaired, at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back your honour any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick lieutenant—Is he in the army, then? said my uncle _Toby_——He is, said the corporal——And in what regiment? said my uncle _Toby_——I’ll tell your honour, replied the corporal, every thing straight forwards, as I learnt it.—Then, _Trim_, I’ll fill another pipe, said my uncle _Toby_, and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy ease, _Trim_, in the window-seat, and begin thy story again. The corporal made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow could speak it—_Your honour is good:_—And having done that, he sat down, as he was ordered,—and begun the story to my uncle _Toby_ over again in pretty near the same words.
I despaired at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back any intelligence to your honour, about the lieutenant and his son; for when I asked where his servant was, from whom I made myself sure of knowing every thing which was proper to be asked,—That’s a right distinction, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_—I was answered, an’ please your honour, that he had no servant with him;——that he had come to the inn with hired horses, which, upon finding himself unable to proceed (to join, I suppose, the regiment), he had dismissed the morning after he came.—If I get better, my dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay the man,—we can hire horses from hence.——But alas! the poor gentleman will never get from hence, said the landlady to me,—for I heard the death-watch all night long;——and when he dies, the youth, his son, will certainly die with him; for he is broken- hearted already.
I was hearing this account, continued the corporal, when the youth came into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of;——but I will do it for my father myself, said the youth.——Pray let my save you the trouble, young gentleman, said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, and offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst I did it.——I believe, Sir, said he, very modestly, I can please him best myself.——I am sure, said I, his honour will not like the toast the worse for being toasted by an old soldier.——The youth took hold of my hand, and instantly burst into tears.——Poor youth! said my uncle _Toby_,—he has been bred up from an infant in the army, and the name of a soldier, _Trim_, sounded in his ears like the name of a friend;—I wish I had him here.
——I never, in the longest march, said the corporal, had so great a mind to my dinner, as I had to cry with him for company:—What could be the matter with me, an’ please your honour? Nothing in the world, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, blowing his nose,—but that thou art a good-natured fellow.
When I gave him the toast, continued the corporal, I thought it was proper to tell him I was captain _Shandy_’s servant, and that your honour (though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father;—and that if there was any thing in your house or cellar——(And thou might’st have added my purse too, said my uncle _Toby_),——he was heartily welcome to it:——He made a very low bow (which was meant to your honour), but no answer—for his heart was full—so he went up stairs with the toast;—I warrant you, my dear, said I, as I opened the kitchen-door, your father will be well again.——Mr. _Yorick_’s curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire,—but said not a word good or bad to comfort the youth.——I thought it wrong; added the corporal——I think so too, said my uncle _Toby._
When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to let me know, that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would step up stairs.——I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers,——for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and as I shut the door, I saw his son take up a cushion.——
I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. _Trim_, never said your prayers at all.——I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it.——Are you sure of it? replied the curate.——A soldier, an’ please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson;——and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world——’Twas well said of thee, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby._——But when a soldier, said I, an’ please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water,—or engaged, said I, for months together in long and dangerous marches;—harassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day;—harassing others to-morrow;—detached here;—countermanded there;—resting this night out upon his arms;—beat up in his shirt the next;—benumbed in his joints;—perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on;—must say his prayers _how_ and _when_ he can.—I believe, said I,—for I was piqued, quoth the corporal, for the reputation of the army,—I believe, an’ please your reverence, said I, that when a soldier gets time to pray,—he prays as heartily as a parson,—though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy.——Thou shouldst not have said that, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_,—for God only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not:——At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then)—it will be seen who has done their duties in this world,—and who has not; and we shall be advanced, _Trim_, accordingly.——I hope we shall, said _Trim._——It is in the Scripture, said my uncle _Toby;_ and I will shew it thee to-morrow:—In the mean time we may depend upon it, _Trim_, for our comfort, said my uncle _Toby_, that God Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it,—it will never be enquired into, whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one:——I hope not, said the corporal——But go on, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, with thy story.
When I went up, continued the corporal, into the lieutenant’s room, which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes,—he was lying in his bed with his head raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon the pillow, and a clean white cambrick handkerchief beside it:——The youth was just stooping down to take up the cushion, upon which I supposed he had been kneeling,—the book was laid upon the bed,—and, as he rose, in taking up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away at the same time.——Let it remain there, my dear, said the lieutenant.
He did not offer to speak to me, till I had walked up close to his bed- side:—If you are captain _Shandy_’s servant, said he, you must present my thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks along with them, for his courtesy to me;—if he was of _Levens_’s—said the lieutenant.—I told him your honour was—Then, said he, I served three campaigns with him in _Flanders_, and remember him,—but ’tis most likely, as I had not the honour of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me.——You will tell him, however, that the person his good-nature has laid under obligations to him, is one _Le Fever_, a lieutenant in _Angus_’s——but he knows me not,—said he, a second time, musing;——possibly he may my story—added he—pray tell the captain, I was the ensign at _Breda_, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.——I remember the story, an’t please your honour, said I, very well.——Do you so? said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief—then well may I.—In saying this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black ribband about his neck, and kiss’d it twice——Here, _Billy_, said he,—the boy flew across the room to the bed-side,—and falling down upon his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it too,—then kissed his father, and sat down upon the bed and wept.
I wish, said my uncle _Toby_, with a deep sigh,—I wish, _Trim_, I was asleep.
Your honour, replied the corporal, is too much concerned;—shall I pour your honour out a glass of sack to your pipe?——Do, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby._
I remember, said my uncle _Toby_, sighing again, the story of the ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted;—and
## particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other
(I forget what) was universally pitied by the whole regiment;—but finish the story thou art upon:—’Tis finished already, said the corporal,—for I could stay no longer,—so wished his honour a good night; young _Le Fever_ rose from off the bed, and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and as we went down together, told me, they had come from _Ireland_, and were on their route to join the regiment in _Flanders._——But alas! said the corporal,—the lieutenant’s last day’s march is over.—Then what is to become of his poor boy? cried my uncle _Toby._
C H A P. LI
THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED
IT was to my uncle _Toby_’s eternal honour,——though I tell it only for the sake of those, who, when coop’d in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn themselves——That notwithstanding my uncle _Toby_ was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of _Dendermond_, parallel with the allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously, that they scarce allowed him time to get his dinner——that nevertheless he gave up _Dendermond_, though he had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp;—and bent his whole thoughts towards the private distresses at the inn; and except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege of _Dendermond_ into a blockade,—he left _Dendermond_ to itself—to be relieved or not by the _French_ king, as the _French_ king thought good; and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son.
——That kind BEING, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompence thee for this.
Thou hast left this matter short, said my uncle _Toby_ to the corporal, as he was putting him to bed,——and I will tell thee in what, _Trim._——In the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to _Le Fever_,——as sickness and travelling are both expensive, and thou knowest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay,—that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse; because, had he stood in need, thou knowest, _Trim_, he had been as welcome to it as myself.——Your honour knows, said the corporal, I had no orders;——True, quoth my uncle _Toby_,—thou didst very right, _Trim_, as a soldier,—but certainly very wrong as a man.
In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse, continued my uncle _Toby_,——when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house,——thou shouldst have offered him my house too:——A sick brother officer should have the best quarters, _Trim_, and if we had him with us,—we could tend and look to him:——Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, _Trim_,—and what with thy care of him, and the old woman’s and his boy’s, and mine together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his legs.——
——In a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle _Toby_, smiling,——he might march.——He will never march; an’ please your honour, in this world, said the corporal:——He will march; said my uncle _Toby_, rising up from the side of the bed, with one shoe off:——An’ please your honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave:——He shall march, cried my uncle _Toby_, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch,—he shall march to his regiment.——He cannot stand it, said the corporal;——He shall be supported, said my uncle _Toby;_——He’ll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will become of his boy?——He shall not drop, said my uncle _Toby_, firmly.——A-well-o’day,—do what we can for him, said _Trim_, maintaining his point,—the poor soul will die:——He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle _Toby._
—The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.
C H A P. LII
——MY uncle _Toby_ went to his bureau,—put his purse into his breeches pocket, and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician,—he went to bed, and fell asleep.
C H A P. LIII
THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED
THE sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but _Le Fever_’s and his afflicted son’s; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eye-lids,——and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle,—when my uncle _Toby_, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant’s room, and without preface or apology, sat himself down upon the chair by the bed-side, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did,—how he had rested in the night,—what was his complaint,—where was his pain,—and what he could do to help him:——and without giving him time to answer any one of the enquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal the night before for him.——
——You shall go home directly, _Le Fever_, said my uncle _Toby_, to my house,—and we’ll send for a doctor to see what’s the matter,—and we’ll have an apothecary,—and the corporal shall be your nurse;——and I’ll be your servant, _Le Fever._
There was a frankness in my uncle _Toby_,—not the _effect_ of familiarity,—but the cause of it,—which let you at once into his soul, and shewed you the goodness of his nature; to this there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him, so that before my uncle _Toby_ had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards him.——The blood and spirits of _Le Fever_, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart—rallied back,—the film forsook his eyes for a moment,—he looked up wishfully in my uncle _Toby_’s face,—then cast a look upon his boy,——and that _ligament_, fine as it was,—was never broken.——
Nature instantly ebb’d again,—the film returned to its place,——the pulse fluttered——stopp’d——went on——throbb’d———stopp’d again——moved——stopp’d——shall I go on?——No.
C H A P. LIV
I AM so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young _Le Fever_’s, that is, from this turn of his fortune, to the time my uncle _Toby_ recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very few words in the next chapter.—All that is necessary to be added to this chapter is as follows.—
That my uncle _Toby_, with young _Le Fever_ in his hand, attended the poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.
That the governor of _Dendermond_ paid his obsequies all military honours,—and that _Yorick_, not to be behind-hand—paid him all ecclesiastic—for he buried him in his chancel:—And it appears likewise, he preached a funeral sermon over him——I say it _appears_,—for it was _Yorick_’s custom, which I suppose a general one with those of his profession, on the first leaf of every sermon which he composed, to chronicle down the time, the place, and the occasion of its being preached: to this, he was ever wont to add some short comment or stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its credit:—For instance, _This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation—I don’t like it at all;—Though I own there is a world of_ WATER-LANDISH _knowledge in it;—but ’tis all tritical, and most tritically put together.—This is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my head when I made it?_
——N.B. _The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any sermon,—and of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.——_
——_For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest part of it. Doctor_ Paidagunes _found me out. => Set a thief to catch a thief.——_
On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and upon a couple _Moderato;_ by which, as far as one may gather from _Altieri’s Italian_ dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of _Yorick_’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked _Moderato_, and the half dozen of _So, so_, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing.
There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is this, that the _moderato_’s are five times better than the _so, so_’s;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which reason, whene’er _Yorick’s dramatic_ sermons are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the _so, so_’s, I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two _moderato_’s without any sort of scruple.
What _Yorick_ could mean by the words _lentamente,—tenutè,—grave_,—and sometimes _adagio_,—as applied to _theological_ compositions, and with which he has characterised some of these sermons, I dare not venture to guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding _a l’octava alta!_ upon one;——_Con strepito_ upon the back of another;——_Scicilliana_ upon a third;——_Alla capella_ upon a fourth;——_Con l’arco_ upon this;——_Senza l’arco_ upon that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt, but that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters upon his fancy,—whatever they may do upon that of others.
Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor _Le Fever_, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——Whether these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote——
Bravo!
——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small _Italian_ hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not,—so that from the _manner of it_, it stands half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing,—’tis more like a _ritratto_ of the shadow of vanity, than of VANITY herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer; than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world.
With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do no service to _Yorick_’s character as a modest man;—but all men have their failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is this; that the word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner, BRAVO——as if he had retracted, or was ashamed of the opinion he had once entertained of it.
These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text;—but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in,—he took a large circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the pulpit allowed.—These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue;—tell me then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be printed together?
C H A P. lV
When my uncle _Toby_ had turned every thing into money, and settled all accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and _Le Fever_, and betwixt _Le Fever_ and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle _Toby_’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my uncle _Toby_ found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration. The coat my uncle _Toby_ gave the corporal;——Wear it, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor lieutenant——And this,——said my uncle _Toby_, taking up the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke——and this, _Le Fever_, I’ll save for thee,—’tis all the fortune, continued my uncle _Toby_, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear _Le Fever_, which God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—’tis enough for us.
As soon as my uncle _Toby_ had laid a foundation, and taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where, excepting _Whitsontide_ and _Christmas_, at which times the corporal was punctually dispatched for him,—he remained to the spring of the year, seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his army into _Hungary_ against the _Turks_, kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his _Greek_ and _Latin_ without leave, and throwing himself upon his knees before my uncle _Toby_, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle _Toby_’s leave along with it, to go and try his fortune under _Eugene._—Twice did my uncle _Toby_ forget his wound and cry out, _Le Fever!_ I will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside me——And twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung down his head in sorrow and disconsolation.——
My uncle _Toby_ took down the sword from the crook, where it had hung untouched ever since the lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the corporal to brighten up;——and having detained _Le Fever_ a single fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to _Leghorn_,—he put the sword into his hand.——If thou art brave, _Le Fever_, said my uncle _Toby_, this will not fail thee,——but Fortune, said he (musing a little),——Fortune may——And if she does,—added my uncle _Toby_, embracing him, come back again to me, _Le Fever_, and we will shape thee another course.
The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of _Le Fever_ more than my uncle _Toby_’s paternal kindness;——he parted from my uncle _Toby_, as the best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped tears——and as my uncle _Toby_ gave him his last kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up in an old purse of his father’s, in which was his mother’s ring, into his hand,—and bid God bless him.
C H A P. LVI
LE FEVER got up to the Imperial army just time enough to try what metal his sword was made of, at the defeat of the _Turks_ before _Belgrade;_ but a series of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment, and trod close upon his heels for four years together after; he had withstood these buffetings to the last, till sickness overtook him at _Marseilles_, from whence he wrote my uncle _Toby_ word, he had lost his time, his services, his health, and, in short, every thing but his sword;——and was waiting for the first ship to return back to him.
As this letter came to hand about six weeks before _Susannah_’s accident, _Le Fever_ was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle _Toby_’s mind all the time my father was giving him and _Yorick_ a description of what kind of a person he would chuse for a preceptor to me: but as my uncle _Toby_ thought my father at first somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning _Le Fever_’s name,——till the character, by _Yorick_’s inter-position, ending unexpectedly, in one, who should be gentle-tempered, and generous, and good, it impressed the image of _Le Fever_, and his interest, upon my uncle _Toby_ so forcibly, he rose instantly off his chair; and laying down his pipe, in order to take hold of both my father’s hands——I beg, brother _Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_, I may recommend poor _Le Fever_’s son to you—I beseech you do, added _Yorick_——He has a good heart, said my uncle _Toby_——And a brave one too, an’ please your honour, said the corporal.
——The best hearts, _Trim_, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle _Toby._——And the greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our regiment, were the greatest rascals in it.—There was serjeant _Kumber_, and ensign——
——We’ll talk of them, said my father, another time.
C H A P. LVII
WHAT a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!
Doctor _Slop_, like a son of a w——, as my father called him for it,—to exalt himself,—debased me to death,—and made ten thousand times more of _Susannah_’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s time, or less, it was in every body’s mouth, _That poor Master Shandy_ * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely.—And FAME, who loves to double every thing,—in three days more, had sworn, positively she saw it,—and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence——“That the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ;—but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ’s also.”
Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE,—my father had brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul of individuals about it——as every soul who had mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable;——’twas like flying in the very face of his best friends:——And yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence—was to acknowledge it openly,—at least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it,—was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.——
——Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my father.
I would shew him publickly, said my uncle _Toby_, at the market cross.
——’Twill have no effect, said my father.
C H A P. LVIII
——I’ll put him, however, into breeches, said my father,—let the world say what it will.
C H A P. LIX
THERE are a thousand resolutions, Sir, both in church and state, as well as in matters, Madam, of a more private concern;—which, though they have carried all the appearance in the world of being taken, and entered upon in a hasty, hare-brained, and unadvised manner, were, notwithstanding this, (and could you or I have got into the cabinet, or stood behind the curtain, we should have found it was so) weighed, poized, and perpended——argued upon——canvassed through——entered into, and examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the GODDESS OF COOLNESS herself (I do not take upon me to prove her existence) could neither have wished it, or done it better.
Of the number of these was my father’s resolution of putting me into breeches; which, though determined at once,—in a kind of huff, and a defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been _pro’d_ and _conn’d_, and judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month before, in two several _beds of justice_, which my father had held for that purpose. I shall explain the nature of these beds of justice in my next chapter; and in the chapter following that, you shall step with me, Madam, behind the curtain, only to hear in what kind of manner my father and my mother debated between themselves, this affair of the breeches,—from which you may form an idea, how they debated all lesser matters.
C H A P. LX
THE ancient _Goths_ of _Germany_, who (the learned _Cluverius_ is positive) were first seated in the country between the _Vistula_ and the _Oder_, and who afterwards incorporated the _Herculi_, the _Bugians_, and some other _Vandallick_ clans to ’em—had all of them a wise custom of debating every thing of importance to their state, twice, that is,—once drunk, and once sober:——Drunk—that their councils might not want vigour;——and sober—that they might not want discretion.
Now my father being entirely a water-drinker,—was a long time gravelled almost to death, in turning this as much to his advantage, as he did every other thing which the ancients did or said; and it was not till the seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless experiments and devices, that he hit upon an expedient which answered the purpose;——and that was, when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the family, which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its determination,——he fixed and set apart the first _Sunday_ night in the month, and the _Saturday_ night which immediately preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with my mother: By which contrivance, if you consider, Sir, with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
These my father, humorously enough, called his _beds of justice;_——for from the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a middle one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times.
I must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers full as well in literary discussions, as either in military or conjugal; but it is not every author that can try the experiment as the _Goths_ and _Vandals_ did it——or, if he can, may it be always for his body’s health; and to do it, as my father did it,—am I sure it would be always for his soul’s.
My way is this:——
In all nice and ticklish discussions,—(of which, heaven knows, there are but too many in my book)—where I find I cannot take a step without the danger of having either their worships or their reverences upon my back——I write one-half _full_,—and t’other _fasting;_——or write it all full,—and correct it fasting;——or write it fasting,—and correct it full, for they all come to the same thing:——So that with a less variation from my father’s plan, than my father’s from the _Gothick_—I feel myself upon a par with him in his first bed of justice,—and no way inferior to him in his second.——These different and almost irreconcileable effects, flow uniformly from the wise and wonderful mechanism of nature,—of which,—be her’s the honour.——All that we can do, is to turn and work the machine to the improvement and better manufactory of the arts and sciences.——
Now, when I write full,—I write as if I was never to write fasting again as long as I live;——that is, I write free from the cares as well as the terrors of the world.——I count not the number of my scars,—nor does my fancy go forth into dark entries and bye-corners to ante-date my stabs.——In a word, my pen takes its course; and I write on as much from the fulness of my heart, as my stomach.——
But when, an’ please your honours, I indite fasting, ’tis a different history.——I pay the world all possible attention and respect,—and have as great a share (whilst it lasts) of that under strapping virtue of discretion as the best of you.——So that betwixt both, I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured _Shandean_ book, which will do all your hearts good——
——And all your heads too,—provided you understand it.
C H A P. LXI
WE should begin, said my father, turning himself half round in bed, and shifting his pillow a little towards my mother’s, as he opened the debate——We should begin to think, Mrs. _Shandy_, of putting this boy into breeches.——
We should so,—said my mother.——We defer it, my dear, quoth my father, shamefully.——
I think we do, Mr. _Shandy_,—said my mother.
——Not but the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vests and tunicks.——
——He does look very well in them,—replied my mother.——
——And for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to take him out of ’em.——
——It would so,—said my mother:——But indeed he is growing a very tall lad,—rejoined my father.
——He is very tall for his age, indeed,—said my mother.——
——I can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, quoth my father, who the deuce he takes after.——
I cannot conceive, for my life, said my mother.——
Humph!——said my father.
(The dialogue ceased for a moment.)
——(I am very short myself,—continued my father gravely.
You are very short, Mr _Shandy_,—said my mother.
Humph! quoth my father to himself, a second time: in muttering which, he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother’s,—and turning about again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a half.
——When he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher tone, he’ll look like a beast in ’em.
He will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother.
——And ’twill be lucky, if that’s the worst on’t, added my father.
It will be very lucky, answered my mother.
I suppose, replied my father,—making some pause first,—he’ll be exactly like other people’s children.——
Exactly, said my mother.——
——Though I shall be sorry for that, added my father: and so the debate stopp’d again.
——They should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again.—
They will last him, said my mother, the longest.
But he can have no linings to ’em, replied my father.——
He cannot, said my mother.
’Twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my father.
Nothing can be better, quoth my mother.——
——Except dimity,—replied my father:——’Tis best of all,—replied my mother.
——One must not give him his death, however,—interrupted my father.
By no means, said my mother:——and so the dialogue stood still again.
I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth time, he shall have no pockets in them.——
——There is no occasion for any, said my mother.——
I mean in his coat and waistcoat,—cried my father.
——I mean so too,—replied my mother.
——Though if he gets a gig or top——Poor souls! it is a crown and a sceptre to them,—they should have where to secure it.——
Order it as you please, Mr. _Shandy_, replied my mother.——
——But don’t you think it right? added my father, pressing the point home to her.
Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. _Shandy._——
——There’s for you! cried my father, losing his temper——Pleases me!——You never will distinguish, Mrs. _Shandy_, nor shall I ever teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.——This was on the _Sunday_ night:——and further this chapter sayeth not.
C H A P. LXII
AFTER my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother,—he consulted _Albertus Rubenius_ upon it; and _Albertus Rubenius_ used my father ten times worse in the consultation (if possible) than even my father had used my mother: For as _Rubenius_ had wrote a quarto _express, De re Vestiaria Veterum_,—it was _Rubenius_’s business to have given my father some lights.—On the contrary, my father might as well have thought of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long beard,—as of extracting a single word out of _Rubenius_ upon the subject.
Upon every other article of ancient dress, _Rubenius_ was very communicative to my father;—gave him a full satisfactory account of
The Toga, or loose gown.
The Chlamys.
The Ephod.
The Tunica, or Jacket.
The Synthesis.
The Pænula.
The Lacema, with its Cucullus.
The Paludamentum.
The Prætexta.
The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin.
The Trabea: of which, according to _Suetonius_, there was three kinds.—
——But what are all these to the breeches? said my father.
_Rubenius_ threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had been in fashion with the _Romans._——
There was,
The open shoe.
The close shoe.
The slip shoe.
The wooden shoe.
The soc.
The buskin.
And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which _Juvenal_ takes notice of.
There were, The clogs.
The pattins.
The pantoufles.
The brogues.
The sandals, with latchets to them.
There was, The felt shoe.
The linen shoe.
The laced shoe.
The braided shoe.
The calceus incisus.
And The calceus rostratus.
_Rubenius_ shewed my father how well they all fitted,—in what manner they laced on,—with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, jaggs, and ends.——
——But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father.
_Albertus Rubenius_ informed my father that the _Romans_ manufactured stuffs of various fabrics,——some plain,—some striped,—others diapered throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold——That linen did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of the empire, when the _Egyptians_ coming to settle amongst them, brought it into vogue.
——That persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour (next to purple, which was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected, and wore on their birth-days and public rejoicings.——That it appeared from the best historians of those times, that they frequently sent their clothes to the fuller, to be clean’d and whitened:——but that the inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore brown clothes, and of a something coarser texture,—till towards the beginning of _Augustus_’s reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the _Latus Clavus._
And what was the _Latus Clavus?_ said my father.
_Rubenius_ told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the learned:——That _Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budæus, Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon_, and _Joseph Scaliger_, all differed from each other,—and he from them: That some took it to be the button,—some the coat itself,—others only the colour of it;—That the great _Bayfuis_ in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12—honestly said, he knew not what it was,—whether a tibula,—a stud,—a button,—a loop,—a buckle,—or clasps and keepers.——
——My father lost the horse, but not the saddle——They are _hooks and eyes_, said my father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made.
C H A P. LXIII
WE are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.——
——Leave we then the breeches in the taylor’s hands, with my father standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a lecture upon the _latus clavus_, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.——
Leave we my mother—(truest of all the _Poco-curante_’s of her sex!)—careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which concerned her;—that is,—indifferent whether it was done this way or that,——provided it was but done at all.——
Leave we _Slop_ likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.——
Leave we poor _Le Fever_ to recover, and get home from _Marseilles_ as he can.——And last of all,—because the hardest of all——
Let us leave, if possible, _myself:_——But ’tis impossible,—I must go along with you to the end of the work.
C H A P. LXIV
IF the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle _Toby_’s kitchen-garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is not in me,—but in his imagination;—for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I was almost ashamed of it.
When FATE was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,—she gave a nod to NATURE,—’twas enough—Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so _much_ clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so _little_ of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather.
My uncle _Toby_ came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in _Italy_ and _Flanders;_ so let the duke of _Marlborough_, or the allies, have set down before what town they pleased, my uncle _Toby_ was prepared for them.
His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches,—the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets, &c.—he set the corporal to work——and sweetly went it on:——The nature of the soil,—the nature of the work itself,—and above all, the good-nature of my uncle _Toby_ sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past- done deeds,—left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name.
When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal began to run their first parallel.—I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by being told, _That the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the place,—and that I have not left a single inch for it;_——for my uncle _Toby_ took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle _Toby_’s and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work——surely they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take the following sketch of them in the mean time.
C H A P. LXV
WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal began to run their first parallel——not at random, or any how——but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle _Toby_ received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies.
When the duke of _Marlborough_ made a lodgment,——my uncle _Toby_ made a lodgment too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands.
To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the duke of _Marlborough_, in the main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle _Toby_, with _Trim_ behind him, sallied forth;——the one with the _Gazette_ in his hand,—the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest triumph in my uncle _Toby_’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts! What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow.——But when the _chamade_ was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—Heaven! Earth! Sea!——but what avails apostrophes?——with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.
In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the _Flanders_ mail, and kept them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In this track, I say, did my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.
The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I’ve related.
In the second year, in which my uncle _Toby_ took _Liege_ and _Ruremond_, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work.
At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port-cullises:——These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle _Toby_, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at _Christmas_, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.
——The sentry-box was in case of rain.
All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle _Toby_ to take the field with great splendour.
My father would often say to _Yorick_, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother _Toby_, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which _Lewis_ XIV. from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field——But ’tis not my brother _Toby_’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.
——But let us go on.
C H A P. LXVI
I MUST observe, that although in the first year’s campaign, the word town is often mentioned,—yet there was no town at that time within the polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the third year of my uncle _Toby_’s campaigns,—when upon his taking _Amberg, Bonn_, and _Rhinberg_, and _Huy_ and _Limbourg_, one after another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to talk of taking so many towns, _without one_ TOWN _to shew for it_,—was a very nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle _Toby_, that they should have a little model of a town built for them,—to be run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all.
My uncle _Toby_ felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself.
The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of which it was most likely to be the representative:——with grated windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.—as those in _Ghent_ and _Bruges_, and the rest of the towns in _Brabant_ and _Flanders._
The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation was exchanged between my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work.
——It answered prodigiously the next summer——the town was a perfect _Proteus_——It was _Landen_, and _Trerebach_, and _Santvliet_, and _Drusen_, and _Hagenau_,—and then it was _Ostend_ and _Menin_, and _Aeth_ and _Dendermond._
——Surely never did any TOWN act so many parts, since _Sodom_ and _Gomorrah_, as my uncle _Toby_’s town did.
In the fourth year, my uncle _Toby_ thinking a town looked foolishly without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.——_Trim_ was for having bells in it;——my uncle _Toby_ said, the metal had better be cast into cannon.
This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field-pieces, to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle _Toby_’s sentry-box; and in a short time, these led the way for a train of somewhat larger,—and so on—(as must always be the case in hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came at last to my father’s jack boots.
The next year, which was that in which _Lisle_ was besieged, and at the close of which both _Ghent_ and _Bruges_ fell into our hands,—my uncle _Toby_ was sadly put to it for _proper_ ammunition;——I say proper ammunition——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and ’twas well for the _Shandy_ family they would not——For so full were the papers, from the beginning to the end of the siege, of the incessant firings kept up by the besiegers,——and so heated was my uncle _Toby_’s imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away all his estate.
SOMETHING therefore was wanting as a _succedaneum_, especially in one or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something like a continual firing in the imagination,——and this something, the corporal, whose principal strength lay in invention, supplied by an entire new system of battering of his own,—without which, this had been objected to by military critics, to the end of the world, as one of the great _desiderata_ of my uncle _Toby_’s apparatus.
This will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as I generally do, at a little distance from the subject.
C H A P. LXVII
WITH two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great regard, which poor _Tom_, the corporal’s unfortunate brother, had sent him over, with the account of his marriage with the _Jew_’s widow——there was
A _Montero_-cap and two _Turkish_ tobacco-pipes.
The _Montero_-cap I shall describe by and bye.—The _Turkish_ tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of _Morocco_ leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory,—the other with black ebony, tipp’d with silver.
My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the world, would say to the corporal, that he ought to look upon these two presents more as tokens of his brother’s nicety, than his affection.——Tom did not care, _Trim_, he would say, to put on the cap, or to smoke in the tobacco-pipe of a _Jew._——God bless your honour, the corporal would say (giving a strong reason to the contrary)—how can that be?
The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine _Spanish_ cloth, dyed in grain, and mounted all round with fur, except about four inches in the front, which was faced with a light blue, slightly embroidered,—and seemed to have been the property of a _Portuguese_ quarter-master, not of foot, but of horse, as the word denotes.
The corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own sake, as the sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but upon GALA-days; and yet never was a Montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all controverted points, whether military or culinary, provided the corporal was sure he was in the right,—it was either his _oath_,—his _wager_,—or his _gift._
——’Twas his gift in the present case.
I’ll be bound, said the corporal, speaking to himself, to give away my Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if I do not manage this matter to his honour’s satisfaction.
The completion was no further off, than the very next morning; which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the _Lower Deule_, to the right, and the gate St. _Andrew_,—and on the left, between St. _Magdalen_’s and the river.
As this was the most memorable attack in the whole war,—the most gallant and obstinate on both sides,—and I must add the most bloody too, for it cost the allies themselves that morning above eleven hundred men,—my uncle _Toby_ prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity.
The eve which preceded, as my uncle _Toby_ went to bed, he ordered his ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an old campaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;—and the very first thing he did in his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle _Toby_, after he had turned the rough side outwards,—put it on:——This done, he proceeded next to his breeches, and having buttoned the waist-band, he forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his sword half way in,—when he considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on,—so took it off:——In essaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle _Toby_ found the same objection in his wig,—so that went off too:—So that what with one thing and what with another, as always falls out when a man is in the most haste,—’twas ten o’clock, which was half an hour later than his usual time, before my uncle _Toby_ sallied out.
C H A P. LXVIII
MY uncle _Toby_ had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the corporal had begun the attack without him.——
Let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal’s apparatus; and of the corporal himself in the height of his attack, just as it struck my uncle _Toby_, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the corporal was at work,——for in nature there is not such another,——nor can any combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal.
The corporal———
——Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,——for he was your kinsman:
Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,—for he was your brother.—Oh corporal! had I thee, but now,—now, that I am able to give thee a dinner and protection,—how would I cherish thee! thou should’st wear thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week.—and when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it:——But alas! alas! alas! now that I can do this in spite of their reverences—the occasion is lost—for thou art gone;—thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it came;—and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a _clod of the valley!_
——But what——what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I look towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy master—the first—the foremost of created beings;——where, I shall see thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door, to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he directed thee;——where—all my father’s systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he inspects the lackered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them——When I see him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my ears,——O _Toby!_ in what corner of the world shall I seek thy fellow?
——Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain—when I shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted hand.
C H A P. LXIX
THE corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand _desideratum_, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,—had no further idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle _Toby_’s six field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects.
Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began to find out, that by means of his two _Turkish_ tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their lower ends, to be tagg’d by the same number of tin-pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the _Morocco_ tube,—he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one.———
——Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my father’s first and second _beds of justice_, ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.——Heaven! thou knowest how I love them;——thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this moment give my shirt——Thou art a fool, _Shandy_, says _Eugenius_, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and ’twill break thy set.——
No matter for that, _Eugenius;_ I would give the shirt off my back to be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of it.——Think ye not that in striking these _in_,—he might, per-adventure, strike something _out?_ as sure as a gun.——
——But this project, by the bye.
The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing _his_ to perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with charging them to the top with tobacco,—he went with contentment to bed.
C H A P. LXX
THE corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle _Toby_, in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle _Toby_ came.
He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in front of my uncle _Toby_’s sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, &c.—and the sake possibly of two batteries, which he might think double the honour of one.
In the rear and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken his post:——He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand,—and the ebony pipe tipp’d with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and thumb of the other——and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, which faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the _puffs_, as well as the _puffing_, had insensibly got hold of the corporal, and drawn him on from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time my uncle _Toby_ joined him.
’Twas well for my father, that my uncle _Toby_ had not his will to make that day.
C H A P. LXXI
MY uncle _Toby_ took the ivory pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked at it for half a minute, and returned it.
In less than two minutes, my uncle _Toby_ took the pipe from the corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth——then hastily gave it back a second time.
The corporal redoubled the attack,——my uncle _Toby_ smiled,——then looked grave,——then smiled for a moment,——then looked serious for a long time;——Give me hold of the ivory pipe, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_——my uncle _Toby_ put it to his lips,——drew it back directly,——gave a peep over the horn-beam hedge;——never did my uncle _Toby_’s mouth water so much for a pipe in his life.——My uncle _Toby_ retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.———
——Dear uncle _Toby_! don’t go into the sentry-box with the pipe,—there’s no trusting a man’s self with such a thing in such a corner.
C H A P. LXXII
I BEG the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle _Toby_’s ordnance behind the scenes,——to remove his sentry-box, and clear the theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half moons, and get the rest of his military apparatus out of the way;——that done, my dear friend _Garrick_, we’ll snuff the candles bright,—sweep the stage with a new broom,—draw up the curtain, and exhibit my uncle _Toby_ dressed in a new character, throughout which the world can have no idea how he will act: and yet, if pity be a-kin to love,—and bravery no alien to it, you have seen enough of my uncle _Toby_ in these, to trace these family likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case there is one) to your heart’s content.
Vain science! thou assistest us in no case of this kind—and thou puzzlest us in every one.
There was, Madam, in my uncle _Toby_, a singleness of heart which misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in which things of this nature usually go on; you can—you can have no conception of it: with this, there was a plainness and simplicity of thinking, with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the plies and foldings of the heart of woman;——and so naked and defenceless did he stand before you, (when a siege was out of his head,) that you might have stood behind any one of your serpentine walks, and shot my uncle _Toby_ ten times in a day, through his liver, if nine times in a day, Madam, had not served your purpose.
With all this, Madam,—and what confounded every thing as much on the other hand, my uncle _Toby_ had that unparalleled modesty of nature I once told you of, and which, by the bye, stood eternal sentry upon his feelings, that you might as soon——But where am I going? these reflections crowd in upon me ten pages at least too soon, and take up that time, which I ought to bestow upon facts.
C H A P. LXXIII
OF the few legitimate sons of _Adam_ whose breasts never felt what the sting of love was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to be bastards,)—the greatest heroes of ancient and modern story have carried off amongst them nine parts in ten of the honour; and I wish for their sakes I had the key of my study, out of my draw-well, only for five minutes, to tell you their names—recollect them I cannot—so be content to accept of these, for the present, in their stead.
There was the great king _Aldrovandus_, and _Bosphorus_, and _Cappadocius_, and _Dardanus_, and _Pontus_, and _Asius_,——to say nothing of the iron-hearted _Charles_ the XIIth, whom the Countess of K***** herself could make nothing of.——There was _Babylonicus_, and _Mediterraneus_, and _Polixenes_, and _Persicus_, and _Prusicus_, not one of whom (except _Cappadocius_ and _Pontus_, who were both a little suspected) ever once bowed down his breast to the goddess——The truth is, they had all of them something else to do—and so had my uncle _Toby_—till Fate—till Fate I say, envying his name the glory of being handed down to posterity with _Aldrovandus_’s and the rest,—she basely patched up the peace of _Utrecht._
——Believe me, Sirs, ’twas the worst deed she did that year.
C H A P. LXXIV
AMONGST the many ill consequences of the treaty of _Utrecht_, it was within a point of giving my uncle _Toby_ a surfeit of sieges; and though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet _Calais_ itself left not a deeper scar in _Mary_’s heart, than _Utrecht_ upon my uncle _Toby_’s. To the end of his life he never could hear _Utrecht_ mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as read an article of news extracted out of the _Utrecht Gazette_, without fetching a sigh, as if his heart would break in twain.
My father, who was a great MOTIVE-MONGER, and consequently a very dangerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying,—for he generally knew your motive for doing both, much better than you knew it yourself—would always console my uncle _Toby_ upon these occasions, in a way, which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle _Toby_ grieved for nothing in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his _hobby-horse._——Never mind, brother _Toby_, he would say,—by God’s blessing we shall have another war break out again some of these days; and when it does,—the belligerent powers, if they would hang themselves, cannot keep us out of play.——I defy ’em, my dear _Toby_, he would add, to take countries without taking towns,——or towns without sieges.
My uncle _Toby_ never took this back-stroke of my father’s at his hobby-horse kindly.——He thought the stroke ungenerous; and the more so, because in striking the horse he hit the rider too, and in the most dishonourable part a blow could fall; so that upon these occasions, he always laid down his pipe upon the table with more fire to defend himself than common.
I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle _Toby_ was not eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the contrary:——I repeat the observation, and a fact which contradicts it again.—He was not eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle _Toby_ to make long harangues,—and he hated florid ones; but there were occasions where the stream overflowed the man, and ran so counter to its usual course, that in some parts my uncle _Toby_, for a time, was at least equal to _Tertullus_——but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely above him.
My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical orations of my uncle _Toby_’s, which he had delivered one evening before him and _Yorick_, that he wrote it down before he went to bed.
I have had the good fortune to meet with it amongst my father’s papers, with here and there an insertion of his own, betwixt two crooks, thus [ ], and is endorsed, MY BROTHER TOBY’S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS OWN PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT IN WISHING TO CONTINUE THE WAR.
I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of my uncle _Toby_’s a hundred times, and think it so fine a model of defence,—and shews so sweet a temperament of gallantry and good principles in him, that I give it the world, word for word (interlineations and all), as I find it.
C H A P. LXXV
MY UNCLE TOBY’S APOLOGETICAL ORATION
I AM not insensible, brother _Shandy_, that when a man whose profession is arms, wishes, as I have done, for war,—it has an ill aspect to the world;——and that, how just and right soever his motives the intentions may be,—he stands in an uneasy posture in vindicating himself from private views in doing it.
For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be without being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter his wish in the hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy will not believe him.——He will be cautious of doing it even to a friend,—lest he may suffer in his esteem:——But if his heart is overcharged, and a secret sigh for arms must have its vent, he will reserve it for the ear of a brother, who knows his character to the bottom, and what his true notions, dispositions, and principles of honour are: What, I _hope_, I have been in all these, brother _Shandy_, would be unbecoming in me to say:——much worse, I know, have I been than I ought,—and something worse, perhaps, than I think: But such as I am, you, my dear brother _Shandy_, who have sucked the same breasts with me,—and with whom I have been brought up from my cradle,—and from whose knowledge, from the first hours of our boyish pastimes, down to this, I have concealed no one action of my life, and scarce a thought in it——Such as I am, brother, you must by this time know me, with all my vices, and with all my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my temper, my passions, or my understanding.
Tell me then, my dear brother _Shandy_, upon which of them it is, that when I condemned the peace of _Utrecht_, and grieved the war was not carried on with vigour a little longer, you should think your brother did it upon unworthy views; or that in wishing for war, he should be bad enough to wish more of his fellow-creatures slain,—more slaves made, and more families driven from their peaceful habitations, merely for his own pleasure:——Tell me, brother _Shandy_, upon what one deed of mine do you ground it? [_The devil a deed do I know of, dear_ Toby, _but one for a hundred pounds, which I lent thee to carry on these cursed sieges._]
If, when I was a school-boy, I could not hear a drum beat, but my heart beat with it—was it my fault?——Did I plant the propensity there?——Did I sound the alarm within, or Nature?
When _Guy_, Earl of _Warwick_, and _Parismus_ and _Parismenus_, and _Valentine_ and _Orson_, and the _Seven Champions of England_, were handed around the school,—were they not all purchased with my own pocket-money? Was that selfish, brother _Shandy_? When we read over the siege of _Troy_, which lasted ten years and eight months,——though with such a train of artillery as we had at _Namur_, the town might have been carried in a week—was I not as much concerned for the destruction of the _Greeks_ and _Trojans_ as any boy of the whole school? Had I not three strokes of a ferula given me, two on my right hand, and one on my left, for calling _Helena_ a bitch for it? Did any one of you shed more tears for _Hector?_ And when king _Priam_ came to the camp to beg his body, and returned weeping back to _Troy_ without it,—you know, brother, I could not eat my dinner.——
——Did that bespeak me cruel? Or because, brother _Shandy_, my blood flew out into the camp, and my heart panted for war,—was it a proof it could not ache for the distresses of war too?
O brother! ’tis one thing for a soldier to gather laurels,—and ’tis another to scatter cypress.——[_Who told thee, my dear Toby, that cypress was used by the antients on mournful occasions?_ ]
——’Tis one thing, brother _Shandy_, for a soldier to hazard his own life—to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in pieces:——’Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter the breach the first man,—to stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his ears:——’Tis one thing, I say, brother _Shandy_, to do this,—and ’tis another thing to reflect on the miseries of war;—to view the desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them, is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo.
Need I be told, dear _Yorick_, as I was by you, in _Le Fever_’s funeral sermon, _That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?_——But why did you not add, _Yorick_,—if not by NATURE—that he is so by NECESSITY?——For what is war? what is it, _Yorick_, when fought as ours has been, upon principles of _liberty_, and upon principles of _honour_—what is it, but the getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? And heaven is my witness, brother _Shandy_, that the pleasure I have taken in these things,—and that infinite delight, in particular, which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, and I hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our creation.
C H A P. LXXVI
I TOLD the Christian reader—I say _Christian_——hoping he is one——and if he is not, I am sorry for it——and only beg he will consider the matter with himself, and not lay the blame entirely upon this book——
I told him, Sir——for in good truth, when a man is telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader’s fancy——which, for my own part, if I did not take heed to do more than at first, there is so much unfixed and equivocal matter starting up, with so many breaks and gaps in it,—and so little service do the stars afford, which, nevertheless, I hang up in some of the darkest passages, knowing that the world is apt to lose its way, with all the lights the sun itself at noon-day can give it——and now you see, I am lost myself!——
——But ’tis my father’s fault; and whenever my brains come to be dissected, you will perceive, without spectacles, that he has left a large uneven thread, as you sometimes see in an unsaleable piece of cambrick, running along the whole length of the web, and so untowardly, you cannot so much as cut out a * *, (here I hang up a couple of lights again)——or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, but it is seen or felt.——
_Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum_, sayeth _Cardan._ All which being considered, and that you see ’tis morally impracticable for me to wind this round to where I set out——
I begin the chapter over again.
C H A P. LXXVII
I TOLD the Christian reader in the beginning of the chapter which preceded my uncle _Toby_’s apologetical oration,—though in a different trope from what I should make use of now, That the peace of _Utrecht_ was within an ace of creating the same shyness betwixt my uncle _Toby_ and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt the queen and the rest of the confederating powers.
There is an indignant way in which a man sometimes dismounts his horse, which, as good as says to him, “I’ll go afoot, Sir, all the days of my life before I would ride a single mile upon your back again.” Now my uncle _Toby_ could not be said to dismount his horse in this manner; for in strictness of language, he could not be said to dismount his horse at all——his horse rather flung him——and somewhat _viciously_, which made my uncle _Toby_ take it ten times more unkindly. Let this matter be settled by state-jockies as they like.——It created, I say, a sort of shyness betwixt my uncle _Toby_ and his hobby-horse.——He had no occasion for him from the month of _March_ to _November_, which was the summer after the articles were signed, except it was now and then to take a short ride out, just to see that the fortifications and harbour of _Dunkirk_ were demolished, according to stipulation.
The _French_ were so backwards all that summer in setting about that affair, and Monsieur _Tugghe_, the deputy from the magistrates of _Dunkirk_, presented so many affecting petitions to the queen,—beseeching her majesty to cause only her thunderbolts to fall upon the martial works, which might have incurred her displeasure,—but to spare—to spare the mole, for the mole’s sake; which, in its naked situation, could be no more than an object of pity——and the queen (who was but a woman) being of a pitiful disposition,—and her ministers also, they not wishing in their hearts to have the town dismantled, for these private reasons, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *——
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ; so that the whole went heavily on with my uncle _Toby;_ insomuch, that it was not within three full months, after he and the corporal had constructed the town, and put it in a condition to be destroyed, that the several commandants, commissaries, deputies, negociators, and intendants, would permit him to set about it.——Fatal interval of inactivity!
The corporal was for beginning the demolition, by making a breach in the ramparts, or main fortifications of the town——No,—that will never do, corporal, said my uncle _Toby_, for in going that way to work with the town, the _English_ garrison will not be safe in it an hour; because if the French are treacherous——They are as treacherous as devils, an’ please your honour, said the corporal——It gives me concern always when I hear it, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby;_—for they don’t want personal bravery; and if a breach is made in the ramparts, they may enter it, and make themselves masters of the place when they please:—Let them enter it, said the corporal, lifting up his pioneer’s spade in both his hands, as if he was going to lay about him with it,—let them enter, an’ please your honour, if they dare.——In cases like this, corporal, said my uncle _Toby_, slipping his right hand down to the middle of his cane, and holding it afterwards truncheon-wise with his fore-finger extended,——’tis no part of the consideration of a commandant, what the enemy dare,—or what they dare not do; he must act with prudence. We will begin with the outworks both towards the sea and the land, and particularly with fort _Louis_, the most distant of them all, and demolish it first,—and the rest, one by one, both on our right and left, as we retreat towards the town;——then we’ll demolish the mole,—next fill up the harbour,—then retire into the citadel, and blow it up into the air: and having done that, corporal, we’ll embark for _England._——We are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting himself——Very true, said my uncle _Toby_—looking at the church.
C H A P. LXXVIII
A DELUSIVE, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_, upon the demolition of _Dunkirk_,—for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him:——still—still all went on heavily——the magic left the mind the weaker—STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle _Toby_’s head;—and LISTLESSNESS, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm-chair.——No longer _Amberg_ and _Rhinberg_, and _Limbourg_, and _Huy_, and _Bonn_, in one year,—and the prospect of _Landen_, and _Trerebach_, and _Drusen_, and _Dendermond_, the next,—hurried on the blood:—No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man’s repose:——No more could my uncle _Toby_, after passing the _French_ lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of _France_,—cross over the _Oyes_, and with all _Picardie_ open behind him, march up to the gates of _Paris_, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory:——No more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the _Bastile_, and awake with it streaming in his head.
——Softer visions,—gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his slumbers;—the trumpet of war fell out of his hands,—he took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all others the most delicate! the most difficult!——how wilt thou touch it, my dear uncle _Toby_?
C H A P. LXXIX
NOW, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle _Toby_’s courtship of widow _Wadman_, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the most complete systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world——are you to imagine from thence, that I shall set out with a description of _what love is?_ whether part God and part Devil, as _Plotinus_ will have it——
——Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as ten——to determine with _Ficinus_, “_How many parts of it—the one,—and how many the other;_”—or whether it is _all of it one great Devil_, from head to tail, as _Plato_ has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my opinion of _Plato_ is this; that he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with doctor _Baynyard_, who being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of ’em at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a herse and six—rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was nothing in the world, but one great bouncing _Cantharidis._——
I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous liberty in arguing, but what _Nazianzen_ cried out (_that is, polemically_) to _Philagrius_——
“’Ευγε!” _O rare! ’tis fine reasoning, Sir indeed!_—“οτι φιλοσοφεισ ευ Παθεσ.” _and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize about it in your moods and passions._
Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to inquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself with _Rhasis_ and _Dioscorides_, whether the seat of it is in the brain or liver;—because this would lead me on, to an examination of the two very opposite manners, in which patients have been treated——the one, of _Aœtius_, who always begun with a cooling clyster of hempseed and bruised cucumbers;—and followed on with thin potations of water-lilies and purslane—to which he added a pinch of snuff, of the herb _Hanea;_—and where _Aœtius_ durst venture it,—his topaz-ring.
——The other, that of _Gordonius_, who (in his cap. 15. _de Amore_) directs they should be thrashed, “_ad putorem usque_,”——till they stink again.
These are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great stock of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the progress of my uncle _Toby_’s affairs: I must anticipate thus much, That from his theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my uncle _Toby_’s mind, almost as much as his amours themselves,)—he took a single step into practice;—and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was making my uncle _Toby_ a new pair of breeches, he produced _Gordonius_’s effect upon my uncle _Toby_ without the disgrace.
What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: all that is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this——That whatever effect it had upon my uncle _Toby_,——it had a vile effect upon the house;——and if my uncle _Toby_ had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had a vile effect upon my father too.
C H A P. LXXX
——’TWILL come out of itself by and bye.——All I contend for is, that I am not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so long as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the word itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in common with the rest of the world, why should I differ from it a moment before the time?——When I can get on no further,—and find myself entangled on all sides of this mystic labyrinth,—my Opinion will then come in, in course,—and lead me out.
At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the reader, my uncle _Toby fell in love:_
—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is _fallen_ in love,—or that he is _deeply_ in love,—or up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even _over head and ears in it_,—carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing _below_ a man:—this is recurring again to _Plato_’s opinion, which, with all his divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for that.
Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle _Toby_ fell into it.
——And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation—so wouldst thou: For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in this world, more concupiscible than widow _Wadman._
C H A P. LXXXI
TO conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your hand.——Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind——as like your mistress as you can——as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis all one to me——please but your own fancy in it.
——Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so exquisite!
——Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle _Toby_ resist it?
Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot misrepresent.
C H A P. LXXXII
AS _Susannah_ was informed by an express from Mrs. _Bridget_, of my uncle _Toby_’s falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it happened,—the contents of which express, _Susannah_ communicated to my mother the next day,—it has just given me an opportunity of entering upon my uncle _Toby_’s amours a fortnight before their existence.
I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. _Shandy_, quoth my mother, which will surprise you greatly.——
Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my mother broke silence.——
“—My brother _Toby_, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs. _Wadman._”
——Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.
It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked the meaning of a thing she did not understand.
——That she is not a woman of science, my father would say—is her misfortune—but she might ask a question.—
My mother never did.——In short, she went out of the world at last without knowing whether it turned _round_, or stood _still._——My father had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was,—but she always forgot.
For these reasons, a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt them, than a proposition,—a reply, and a rejoinder; at the end of which, it generally took breath for a few minutes (as in the affair of the breeches), and then went on again.
If he marries, ’twill be the worse for us,—quoth my mother.
Not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter away his means upon that, as any thing else,
——To be sure, said my mother: so here ended the proposition—the reply,—and the rejoinder, I told you of.
It will be some amusement to him, too,——said my father.
A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.——
——Lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to himself——* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
C H A P. LXXXIII
I AM now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle _Toby_’s story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now,
four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S
These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes[32]——In the fifth volume I have been very good,——the precise line I have described in it being this:
One very squiggly line across the page with loops marked A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D.
By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to _Navarre_,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady _Baussiere_ and her page,—I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till _John de la Casse_’s devils led me the round you see marked D.—for as for _c c c c c_ they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,—or with my own transgressions at the letters A B D—they vanish into nothing.
In this last volume I have done better still—for from the end of Le Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle _Toby_’s campaigns,—I have scarce stepped a yard out of my way.
If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the good leave of his grace of _Benevento_’s devils——but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of going on even thus:
which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master’s ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to the right hand or to the left.
This _right line_,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines——
——The emblem of moral rectitude! says _Cicero_——
——_The best line!_ say cabbage planters——is the shortest line, says _Archimedes_, which can be drawn from one given point to another.——
I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next birth- day suits!
——What a journey!
Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines——by what mistake——who told them so——or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of GRAVITATION?
[32] Alluding to the first edition.
C H A P. LXXXIV
NO——I think, I said, I would write two volumes every year, provided the vile cough which then tormented me, and which to this hour I dread worse than the devil, would but give me leave—and in another place—(but where, I can’t recollect now) speaking of my book as a _machine_, and laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain the greater credit to it—I swore it should be kept a going at that rate these forty years, if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless me so long with health and good spirits.
Now as for my spirits, little have I to lay to their charge—nay so very little (unless the mounting me upon a long stick and playing the fool with me nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, be accusations) that on the contrary, I have much—much to thank ’em for: cheerily have ye made me tread the path of life with all the burthens of it (except its cares) upon my back; in no one moment of my existence, that I remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my horizon with hope, and when DEATH himself knocked at my door—ye bad him come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he doubted of his commission——
“—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he.
Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story——and I was that moment telling _Eugenius_ a most tawdry one in my way, of a nun who fancied herself a shell-fish, and of a monk damn’d for eating a muscle, and was shewing him the grounds and justice of the procedure——
“—Did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a scrape?” quoth Death. Thou hast had a narrow escape, _Tristram_, said _Eugenius_, taking hold of my hand as I finished my story——
But there is no living, _Eugenius_, replied I, at this rate; for as this _son of a whore_ has found out my lodgings——
—You call him rightly, said _Eugenius_,—for by sin, we are told, he enter’d the world——I care not which way he enter’d, quoth I, provided he be not in such a hurry to take me out with him—for I have forty volumes to write, and forty thousand things to say and do which no body in the world will say and do for me, except thyself; and as thou seest he has got me by the throat (for _Eugenius_ could scarce hear me speak across the table), and that I am no match for him in the open field, had I not better, whilst these few scatter’d spirits remain, and these two spider legs of mine (holding one of them up to him) are able to support me—had I not better, _Eugenius_, fly for my life? ’Tis my advice, my dear _Tristram_, said _Eugenius_—Then by heaven! I will lead him a dance he little thinks of——for I will gallop, quoth I, without looking once behind me, to the banks of the _Garonne;_ and if I hear him clattering at my heels——I’ll scamper away to mount _Vesuvius_——from thence to _Joppa_, and from _Joppa_ to the world’s end; where, if he follows me, I pray God he may break his neck——
—He runs more risk _there_, said _Eugenius_, than thou.
_Eugenius_’s wit and affection brought blood into the cheek from whence it had been some months banish’d——’twas a vile moment to bid adieu in; he led me to my chaise——_Allons!_ said I; the post-boy gave a crack with his whip——off I went like a cannon, and in half a dozen bounds got into _Dover._
C H A P. LXXXV
NOW hang it! quoth I, as I look’d towards the _French_ coast—a man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad——and I never gave a peep into _Rochester_ church, or took notice of the dock of _Chatham_, or visited St. _Thomas_ at _Canterbury_, though they all three laid in my way——
—But mine, indeed, is a particular case——
So without arguing the matter further with _Thomas o’Becket_, or any one else—I skip’d into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, and scudded away like the wind.
Pray, captain, quoth I, as I was going down into the cabin, is a man never overtaken by _Death_ in this passage?
Why, there is not time for a man to be sick in it, replied he——What a cursed lyar! for I am sick as a horse, quoth I, already——what a brain!——upside down!——hey-day! the cells are broke loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fix’d and volatile salts, are all jumbled into one mass——good G—! every thing turns round in it like a thousand whirlpools——I’d give a shilling to know if I shan’t write the clearer for it——
Sick! sick! sick! sick!——
—When shall we get to land? captain—they have hearts like stones——O I am deadly sick!——reach me that thing, boy——’tis the most discomfiting sickness——I wish I was at the bottom—Madam! how is it with you? Undone! undone! un——O! undone! sir——What the first time?——No, ’tis the second, third, sixth, tenth time, sir,——hey-day!—what a trampling over head!—hollo! cabin boy! what’s the matter?
The wind chopp’d about! s’Death—then I shall meet him full in the face.
What luck!—’tis chopp’d about again, master——O the devil chop it——
Captain, quoth she, for heaven’s sake, let us get ashore.
C H A P. LXXXVI
IT is a great inconvenience to a man in a haste, that there are three distinct roads between _Calais_ and _Paris_, in behalf of which there is so much to be said by the several deputies from the towns which lie along them, that half a day is easily lost in settling which you’ll take.
First, the road by _Lisle_ and _Arras_, which is the most about——but most interesting, and instructing.
The second, that by _Amiens_, which you may go, if you would see _Chantilly_——
And that by _Beauvais_, which you may go, if you will.
For this reason a great many chuse to go by _Beauvais._
C H A P. LXXXVII
“NOW before I quit _Calais_,” a travel-writer would say, “it would not be amiss to give some account of “it.”—Now I think it very much amiss—that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely o’ my conscience for the sake of drawing it; because, if we may judge from what has been wrote of these things, by all who have _wrote and gallop’d_—or who have _gallop’d and wrote_, which is a different way still; or who, for more expedition than the rest, have _wrote galloping_, which is the way I do at present——from the great _Addison_, who did it with his satchel of school books hanging at his a—, and galling his beast’s crupper at every stroke—there is not a gallopper of us all who might not have gone on ambling quietly in his own ground (in case he had any), and have wrote all he had to write, dry-shod, as well as not.
For my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which I shall ever make my last appeal—I know no more of _Calais_ (except the little my barber told me of it as he was whetting his razor) than I do this moment of _Grand Cairo_; for it was dusky in the evening when I landed, and dark as pitch in the morning when I set out, and yet by merely knowing what is what, and by drawing this from that in one part of the town, and by spelling and putting this and that together in another—I would lay any travelling odds, that I this moment write a chapter upon _Calais_ as long as my arm; and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail of every item, which is worth a stranger’s curiosity in the town—that you would take me for the town-clerk of _Calais_ itself—and where, sir, would be the wonder? was not _Democritus_, who laughed ten times more than I—town-clerk of _Abdera?_ and was not (I forget his name) who had more discretion than us both, town-clerk of _Ephesus?_——it should be penn’d moreover, sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, and truth, and precision——
—Nay—if you don’t believe me, you may read the chapter for your pains.
C H A P. LXXXVIII
CALAIS, _Calatium, Calusium, Calesium._
This town, if we may trust its archives, the authority of which I see no reason to call in question in this place—was _once_ no more than a small village belonging to one of the first Counts de _Guignes;_ and as it boasts at present of no less than fourteen thousand inhabitants, exclusive of four hundred and twenty distinct families in the _basse ville_, or suburbs——it must have grown up by little and little, I suppose, to its present size.
Though there are four convents, there is but one parochial church in the whole town; I had not an opportunity of taking its exact dimensions, but it is pretty easy to make a tolerable conjecture of ’em—for as there are fourteen thousand inhabitants in the town, if the church holds them all it must be considerably large—and if it will not—’tis a very great pity they have not another—it is built in form of a cross, and dedicated to the Virgin _Mary;_ the steeple, which has a spire to it, is placed in the middle of the church, and stands upon four pillars elegant and light enough, but sufficiently strong at the same time—it is decorated with eleven altars, most of which are rather fine than beautiful. The great altar is a master- piece in its kind; ’tis of white marble, and, as I was told, near sixty feet high—had it been much higher, it had been as high as mount _Calvary_ itself—therefore, I suppose it must be high enough in all conscience.
There was nothing struck me more than the great _Square;_ tho’ I cannot say ’tis either well paved or well built; but ’tis in the heart of the town, and most of the streets, especially those in that quarter, all terminate in it; could there have been a fountain in all _Calais_, which it seems there cannot, as such an object would have been a great ornament, it is not to be doubted, but that the inhabitants would have had it in the very centre of this square,—not that it is properly a square,—because ’tis forty feet longer from east to west, than from north to south; so that the _French_ in general have more reason on their side in calling them _Places_ than _Squares_, which, strictly speaking, to be sure, they are not.
The town-house seems to be but a sorry building, and not to be kept in the best repair; otherwise it had been a second great ornament to this place; it answers however its destination, and serves very well for the reception of the magistrates, who assemble in it from time to time; so that ’tis presumable, justice is regularly distributed.
I have heard much of it, but there is nothing at all curious in the _Courgain;_ ’tis a distinct quarter of the town, inhabited solely by sailors and fishermen; it consists of a number of small streets, neatly built and mostly of brick; ’tis extremely populous, but as that may be accounted for, from the principles of their diet,—there is nothing curious in that neither.——A traveller may see it to satisfy himself—he must not omit however taking notice of _La Tour de Guet_, upon any account; ’tis so called from its particular destination, because in war it serves to discover and give notice of the enemies which approach the place, either by sea or land;——but ’tis monstrous high, and catches the eye so continually, you cannot avoid taking notice of it if you would.
It was a singular disappointment to me, that I could not have permission to take an exact survey of the fortifications, which are the strongest in the world, and which, from first to last, that is, for the time they were set about by _Philip_ of _France_, Count of _Bologne_, to the present war, wherein many reparations were made, have cost (as I learned afterwards from an engineer in _Gascony_)—above a hundred millions of livres. It is very remarkable, that at the _Tête de Gravelenes_, and where the town is naturally the weakest, they have expended the most money; so that the outworks stretch a great way into the campaign, and consequently occupy a large tract of ground—However, after all that is _said_ and _done_, it must be acknowledged that _Calais_ was never upon any account so considerable from itself, as from its situation, and that easy entrance which it gave our ancestors, upon all occasions, into _France:_ it was not without its inconveniences also; being no less troublesome to the _English_ in those times, than _Dunkirk_ has been to us, in ours; so that it was deservedly looked upon as the key to both kingdoms, which no doubt is the reason that there have arisen so many contentions who should keep it: of these, the siege of _Calais_, or rather the blockade (for it was shut up both by land and sea), was the most memorable, as it with-stood the efforts of _Edward_ the Third a whole year, and was not terminated at last but by famine and extreme misery; the gallantry of _Eustace de St. Pierre_, who first offered himself a victim for his fellow-citizens, has rank’d his name with heroes. As it will not take up above fifty pages, it would be injustice to the reader, not to give him a minute account of that romantic transaction, as well as of the siege itself, in _Rapin_’s own words:
C H A P. LXXXIX
——BUT courage! gentle reader!——I scorn it——’tis enough to have thee in my power——but to make use of the advantage which the fortune of the pen has now gained over thee, would be too much——No——! by that all-powerful fire which warms the visionary brain, and lights the spirits through unworldly tracts! ere I would force a helpless creature upon this hard service, and make thee pay, poor soul! for fifty pages, which I have no right to sell thee,——naked as I am, I would browse upon the mountains, and smile that the north wind brought me neither my tent or my supper.
—So put on, my brave boy! and make the best of thy way to _Boulogne._
C H A P. XC
——BOULOGNE!——hah!——so we are all got together——debtors and sinners before heaven; a jolly set of us—but I can’t stay and quaff it off with you—I’m pursued myself like a hundred devils, and shall be overtaken, before I can well change horses:——for heaven’s sake, make haste——’Tis for high-treason, quoth a very little man, whispering as low as he could to a very tall man, that stood next him——Or else for murder; quoth the tall man——Well thrown, _Size-ace!_ quoth I. No; quoth a third, the gentleman has been committing———
_Ah! ma chere fille!_ said I, as she tripp’d by from her matins—you look as rosy as the morning (for the sun was rising, and it made the compliment the more gracious)—No; it can’t be that, quoth a fourth——(she made a curt’sy to me—I kiss’d my hand) ’tis debt, continued he: ’Tis certainly for debt; quoth a fifth; I would not pay that gentleman’s debts, quoth _Ace_, for a thousand pounds; nor would I, quoth _Size_, for six times the sum—Well thrown, _Size-ace_, again! quoth I;—but I have no debt but the debt of NATURE, and I want but patience of her, and I will pay her every farthing I owe her——How can you be so hard-hearted, Madam, to arrest a poor traveller going along without molestation to any one upon his lawful occasions? do stop that death-looking, long-striding scoundrel of a scare-sinner, who is posting after me——he never would have followed me but for you——if it be but for a stage or two, just to give me start of him, I beseech you, madam——do, dear lady——
——Now, in troth, ’tis a great pity, quoth mine _Irish_ host, that all this good courtship should be lost; for the young gentlewoman has been after going out of hearing of it all along.——
——Simpleton! quoth I.
——So you have nothing _else_ in _Boulogne_ worth seeing?
—By Jasus! there is the finest SEMINARY for the HUMANITIES——
—There cannot be a finer; quoth I.
C H A P. XCI
WHEN the precipitancy of a man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in—woe be to truth! and woe be to the vehicle and its tackling (let ’em be made of what stuff you will) upon which he breathes forth the disappointment of his soul!
As I never give general characters either of men or things in choler, “_the most haste the worse speed_,” was all the reflection I made upon the affair, the first time it happen’d;—the second, third, fourth, and fifth time, I confined it respectively to those times, and accordingly blamed only the second, third, fourth, and fifth post-boy for it, without carrying my reflections further; but the event continuing to befal me from the fifth, to the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth time, and without one exception, I then could not avoid making a national reflection of it, which I do in these words;
_That something is always wrong in a French post-chaise, upon first setting out._
Or the proposition may stand thus:
_A French postilion has always to alight before he has got three hundred yards out of town._
What’s wrong now?——Diable!——a rope’s broke!——a knot has slipt!——a staple’s drawn!——a bolt’s to whittle!——a tag, a rag, a jag, a strap, a buckle, or a buckle’s tongue, want altering.
Now true as all this is, I never think myself impowered to excommunicate thereupon either the post-chaise, or its driver——nor do I take it into my head to swear by the living G—, I would rather go a-foot ten thousand times——or that I will be damn’d, if ever I get into another——but I take the matter coolly before me, and consider, that some tag, or rag, or jag, or bolt, or buckle, or buckle’s tongue, will ever be a wanting or want altering, travel where I will—so I never chaff, but take the good and the bad as they fall in my road, and get on:——Do so, my lad! said I; he had lost five minutes already, in alighting in order to get at a luncheon of black bread, which he had cramm’d into the chaise-pocket, and was remounted, and going leisurely on, to relish it the better.——Get on, my lad, said I, briskly—but in the most persuasive tone imaginable, for I jingled a four-and-twenty sous piece against the glass, taking care to hold the flat side towards him, as he look’d back: the dog grinn’d intelligence from his right ear to his left, and behind his sooty muzzle discovered such a pearly row of teeth, that _Sovereignty_ would have pawn’d her jewels for them. Just heaven! {What masticators!—/What bread!—
and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of _Montreuil._
C H A P. XCII
THERE is not a town in all _France_ which, in my opinion, looks better in the map, than MONTREUIL;——I own, it does not look so well in the book of post-roads; but when you come to see it—to be sure it looks most pitifully.
There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that is, the inn-keeper’s daughter: She has been eighteen months at _Amiens_, and six at _Paris_, in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.——
—A slut! in running them over within these five minutes that I have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread stocking——yes, yes—I see, you cunning gipsy!—’tis long and taper—you need not pin it to your knee—and that ’tis your own—and fits you exactly.——
——That Nature should have told this creature a word about a _statue’s thumb!_
—But as this sample is worth all their thumbs—besides, I have her thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to me,—and as _Janatone_ withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing——may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,—if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.——
—But your worships chuse rather that I give you the length, breadth, and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the façade of the abbey of Saint _Austreberte_ which has been transported from _Artois_ hither—every thing is just I suppose as the masons and carpenters left them,—and if the belief in _Christ_ continues so long, will be so these fifty years to come—so your worships and reverences may all measure them at your leisures——but he who measures thee, _Janatone_, must do it now—thou carriest the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are passed and gone, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes——or thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty—nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy—and lose thyself.—I would not answer for my aunt _Dinah_, was she alive——’faith, scarce for her picture——were it but painted by _Reynolds_—
But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of _Apollo_, I’ll be shot——
So you must e’en be content with the original; which, if the evening is fine in passing thro’ _Montreuil_, you will see at your chaise-door, as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have—you had better stop:—She has a little of the _devote:_ but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour——
—L— help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil.
C H A P. XCIII
ALL which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much nearer me than I imagined——I wish I was at _Abbeville_, quoth I, were it only to see how they card and spin——so off we set.
[33]_de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi de Nampont_ a Bernay - - - - - - poste de Bernay a Nouvion - - - - - poste de Nouvion a ABBEVILLE poste ——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.
[33] Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762.
C H A P. XCIV
WHAT a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter.
C H A P. XCV
WAS I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster——I should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house——but rather in some decent inn——at home, I know it,——the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention——but mark. This inn should not be the inn at _Abbeville_——if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so
Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning——Yes, by four, Sir,——or by _Genevieve!_ I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.
C H A P. XCVI
“MAKE _them like unto a wheel_,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the _grand tour_, and that restless spirit for making it, which _David_ prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop _Hall_, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which _David_ ever utter’d against the enemies of the Lord—and, as if he had said, “I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.”—So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven.
Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy——and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil——
Hollo! Ho!——the whole world’s asleep!——bring out the horses——grease the wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail into that moulding——I’ll not lose a moment——
Now the wheel we are talking of, and _whereinto_ (but not _whereonto_, for that would make an Ixion’s wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop’s habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in _Palestine_ at that time or not——and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country.
I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear _Jenny_) for their “Χωξισμον απο τκ Εωμαιος, εις το καλως φιλοσοφειν”——[their] “getting out of the body, in order to think well.”
No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre——REASON is, half of it, SENSE; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appetites and concoctions.——
——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong?
You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early.
C H A P. XCVII
——But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my beard till I got to _Paris;_——yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which _Lessius (lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.)_ hath made his estimate, wherein he setteth forth, That one _Dutch_ mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great a number of souls (counting from the fall of _Adam_) as can possibly be damn’d to the end of the world.
From what he has made this second estimate——unless from the parental goodness of God—I don’t know—I am much more at a loss what could be in _Franciscus Ribbera_’s head, who pretends that no less a space than one of two hundred _Italian_ miles multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to hold the like number——he certainly must have gone upon some of the old _Roman_ souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a gradual and most tabid decline, in the course of eighteen hundred years, they must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have come, when he wrote, almost to nothing.
In _Lessius_’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can be imagined——
——We find them less _now_——
And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on from little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not one moment to affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall have no souls at all; which being the period beyond which I doubt likewise of the existence of the Christian faith, ’twill be one advantage that both of ’em will be exactly worn out together.
Blessed _Jupiter!_ and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for now ye will all come into play again, and with _Priapus_ at your tails——what jovial times!——but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing? I——I who must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste no more of ’em than what I borrow from my imagination——peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on.
C H A P. XCVIII
——“So hating, I say, to make mysteries of _nothing_”——I intrusted it with the post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones; he gave a crack with his whip to balance the compliment; and with the thill-horse trotting, and a sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it along to _Ailly au clochers_, famed in days of yore for the finest chimes in the world; but we danced through it without music—the chimes being greatly out of order—(as in truth they were through all _France_).
And so making all possible speed, from
_Ailly au clochers_, I got to _Hixcourt_, from _Hixcourt_ I got to _Pequignay_, and from _Pequignay_, I got to AMIENS, concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have informed you once before——and that was—that _Janatone_ went there to school.
C H A P. XCIX
IN the whole catalogue of those whiffling vexations which come puffing across a man’s canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and tormenting nature, than this particular one which I am going to describe——and for which (unless you travel with an avance-courier, which numbers do in order to prevent it)——there is no help: and it is this.
That be you in never so kindly a propensity to sleep——though you are passing perhaps through the finest country—upon the best roads, and in the easiest carriage for doing it in the world——nay, was you sure you could sleep fifty miles straight forwards, without once opening your eyes—nay, what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be of any truth in _Euclid_, that you should upon all accounts be full as well asleep as awake——nay, perhaps better——Yet the incessant returns of paying for the horses at every stage,——with the necessity thereupon of putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence three livres fifteen sous (sous by sous), puts an end to so much of the project, that you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a post and a half, that is but nine)——were it to save your soul from destruction.
—I’ll be even with ’em, quoth I, for I’ll put the precise sum into a piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way: “Now I shall have nothing to do,” said I (composing myself to rest), “but to drop this gently into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a word.”——Then there wants two sous more to drink——or there is a twelve sous piece of _Louis_ XIV. which will not pass—or a livre and some odd liards to be brought over from the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot; which altercations (as a man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him: still is sweet sleep retrievable; and still might the flesh weigh down the spirit, and recover itself of these blows—but then, by heaven! you have paid but for a single post—whereas ’tis a post and a half; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you will or no: Then Monsieur _le Curé_ offers you a pinch of snuff——or a poor soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling his box——or the priestesse of the cistern will water your wheels——they do not want it——but she swears by her _priesthood_ (throwing it back) that they do:——then you have all these points to argue, or consider over in your mind; in doing of which, the rational powers get so thoroughly awakened——you may get ’em to sleep again as you can.
It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had pass’d clean by the stables of _Chantilly_——
——But the postillion first affirming, and then persisting in it to my face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, I open’d my eyes to be convinced—and seeing the mark upon it as plain as my nose—I leap’d out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at _Chantilly_ in spite.——I tried it but for three posts and a half, but believe ’tis the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; for as few objects look very inviting in that mood—you have little or nothing to stop you; by which means it was that I passed through St. _Dennis_, without turning my head so much as on one side towards the Abby——
——Richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense!——bating their jewels, which are all false, I would not give three sous for any one thing in it, but _Jaidas’s lantern_——nor for that either, only as it grows dark, it might be of use.
C H A P. C
CRACK, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack—so this is _Paris!_ quoth I (continuing in the same mood)—and this is _Paris!_——humph!——_Paris!_ cried I, repeating the name the third time——
The first, the finest, the most brilliant——
The streets however are nasty.
But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells——crack, crack——crack, crack——what a fuss thou makest!—as if it concerned the good people to be informed, that a man with pale face and clad in black, had the honour to be driven into _Paris_ at nine o’clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin, turned up with red calamanco—crack, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack,——I wish thy whip——
——But ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack—crack on.
Ha!——and no one gives the wall!——but in the SCHOOL of URBANITY herself, if the walls are besh-t—how can you do otherwise?
And prithee when do they light the lamps? What?—never in the summer months!——Ho! ’tis the time of sallads.——O rare! sallad and soup—soup and sallad—sallad and soup, _encore_——
——’Tis _too much_ for sinners.
Now I cannot bear the barbarity of it; how can that unconscionable coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? don’t you see, friend, the streets are so villanously narrow, that there is not room in all _Paris_ to turn a wheelbarrow? In the grandest city of the whole world, it would not have been amiss, if they had been left a thought wider; nay, were it only so much in every single street, as that a man might know (was it only for satisfaction) on which side of it he was walking.
One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten.—Ten cooks shops! and twice the number of barbers! and all within three minutes driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world, on some great merry-meeting with the barbers, by joint consent had said—Come, let us all go live at _Paris:_ the _French_ love good eating——they are all _gourmands_——we shall rank high; if their god is their belly——their cooks must be gentlemen: and forasmuch as _the periwig maketh the man_, and the periwig-maker maketh the periwig—_ergo_, would the barbers say, we shall rank higher still—we shall be above you all—we shall be _Capitouls_[34] at least—_pardi!_ we shall all wear swords——
—And so, one would swear, (that is, by candle-light,—but there is no depending upon it,) they continued to do, to this day.
[34] Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &c. &c. &c.
C H A P. CI
THE _French_ are certainly misunderstood:——but whether the fault is theirs, in not sufficiently explaining themselves; or speaking with that exact limitation and precision which one would expect on a point of such importance, and which, moreover, is so likely to be contested by us——or whether the fault may not be altogether on our side, in not understanding their language always so critically as to know “what they would be at”——I shall not decide; but ’tis evident to me, when they affirm, “_That they who have seen_ Paris, _have seen every thing_,” they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light.
As for candle-light—I give it up——I have said before, there was no depending upon it—and I repeat it again; but not because the lights and shades are too sharp—or the tints confounded—or that there is neither beauty or keeping, &c. . . . for that’s not truth—but it is an uncertain light in this respect, That in all the five hundred grand Hôtels, which they number up to you in _Paris_—and the five hundred good things, at a modest computation (for ’tis only allowing one good thing to a Hôtel), which by candle-light are best to be _seen, felt, heard_, and _understood_ (which, by the bye, is a quotation from _Lilly_)——the devil a one of us out of fifty, can get our heads fairly thrust in amongst them.
This is no part of the _French_ computation: ’tis simply this,
That by the last survey taken in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixteen, since which time there have been considerable augmentations, _Paris_ doth contain nine hundred streets; (viz)
In the quarter called the _City_—there are fifty-three streets.
In St. _James_ of the Shambles, fifty-five streets.
In St. _Oportune_, thirty-four streets.
In the quarter of the _Louvre_, twenty-five streets.
In the _Palace Royal_, or St. _Honorius_, forty-nine streets.
In _Mont. Martyr_, forty-one streets.
In St. _Eustace_, twenty-nine streets.
In the _Halles_, twenty-seven streets.
In St. _Dennis_, fifty-five streets.
In St. _Martin_, fifty-four streets.
In St. _Paul_, or the _Mortellerie_, twenty-seven streets.
The _Greve_, thirty-eight streets.
In St. _Avoy_, or the _Verrerie_, nineteen streets.
In the _Marais_, or the _Temple_, fifty-two streets.
In St. _Antony_’s, sixty-eight streets.
In the _Place Maubert_, eighty-one streets.
In St. _Bennet_, sixty streets.
In St. _Andrews de Arcs_, fifty-one streets.
In the quarter of the _Luxembourg_, sixty-two streets.
And in that of St. Germain, fifty-five streets, into any of which you may walk; and that when you have seen them with all that belongs to them, fairly by day-light—their gates, their bridges, their squares, their statues - - - and have crusaded it moreover, through all their parish-churches, by no means omitting St. _Roche_ and _Sulpice_ - - - and to crown all, have taken a walk to the four palaces, which you may see, either with or without the statues and pictures, just as you chuse—
——Then you will have seen——
——but ’tis what no one needeth to tell you, for you will read of it yourself upon the portico of the _Louvre_, in these words,
[35]EARTH NO SUCH FOLKS!—NO FOLKS E’ER SUCH A TOWN
AS PARIS IS!—SING, DERRY, DERRY, DOWN.
The _French_ have a _gay_ way of treating every thing that is Great; and that is all can be said upon it.
[35] Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam ——————ulla parem.
C H A P. CII
IN mentioning the word _gay_ (as in the close of the last chapter) it puts one (_i.e._ an author) in mind of the word _spleen_——especially if he has any thing to say upon it: not that by any analysis—or that from any table of interest or genealogy, there appears much more ground of alliance betwixt them, than betwixt light and darkness, or any two of the most unfriendly opposites in nature——only ’tis an undercraft of authors to keep up a good understanding amongst words, as politicians do amongst men—not knowing how near they may be under a necessity of placing them to each other——which point being now gain’d, and that I may place mine exactly to my mind, I write it down here—
S P L E E N
This, upon leaving _Chantilly_, I declared to be the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; but I gave it only as matter of opinion. I still continue in the same sentiments—only I had not then experience enough of its working to add this, that though you do get on at a tearing rate, yet you get on but uneasily to yourself at the same time; for which reason I here quit it entirely, and for ever, and ’tis heartily at any one’s service—it has spoiled me the digestion of a good supper, and brought on a bilious diarrhœa, which has brought me back again to my first principle on which I set out——and with which I shall now scamper it away to the banks of the _Garonne_—
——No;——I cannot stop a moment to give you the character of the people—their genius—— their manners—their customs—their laws——their religion—their government— their manufactures—their commerce—their finances, with all the resources and hidden springs which sustain them: qualified as I may be, by spending three days and two nights amongst them, and during all that time making these things the entire subject of my enquiries and reflections——
Still—still I must away——the roads are paved—the posts are short—the days are long—’tis no more than noon—I shall be at _Fontainebleau_ before the king——
—Was he going there? not that I know——
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME
Tristram Shandy
_Tristram Shandy_
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN ——— Volume the Fourth ———
Non enim excursus hic ejus, sed opus ipsum est.
PLIN. Lib. V. Epist. 6.
Si quid urbaniusculè lusum a nobis, per Musas et Charitas et omnium poëtarum Numina, Oro te, ne me malè capias.
A
D E D I C A T I O N
TO
A GREAT MAN
HAVING, _a priori_, intended to dedicate _The Amours of my Uncle Toby_ to Mr. ***——I see more reasons, _a posteriori_, for doing it to Lord *******.
I should lament from my soul, if this exposed me to the jealousy of their Reverences; because _a posteriori_, in Court-latin, signifies the kissing hands for preferment—or any thing else—in order to get it.
DEDICATION
My opinion of Lord ******* is neither better nor worse, than it was of Mr. ***. Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight.
The same good-will that made me think of offering up half an hour’s amusement to Mr. *** when out of place—operates more forcibly at present, as half an hour’s amusement will be more serviceable and refreshing after labour and sorrow, than after a philosophical repast.
Nothing is so perfectly _amusement_ as a total change of ideas; no ideas are so totally different as those of Ministers, and innocent Lovers: for which reason, when I come to talk of Statesmen and Patriots, and set such marks upon them as will prevent confusion and mistakes concerning them for the future—I propose to dedicate that Volume to some gentle Shepherd,
Whose thoughts proud Science never taught to stray, Far as the Statesman’s walk or Patriot-way; Yet _simple Nature_ to his hopes had given Out of a cloud-capp’d head a humbler heaven; Some _untam’d_ World in depths of wood embraced— Some happier Island in the wat’ry-waste— And where admitted to that equal sky, His _faithful_ Dogs should bear him company.
In a word, by thus introducing an entire new set of objects to his Imagination, I shall unavoidably give a _Diversion_ to his passionate and love-sick Contemplations. In the mean time,
I am THE AUTHOR.
C H A P. I
NOW I hate to hear a person, especially if he be a traveller, complain that we do not get on so fast in _France_ as we do in _England;_ whereas we get on much faster, _consideratis considerandis;_ thereby always meaning, that if you weigh their vehicles with the mountains of baggage which you lay both before and behind upon them—and then consider their puny horses, with the very little they give them—’tis a wonder they get on at all: their suffering is most unchristian, and ’tis evident thereupon to me, that a _French_ post-horse would not know what in the world to do, was it not for the two words * * * * * * and * * * * * * in which there is as much sustenance, as if you give him a peck of corn: now as these words cost nothing, I long from my soul to tell the reader what they are; but here is the question—they must be told him plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or it will answer no end—and yet to do it in that plain way—though their reverences may laugh at it in the bed-chamber—full well I wot, they will abuse it in the parlour: for which cause, I have been volving and revolving in my fancy some time, but to no purpose, by what clean device or facette contrivance I might so modulate them, that whilst I satisfy _that ear_ which the reader chuses to _lend_ me—I might not dissatisfy the other which he keeps to himself.
——My ink burns my finger to try——and when I have——’twill have a worse consequence——It will burn (I fear) my paper.
——No;——I dare not——
But if you wish to know how the _abbess_ of _Andoüillets_ and a novice of her convent got over the difficulty (only first wishing myself all imaginable success)—I’ll tell you without the least scruple.
C H A P. II
THE abbess of _Andoüillets_, which if you look into the large set of provincial maps now publishing at _Paris_, you will find situated amongst the hills which divide _Burgundy_ from _Savoy_, being in danger of an _Anchylosis_ or stiff joint (the _sinovia_ of her knee becoming hard by long matins), and having tried every remedy——first, prayers and thanksgiving; then invocations to all the saints in heaven promiscuously——then particularly to every saint who had ever had a stiff leg before her——then touching it with all the reliques of the convent, principally with the thigh-bone of the man of _Lystra_, who had been impotent from his youth——then wrapping it up in her veil when she went to bed—then cross-wise her rosary—then bringing in to her aid the secular arm, and anointing it with oils and hot fat of animals——then treating it with emollient and resolving fomentations——then with poultices of marsh-mallows, mallows, bonus Henricus, white lillies and fenugreek—then taking the woods, I mean the smoak of ’em, holding her scapulary across her lap——then decoctions of wild chicory, water-cresses, chervil, sweet cecily and cochlearia——and nothing all this while answering, was prevailed on at last to try the hot-baths of _Bourbon_——so having first obtained leave of the visitor-general to take care of her existence—she ordered all to be got ready for her journey: a novice of the convent of about seventeen, who had been troubled with a whitloe in her middle finger, by sticking it constantly into the abbess’s cast poultices, &c.—had gained such an interest, that overlooking a sciatical old nun, who might have been set up for ever by the hot-baths of _Bourbon, Margarita_, the little novice, was elected as the companion of the journey.
An old calesh, belonging to the abbesse, lined with green frize, was ordered to be drawn out into the sun—the gardener of the convent being chosen muleteer, led out the two old mules, to clip the hair from the rump- ends of their tails, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busied, the one in darning the lining, and the other in sewing on the shreds of yellow binding, which the teeth of time had unravelled——the under-gardener dress’d the muleteer’s hat in hot wine-lees——and a taylor sat musically at it, in a shed over-against the convent, in assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, whistling to each bell, as he tied it on with a thong.——
——The carpenter and the smith of _Andoüillets_ held a council of wheels; and by seven, the morning after, all look’d spruce, and was ready at the gate of the convent for the hot-baths of _Bourbon_—two rows of the unfortunate stood ready there an hour before.
The abbess of _Andoüillets_, supported by _Margarita_ the novice, advanced slowly to the calesh, both clad in white, with their black rosaries hanging at their breasts——
——There was a simple solemnity in the contrast: they entered the calesh; the nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of innocence, each occupied a window, and as the abbess and _Margarita_ look’d up—each (the sciatical poor nun excepted)—each stream’d out the end of her veil in the air—then kiss’d the lilly hand which let it go: the good abbess and _Margarita_ laid their hands saint-wise upon their breasts—look’d up to heaven—then to them—and look’d “God bless you, dear sisters.”
I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been there.
The gardener, whom I shall now call the muleteer, was a little, hearty, broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a fellow, who troubled his head very little with the _hows_ and _whens_ of life; so had mortgaged a month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times more than he rode—he found more occasions than those of nature, to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till by frequent coming and going, it had so happen’d, that all his wine had leak’d out at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one half of the journey was finish’d.
Man is a creature born to habitudes. The day had been sultry—the evening was delicious—the wine was generous—the _Burgundian_ hill on which it grew was steep—a little tempting bush over the door of a cool cottage at the foot of it, hung vibrating in full harmony with the passions—a gentle air rustled distinctly through the leaves—“Come—come, thirsty muleteer,—come in.”
—The muleteer was a son of _Adam_, I need not say a word more. He gave the mules, each of ’em, a sound lash, and looking in the abbess’s and _Margarita_’s faces (as he did it)—as much as to say “here I am”—he gave a second good crack—as much as to say to his mules, “get on”——so slinking behind, he enter’d the little inn at the foot of the hill.
The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow, who thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or what was to follow it, provided he got but his scantling of Burgundy, and a little chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, as how he was chief gardener to the convent of _Andoüillets_, &c. &c. and out of friendship for the abbess and Mademoiselle _Margarita_, who was only in her noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of _Savoy_, &c. &c.—and as how she had got a white swelling by her devotions—and what a nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, &c. &c. and that if the waters of _Bourbon_ did not mend that leg—she might as well be lame of both—&c. &c. &c.—He so contrived his story, as absolutely to forget the heroine of it—and with her the little novice, and what was a more ticklish point to be forgot than both—the two mules; who being creatures that take advantage of the world, inasmuch as their parents took it of them—and they not being in a condition to return the obligation _downwards_ (as men and women and beasts are)—they do it side-ways, and long-ways, and back-ways—and up hill, and down hill, and which way they can.——Philosophers, with all their ethicks, have never considered this rightly—how should the poor muleteer, then in his cups, consider it at all? he did not in the least—’tis time we do; let us leave him then in the vortex of his element, the happiest and most thoughtless of mortal men—and for a moment let us look after the mules, the abbess, and _Margarita._
By virtue of the muleteer’s two last strokes the mules had gone quietly on, following their own consciences up the hill, till they had conquer’d about one half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty old devil, at the turn of an angle, giving a side glance, and no muleteer behind them,——
By my fig! said she, swearing, I’ll go no further——And if I do, replied the other, they shall make a drum of my hide.——
And so with one consent they stopp’d thus——
C H A P. III
——Get on with you, said the abbess.
——Wh - - - - - ysh——ysh——cried _Margarita._
Sh - - - a——shu - u——shu - - u—sh - - aw——shaw’d the abbess.
——Whu—v—w—whew—w—w—whuv’d _Margarita_, pursing up her sweet lips betwixt a hoot and a whistle.
Thump—thump—thump—obstreperated the abbess of _Andoüillets_ with the end of her gold-headed cane against the bottom of the calesh——
The old mule let a f—
C H A P. IV
WE are ruin’d and undone, my child, said the abbess to _Margarita_,——we shall be here all night——we shall be plunder’d——we shall be ravished——
——We shall be ravish’d, said _Margarita_, as sure as a gun.
_Sancta Maria!_ cried the abbess (forgetting the _O!_)—why was I govern’d by this wicked stiff joint? why did I leave the convent of _Andoüillets?_ and why didst thou not suffer thy servant to go unpolluted to her tomb?
O my finger! my finger! cried the novice, catching fire at the word _servant_—why was I not content to put it here, or there, any where rather than be in this strait?
Strait! said the abbess.
Strait——said the novice; for terror had struck their understandings——the one knew not what she said——the other what she answer’d.
O my virginity! virginity! cried the abbess.
——inity!——inity! said the novice, sobbing.
C H A P. V
MY dear mother, quoth the novice, coming a little to herself,—there are two certain words, which I have been told will force any horse, or ass, or mule, to go up a hill whether he will or no; be he never so obstinate or ill-will’d, the moment he hears them utter’d, he obeys. They are words magic! cried the abbess in the utmost horror—No; replied _Margarita_ calmly—but they are words sinful—What are they? quoth the abbess, interrupting her: They are sinful in the first degree, answered _Margarita_,—they are mortal—and if we are ravished and die unabsolved of them, we shall both——but you may pronounce them to me, quoth the abbess of _Andoüillets_——They cannot, my dear mother, said the novice, be pronounced at all; they will make all the blood in one’s body fly up into one’s face—But you may whisper them in my ear, quoth the abbess.
Heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to delegate to the inn at the bottom of the hill? was there no generous and friendly spirit unemployed——no agent in nature, by some monitory shivering, creeping along the artery which led to his heart, to rouse the muleteer from his banquet?——no sweet minstrelsy to bring back the fair idea of the abbess and _Margarita_, with their black rosaries!
Rouse! rouse!——but ’tis too late—the horrid words are pronounced this moment——
——and how to tell them—Ye, who can speak of every thing existing, with unpolluted lips—instruct me——guide me——
C H A P. VI
ALL sins whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being the slightest and least of all sins—being halved—by taking either only the half of it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, and amicably halving it betwixt yourself and another person—in course becomes diluted into no sin at all.
Now I see no sin in saying, _bou, bou, bou, bou, bou_, a hundred times together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing the syllable _ger, ger, ger, ger, ger_, were it from our matins to our vespers: Therefore, my dear daughter, continued the abbess of _Andoüillets_—I will say _bou_, and thou shalt say _ger;_ and then alternately, as there is no more sin in _fou_ than in _bou_—Thou shalt say _fou_—and I will come in (like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, at our complines) with _ter._ And accordingly the abbess, giving the pitch note, set off thus:
Abbess, ) Bou - - bou - - bou - - _Margarita_,) ——ger, - - ger, - - ger. _Margarita_,) Fou...fou...fou.. Abbess, ) —ter, - - ter, - - ter.
The two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; but it went no further——’Twill answer by an’ by, said the novice.
Abbess, ) Bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. Margarita,) —ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger.
Quicker still, cried _Margarita._
Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou.
Quicker still, cried _Margarita._
Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou.
Quicker still—God preserve me; said the abbess—They do not understand us, cried _Margarita_—But the Devil does, said the abbess of _Andoüillets._
C H A P. VII
WHAT a tract of country have I run!—how many degrees nearer to the warm sun am I advanced, and how many fair and goodly cities have I seen, during the time you have been reading and reflecting, Madam, upon this story! There’s FONTAINBLEAU, and SENS, and JOIGNY, and AUXERRE, and DIJON the capital of _Burgundy_, and CHALLON, and _Mâcon_ the capital of the _Maconese_, and a score more upon the road to LYONS——and now I have run them over——I might as well talk to you of so many market towns in the moon, as tell you one word about them: it will be this chapter at the least, if not both this and the next entirely lost, do what I will——
—Why, ’tis a strange story! _Tristram._
——Alas! Madam,
had it been upon some melancholy lecture of the cross—the peace of meekness, or the contentment of resignation——I had not been incommoded: or had I thought of writing it upon the purer abstractions of the soul, and that food of wisdom and holiness and contemplation, upon which the spirit of man (when separated from the body) is to subsist for ever——You would have come with a better appetite from it——
——I wish I never had wrote it: but as I never blot any thing out——let us use some honest means to get it out of our heads directly.
——Pray reach me my fool’s cap——I fear you sit upon it, Madam——’tis under the cushion——I’ll put it on——
Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——There then let it stay, with a
Fa-ra diddle di
and a fa-ri diddle d
and a high-dum—dye-dum
fiddle - - - dumb - c.
And now, Madam, we may venture, I hope a little to go on.
C H A P. VIII
——All you need say of _Fontainbleau_ (in case you are ask’d) is, that it stands about forty miles (south something) from _Paris_, in the middle of a large forest_—_That there is something great in it_—_That the king goes there once every two or three years, with his whole court, for the pleasure of the chace—and that, during that carnival of sporting, any _English_ gentleman of fashion (you need not forget yourself) may be accommodated with a nag or two, to partake of the sport, taking care only not to out-gallop the king——
Though there are two reasons why you need not talk loud of this to every one.
First, Because ’twill make the said nags the harder to be got; and
Secondly, ’Tis not a word of it true.——_Allons!_
As for SENS——you may dispatch—in a word——“_’Tis an archiepiscopal see._”
——For JOIGNY—the less, I think, one says of it the better.
But for AUXERRE—I could go on for ever: for in my _grand tour_ through _Europe_, in which, after all, my father (not caring to trust me with any one) attended me himself, with my uncle _Toby_, and _Trim_, and _Obadiah_, and indeed most of the family, except my mother, who being taken up with a project of knitting my father a pair of large worsted breeches—(the thing is common sense)—and she not caring to be put out of her way, she staid at home, at SHANDY HALL, to keep things right during the expedition; in which, I say, my father stopping us two days at _Auxerre_, and his researches being ever of such a nature, that they would have found fruit even in a desert——he has left me enough to say upon AUXERRE: in short, wherever my father went——but ’twas more remarkably so, in this journey through _France_ and _Italy_, than in any other stages of his life—his road seemed to lie so much on one side of that, wherein all other travellers have gone before him—he saw kings and courts and silks of all colours, in such strange lights——and his remarks and reasonings upon the characters, the manners, and customs of the countries we pass’d over, were so opposite to those of all other mortal men, particularly those of my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_—(to say nothing of myself)—and to crown all—the occurrences and scrapes which we were perpetually meeting and getting into, in consequence of his systems and opiniotry—they were of so odd, so mix’d and tragi-comical a contexture—That the whole put together, it appears of so different a shade and tint from any tour of _Europe_, which was ever executed—that I will venture to pronounce—the fault must be mine and mine only—if it be not read by all travellers and travel-readers, till travelling is no more,—or which comes to the same point—till the world, finally, takes it into its head to stand still.——
——But this rich bale is not to be open’d now; except a small thread or two of it, merely to unravel the mystery of my father’s stay at AUXERRE.
——As I have mentioned it—’tis too slight to be kept suspended; and when ’tis wove in, there is an end of it.
We’ll go, brother _Toby_, said my father, whilst dinner is coddling—to the abbey of Saint _Germain_, if it be only to see these bodies, of which Monsieur _Sequier_ has given such a recommendation.——I’ll go see any body, quoth my uncle _Toby;_ for he was all compliance through every step of the journey——Defend me! said my father—they are all mummies——Then one need not shave; quoth my uncle _Toby_——Shave! no—cried my father—’twill be more like relations to go with our beards on—So out we sallied, the corporal lending his master his arm, and bringing up the rear, to the abbey of Saint _Germain._
Every thing is very fine, and very rich, and very superb, and very magnificent, said my father, addressing himself to the sacristan, who was a younger brother of the order of _Benedictines_—but our curiosity has led us to see the bodies, of which Monsieur _Sequier_ has given the world so exact a description.—The sacristan made a bow, and lighting a torch first, which he had always in the vestry ready for the purpose; he led us into the tomb of St. _Heribald_——This, said the sacristan, laying his hand upon the tomb, was a renowned prince of the house of _Bavaria_, who under the successive reigns of _Charlemagne, Louis le Debonnair_, and _Charles the Bald_, bore a great sway in the government, and had a principal hand in bringing every thing into order and discipline——
Then he has been as great, said my uncle, in the field, as in the cabinet——I dare say he has been a gallant soldier——He was a monk—said the sacristan.
My uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ sought comfort in each other’s faces—but found it not: my father clapped both his hands upon his cod-piece, which was a way he had when any thing hugely tickled him: for though he hated a monk and the very smell of a monk worse than all the devils in hell——yet the shot hitting my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ so much harder than him, ’twas a relative triumph; and put him into the gayest humour in the world.
——And pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my father, rather sportingly: This tomb, said the young _Benedictine_, looking downwards, contains the bones of Saint MAXIMA, who came from _Ravenna_ on purpose to touch the body——
——Of Saint MAXIMUS, said my father, popping in with his saint before him,—they were two of the greatest saints in the whole martyrology, added my father——Excuse me, said the sacristan——’twas to touch the bones of Saint _Germain_, the builder of the abbey——And what did she get by it? said my uncle _Toby_——What does any woman get by it? said my father——MARTYRDOME; replied the young _Benedictine_, making a bow down to the ground, and uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a cadence, it disarmed my father for a moment. ’Tis supposed, continued the _Benedictine_, that St. _Maxima_ has lain in this tomb four hundred years, and two hundred before her canonization——’Tis but a slow rise, brother _Toby_, quoth my father, in this self-same army of martyrs.——A desperate slow one, an’ please your honour, said _Trim_, unless one could purchase——I should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle _Toby_——I am pretty much of your opinion, brother _Toby_, said my father.
——Poor St. _Maxima!_ said my uncle _Toby_ low to himself, as we turn’d from her tomb: She was one of the fairest and most beautiful ladies either of _Italy_ or _France_, continued the sacristan——But who the duce has got lain down here, besides her? quoth my father, pointing with his cane to a large tomb as we walked on——It is Saint _Optat_, Sir, answered the sacristan——And properly is Saint _Optat_ plac’d! said my father: And what is Saint _Optat_’s story? continued he. Saint _Optat_, replied the sacristan, was a bishop——
——I thought so, by heaven! cried my father, interrupting him—Saint _Optat!_——how should Saint _Optat_ fail? so snatching out his pocket-book, and the young _Benedictine_ holding him the torch as he wrote, he set it down as a new prop to his system of Christian names, and I will be bold to say, so disinterested was he in the search of truth, that had he found a treasure in Saint _Optat_’s tomb, it would not have made him half so rich: ’Twas as successful a short visit as ever was paid to the dead; and so highly was his fancy pleas’d with all that had passed in it,—that he determined at once to stay another day in _Auxerre._
—I’ll see the rest of these good gentry to-morrow, said my father, as we cross’d over the square—And while you are paying that visit, brother _Shandy_, quoth my uncle _Toby_—the corporal and I will mount the ramparts.
C H A P. IX
——NOW this is the most puzzled skein of all——for in this last chapter, as far at least as it has help’d me through _Auxerre_, I have been getting forwards in two different journies together, and with the same dash of the pen—for I have got entirely out of _Auxerre_ in this journey which I am writing now, and I am got half way out of _Auxerre_ in that which I shall write hereafter——There is but a certain degree of perfection in every thing; and by pushing at something beyond that, I have brought myself into such a situation, as no traveller ever stood before me; for I am this moment walking across the market-place of _Auxerre_ with my father and my uncle _Toby_, in our way back to dinner——and I am this moment also entering _Lyons_ with my post-chaise broke into a thousand pieces—and I am moreover this moment in a handsome pavillion built by _Pringello_,[36] upon the banks of the _Garonne_, which Mons. _Sligniac_ has lent me, and where I now sit rhapsodising all these affairs.
——Let me collect myself, and pursue my journey.
[36] The same Don _Pringello_, the celebrated _Spanish_ architect, of whom my cousin _Antony_ has made such honourable mention in a scholium to the Tale inscribed to his name.—Vid. p.129, small edit.
C H A P. X
I AM glad of it, said I, settling the account with myself, as I walk’d into _Lyons_——my chaise being all laid higgledy-piggledy with my baggage in a cart, which was moving slowly before me——I am heartily glad, said I, that ’tis all broke to pieces; for now I can go directly by water to _Avignon_, which will carry me on a hundred and twenty miles of my journey, and not cost me seven livres——and from thence, continued I, bringing forwards the account, I can hire a couple of mules—or asses, if I like, (for nobody knows me,) and cross the plains of _Languedoc_ for almost nothing——I shall gain four hundred livres by the misfortune clear into my purse: and pleasure! worth—worth double the money by it. With what velocity, continued I, clapping my two hands together, shall I fly down the rapid _Rhône_, with the VIVARES on my right hand, and DAUPHINY on my left, scarce seeing the ancient cities of VIENNE, _Valence_, and _Vivieres._ What a flame will it rekindle in the lamp, to snatch a blushing grape from the _Hermitage_ and _Cotê roti_, as I shoot by the foot of them! and what a fresh spring in the blood! to behold upon the banks advancing and retiring, the castles of romance, whence courteous knights have whilome rescued the distress’d——and see vertiginous, the rocks, the mountains, the cataracts, and all the hurry which Nature is in with all her great works about her.
As I went on thus, methought my chaise, the wreck of which look’d stately enough at the first, insensibly grew less and less in its size; the freshness of the painting was no more—the gilding lost its lustre—and the whole affair appeared so poor in my eyes—so sorry!—so contemptible! and, in a word, so much worse than the abbess of _Andoüillets’_ itself—that I was just opening my mouth to give it to the devil—when a pert vamping chaise-undertaker, stepping nimbly across the street, demanded if Monsieur would have his chaise refitted——No, no, said I, shaking my head sideways—Would Monsieur choose to sell it? rejoined the undertaker—With all my soul, said I—the iron work is worth forty livres—and the glasses worth forty more—and the leather you may take to live on.
What a mine of wealth, quoth I, as he counted me the money, has this post-chaise brought me in? And this is my usual method of book-keeping, at least with the disasters of life—making a penny of every one of ’em as they happen to me——
——Do, my dear _Jenny_, tell the world for me, how I behaved under one, the most oppressive of its kind, which could befal me as a man, proud as he ought to be of his manhood——
’Tis enough, saidst thou, coming close up to me, as I stood with my garters in my hand, reflecting upon what had not pass’d——’Tis enough, _Tristram_, and I am satisfied, saidst thou, whispering these words in my ear, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *;—* * * * * * * * *——any other man would have sunk down to the centre——
——Every thing is good for something, quoth I.
——I’ll go into _Wales_ for six weeks, and drink goat’s whey—and I’ll gain seven years longer life for the accident. For which reason I think myself inexcusable, for blaming Fortune so often as I have done, for pelting me all my life long, like an ungracious duchess, as I call’d her, with so many small evils: surely, if I have any cause to be angry with her, ’tis that she has not sent me great ones—a score of good cursed, bouncing losses, would have been as good as a pension to me.
——One of a hundred a year, or so, is all I wish—I would not be at the plague of paying land-tax for a larger.
C H A P. XI
TO those who call vexations, VEXATIONS, as knowing what they are, there could not be a greater, than to be the best part of a day at _Lyons_, the most opulent and flourishing city in _France_, enriched with the most fragments of antiquity—and not be able to see it. To be withheld upon _any_ account, must be a vexation; but to be withheld _by_ a vexation——must certainly be, what philosophy justly calls
VEXATION upon VEXATION.
I had got my two dishes of milk coffee (which by the bye is excellently good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and coffee together—otherwise ’tis only coffee and milk)—and as it was no more than eight in the morning, and the boat did not go off till noon, I had time to see enough of _Lyons_ to tire the patience of all the friends I had in the world with it. I will take a walk to the cathedral, said I, looking at my list, and see the wonderful mechanism of this great clock of _Lippius_ of _Basil_, in the first place——
Now, of all things in the world, I understand the least of mechanism——I have neither genius, or taste, or fancy—and have a brain so entirely unapt for every thing of that kind, that I solemnly declare I was never yet able to comprehend the principles of motion of a squirrel cage, or a common knife-grinder’s wheel—tho’ I have many an hour of my life look’d up with great devotion at the one—and stood by with as much patience as any christian ever could do, at the other——
I’ll go see the surprising movements of this great clock, said I, the very first thing I do: and then I will pay a visit to the great library of the Jesuits, and procure, if possible, a sight of the thirty volumes of the general history of _China_, wrote (not in the _Tartarean_, but) in the _Chinese_ language, and in the _Chinese_ character too.
Now I almost know as little of the _Chinese_ language, as I do of the mechanism of _Lippius_’s clock-work; so, why these should have jostled themselves into the two first articles of my list——I leave to the curious as a problem of Nature. I own it looks like one of her ladyship’s obliquities; and they who court her, are interested in finding out her humour as much as I.
When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, half addressing myself to my _valet de place_, who stood behind me——’twill be no hurt if we go to the church of St. _Irenæus_, and see the pillar to which _Christ_ was tied——and after that, the house where _Pontius Pilate_ lived——’Twas at the next town, said the _valet de place_—at _Vienne;_ I am glad of it, said I, rising briskly from my chair, and walking across the room with strides twice as long as my usual pace——“for so much the sooner shall I be at the _Tomb of the two lovers._”
What was the cause of this movement, and why I took such long strides in uttering this——I might leave to the curious too; but as no principle of clock-work is concerned in it——’twill be as well for the reader if I explain it myself.
C H A P. XII
O! THERE is a sweet æra in the life of man, when (the brain being tender and fibrillous, and more like pap than any thing else)——a story read of two fond lovers, separated from each other by cruel parents, and by still more cruel destiny——
_Amandus_——He _Amanda_——She——
each ignorant of the other’s course, He——east She——west _Amandus_ taken captive by the _Turks_, and carried to the emperor of _Morocco_’s court, where the princess of _Morocco_ falling in love with him, keeps him twenty years in prison for the love of his _Amanda._——
She—(_Amanda_) all the time wandering barefoot, and with dishevell’d hair, o’er rocks and mountains, enquiring for _Amandus!——Amandus! Amandus!—_making every hill and valley to echo back his name——
_Amandus! Amandus!_
at every town and city, sitting down forlorn at the gate——Has Amandus!—has my _Amandus_ enter’d?——till,——going round, and round, and round the world——chance unexpected bringing them at the same moment of the night, though by different ways, to the gate of _Lyons_, their native city, and each in well-known accents calling out aloud,
Is _Amandus_
still alive?
Is my _Amanda_
they fly into each other’s arms, and both drop down dead for joy.
There is a soft æra in every gentle mortal’s life, where such a story affords more _pabulum_ to the brain, than all the _Frusts_, and _Crusts_, and _Rusts_ of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for it.
——’Twas all that stuck on the right side of the cullender in my own, of what _Spon_ and others, in their accounts of _Lyons_, had _strained_ into it; and finding, moreover, in some Itinerary, but in what God knows——That sacred to the fidelity of _Amandus_ and _Amanda_, a tomb was built without the gates, where, to this hour, lovers called upon them to attest their truths——I never could get into a scrape of that kind in my life, but this _tomb of the lovers_ would, somehow or other, come in at the close —nay such a kind of empire had it establish’d over me, that I could seldom think or speak of _Lyons_—and sometimes not so much as see even a _Lyons-waistcoat_, but this remnant of antiquity would present itself to my fancy; and I have often said in my wild way of running on——tho’ I fear with some irreverence——“I thought this shrine (neglected as it was) as valuable as that of _Mecca_, and so little short, except in wealth, of the _Santa Casa_ itself, that some time or other, I would go a pilgrimage (though I had no other business at _Lyons_) on purpose to pay it a visit.”
In my list, therefore, of _Videnda_ at _Lyons_, this, tho’ _last_,—was not, you see, _least_ ; so taking a dozen or two of longer strides than usual cross my room, just whilst it passed my brain, I walked down calmly into the _basse cour_, in order to sally forth; and having called for my bill—as it was uncertain whether I should return to my inn, I had paid it——had moreover given the maid ten sous, and was just receiving the dernier compliments of Monsieur _Le Blanc_, for a pleasant voyage down the _Rhône_——when I was stopped at the gate——
C H A P. XIII
——’TWAS by a poor ass, who had just turned in with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves; and stood dubious, with his two fore-feet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in or no.
Now, ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike——there is a patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I will—whether in town or country—in cart or under panniers—whether in liberty or bondage——I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I)——I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance—and where those carry me not deep enough—in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think—as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this: for parrots, jackdaws, &c.——I never exchange a word with them——nor with the apes, &c. for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay my dog and my cat, though I value them both——(and for my dog he would speak if he could)—yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation——I can make nothing of a discourse with them, beyond the _proposition_, the _reply_, and _rejoinder_, which terminated my father’s and my mother’s conversations, in his beds of justice——and those utter’d——there’s an end of the dialogue——
—But with an ass, I can commune for ever.
Come, _Honesty!_ said I,——seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate——art thou for coming in, or going out?
The ass twisted his head round to look up the street——
Well—replied I—we’ll wait a minute for thy driver:
——He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way——
I understand thee perfectly, answered I——If thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death——Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent.
He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropt it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and pick’d it up again——God help thee, _Jack!_ said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on’t—and many a bitter day’s labour,—and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages——’tis all—all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others.——And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare say, as soot—(for he had cast aside the stem) and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world, that will give thee a macaroon.——In saying this, I pull’d out a paper of ’em, which I had just purchased, and gave him one—and at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me, that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit, of seeing _how_ an ass would eat a macaroon——than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act.
When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I press’d him to come in——the poor beast was heavy loaded——his legs seem’d to tremble under him——he hung rather backwards, and as I pull’d at his halter, it broke short in my hand——he look’d up pensive in my face—“Don’t thrash me with it—but if you will, you may”——If I do, said I, I’ll be d——d.
The word was but one-half of it pronounced, like the abbess of _Andoüillet_’s—(so there was no sin in it)—when a person coming in, let fall a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil’s crupper, which put an end to the ceremony.
_ Out upon it!_
cried I——but the interjection was equivocal——and, I think, wrong placed too—for the end of an osier which had started out from the contexture of the ass’s panier, had caught hold of my breeches pocket, as he rush’d by me, and rent it in the most disastrous direction you can imagine——so that the
_Out upon it!_ in my opinion, should have come in here——but this I leave to be settled by
The REVIEWERS of MY BREECHES,
which I have brought over along with me for that purpose.
C H A P. XIV
WHEN all was set to rights, I came down stairs again into the _basse cour_ with my _valet de place_, in order to sally out towards the tomb of the two lovers, &c.—and was a second time stopp’d at the gate——not by the ass—but by the person who struck him; and who, by that time, had taken possession (as is not uncommon after a defeat) of the very spot of ground where the ass stood.
It was a commissary sent to me from the post-office, with a rescript in his hand for the payment of some six livres odd sous.
Upon what account? said I.——’Tis upon the part of the king, replied the commissary, heaving up both his shoulders——
——My good friend, quoth I——as sure as I am I—and you are you——
——And who are you? said he.——
——Don’t puzzle me; said I.
C H A P. XV
——But it is an indubitable verity, continued I, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration——that I owe the king of _France_ nothing but my good will; for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all health and pastime in the world——
_Pardonnez moi_—replied the commissary, you are indebted to him six livres four sous, for the next post from hence to St. _Fons_, in your route to _Avignon_—which being a post royal, you pay double for the horses and postillion—otherwise ’twould have amounted to no more than three livres two sous——
——But I don’t go by land; said I.
——You may if you please; replied the commissary——
Your most obedient servant——said I, making him a low bow——
The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good breeding—made me one, as low again.——I never was more disconcerted with a bow in my life.
——The devil take the serious character of these people! quoth I—(aside) they understand no more of Irony than this——
The comparison was standing close by with his panniers—but something seal’d up my lips—I could not pronounce the name—
Sir, said I, collecting myself—it is not my intention to take post——
—But you may—said he, persisting in his first reply—you may take post if you chuse——
—And I may take salt to my pickled herring, said I, if I chuse—
—But I do not chuse—
—But you must pay for it, whether you do or no.
Aye! for the salt; said I (I know)——
—And for the post too; added he. Defend me! cried I——
I travel by water—I am going down the _Rhône_ this very afternoon—my baggage is in the boat—and I have actually paid nine livres for my passage——
_C’est tout egal_—’tis all one; said he.
_Bon Dieu!_ what, pay for the way I go! and for the way I do _not_ go!
——_C’est tout egal;_ replied the commissary——
——The devil it is! said I—but I will go to ten thousand Bastiles first——
_O England! England!_ thou land of liberty, and climate of good sense, thou tenderest of mothers—and gentlest of nurses, cried I, kneeling upon one knee, as I was beginning my apostrophè.
When the director of Madam _Le Blanc_’s conscience coming in at that instant, and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at his devotions—looking still paler by the contrast and distress of his drapery—ask’d, if I stood in want of the aids of the church——
I go by WATER—said I—and here’s another will be for making me pay for going by OIL.
C H A P. XVI
AS I perceived the commissary of the post-office would have his six livres four sous, I had nothing else for it, but to say some smart thing upon the occasion, worth the money:
And so I set off thus:——
——And pray, Mr. Commissary, by what law of courtesy is a defenceless stranger to be used just the reverse from what you use a _Frenchman_ in this matter?
By no means; said he.
Excuse me; said I—for you have begun, Sir, with first tearing off my breeches—and now you want my pocket——
Whereas—had you first taken my pocket, as you do with your own people—and then left me bare a—’d after—I had been a beast to have complain’d——
As it is——
——’Tis contrary to the _law of nature._
——’Tis contrary to _reason._
——’Tis contrary to the GOSPEL.
But not to this——said he—putting a printed paper into my hand,
PAR le ROY.
———’Tis a pithy prolegomenon, quoth I—and so read on — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
——By all which it appears, quoth I, having read it over, a little too rapidly, that if a man sets out in a post-chaise from _Paris_—he must go on travelling in one, all the days of his life—or pay for it.—Excuse me, said the commissary, the spirit of the ordinance is this—That if you set out with an intention of running post from _Paris_ to _Avignon_, &c. you shall not change that intention or mode of travelling, without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further than the place you repent at—and ’tis founded, continued he, upon this, that the REVENUES are not to fall short through your _fickleness_——
——O by heavens! cried I—if fickleness is taxable in _France_—we have nothing to do but to make the best peace with you we can——
AND SO THE PEACE WAS MADE;
——And if it is a bad one—as _Tristram Shandy_ laid the corner-stone of it—nobody but _Tristram Shandy_ ought to be hanged.
C H A P. XVII
THOUGH I was sensible I had said as many clever things to the commissary as came to six livres four sous, yet I was determined to note down the imposition amongst my remarks before I retired from the place; so putting my hand into my coat-pocket for my remarks—(which, by the bye, may be a caution to travellers to take a little more care of _their_ remarks for the future) “my remarks were _stolen_”——Never did sorry traveller make such a pother and racket about his remarks as I did about mine, upon the occasion.
Heaven! earth! sea! fire! cried I, calling in every thing to my aid but what I should——My remarks are stolen!—what shall I do?——Mr. Commissary! pray did I drop any remarks, as I stood besides you?——
You dropp’d a good many very singular ones; replied he——Pugh! said I, those were but a few, not worth above six livres two sous—but these are a large parcel——He shook his head——Monsieur _Le Blanc!_ Madam _Le Blanc!_ did you see any papers of mine?—you maid of the house! run up stairs—_François!_ run up after her——
—I must have my remarks——they were the best remarks, cried I, that ever were made—the wisest—the wittiest—What shall I do?—which way shall I turn myself?
_Sancho Pança_, when he lost his ass’s FURNITURE, did not exclaim more bitterly.
C H A P. XVIII
WHEN the first transport was over, and the registers of the brain were beginning to get a little out of the confusion into which this jumble of cross accidents had cast them—it then presently occurr’d to me, that I had left my remarks in the pocket of the chaise—and that in selling my chaise, I had sold my remarks along with it, to the chaise-vamper. I leave this void space that the reader may swear into it any oath that he is most accustomed to——For my own part, if ever I swore a _whole_ oath into a vacancy in my life, I think it was into that—— * * * * * * * * *, said I—and so my remarks through _France_, which were as full of wit, as an egg is full of meat, and as well worth four hundred guineas, as the said egg is worth a penny—have I been selling here to a chaise-vamper—for four _Louis d’Ors_—and giving him a post-chaise (by heaven) worth six into the bargain; had it been to _Dodsley_, or _Becket_, or any creditable bookseller, who was either leaving off business, and wanted a post-chaise—or who was beginning it—and wanted my remarks, and two or three guineas along with them—I could have borne it——but to a chaise-vamper!—shew me to him this moment, _François_,—said I—The valet de place put on his hat, and led the way—and I pull’d off mine, as I pass’d the commissary, and followed him.
C H A P. XIX
WHEN we arrived at the chaise-vamper’s house, both the house and the shop were shut up; it was the eighth of _September_, the nativity of the blessed Virgin _Mary_, mother of God—
——Tantarra - ra - tan - tivi——the whole world was gone out a May-poling—frisking here—capering there——no body cared a button for me or my remarks; so I sat me down upon a bench by the door, philosophating upon my condition: by a better fate than usually attends me, I had not waited half an hour, when the mistress came in to take the papilliotes from off her hair, before she went to the May-poles——
The _French_ women, by the bye, love May-poles, _à la folie_—that is, as much as their matins——give ’em but a May-pole, whether in _May, June, July_ or _September_—they never count the times——down it goes——’tis meat, drink, washing, and lodging to ’em——and had we but the policy, an’ please your worships (as wood is a little scarce in _France_), to send them but plenty of May-poles——
The women would set them up; and when they had done, they would dance round them (and the men for company) till they were all blind.
The wife of the chaise-vamper stepp’d in, I told you, to take the papilliotes from off her hair——the toilet stands still for no man——so she jerk’d off her cap, to begin with them as she open’d the door, in doing which, one of them fell upon the ground—I instantly saw it was my own writing——
O Seigneur! cried I—you have got all my remarks upon your head, Madam!——_J’en suis bien mortifiée_, said she——’tis well, thinks I, they have stuck there—for could they have gone deeper, they would have made such confusion in a _French_ woman’s noddle—She had better have gone with it unfrizled, to the day of eternity.
_Tenez_—said she—so without any idea of the nature of my suffering, she took them from her curls, and put them gravely one by one into my hat——one was twisted this way——another twisted that——ey! by my faith; and when they are published, quoth I,——
They will be worse twisted still.
C H A P. XX
ANS now for _Lippius_’s clock! said I, with the air of a man, who had got thro’ all his difficulties——nothing can prevent us seeing that, and the _Chinese_ history, &c. except the time, said _François_——for ’tis almost eleven—then we must speed the faster, said I, striding it away to the cathedral.
I cannot say, in my heart, that it gave me any concern in being told by one of the minor canons, as I was entering the west door,—That _Lippius_’s great clock was all out of joints, and had not gone for some years——It will give me the more time, thought I, to peruse the _Chinese_ history; and besides I shall be able to give the world a better account of the clock in its decay, than I could have done in its flourishing condition——
——And so away I posted to the college of the Jesuits.
Now it is with the project of getting a peep at the history of _China_ in _Chinese_ characters—as with many others I could mention, which strike the fancy only at a distance; for as I came nearer and nearer to the point—my blood cool’d—the freak gradually went off, till at length I would not have given a cherry-stone to have it gratified——The truth was, my time was short, and my heart was at the Tomb of the Lovers——I wish to God, said I, as I got the rapper in my hand, that the key of the library may be but lost; it fell out as well——
_For all the_ JESUITS _had got the cholic_—and to that degree, as never was known in the memory of the oldest practitioner.
C H A P. XXI
AS I knew the geography of the Tomb of the Lovers, as well as if I had lived twenty years in _Lyons_, namely, that it was upon the turning of my right hand, just without the gate, leading to the _Fauxbourg de Vaise_——I dispatched _François_ to the boat, that I might pay the homage I so long ow’d it, without a witness of my weakness—I walk’d with all imaginable joy towards the place——when I saw the gate which intercepted the tomb, my heart glowed within me——
—Tender and faithful spirits! cried I, addressing myself to _Amandus_ and _Amanda_—long—long have I tarried to drop this tear upon your tomb——I come——I come——
When I came—there was no tomb to drop it upon.
What would I have given for my uncle _Toby_, to have whistled Lillo bullero!
C H A P. XXII
NO matter how, or in what mood—but I flew from the tomb of the lovers—or rather I did not fly _from_ it—(for there was no such thing existing) and just got time enough to the boat to save my passage;—and ere I had sailed a hundred yards, the _Rhône_ and the _Saôn_ met together, and carried me down merrily betwixt them.
But I have described this voyage down the _Rhône_, before I made it——
——So now I am at _Avignon_, and as there is nothing to see but the old house, in which the duke of _Ormond_ resided, and nothing to stop me but a short remark upon the place, in three minutes you will see me crossing the bridge upon a mule, with _François_ upon a horse with my portmanteau behind him, and the owner of both, striding the way before us, with a long gun upon his shoulder, and a sword under his arm, lest peradventure we should run away with his cattle. Had you seen my breeches in entering _Avignon_,——Though you’d have seen them better, I think, as I mounted—you would not have thought the precaution amiss, or found in your heart to have taken it in dudgeon; for my own part, I took it most kindly; and determined to make him a present of them, when we got to the end of our journey, for the trouble they had put him to, of arming himself at all points against them.
Before I go further, let me get rid of my remark upon _Avignon_, which is this: That I think it wrong, merely because a man’s hat has been blown off his head by chance the first night he comes to _Avignon_,——that he should therefore say, “_Avignon_ is more subject to high winds than any town in all _France:_” for which reason I laid no stress upon the accident till I had enquired of the master of the inn about it, who telling me seriously it was so——and hearing, moreover, the windiness of _Avignon_ spoke of in the country about as a proverb——I set it down, merely to ask the learned what can be the cause——the consequence I saw—for they are all Dukes, Marquisses, and Counts, there——the duce a Baron, in all _Avignon_——so that there is scarce any talking to them on a windy day.
Prithee, friend, said I, take hold of my mule for a moment——for I wanted to pull off one of my jack-boots, which hurt my heel—the man was standing quite idle at the door of the inn, and as I had taken it into my head, he was someway concerned about the house or stable, I put the bridle into his hand—so begun with the boot:—when I had finished the affair, I turned about to take the mule from the man, and thank him——
——But _Monsieur le Marquis_ had walked in——
C H A P. XXIII
I HAD now the whole south of _France_, from the banks of the _Rhône_ to those of the _Garonne_, to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure—_at my own leisure_——for I had left Death, the Lord knows——and He only—how far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ _France_, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome rate.”——Still he followed,——and still I fled him——but I fled him cheerfully——still he pursued——but, like one who pursued his prey without hope——as he lagg’d, every step he lost, softened his looks——why should I fly him at this rate?
So notwithstanding all the commissary of the post-office had said, I changed the _mode_ of my travelling once more; and, after so precipitate and rattling a course as I had run, I flattered my fancy with thinking of my mule, and that I should traverse the rich plains of _Languedoc_ upon his back, as slowly as foot could fall.
There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller——or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain; especially if it is without great rivers or bridges; and presents nothing to the eye, but one unvaried picture of plenty: for after they have once told you, that ’tis delicious! or delightful! (as the case happens)—that the soil was grateful, and that nature pours out all her abundance, &c. . . . they have then a large plain upon their hands, which they know not what to do with—and which is of little or no use to them but to carry them to some town; and that town, perhaps of little more, but a new place to start from to the next plain——and so on.
—This is most terrible work; judge if I don’t manage my plains better.
C H A P. XXIV
I HAD not gone above two leagues and a half, before the man with his gun began to look at his priming.
I had three several times loiter’d _terribly_ behind; half a mile at least every time; once, in deep conference with a drum-maker, who was making drums for the fairs of _Baucaira_ and _Tarascone_—I did not understand the principles——
The second time, I cannot so properly say, I stopp’d——for meeting a couple of _Franciscans_ straitened more for time than myself, and not being able to get to the bottom of what I was about——I had turn’d back with them——
The third, was an affair of trade with a gossip, for a hand-basket of _Provence_ figs for four sous; this would have been transacted at once; but for a case of conscience at the close of it; for when the figs were paid for, it turn’d out, that there were two dozen of eggs covered over with vine-leaves at the bottom of the basket—as I had no intention of buying eggs—I made no sort of claim of them—as for the space they had occupied—what signified it? I had figs enow for my money——
—But it was my intention to have the basket—it was the gossip’s intention to keep it, without which, she could do nothing with her eggs——and unless I had the basket, I could do as little with my figs, which were too ripe already, and most of ’em burst at the side: this brought on a short contention, which terminated in sundry proposals, what we should both do——
——How we disposed of our eggs and figs, I defy you, or the Devil himself, had he not been there (which I am persuaded he was), to form the least probable conjecture: You will read the whole of it——not this year, for I am hastening to the story of my uncle _Toby_’s amours—but you will read it in the collection of those which have arose out of the journey across this plain—and which, therefore, I call my
PLAIN STORIES.
How far my pen has been fatigued, like those of other travellers, in this journey of it, over so barren a track—the world must judge—but the traces of it, which are now all set o’ vibrating together this moment, tell me ’tis the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for as I had made no convention with my man with the gun, as to time—by stopping and talking to every soul I met, who was not in a full trot—joining all
## parties before me—waiting for every soul behind—hailing all those who
were coming through cross-roads—arresting all kinds of beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers, friars—not passing by a woman in a mulberry-tree without commending her legs, and tempting her into conversation with a pinch of snuff——In short, by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever, which chance held out to me in this journey—I turned my _plain_ into a _city_—I was always in company, and with great variety too; and as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some proposals always on his part to offer to every beast he met—I am confident we could have passed through _Pall-Mall_, or St. _James_’s-Street, for a month together, with fewer adventures—and seen less of human nature.
O! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait of a _Languedocian_’s dress—that whatever is beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days—I will delude my fancy, and believe it is so.
’Twas in the road betwixt _Nismes_ and _Lunel_, where there is the best _Muscatto_ wine in all _France_, and which by the bye belongs to the honest canons of MONTPELLIER—and foul befal the man who has drunk it at their table, who grudges them a drop of it.
——The sun was set—they had done their work; the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh—and the swains were preparing for a carousal—my mule made a dead point——’Tis the fife and tabourin, said I——I’m frighten’d to death, quoth he——They are running at the ring of pleasure, said I, giving him a prick——By saint _Boogar_, and all the saints at the backside of the door of purgatory, said he—(making the same resolution with the abbesse of _Andoüillets_) I’ll not go a step further——’Tis very well, sir, said I——I never will argue a point with one of your family, as long as I live; so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch, and t’other into that—I’ll take a dance, said I—so stay you here.
A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the groupe to meet me, as I advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chesnut approaching rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress.
We want a cavalier, said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer them—And a cavalier ye shall have; said I, taking hold of both of them.
Hadst thou, _Nannette_, been array’d like a duchesse!
——But that cursed slit in thy petticoat!
_Nannette_ cared not for it.
We could not have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other.
A lame youth, whom _Apollo_ had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank——Tie me up this tress instantly, said _Nannette_, putting a piece of string into my hand—It taught me to forget I was a stranger—— The whole knot fell down——We had been seven years acquainted.
The youth struck the note upon the tabourin—his pipe followed, and off we bounded——“the duce take that slit!”
The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung alternately with her brother——’twas a _Gascoigne_ roundelay.
VIVA LA JOIA!
FIDON LA TRISTESSA!
The nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains an octave below them——
I would have given a crown to have it sew’d up—_Nannette_ would not have given a sous—_Viva la joia!_ was in her lips—_Viva la joia!_ was in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us——She look’d amiable!——Why could I not live, and end my days thus? Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here——and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious——Then ’tis time to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from _Lunel_ to _Montpellier_——from thence to _Pesçnas, Beziers_——I danced it along through _Narbonne, Carcasson_, and _Castle Naudairy_, till at last I danced myself into _Perdrillo_’s pavillion, where pulling out a paper of black lines, that I might go on straight forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle _Toby_’s amours——
I begun thus——
C H A P. XXV
——BUT softly——for in these sportive plains, and under this genial sun, where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and every step that’s taken, the judgment is surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding all that has been said upon _straight lines_[37] in sundry pages of my book—I defy the best cabbage planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—I defy him to go on coolly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if slits in petticoats are unsew’d up—without ever and anon straddling out, or sidling into some bastardly digression——In _Freeze-land, Fog-land_, and some other lands I wot of—it may be done——
But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear _Eugenius_—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where I now sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle _Toby_’s amours, and with all the meanders of JULIA’s track in quest of her DIEGO, in full view of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand——
What a work it is likely to turn out!
Let us begin it.
[37] Vid. Vol. III. p. 243.
C H A P. XXVI
IT is with LOVE as with CUCKOLDOM——
But now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which, if not imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as I live (whereas the COMPARISON may be imparted to him any hour in the day)——I’ll just mention it, and begin in good earnest.
The thing is this.
That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best——I’m sure it is the most religious——for I begin with writing the first sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
’Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his street-door, and calling in his neighbours and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his imps, with their hammers and engines, &c. only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the whole.
I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up——catching the idea, even sometimes before it half way reaches me——
I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man.
_Pope_ and his Portrait[38] are fools to me——no martyr is ever so full of faith or fire——I wish I could say of good works too——but I have no
Zeal or Anger——or
Anger or Zeal——
And till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name——the errantest TARTUFFE, in science——in politics—or in religion, shall never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind greeting, than what he will read in the next chapter.
[38] Vid. _Pope_’s Portrait.
C H A P. XXVII
——Bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’ foot——and obstructions in the glands are dangerous——And how goes it with thy concubine—thy wife,—and thy little ones o’ both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady—your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins——I hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes.
——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—clyster—blister?——And why so many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my great-aunt _Dinah_’s old black velvet mask! I think there is no occasion for it.
Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off and on, _before_ she was got with child by the coachman—not one of our family would wear it after. To cover the MASK afresh, was more than the mask was worth——and to wear a mask which was bald, or which could be half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all——
This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one archbishop, a _Welch_ judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single mountebank——
In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.
C H A P. XXVIII
“IT is with Love as with Cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least the _third_, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is _Love_—may be _Hatred_, in that——_Sentiment_ half a yard higher——and _Nonsense_———no, Madam,—not there——I mean at the