A work by Laurence Sterne




To the Right Honourable Mr Pitt.

Sir,

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

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

I am, Great Sir, (and, what is more to your Honour) I am, Good Sir, Your
Well-wisher, and most humble Fellow-subject,

The Author.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.

Volume the First

Chapter 1.I.

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

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


Chapter 1.II.

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

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

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


Chapter 1.III.

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

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


Chapter 1.IV.

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

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

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

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

--Shut the door.--

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

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

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

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-book, which now lies
upon the table, 'That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month
in which I date my geniture,--my father set upon his journey to London,
with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster school;' and, as it
appears from the same authority, 'That he did not get down to his wife and
family till the second week in May following,'--it brings the thing almost
to a certainty.  However, what follows in the beginning of the next
chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt.

--But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and
February?--Why, Madam,--he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica. 


Chapter 1.V.

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


Chapter 1.VI.

In the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I was
born; but I did not inform you how.  No, that particular was reserved
entirely for a chapter by itself;--besides, Sir, as you and I are in a
manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to
have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.

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


Chapter 1.VII.

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

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

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


Chapter 1.VIII.

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

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


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


Chapter 1.IX.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bright Goddess,
If thou art not too busy with Candid and Miss Cunegund's affairs,--take
Tristram Shandy's under thy protection also.


Chapter 1.X.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XI.

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

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

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

I have not the time to look into Saxo-Grammaticus's Danish history, to know
the certainty of this;--but if you have leisure, and can easily get at the
book, you may do it full as well yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion was as follows:

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XIII.

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XIV.

Upon looking into my mother's marriage settlement, in order to satisfy
myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could
proceed any farther in this history;--I had the good fortune to pop upon
the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half straight
forwards,--it might have taken me up a month;--which shews plainly, that
when a man sits down to write a history,--tho' it be but the history of
Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he knows no more than his heels what lets
and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way,--or what a dance
he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over.  Could a
historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,--
straight forward;--for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without
ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,-
-he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his
journey's end;--but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible:  For, if he
is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight
line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways
avoid.  He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting
his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can
fly; he will moreover have various 
Accounts to reconcile:  
Anecdotes to pick up:  
Inscriptions to make out:  
Stories to weave in:  
Traditions to sift:  
Personages to call upon:  
Panegyricks to paste up at this door;  
Pasquinades at that:--All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt
from.  To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be look'd into,
and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever
and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:--In short there is no end
of it;--for my own part, I declare I have been at it these six weeks,
making all the speed I possibly could,--and am not yet born:--I have just
been able, and that's all, to tell you when it happen'd, but not how;--so
that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished.

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


Chapter 1.XV.

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XVI.

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XVII.

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

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


Chapter 1.XVIII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XIX.

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

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

The hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more seriousness,--nor had
he more faith,--or more to say on the powers of necromancy in dishonouring
his deeds,--or on Dulcinea's name, in shedding lustre upon them, than my
father had on those of Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the one hand--or of
Nyky and Simkin on the other.  How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would say,
by mere inspiration of the names, have been rendered worthy of them?  And
how many, he would add, are there, who might have done exceeding well in
the world, had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and
Nicodemus'd into nothing?

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

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

I never knew a man able to answer this argument.--But, indeed, to speak of
my father as he was;--he was certainly irresistible;--both in his orations
and disputations;--he was born an orator;--(Greek).--Persuasion hung upon
his lips, and the elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in
him,--and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and passions
of his respondent,--that Nature might have stood up and said,--'This man is
eloquent.'--In short, whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the
question, 'twas hazardous in either case to attack him.--And yet, 'tis
strange, he had never read Cicero, nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor
Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, amongst the antients;--nor Vossius,
nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby, amongst the moderns;--and what is
more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark
of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp
or Burgersdicius or any Dutch logician or commentator;--he knew not so much
as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad
hominem consisted; so that I well remember, when he went up along with me
to enter my name at Jesus College in. . .,--it was a matter of just wonder
with my worthy tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society,--
that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able
to work after that fashion with them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XX.

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

--But here comes my fair lady.  Have you read over again the chapter,
Madam, as I desired you?--You have:  And did you not observe the passage,
upon the second reading, which admits the inference?--Not a word like it! 
Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the
chapter, where I take upon me to say, 'It was necessary I should be born
before I was christen'd.'  Had my mother, Madam, been a Papist, that
consequence did not follow.  (The Romish Rituals direct the baptizing of
the child, in cases of danger, before it is born;--but upon this proviso,
That some part or other of the child's body be seen by the baptizer:--But
the Doctors of the Sorbonne, by a deliberation held amongst them, April 10,
1733,--have enlarged the powers of the midwives, by determining, That
though no part of the child's body should appear,--that baptism shall,
nevertheless, be administered to it by injection,--par le moyen d'une
petite canulle,--Anglice a squirt.--'Tis very strange that St. Thomas
Aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying and untying the
knots of school-divinity,--should, after so much pains bestowed upon this,-
-give up the point at last, as a second La chose impossible,--'Infantes in
maternis uteris existentes (quoth St. Thomas!) baptizari possunt nullo
modo.'--O Thomas! Thomas!  If the reader has the curiosity to see the
question upon baptism by injection, as presented to the Doctors of the
Sorbonne, with their consultation thereupon, it is as follows.)

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

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

Memoire presente a Messieurs les Docteurs de Sorbonne 
Vide Deventer.  Paris Edit.  4to, 1734, p. 366.

Un Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente a Messieurs les Docteurs de Sorbonne,
qu'il y a des cas, quoique tres rares, ou une mere ne scauroit accoucher, &
meme ou l'enfant est tellement renferme dans le sein de sa mere, qu'il ne
fait paroitre aucune partie de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas, suivant les
Rituels, de lui conferer, du moins sous condition, le bapteme.  Le
Chirurgien, qui consulte, pretend, par le moyen d'une petite canulle, de
pouvoir baptiser immediatement l'enfant, sans faire aucun tort a la mere.--
Il demand si ce moyen, qu'il vient de proposer, est permis & legitime, &
s'il peut s'en servir dans les cas qu'il vient d'exposer.

Reponse

Le Conseil estime, que la question proposee souffre de grandes difficultes.
Les Theologiens posent d'un cote pour principe, que le bapteme, qui est une
naissance spirituelle, suppose une premiere naissance; il faut etre ne dans
le monde, pour renaitre en Jesus Christ, comme ils l'enseignent.  S.
Thomas, 3 part. quaest. 88 artic. II. suit cette doctrine comme une verite
constante; l'on ne peut, dit ce S. Docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont
renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, & S. Thomas est fonde sur ce, que
les enfans ne sont point nes, & ne peuvent etre comptes parmi les autres
hommes; d'ou il conclud, qu'ils ne peuvent etre l'objet d'une action
exterieure, pour recevoir par leur ministere, les sacremens necessaires au
salut:  Pueri in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut
cum aliis hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici actioni humanae,
ut per eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem.  Les rituels
ordonnent dans la pratique ce que les theologiens ont etabli sur les memes
matieres, & ils deffendent tous d'une maniere uniforme, de baptiser les
enfans qui sont renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, s'ils ne sont
paroitre quelque partie de leurs corps.  Le concours des theologiens, & des
rituels, qui sont les regles des dioceses, paroit former une autorite qui
termine la question presente; cependant le conseil de conscience
considerant d'un cote, que le raisonnement des theologiens est uniquement
fonde sur une raison de convenance, & que la deffense des rituels suppose
que l'on ne peut baptiser immediatement les enfans ainsi renfermes dans le
sein de leurs meres, ce qui est contre la supposition presente; & d'un
autre cote, considerant que les memes theologiens enseignent, que l'on peut
risquer les sacremens que Jesus Christ a etablis comme des moyens faciles,
mais necessaires pour sanctifier les hommes; & d'ailleurs estimant, que les
enfans renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient etre capables de
salut, parcequ'ils sont capables de damnation;--pour ces considerations, &
en egard a l'expose, suivant lequel on assure avoir trouve un moyen certain
de baptiser ces enfans ainsi renfermes, sans faire aucun tort a la mere, le
Conseil estime que l'on pourroit se servir du moyen propose, dans la
confiance qu'il a, que Dieu n'a point laisse ces sortes d'enfans sans
aucuns secours, & supposant, comme il est expose, que le moyen dont il
s'agit est propre a leur procurer le bapteme; cependant comme il s'agiroit,
en autorisant la pratique proposee, de changer une regle universellement
etablie, le Conseil croit que celui qui consulte doit s'addresser a son
eveque, & a qui il appartient de juger de l'utilite, & du danger du moyen
propose, & comme, sous le bon plaisir de l'eveque, le Conseil estime qu'il
faudroit recourir au Pape, qui a le droit d'expliquer les regles de
l'eglise, & d'y deroger dans le cas, ou la loi ne scauroit obliger, quelque
sage & quelque utile que paroisse la maniere de baptiser dont il s'agit, le
Conseil ne pourroit l'approver sans le concours de ces deux autorites.  On
conseile au moins a celui qui consulte, de s'addresser a son eveque, & de
lui faire part de la presente decision, afin que, si le prelat entre dans
les raisons sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignes s'appuyent, il puisse
etre autorise dans le cas de necessite, ou il risqueroit trop d'attendre
que la permission fut demandee & accordee d'employer le moyen qu'il propose
si avantageux au salut de l'enfant.  Au reste, le Conseil, en estimant que
l'on pourroit s'en servir, croit cependant, que si les enfans dont il
s'agit, venoient au monde, contre l'esperance de ceux qui se seroient
servis du meme moyen, il seroit necessaire de les baptiser sous condition;
& en cela le Conseil se conforme a tous les rituels, qui en autorisant le
bapteme d'un enfant qui fait paroitre quelque partie de son corps,
enjoignent neantmoins, & ordonnent de le baptiser sous condition, s'il
vient heureusement au monde.

Delibere en Sorbonne, le 10 Avril, 1733.
A. Le Moyne.
L. De Romigny.
De Marcilly.

Mr Tristram Shandy's compliments to Messrs. Le Moyne, De Romigny, and De
Marcilly; hopes they all rested well the night after so tiresome a
consultation.--He begs to know, whether after the ceremony of marriage, and
before that of consummation, the baptizing all the Homunculi at once,
slapdash, by injection, would not be a shorter and safer cut still; on
condition, as above, That if the Homunculi do well, and come safe into the
world after this, that each and every of them shall be baptized again (sous
condition)--And provided, in the second place, That the thing can be done,
which Mr Shandy apprehends it may, par le moyen d'une petite canulle, and
sans faire aucune tort au pere.


Chapter 1.XXI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--My father, as I told you was a philosopher in grain,--speculative,--
systematical;--and my aunt Dinah's affair was a matter of as much
consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the planets to Copernicus:--
The backslidings of Venus in her orbit fortified the Copernican system,
called so after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt Dinah in her
orbit, did the same service in establishing my father's system, which, I
trust, will for ever hereafter be called the Shandean System, after his.

In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a sense of
shame as any man whatever;--and neither he, nor, I dare say, Copernicus,
would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least
notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they
thought, to truth.--Amicus Plato, my father would say, construing the words
to my uncle Toby, as he went along, Amicus Plato; that is, Dinah was my
aunt;--sed magis amica veritas--but Truth is my sister.

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

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

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

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

I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it be
known and distinguished by the name and title of the Argumentum
Fistulatorium, and no other;--and that it rank hereafter with the
Argumentum Baculinum and the Argumentum ad Crumenam, and for ever hereafter
be treated of in the same chapter. 

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



Chapter 1.XXII.

The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was Bishop
of Exeter in King James the First's reign, tells us in one of Decads, at
the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at London, in the year
1610, by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, 'That it is an
abominable thing for a man to commend himself;'--and I really think it is
so.

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

This is precisely my situation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXIII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients;--not
from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it,
which they have borrowed from the honourable devices which the Pentagraphic
Brethren (Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures
mechanically, and in any proportion.) of the brush have shewn in taking
copies.--These, you must know, are your great historians.

One of these you will see drawing a full length character against the
light;--that's illiberal,--dishonest,--and hard upon the character of the
man who sits.

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

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


Chapter 1.XXIV.

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXV.

The wound in my uncle Toby's groin, which he received at the siege of
Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he
should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXVI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXVII.

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

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

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

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

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

--Therefore I answer thus:

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

But this by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXVIII.

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

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

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

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

In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli and Cataneo, translated
from the Italian;--likewise Stevinus, Moralis, the Chevalier de Ville,
Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter, the Count de Pagan, the Marshal Vauban, Mons.
Blondel, with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don
Quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded
his library.

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

--Endless is the search of Truth.

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


Chapter 1.XXIX.

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXX.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXI.

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

Pray, what's all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?--quoth my father;--my
brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

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

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

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

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

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at the period's
end--then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father's
tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in
oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis.--Just Heaven! how does
the Poco piu and the Poco meno of the Italian artists;--the insensible more
or less, determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as
in the statue!  How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the
pen, the fiddle-stick, et caetera,--give the true swell, which gives the
true pleasure!--O my countrymen:--be nice; be cautious of your language;
and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your
eloquence and your fame depend.

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXII.

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

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

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

It is said in Aristotle's Master Piece, 'That when a man doth think of any
thing which is past,--he looketh down upon the ground;--but that when he
thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards the heavens.'

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXIII.

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

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

I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles
from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-midwife's house:--and that whilst
Obadiah has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle
Toby from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:--That I have had
him ill upon my hands near four years;--and have since travelled him and
Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles
down into Yorkshire.--all which put together, must have prepared the
reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,--as much,
at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXIV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXV.

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXVI.

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

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

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

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

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

--Make great haste, Obadiah, quoth my father, and I'll give thee a crown!
and quoth my uncle Toby, I'll give you another.


Chapter 1.XXXVII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XXXVIII.

My brother does it, quoth my uncle Toby, out of principle.--In a family
way, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop.--Pshaw!--said my father,--'tis not worth
talking of.


Chapter 1.XXXIX.

At the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle Toby were left both
standing, like Brutus and Cassius, at the close of the scene, making up
their accounts.

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

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

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

You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth Dr. Slop (as the
fellow is lame) of going for Stevinus's account of it, because in my return
from Leyden thro' the Hague, I walked as far as Schevling, which is two
long miles, on purpose to take a view of it.

That's nothing, replied my uncle Toby, to what the learned Peireskius did,
who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to
Schevling, and from Schevling to Paris back again, in order to see it, and
nothing else.

Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.

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

It answered, replied my uncle Toby, as well, if not better; for, as
Peireskius elegantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity of its motion,
Tam citus erat, quam erat ventus; which, unless I have forgot my Latin, is,
that it was as swift as the wind itself.

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

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

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


Chapter 1.XL.

In popped Corporal Trim with Stevinus:--But 'twas too late,--all the
discourse had been exhausted without him, and was running into a new
channel.

--You may take the book home again, Trim, said my uncle Toby, nodding to
him.

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

Corporal Trim, by being in the service, had learned to obey,--and not to
remonstrate,--so taking the book to a side-table, and running over the
leaves; An' please your Honour, said Trim, I can see no such thing;--
however, continued the Corporal, drolling a little in his turn, I'll make
sure work of it, an' please your Honour;--so taking hold of the two covers
of the book, one in each hand, and letting the leaves fall down as he bent
the covers back, he gave the book a good sound shake.

There is something falling out, however, said Trim, an' please your
Honour;--but it is not a chariot, or any thing like one:--Prithee,
Corporal, said my father, smiling, what is it then?--I think, answered
Trim, stooping to take it up,--'tis more like a sermon,--for it begins with
a text of scripture, and the chapter and verse;--and then goes on, not as a
chariot, but like a sermon directly.

The company smiled.

I cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle Toby, for such a thing
as a sermon to have got into my Stevinus.

I think 'tis a sermon, replied Trim:--but if it please your Honours, as it
is a fair hand, I will read you a page;--for Trim, you must know, loved to
hear himself read almost as well as talk.

I have ever a strong propensity, said my father, to look into things which
cross my way, by such strange fatalities as these;--and as we have nothing
better to do, at least till Obadiah gets back, I shall be obliged to you,
brother, if Dr. Slop has no objection to it, to order the Corporal to give
us a page or two of it,--if he is as able to do it, as he seems willing. 
An' please your honour, quoth Trim, I officiated two whole campaigns, in
Flanders, as clerk to the chaplain of the regiment.--He can read it, quoth
my uncle Toby, as well as I can.--Trim, I assure you, was the best scholar
in my company, and should have had the next halberd, but for the poor
fellow's misfortune.  Corporal Trim laid his hand upon his heart, and made
an humble bow to his master; then laying down his hat upon the floor, and
taking up the sermon in his left hand, in order to have his right at
liberty,--he advanced, nothing doubting, into the middle of the room, where
he could best see, and be best seen by his audience.


Chapter 1.XLI.

--If you have any objection,--said my father, addressing himself to Dr.
Slop.  Not in the least, replied Dr. Slop;--for it does not appear on which
side of the question it is wrote,--it may be a composition of a divine of
our church, as well as yours,--so that we run equal risques.--'Tis wrote
upon neither side, quoth Trim, for 'tis only upon Conscience, an' please
your Honours.

Trim's reason put his audience into good humour,--all but Dr. Slop, who
turning his head about towards Trim, looked a little angry.

Begin, Trim,--and read distinctly, quoth my father.--I will, an' please
your Honour, replied the Corporal, making a bow, and bespeaking attention
with a slight movement of his right hand.


Chapter 1.XLII.

--But before the Corporal begins, I must first give you a description of
his attitude;--otherwise he will naturally stand represented, by your
imagination, in an uneasy posture,--stiff,--perpendicular,--dividing the
weight of his body equally upon both legs;--his eye fixed, as if on duty;--
his look determined,--clenching the sermon in his left hand, like his
firelock.--In a word, you would be apt to paint Trim, as if he was standing
in his platoon ready for action,--His attitude was as unlike all this as
you can conceive.

He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent forwards just so far,
as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the
horizon;--which sound orators, to whom I address this, know very well to be
the true persuasive angle of incidence;--in any other angle you may talk
and preach;--'tis certain;--and it is done every day;--but with what
effect,--I leave the world to judge!

The necessity of this precise angle of 85 degrees and a half to a
mathematical exactness,--does it not shew us, by the way, how the arts and
sciences mutually befriend each other?

How the duce Corporal Trim, who knew not so much as an acute angle from an
obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly;--or whether it was chance or nature,
or good sense or imitation, &c. shall be commented upon in that part of the
cyclopaedia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental parts of the
eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar, the coffee-house, the
bed-chamber, and fire-side, fall under consideration.

He stood,--for I repeat it, to take the picture of him in at one view, with
his body swayed, and somewhat bent forwards,--his right leg from under him,
sustaining seven-eighths of his whole weight,--the foot of his left leg,
the defect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude, advanced a
little,--not laterally, nor forwards, but in a line betwixt them;--his knee
bent, but that not violently,--but so as to fall within the limits of the
line of beauty;--and I add, of the line of science too;--for consider, it
had one eighth part of his body to bear up;--so that in this case the
position of the leg is determined,--because the foot could be no farther
advanced, or the knee more bent, than what would allow him, mechanically to
receive an eighth part of his whole weight under it, and to carry it too.

>This I recommend to painters;--need I add,--to orators!--I think not; for
unless they practise it,--they must fall upon their noses.

So much for Corporal Trim's body and legs.--He held the sermon loosely, not
carelessly, in his left hand, raised something above his stomach, and
detached a little from his breast;--his right arm falling negligently by
his side, as nature and the laws of gravity ordered it,--but with the palm
of it open and turned towards his audience, ready to aid the sentiment in
case it stood in need.

Corporal Trim's eyes and the muscles of his face were in full harmony with
the other parts of him;--he looked frank,--unconstrained,--something
assured,--but not bordering upon assurance.

Let not the critic ask how Corporal Trim could come by all this.--I've told
him it should be explained;--but so he stood before my father, my uncle
Toby, and Dr. Slop,--so swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and with
such an oratorical sweep throughout the whole figure,--a statuary might
have modelled from it;--nay, I doubt whether the oldest Fellow of a
College,--or the Hebrew Professor himself, could have much mended it.

Trim made a bow, and read as follows:

The Sermon.

Hebrews xiii. 18.

--For we trust we have a good Conscience.

'Trust!--Trust we have a good conscience!'

(Certainly, Trim, quoth my father, interrupting him, you give that sentence
a very improper accent; for you curl up your nose, man, and read it with
such a sneering tone, as if the Parson was going to abuse the Apostle.

He is, an' please your Honour, replied Trim.  Pugh! said my father,
smiling.

Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Trim is certainly in the right; for the writer (who I
perceive is a Protestant) by the snappish manner in which he takes up the
apostle, is certainly going to abuse him;--if this treatment of him has not
done it already.  But from whence, replied my father, have you concluded so
soon, Dr. Slop, that the writer is of our church?--for aught I can see
yet,--he may be of any church.--Because, answered Dr. Slop, if he was of
ours,--he durst no more take such a licence,--than a bear by his beard:--
If, in our communion, Sir, a man was to insult an apostle,--a saint,--or
even the paring of a saint's nail,--he would have his eyes scratched out.--
What, by the saint? quoth my uncle Toby.  No, replied Dr. Slop, he would
have an old house over his head.  Pray is the Inquisition an ancient
building, answered my uncle Toby, or is it a modern one?--I know nothing of
architecture, replied Dr. Slop.--An' please your Honours, quoth Trim, the
Inquisition is the vilest--Prithee spare thy description, Trim, I hate the
very name of it, said my father.--No matter for that, answered Dr. Slop,--
it has its uses; for tho' I'm no great advocate for it, yet, in such a case
as this, he would soon be taught better manners; and I can tell him, if he
went on at that rate, would be flung into the Inquisition for his pains. 
God help him then, quoth my uncle Toby.  Amen, added Trim; for Heaven above
knows, I have a poor brother who has been fourteen years a captive in it.--
I never heard one word of it before, said my uncle Toby, hastily:--How came
he there, Trim?--O, Sir, the story will make your heart bleed,--as it has
made mine a thousand times;--but it is too long to be told now;--your
Honour shall hear it from first to last some day when I am working beside
you in our fortifications;--but the short of the story is this;--That my
brother Tom went over a servant to Lisbon,--and then married a Jew's widow,
who kept a small shop, and sold sausages, which somehow or other, was the
cause of his being taken in the middle of the night out of his bed, where
he was lying with his wife and two small children, and carried directly to
the Inquisition, where, God help him, continued Trim, fetching a sigh from
the bottom of his heart,--the poor honest lad lies confined at this hour;
he was as honest a soul, added Trim, (pulling out his handkerchief) as ever
blood warmed.--

--The tears trickled down Trim's cheeks faster than he could well wipe them
away.--A dead silence in the room ensued for some minutes.--Certain proof
of pity!

Come Trim, quoth my father, after he saw the poor fellow's grief had got a
little vent,--read on,--and put this melancholy story out of thy head:--I
grieve that I interrupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon again;--for if
the first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as thou sayest, I have a great
desire to know what kind of provocation the apostle has given.

Corporal Trim wiped his face, and returned his handkerchief into his
pocket, and, making a bow as he did it,--he began again.)

The Sermon.

Hebrews xiii. 18.

--For we trust we have a good Conscience.--

'Trust! trust we have a good conscience!  Surely if there is any thing in
this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is
capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this
very thing,--whether he has a good conscience or no.'

(I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. Slop.)

'If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state of
this account:--he must be privy to his own thoughts and desires;--he must
remember his past pursuits, and know certainly the true springs and
motives, which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.'

(I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. Slop.)

'In other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the wise
man complains, hardly do we guess aright at the things that are upon the
earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us.  But here
the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;--is conscious of
the web she has wove;--knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share
which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which
virtue or vice has planned before her.'

(The language is good, and I declare Trim reads very well, quoth my
father.)

'Now,--as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind has
within herself of this; and the judgment, either of approbation or censure,
which it unavoidably makes upon the successive actions of our lives; 'tis
plain you will say, from the very terms of the proposition,--whenever this
inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands self-accused, that he
must necessarily be a guilty man.--And, on the contrary, when the report is
favourable on his side, and his heart condemns him not:--that it is not a
matter of trust, as the apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty and
fact, that the conscience is good, and that the man must be good also.'

(Then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop,
and the Protestant divine is in the right.  Sir, have patience, replied my
father, for I think it will presently appear that St. Paul and the
Protestant divine are both of an opinion.--As nearly so, quoth Dr. Slop, as
east is to west;--but this, continued he, lifting both hands, comes from
the liberty of the press.

It is no more at the worst, replied my uncle Toby, than the liberty of the
pulpit; for it does not appear that the sermon is printed, or ever likely
to be.

Go on, Trim, quoth my father.)

'At first sight this may seem to be a true state of the case:  and I make
no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is so truly impressed upon
the mind of man,--that did no such thing ever happen, as that the
conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures
it may) insensibly become hard;--and, like some tender parts of his body,
by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by degrees that nice sense
and perception with which God and nature endowed it:--Did this never
happen;--or was it certain that self-love could never hang the least bias
upon the judgment;--or that the little interests below could rise up and
perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass them about with
clouds and thick darkness:--Could no such thing as favour and affection
enter this sacred Court--Did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it;--or was
ashamed to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment: 
Or, lastly, were we assured that Interest stood always unconcerned whilst
the cause was hearing--and that Passion never got into the judgment-seat,
and pronounced sentence in the stead of Reason, which is supposed always to
preside and determine upon the case:--Was this truly so, as the objection
must suppose;--no doubt then the religious and moral state of a man would
be exactly what he himself esteemed it:--and the guilt or innocence of
every man's life could be known, in general, by no better measure, than the
degrees of his own approbation and censure.

'I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does accuse him (as it
seldom errs on that side) that he is guilty;--and unless in melancholy and
hypocondriac cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always
sufficient grounds for the accusation.

'But the converse of the proposition will not hold true;--namely, that
whenever there is guilt, the conscience must accuse; and if it does not,
that a man is therefore innocent.--This is not fact--So that the common
consolation which some good christian or other is hourly administering to
himself,--that he thanks God his mind does not misgive him; and that,
consequently, he has a good conscience, because he hath a quiet one,--is
fallacious;--and as current as the inference is, and as infallible as the
rule appears at first sight, yet when you look nearer to it, and try the
truth of this rule upon plain facts,--you see it liable to so much error
from a false application;--the principle upon which it goes so often
perverted;--the whole force of it lost, and sometimes so vilely cast away,
that it is painful to produce the common examples from human life, which
confirm the account.

'A man shall be vicious and utterly debauched in his principles;--
exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live shameless, in the
open commission of a sin which no reason or pretence can justify,--a sin by
which, contrary to all the workings of humanity, he shall ruin for ever the
deluded partner of his guilt;--rob her of her best dowry; and not only
cover her own head with dishonour;--but involve a whole virtuous family in
shame and sorrow for her sake.  Surely, you will think conscience must lead
such a man a troublesome life; he can have no rest night and day from its
reproaches.

'Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this time, than break in
upon him; as Elijah reproached the god Baal,--this domestic god was either
talking, or pursuing, or was in a journey, or peradventure he slept and
could not be awoke.

'Perhaps He was gone out in company with Honour to fight a duel: to pay off
some debt at play;--or dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; Perhaps
Conscience all this time was engaged at home, talking aloud against petty
larceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes as his fortune
and rank of life secured him against all temptation of committing; so that
he lives as merrily;'--(If he was of our church, tho', quoth Dr. Slop, he
could not)--'sleeps as soundly in his bed;--and at last meets death
unconcernedly;--perhaps much more so, than a much better man.'

(All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. Slop, turning to my father,--the
case could not happen in our church.--It happens in ours, however, replied
my father, but too often.--I own, quoth Dr. Slop, (struck a little with my
father's frank acknowledgment)--that a man in the Romish church may live as
badly;--but then he cannot easily die so.--'Tis little matter, replied my
father, with an air of indifference,--how a rascal dies.--I mean, answered
Dr. Slop, he would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.--Pray how
many have you in all, said my uncle Toby,--for I always forget?--Seven,
answered Dr. Slop.--Humph!--said my uncle Toby; tho' not accented as a note
of acquiescence,--but as an interjection of that particular species of
surprize, when a man in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing than
he expected.--Humph! replied my uncle Toby.  Dr. Slop, who had an ear,
understood my uncle Toby as well as if he had wrote a whole volume against
the seven sacraments.--Humph! replied Dr. Slop, (stating my uncle Toby's
argument over again to him)--Why, Sir, are there not seven cardinal
virtues?--Seven mortal sins?--Seven golden candlesticks?--Seven heavens?--
'Tis more than I know, replied my uncle Toby.--Are there not seven wonders
of the world?--Seven days of the creation?--Seven planets?--Seven plagues?-
-That there are, quoth my father with a most affected gravity.  But
prithee, continued he, go on with the rest of thy characters, Trim.)

'Another is sordid, unmerciful,' (here Trim waved his right hand) 'a
strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship or
public spirit.  Take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in their
distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life without a sigh
or a prayer.'  (An' please your honours, cried Trim, I think this a viler
man than the other.)

'Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occasions?--No; thank
God there is no occasion, I pay every man his own;--I have no fornication
to answer to my conscience;--no faithless vows or promises to make up;--I
have debauched no man's wife or child; thank God, I am not as other men,
adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who stands before me.

'A third is crafty and designing in his nature.  View his whole life;--'tis
nothing but a cunning contexture of dark arts and unequitable subterfuges,
basely to defeat the true intent of all laws,--plain dealing and the safe
enjoyment of our several properties.--You will see such a one working out a
frame of little designs upon the ignorance and perplexities of the poor and
needy man;--shall raise a fortune upon the inexperience of a youth, or the
unsuspecting temper of his friend, who would have trusted him with his
life.

'When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this
black account, and state it over again with his conscience--Conscience
looks into the Statutes at Large;--finds no express law broken by what he
has done;--perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels
incurred;--sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his
gates upon him:--What is there to affright his conscience?--Conscience has
got safely entrenched behind the Letter of the Law; sits there
invulnerable, fortified with Cases and Reports so strongly on all sides;--
that it is not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.'

(Here Corporal Trim and my uncle Toby exchanged looks with each other.--
Aye, Aye, Trim! quoth my uncle Toby, shaking his head,--these are but sorry
fortifications, Trim.--O! very poor work, answered Trim, to what your
Honour and I make of it.--The character of this last man, said Dr. Slop,
interrupting Trim, is more detestable than all the rest; and seems to have
been taken from some pettifogging Lawyer amongst you:--Amongst us, a man's
conscience could not possibly continue so long blinded,--three times in a
year, at least, he must go to confession.  Will that restore it to sight?
quoth my uncle Toby,--Go on, Trim, quoth my father, or Obadiah will have
got back before thou has got to the end of thy sermon.--'Tis a very short
one, replied Trim.--I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle Toby, for I like
it hugely.--Trim went on.)

'A fourth man shall want even this refuge;--shall break through all their
ceremony of slow chicane;--scorns the doubtful workings of secret plots and
cautious trains to bring about his purpose:--See the bare-faced villain,
how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders!--Horrid!--But indeed much
better was not to be expected, in the present case--the poor man was in the
dark!--his priest had got the keeping of his conscience;--and all he would
let him know of it, was, That he must believe in the Pope;--go to Mass;--
cross himself;--tell his beads;--be a good Catholic, and that this, in all
conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven.  What;--if he perjures?--
Why;--he had a mental reservation in it.--But if he is so wicked and
abandoned a wretch as you represent him;--if he robs,--if he stabs, will
not conscience, on every such act, receive a wound itself?--Aye,--but the
man has carried it to confession;--the wound digests there, and will do
well enough, and in a short time be quite healed up by absolution.  O
Popery! what hast thou to answer for!--when not content with the too many
natural and fatal ways, thro' which the heart of man is every day thus
treacherous to itself above all things;--thou hast wilfully set open the
wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, God
knows, to go astray of himself, and confidently speak peace to himself,
when there is no peace.

'Of this the common instances which I have drawn out of life, are too
notorious to require much evidence.  If any man doubts the reality of them,
or thinks it impossible for a man to be such a bubble to himself,--I must
refer him a moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to trust
my appeal with his own heart.

'Let him consider in how different a degree of detestation, numbers of
wicked actions stand there, tho' equally bad and vicious in their own
natures;--he will soon find, that such of them as strong inclination and
custom have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and painted
with all the false beauties which a soft and a flattering hand can give
them;--and that the others, to which he feels no propensity, appear, at
once, naked and deformed, surrounded with all the true circumstances of
folly and dishonour.

'When David surprized Saul sleeping in the cave, and cut off the skirt of
his robe--we read his heart smote him for what he had done:--But in the
matter of Uriah, where a faithful and gallant servant, whom he ought to
have loved and honoured, fell to make way for his lust,--where conscience
had so much greater reason to take the alarm, his heart smote him not.  A
whole year had almost passed from first commission of that crime, to the
time Nathan was sent to reprove him; and we read not once of the least
sorrow or compunction of heart which he testified, during all that time,
for what he had done.

'Thus conscience, this once able monitor,--placed on high as a judge within
us, and intended by our maker as a just and equitable one too,--by an
unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such imperfect
cognizance of what passes,--does its office so negligently,--sometimes so
corruptly,--that it is not to be trusted alone; and therefore we find there
is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of joining another principle with
it, to aid, if not govern, its determinations.

'So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite
importance to you not to be misled in,--namely, in what degree of real
merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful
subject to your king, or a good servant to your God,--call in religion and
morality.--Look, What is written in the law of God?--How readest thou?--
Consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of justice and truth;-
-what say they?

'Let Conscience determine the matter upon these reports;--and then if thy
heart condemns thee not, which is the case the apostle supposes,--the rule
will be infallible;'--(Here Dr. Slop fell asleep)--'thou wilt have
confidence towards God;--that is, have just grounds to believe the judgment
thou hast past upon thyself, is the judgment of God;--and nothing else but
an anticipation of that righteous sentence which will be pronounced upon
thee hereafter by that Being, to whom thou art finally to give an account
of thy actions.

'Blessed is the man, indeed, then, as the author of the book of
Ecclesiasticus expresses it, who is not pricked with the multitude of his
sins:  Blessed is the man whose heart hath not condemned him; whether he be
rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart (a heart thus guided
and informed) he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his
mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower
on high.'--(A tower has no strength, quoth my uncle Toby, unless 'tis
flank'd.)--'in the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a
thousand casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better security for
his behaviour than all the causes and restrictions put together, which law-
makers are forced to multiply:--Forced, I say, as things stand; human laws
not being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to
fence against the mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law
unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions made,--that in all
such corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks of
conscience will not make us upright,--to supply their force, and, by the
terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us to it.'

(I see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been composed to be
preached at the Temple,--or at some Assize.--I like the reasoning,--and am
sorry that Dr. Slop has fallen asleep before the time of his conviction:--
for it is now clear, that the Parson, as I thought at first, never insulted
St. Paul in the least;--nor has there been, brother, the least difference
between them.--A great matter, if they had differed, replied my uncle
Toby,--the best friends in the world may differ sometimes.--True,--brother
Toby quoth my father, shaking hands with him,--we'll fill our pipes,
brother, and then Trim shall go on.

Well,--what dost thou think of it? said my father, speaking to Corporal
Trim, as he reached his tobacco-box.

I think, answered the Corporal, that the seven watch-men upon the tower,
who, I suppose, are all centinels there,--are more, an' please your Honour,
than were necessary;--and, to go on at that rate, would harrass a regiment
all to pieces, which a commanding officer, who loves his men, will never
do, if he can help it, because two centinels, added the Corporal, are as
good as twenty.--I have been a commanding officer myself in the Corps de
Garde a hundred times, continued Trim, rising an inch higher in his figure,
as he spoke,--and all the time I had the honour to serve his Majesty King
William, in relieving the most considerable posts, I never left more than
two in my life.--Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,--but you do not
consider, Trim, that the towers, in Solomon's days, were not such things as
our bastions, flanked and defended by other works;--this, Trim, was an
invention since Solomon's death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins
before the curtin, in his time;--or such a fosse as we make with a cuvette
in the middle of it, and with covered ways and counterscarps pallisadoed
along it, to guard against a Coup de main:--So that the seven men upon the
tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set there, not
only to look out, but to defend it.--They could be no more, an' please your
Honour, than a Corporal's Guard.--My father smiled inwardly, but not
outwardly--the subject being rather too serious, considering what had
happened, to make a jest of.--So putting his pipe into his mouth, which he
had just lighted,--he contented himself with ordering Trim to read on.  He
read on as follows:

'To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with
each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and
wrong:--The first of these will comprehend the duties of religion;--the
second, those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together,
that you cannot divide these two tables, even in imagination, (tho' the
attempt is often made in practice) without breaking and mutually destroying
them both.

I said the attempt is often made; and so it is;--there being nothing more
common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion, and indeed
has so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as the
bitterest affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral
character,--or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to
the uttermost mite.

'When there is some appearance that it is so,--tho' one is unwilling even
to suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, yet were
we to look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we
should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive.

'Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be
found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his
pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us
but small dependence upon his actions in matters of great distress.

'I will illustrate this by an example.

'I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call in,'--
(There is no need, cried Dr. Slop, (waking) to call in any physician in
this case)--'to be neither of them men of much religion:  I hear them make
a jest of it every day, and treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, as
to put the matter past doubt.  Well;--notwithstanding this, I put my
fortune into the hands of the one:--and what is dearer still to me, I trust
my life to the honest skill of the other.

'Now let me examine what is my reason for this great confidence.  Why, in
the first place, I believe there is no probability that either of them will
employ the power I put into their hands to my disadvantage;--I consider
that honesty serves the purposes of this life:--I know their success in the
world depends upon the fairness of their characters.--In a word, I'm
persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting themselves more.

'But put it otherwise, namely, that interest lay, for once, on the other
side; that a case should happen, wherein the one, without stain to his
reputation, could secrete my fortune, and leave me naked in the world;--or
that the other could send me out of it, and enjoy an estate by my death,
without dishonour to himself or his art:--In this case, what hold have I of
either of them?--Religion, the strongest of all motives, is out of the
question;--Interest, the next most powerful motive in the world, is
strongly against me:--What have I left to cast into the opposite scale to
balance this temptation?--Alas! I have nothing,--nothing but what is
lighter than a bubble--I must lie at the mercy of Honour, or some such
capricious principle--Strait security for two of the most valuable
blessings!--my property and myself.

'As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality without religion;--
so, on the other hand, there is nothing better to be expected from religion
without morality; nevertheless, 'tis no prodigy to see a man whose real
moral character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion of
himself in the light of a religious man.

'He shall not only be covetous, revengeful, implacable,--but even wanting
in points of common honesty; yet inasmuch as he talks aloud against the
infidelity of the age,--is zealous for some points of religion,--goes twice
a day to church,--attends the sacraments,--and amuses himself with a few
instrumental parts of religion,--shall cheat his conscience into a
judgment, that, for this, he is a religious man, and has discharged truly
his duty to God: And you will find that such a man, through force of this
delusion, generally looks down with spiritual pride upon every other man
who has less affectation of piety,--though, perhaps, ten times more real
honesty than himself.

'This likewise is a sore evil under the sun; and I believe, there is no one
mistaken principle, which, for its time, has wrought more serious
mischiefs.--For a general proof of this,--examine the history of the Romish
church;'--(Well what can you make of that? cried Dr. Slop)--'see what
scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed,'--(They may thank their own
obstinacy, cried Dr. Slop)--have all been sanctified by a religion not
strictly governed by morality.

'In how many kingdoms of the world'--(Here Trim kept waving his right-hand
from the sermon to the extent of his arm, returning it backwards and
forwards to the conclusion of the paragraph.)

'In how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading sword of this
misguided saint-errant, spared neither age or merit, or sex, or condition?-
-and, as he fought under the banners of a religion which set him loose from
justice and humanity, he shewed none; mercilessly trampled upon both,--
heard neither the cries of the unfortunate, nor pitied their distresses.'

(I have been in many a battle, an' please your Honour, quoth Trim, sighing,
but never in so melancholy a one as this,--I would not have drawn a tricker
in it against these poor souls,--to have been made a general officer.--Why?
what do you understand of the affair? said Dr. Slop, looking towards Trim,
with something more of contempt than the Corporal's honest heart deserved.-
-What do you know, friend, about this battle you talk of?--I know, replied
Trim, that I never refused quarter in my life to any man who cried out for
it;--but to a woman or a child, continued Trim, before I would level my
musket at them, I would loose my life a thousand times.--Here's a crown for
thee, Trim, to drink with Obadiah to-night, quoth my uncle Toby, and I'll
give Obadiah another too.--God bless your Honour, replied Trim,--I had
rather these poor women and children had it.--thou art an honest fellow,
quoth my uncle Toby.--My father nodded his head, as much as to say--and so
he is.--

But prithee, Trim, said my father, make an end,--for I see thou hast but a
leaf or two left.

Corporal Trim read on.)

'If the testimony of past centuries in this matter is not sufficient,--
consider at this instant, how the votaries of that religion are every day
thinking to do service and honour to God, by actions which are a dishonour
and scandal to themselves.

'To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of the
Inquisition.'--(God help my poor brother Tom.)--'Behold Religion, with
Mercy and Justice chained down under her feet,--there sitting ghastly upon
a black tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments of torment.  Hark!-
-hark! what a piteous groan!'--(Here Trims's face turned as pale as
ashes.)--'see the melancholy wretch who uttered it'--(Here the tears began
to trickle down)--'just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock
trial, and endure the utmost pains that a studied system of cruelty has
been able to invent.'--(D..n them all, quoth Trim, his colour returning
into his face as red as blood.)--'Behold this helpless victim delivered up
to his tormentors,--his body so wasted with sorrow and confinement.'--(Oh!
'tis my brother, cried poor Trim in a most passionate exclamation, dropping
the sermon upon the ground, and clapping his hands together--I fear 'tis
poor Tom.  My father's and my uncle Toby's heart yearned with sympathy for
the poor fellow's distress; even Slop himself acknowledged pity for him.--
Why, Trim, said my father, this is not a history,--'tis a sermon thou art
reading; prithee begin the sentence again.)--'Behold this helpless victim
delivered up to his tormentors,--his body so wasted with sorrow and
confinement, you will see every nerve and muscle as it suffers.

'Observe the last movement of that horrid engine!'--(I would rather face a
cannon, quoth Trim, stamping.)--'See what convulsions it has thrown him
into!--Consider the nature of the posture in which he how lies stretched,--
what exquisite tortures he endures by it!'--(I hope 'tis not in Portugal.)-
-''Tis all nature can bear!  Good God! see how it keeps his weary soul
hanging upon his trembling lips!'  (I would not read another line of it,
quoth Trim for all this world;--I fear, an' please your Honours, all this
is in Portugal, where my poor brother Tom is.  I tell thee, Trim, again,
quoth my father, 'tis not an historical account,--'tis a description.--'Tis
only a description, honest man, quoth Slop, there's not a word of truth in
it.--That's another story, replied my father.--However, as Trim reads it
with so much concern,--'tis cruelty to force him to go on with it.--Give me
hold of the sermon, Trim,--I'll finish it for thee, and thou may'st go.  I
must stay and hear it too, replied Trim, if your Honour will allow me;--
tho' I would not read it myself for a Colonel's pay.--Poor Trim! quoth my
uncle Toby.  My father went on.)

'--Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched,--what
exquisite torture he endures by it!--'Tis all nature can bear!  Good God! 
See how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips,--willing
to take its leave,--but not suffered to depart!--Behold the unhappy wretch
led back to his cell!'--(Then, thank God, however, quoth Trim, they have
not killed him.)--'See him dragged out of it again to meet the flames, and
the insults in his last agonies, which this principle,--this principle,
that there can be religion without mercy, has prepared for him.'--(Then,
thank God,--he is dead, quoth Trim,--he is out of his pain,--and they have
done their worst at him.--O Sirs!--Hold your peace, Trim, said my father,
going on with the sermon, lest Trim should incense Dr. Slop,--we shall
never have done at this rate.)

'The surest way to try the merit of any disputed notion is, to trace down
the consequences such a notion has produced, and compare them with the
spirit of Christianity;--'tis the short and decisive rule which our Saviour
hath left us, for these and such like cases, and it is worth a thousand
arguments--By their fruits ye shall know them.

'I will add no farther to the length of this sermon, than by two or three
short and independent rules deducible from it.

'First, Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that
it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his
Creed.  A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome
neighbours, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other
cause but quietness sake.

'Secondly, When a man, thus represented, tells you in any particular
instance,--That such a thing goes against his conscience,--always believe
he means exactly the same thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes
against his stomach;--a present want of appetite being generally the true
cause of both.

'In a word,--trust that man in nothing, who has not a Conscience in every
thing.

'And, in your own case, remember this plain distinction, a mistake in which
has ruined thousands,--that your conscience is not a law;--No, God and
reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;--
not, like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own
passions,--but like a British judge in this land of liberty and good sense,
who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows
already written.'

Finis.

Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, Trim, quoth my father.--If he had
spared his comments, replied Dr. Slop,--he would have read it much better. 
I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my
heart was so full.--that was the very reason, Trim, replied my father,
which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the
clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop,
would take part in what they deliver as deeply as this poor fellow has
done,--as their compositions are fine;--(I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop)--I
maintain it,--that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to
enflame it, would be a model for the whole world:--But alas! continued my
father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like French politicians in
this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field.--'Twere
a pity, quoth my uncle, that has should be lost.  I like the sermon well,
replied my father,--'tis dramatick,--and there is something in that way of
writing, when skilfully managed, which catches the attention.--We preach
much in that way with us, said Dr. Slop.--I know that very well, said my
father,--but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. Slop, full as much as
his assent, simply, could have pleased him.--But in this, added Dr. Slop, a
little piqued,--our sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never
introduce any character into them below a patriarch or a patriarch's wife,
or a martyr or a saint.--There are some very bad characters in this,
however, said my father, and I do not think the sermon a jot the worse for
'em.--But pray, quoth my uncle Toby,--who's can this be?--How could it get
into my Stevinus?  A man must be as great a conjurer as Stevinus, said my
father, to resolve the second question:--The first, I think, is not so
difficult;--for unless my judgment greatly deceives me,--I know the author,
for 'tis wrote, certainly, by the parson of the parish.

The similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those my father
constantly had heard preached in his parish-church, was the ground of his
conjecture,--proving it as strongly, as an argument a priori could prove
such a thing to a philosophic mind, That it was Yorick's and no one's
else:--It was proved to be so, a posteriori, the day after, when Yorick
sent a servant to my uncle Toby's house to enquire after it.

It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds of knowledge, had
borrowed Stevinus of my uncle Toby, and had carelesly popped his sermon, as
soon as he had made it, into the middle of Stevinus; and by an act of
forgetfulness, to which he was ever subject, he had sent Stevinus home, and
his sermon to keep him company.

Ill-fated sermon!  Thou wast lost, after this recovery of thee, a second
time, dropped thru' an unsuspected fissure in thy master's pocket, down
into a treacherous and a tattered lining,--trod deep into the dirt by the
left hind-foot of his Rosinante inhumanly stepping upon thee as thou
falledst;--buried ten days in the mire,--raised up out of it by a beggar,--
sold for a halfpenny to a parish-clerk,--transferred to his parson,--lost
for ever to thy own, the remainder of his days,--nor restored to his
restless Manes till this very moment, that I tell the world the story.

Can the reader believe, that this sermon of Yorick's was preached at an
assize, in the cathedral of York, before a thousand witnesses, ready to
give oath of it, by a certain prebendary of that church, and actually
printed by him when he had done,--and within so short a space as two years
and three months after Yorick's death?--Yorick indeed, was never better
served in his life;--but it was a little hard to maltreat him after, and
plunder him after he was laid in his grave.

However, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect charity with Yorick,--
and, in conscious justice, printed but a few copies to give away;--and that
I am told he could moreover have made as good a one himself, had he thought
fit,--I declare I would not have published this anecdote to the world;--nor
do I publish it with an intent to hurt his character and advancement in the
church;--I leave that to others;--but I find myself impelled by two
reasons, which I cannot withstand.

The first is, That in doing justice, I may give rest to Yorick's ghost;--
which--as the country-people, and some others believe,--still walks.

The second reason is, That, by laying open this story to the world, I gain
an opportunity of informing it,--That in case the character of parson
Yorick, and this sample of his sermons, is liked,--there are now in the
possession of the Shandy family, as many as will make a handsome volume, at
the world's service,--and much good may they do it.


Chapter 1.XLIII.

Obadiah gained the two crowns without dispute;--for he came in jingling,
with all the instruments in the green baize bag we spoke of, flung across
his body, just as Corporal Trim went out of the room.

It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. Slop, (clearing up his looks) as we
are in a condition to be of some service to Mrs. Shandy, to send up stairs
to know how she goes on.

I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to come down to us upon
the least difficulty;--for you must know, Dr. Slop, continued my father,
with a perplexed kind of a smile upon his countenance, that by express
treaty, solemnly ratified between me and my wife, you are no more than an
auxiliary in this affair,--and not so much as that,--unless the lean old
mother of a midwife above stairs cannot do without you.--Women have their
particular fancies, and in points of this nature, continued my father,
where they bear the whole burden, and suffer so much acute pain for the
advantage of our families, and the good of the species,--they claim a right
of deciding, en Souveraines, in whose hands, and in what fashion, they
choose to undergo it.

They are in the right of it,--quoth my uncle Toby.  But Sir, replied Dr.
Slop, not taking notice of my uncle Toby's opinion, but turning to my
father,--they had better govern in other points;--and a father of a family,
who wishes its perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange this
prerogative with them, and give up some other rights in lieu of it.--I know
not, quoth my father, answering a letter too testily, to be quite
dispassionate in what he said,--I know not, quoth he, what we have left to
give up, in lieu of who shall bring our children into the world, unless
that,--of who shall beget them.--One would almost give up any thing,
replied Dr. Slop.--I beg your pardon,--answered my uncle Toby.--Sir,
replied Dr. Slop, it would astonish you to know what improvements we have
made of late years in all branches of obstetrical knowledge, but
particularly in that one single point of the safe and expeditious
extraction of the foetus,--which has received such lights, that, for my
part (holding up his hand) I declare I wonder how the world has--I wish,
quoth my uncle Toby, you had seen what prodigious armies we had in
Flanders.


Chapter 1.XLIV.

I have dropped the curtain over this scene for a minute,--to remind you of
one thing,--and to inform you of another.

What I have to inform you, comes, I own, a little out of its due course;--
for it should have been told a hundred and fifty pages ago, but that I
foresaw then 'twould come in pat hereafter, and be of more advantage here
than elsewhere.--Writers had need look before them, to keep up the spirit
and connection of what they have in hand.

When these two things are done,--the curtain shall be drawn up again, and
my uncle Toby, my father, and Dr. Slop, shall go on with their discourse,
without any more interruption.

First, then, the matter which I have to remind you of, is this;--that from
the specimens of singularity in my father's notions in the point of
Christian-names, and that other previous point thereto,--you was led, I
think, into an opinion,--(and I am sure I said as much) that my father was
a gentleman altogether as odd and whimsical in fifty other opinions.  In
truth, there was not a stage in the life of man, from the very first act of
his begetting,--down to the lean and slippered pantaloon in his second
childishness, but he had some favourite notion to himself, springing out of
it, as sceptical, and as far out of the high-way of thinking, as these two
which have been explained.

--Mr. Shandy, my father, Sir, would see nothing in the light in which
others placed it;--he placed things in his own light;--he would weigh
nothing in common scales;--no, he was too refined a researcher to lie open
to so gross an imposition.--To come at the exact weight of things in the
scientific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, should be almost
invisible, to avoid all friction from popular tenets;--without this the
minutiae of philosophy, which would always turn the balance, will have no
weight at all.  Knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in
infinitum;--that the grains and scruples were as much a part of it, as the
gravitation of the whole world.--In a word, he would say, error was error,-
-no matter where it fell,--whether in a fraction,--or a pound,--'twas alike
fatal to truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as
inevitably by a mistake in the dust of a butterfly's wing,--as in the disk
of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put together.

He would often lament that it was for want of considering this properly,
and of applying it skilfully to civil matters, as well as to speculative
truths, that so many things in this world were out of joint;--that the
political arch was giving way;--and that the very foundations of our
excellent constitution in church and state, were so sapped as estimators
had reported.

You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone people.  Why? he would
ask, making use of the sorites or syllogism of Zeno and Chrysippus, without
knowing it belonged to them.--Why? why are we a ruined people?--Because we
are corrupted.--Whence is it, dear Sir, that we are corrupted?--Because we
are needy;--our poverty, and not our wills, consent.--And wherefore, he
would add, are we needy?--From the neglect, he would answer, of our pence
and our halfpence:--Our bank notes, Sir, our guineas,--nay our shillings
take care of themselves.

'Tis the same, he would say, throughout the whole circle of the sciences;--
the great, the established points of them, are not to be broke in upon.--
The laws of nature will defend themselves;--but error--(he would add,
looking earnestly at my mother)--error, Sir, creeps in thro' the minute
holes and small crevices which human nature leaves unguarded.

This turn of thinking in my father, is what I had to remind you of:--The
point you are to be informed of, and which I have reserved for this place,
is as follows.

Amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which my father had urged my
mother to accept of Dr. Slop's assistance preferably to that of the old
woman,--there was one of a very singular nature; which, when he had done
arguing the matter with her as a Christian, and came to argue it over again
with her as a philosopher, he had put his whole strength to, depending
indeed upon it as his sheet-anchor.--It failed him, tho' from no defect in
the argument itself; but that, do what he could, he was not able for his
soul to make her comprehend the drift of it.--Cursed luck!--said he to
himself, one afternoon, as he walked out of the room, after he had been
stating it for an hour and a half to her, to no manner of purpose;--cursed
luck! said he, biting his lip as he shut the door,--for a man to be master
of one of the finest chains of reasoning in nature,--and have a wife at the
same time with such a head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference
within side of it, to save his soul from destruction.

This argument, though it was entirely lost upon my mother,--had more weight
with him, than all his other arguments joined together:--I will therefore
endeavour to do it justice,--and set it forth with all the perspicuity I am
master of.

My father set out upon the strength of these two following axioms:

First, That an ounce of a man's own wit, was worth a ton of other people's;
and,

Secondly, (Which by the bye, was the ground-work of the first axiom,--tho'
it comes last) That every man's wit must come from every man's own soul,--
and no other body's.

Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by nature equal,--
and that the great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse
understanding--was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking
substance above or below another,--but arose merely from the lucky or
unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the soul principally
took up her residence,--he had made it the subject of his enquiry to find
out the identical place.

Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he was
satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes had fixed it, upon the top of
the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion
for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as so many
nerves did terminate all in that one place,--'twas no bad conjecture;--and
my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the
centre of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued him
out of it, by a story he told him of a Walloon officer at the battle of
Landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,--and
another part of it taken out after by a French surgeon; and after all,
recovered, and did his duty very well without it.

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the
separation of the soul from the body;--and if it is true that people can
walk about and do their business without brains,--then certes the soul does
not inhabit there.  Q.E.D.

As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant juice which
Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze physician affirms, in a letter to
Bartholine, to have discovered in the cellulae of the occipital parts of
the cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the principal seat of
the reasonable soul, (for, you must know, in these latter and more
enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man living,--the one,
according to the great Metheglingius, being called the Animus, the other,
the Anima;)--as for the opinion, I say of Borri,--my father could never
subscribe to it by any means; the very idea of so noble, so refined, so
immaterial, and so exalted a being as the Anima, or even the Animus, taking
up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole all day long, both
summer and winter, in a puddle,--or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or
thin soever, he would say, shocked his imagination; he would scarce give
the doctrine a hearing.

What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of any, was that the
chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place all
intelligences were referred, and from whence all her mandates were issued,-
-was in, or near, the cerebellum,--or rather somewhere about the medulla
oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by Dutch anatomists, that all
the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven senses concentered, like
streets and winding alleys, into a square.

So far there was nothing singular in my father's opinion,--he had the best
of philosophers, of all ages and climates, to go along with him.--But here
he took a road of his own, setting up another Shandean hypothesis upon
these corner-stones they had laid for him;--and which said hypothesis
equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and fineness of the soul
depended upon the temperature and clearness of the said liquor, or of the
finer net-work and texture in the cerebellum itself; which opinion he
favoured.

He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of
propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the
world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture, in
which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name
of good natural parts, do consist;--that next to this and his Christian-
name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;--that
the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Causa sina qua non, and
without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,--was the
preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was
generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head
was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the
world by that foremost.

--This requires explanation.

My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into
Lithopaedus Senonesis de Portu difficili, (The author is here twice
mistaken; for Lithopaedus should be wrote thus, Lithopaedii Senonensis
Icon.  The second mistake is, that this Lithopaedus is not an author, but a
drawing of a petrified child.  The account of this, published by Athosius
1580, may be seen at the end of Cordaeus's works in Spachius.  Mr. Tristram
Shandy has been led into this error, either from seeing Lithopaedus's name
of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr. . ., or by mistaking
Lithopaedus for Trinecavellius,--from the too great similitude of the
names.) published by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, that the lax and
pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the bones of the cranium
having no sutures at that time, was such,--that by force of the woman's
efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the
weight of 470 pounds avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;--it so
happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and
moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a
pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.--Good God! cried
my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely
fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!--Or if there is such a juice as
Borri pretends--is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the world
both seculent and mothery?

But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that this
force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain
itself, or cerebrum,--but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the
cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the
understanding!--Angels and ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--
can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so
rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no
better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion
within-side.

But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child
was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was
extracted by the feet;--that instead of the cerebrum being propelled
towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled
simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of hurt:--By
heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit
God has given us,--and the professors of the obstetric art are listed into
the same conspiracy.--What is it to me which end of my son comes foremost
into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes
uncrushed?

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that
it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the
first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every
thing you see, hear, read, or understand.  This is of great use.

When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a
phaenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by
it;--it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the
family.--Poor devil, he would say,--he made way for the capacity of his
younger brothers.--It unriddled the observations of drivellers and
monstrous heads,--shewing a priori, it could not be otherwise,--unless . .
. I don't know what.  It wonderfully explained and accounted for the acumen
of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating
intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place
solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sunshine, &c.--which for
aught he knew, might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul
into nothing, by one extreme,--as they are condensed in colder climates by
the other;--but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;--shewed that,
in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of
the creation;--their pleasures more;--the necessity of their pains less,
insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight,
that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;--nay, he did
not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-
work was broke or displaced,--so that the soul might just act as she liked.

When my father had got so far,--what a blaze of light did the accounts of
the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into
the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis?  Here you see, he would say,
there was no injury done to the sensorium;--no pressure of the head against
the pelvis;--no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either
by the os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on that;--and pray, what were
the happy consequences?  Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the
operation a name;--and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before
ever the operation had a name;--your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius
Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,--who, had he lived, would have done the
same honour to the hypothesis:--These, and many more who figured high in
the annals of fame,--all came side-way, Sir, into the world.

The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks together in my
father's head;--he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in the
epigastrium, and those in the matrix, were not mortal;--so that the belly
of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the
child.--He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my mother,--merely as a
matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very mention of
it, as much as the operation flattered his hopes,--he thought it as well to
say no more of it,--contenting himself with admiring,--what he thought was
to no purpose to propose.

This was my father Mr. Shandy's hypothesis; concerning which I have only to
add, that my brother Bobby did as great honour to it (whatever he did to
the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke of:  For happening not
only to be christened, as I told you, but to be born too, when my father
was at Epsom,--being moreover my mother's first child,--coming into the
world with his head foremost,--and turning out afterwards a lad of
wonderful slow parts,--my father spelt all these together into his opinion: 
and as he had failed at one end,--he was determined to try the other.

This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not easily
to be put out of their way,--and was therefore one of my father's great
reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could better deal with.

Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for my father's purpose;-
-for though this new-invented forceps was the armour he had proved, and
what he maintained to be the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it
seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very
thing which ran in my father's fancy;--tho' not with a view to the soul's
good in extracting by the feet, as was my father's system,--but for reasons
merely obstetrical.

This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the
ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle Toby.--In what
manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up against
two such allies in science,--is hard to conceive.--You may conjecture upon
it, if you please,--and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may
encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it
could come to pass, that my uncle Toby got his modesty by the wound he
received upon his groin.--You may raise a system to account for the loss of
my nose by marriage-articles,--and shew the world how it could happen, that
I should have the misfortune to be called Tristram, in opposition to my
father's hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, Godfathers and
Godmothers not excepted.--These, with fifty other points left yet
unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;--but I tell you
beforehand it will be in vain, for not the sage Alquise, the magician in
Don Belianis of Greece, nor the no less famous Urganda, the sorceress his
wife, (were they alive) could pretend to come within a league of the truth.

The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of these matters
till the next year,--when a series of things will be laid open which he
little expects.


Chapter 1.XLV.

--'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth my uncle Toby, (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop
a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner
of wishing, than he had wished at first (Vide.))--'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth
my uncle Toby, 'you had seen what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.'

My uncle Toby's wish did Dr. Slop a disservice which his heart never
intended any man,--Sir, it confounded him--and thereby putting his ideas
first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them again for
the soul of him.

In all disputes,--male or female,--whether for honour, for profit, or for
love,--it makes no difference in the case;--nothing is more dangerous,
Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: 
the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the
party wish'd at, instantly to get upon his legs--and wish the wisher
something in return, of pretty near the same value,--so balancing the
account upon the spot, you stand as you were--nay sometimes gain the
advantage of the attack by it.

This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.--

Dr. Slop did not understand the nature of this defence;--he was puzzled
with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four minutes and a
half;--five had been fatal to it:--my father saw the danger--the dispute
was one of the most interesting disputes in the world, 'Whether the child
of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a head or with one:'--
he waited to the last moment, to allow Dr. Slop, in whose behalf the wish
was made, his right of returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was
confounded, and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which
puzzled souls generally stare with--first in my uncle Toby's face--then in
his--then up--then down--then east--east and by east, and so on,--coasting
it along by the plinth of the wainscot till he had got to the opposite
point of the compass,--and that he had actually begun to count the brass
nails upon the arm of his chair,--my father thought there was no time to be
lost with my uncle Toby, so took up the discourse as follows.


Chapter 1.XLVI.

'--What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'--

Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his
right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped India handkerchief from
his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as he argued the point
with my uncle Toby.--

--Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you my
reasons for it.

Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, 'Whether my
father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his
left,'--have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the
monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.--But need I tell
you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is
begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape!--and by
tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what
it is--great--little--good--bad--indifferent or not indifferent, just as
the case happens?

As my father's India handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should
by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged:  on the
contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to
have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural
exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his
handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, but to
have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken it out;--which
he might have done without any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in
any one tendon or muscle of his whole body.

In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool
of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand--or by making some
nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)--his whole
attitude had been easy--natural--unforced:  Reynolds himself, as great and
gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.

Now as my father managed this matter,--consider what a devil of a figure my
father made of himself.

In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, and in the beginning of the reign
of King George the first--'Coat pockets were cut very low down in the
skirt.'--I need say no more--the father of mischief, had he been hammering
at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my
father's situation.


Chapter 1.XLVII.

It was not an easy matter in any king's reign (unless you were as lean a
subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your
whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.--In the
year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was
extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby discovered the transverse
zig-zaggery of my father's approaches towards it, it instantly brought into
his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicolas;--the
idea of which drew off his attention so intirely from the subject in
debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up Trim to go
and fetch his map of Namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to
measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,--but
particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin.

My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body
seemed to rush up into his face--my uncle Toby dismounted immediately.

--I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o'horseback.--


Chapter 1.XLVIII.

A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it,
are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one,--you
rumple the other.  There is one certain exception however in this case, and
that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin
made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet, or thin
persian.

Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes, Antipater,
Panaetius, and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;--Cato and Varro and Seneca
amongst the Romans;--Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne
amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking
Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,--all
pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,--you might have
rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the
outside of them all to pieces;--in short, you might have played the very
devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them would
have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.

I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:--
for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it has been
these last nine months together,--and yet I declare, the lining to it,--as
far as I am a judge of the matter,--is not a three-penny piece the worse;--
pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore
stroke, side way and long-way, have they been trimming it for me:--had
there been the least gumminess in my lining,--by heaven! it had all of it
long ago been frayed and fretted to a thread.

--You Messrs. the Monthly Reviewers!--how could you cut and slash my jerkin
as you did?--how did you know but you would cut my lining too?

Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will injure
none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,--so God bless you;--only
next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at
me, as some of you did last May (in which I remember the weather was very
hot)--don't be exasperated, if I pass it by again with good temper,--being
determined as long as I live or write) which in my case means the same
thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than
my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all dinner-time,--
'Go,--go, poor devil,' quoth he,--'get thee gone,--why should I hurt thee! 
This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.'


Chapter 1.XLIX.

Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion
of blood in my father's countenance,--by means of which (as all the blood
in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) he must have
reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a
half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:--any man, Madam, but
my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of
my father's brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the
whole affair,--would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that
for granted,--had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from
two such instruments being put in exact tune,--he would instantly have
skrew'd up his, to the same pitch;--and then the devil and all had broke
loose--the whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of
Avison Scarlatti--con furia,--like mad.--Grant me patience!--What has con
furia,--con strepito,--or any other hurly burly whatever to do with
harmony?

Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart
interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion would
admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed him too.  My
uncle Toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;--so
sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and
looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good-will--my
father, at length, went on as follows.


Chapter 1.L.

'What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'

--Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as honest a man,
and with as good and as upright a heart as ever God created;--nor is it thy
fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought
to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into the world:--but believe
me, dear Toby, the accidents which unavoidably way-lay them, not only in
the article of our begetting 'em--though these, in my opinion, are well
worth considering,--but the dangers and difficulties our children are beset
with, after they are got forth into the world, are enow--little need is
there to expose them to unnecessary ones in their passage to it.--Are these
dangers, quoth my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon my father's knee, and
looking up seriously in his face for an answer,--are these dangers greater
now o'days, brother, than in times past?  Brother Toby, answered my father,
if a child was but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the
mother did well after it,--our forefathers never looked farther.--My uncle
Toby instantly withdrew his hand from off my father's knee, reclined his
body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see the
cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory muscles along his
cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty--he
whistled Lillabullero.


Chapter 1.LI.

Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero to my father,--Dr. Slop was
stamping, and cursing and damning at Obadiah at a most dreadful rate,--it
would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile
sin of swearing, to have heard him, I am determined therefore to relate the
whole affair to you.

When Dr. Slop's maid delivered the green baize bag with her master's
instruments in it, to Obadiah, she very sensibly exhorted him to put his
head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across his
body:  so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without
any more ado, she helped him on with it.  However, as this, in some
measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any thing should bolt out in
galloping back, at the speed Obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it
off again:  and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had
taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag
first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which Obadiah, to make all
safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body.

This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended; but was no remedy
against some evils which neither he or she foresaw.  The instruments, it
seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it,
towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah could
not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the tire
tete, forceps, and squirt, as would have been enough, had Hymen been taking
a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when
Obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his
coach-horse into a full gallop--by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.

As Obadiah had a wife and three children--the turpitude of fornication, and
the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once
entered his brain,--he had however his objection, which came home to
himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest
patriots.--'The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear himself whistle.'


Chapter 1.LII.

As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music he
carried with him,--he very considerately set his imagination to work, to
contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition
of enjoying it.

In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, nothing is
so apt to enter a man's head as his hat-band:--the philosophy of this is so
near the surface--I scorn to enter into it.

As Obadiah's was a mixed case--mark, Sirs,--I say, a mixed case; for it was
obstetrical,--scrip-tical, squirtical, papistical--and as far as the coach-
horse was concerned in it,--caballistical--and only partly musical;--
Obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which
offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard
together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting
the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down
to the middle of it,--he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from
one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity
of round-abouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every
intersection or point where the strings met,--that Dr. Slop must have had
three fifths of Job's patience at least to have unloosed them.--I think in
my conscience, that had Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in
humour for such a contest--and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started
together--there is no man living which had seen the bag with all that
Obadiah had done to it,--and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can
make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining
in his mind--which of the two would have carried off the prize.  My mother,
Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly--at least by
twenty knots.--Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art,
and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but
it had,--thy affairs had not been so depress'd--(at least by the depression
of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the
occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the
course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so
irrecoverably abandoned--as thou hast been forced to leave them;--but 'tis
over,--all but the account of 'em, which cannot be given to the curious
till I am got out into the world.


End of the first volume. 

Volume the Second

Multitudinis imperitae non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant
opusculis--in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in seriis
vicissim ad jocos transire.

Joan. Saresberiensis,
Episcopus Lugdun.


Chapter 2.I.

Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which
he had not done till the dispute with my uncle Toby about mid-wifery put
him in mind of it)--the very same thought occurred.--'Tis God's mercy,
quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy has had so bad a time of it,--else
she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of
these knots could have got untied.--But here you must distinguish--the
thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as
a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every
day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's
understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some
little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side.

A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother's bed, did the
proposition the very service I am speaking of.  By all that's unfortunate,
quoth Dr. Slop, unless I make haste, the thing will actually befall me as
it is.


Chapter 2.II.

In the case of knots,--by which, in the first place, I would not be
understood to mean slip-knots--because in the course of my life and
opinions--my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I
mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy,--a little
man,--but of high fancy:--he rushed into the duke of Monmouth's affair:--
nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots
called bow-knots;--there is so little address, or skill, or patience
required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion
at all about them.--But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your
reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard
knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his;--in which there is no quibbling
provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings
thro' the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them--to get
them slipp'd and undone by.--I hope you apprehend me.

In the case of these knots then, and of the several obstructions, which,
may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting
through life--every hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and cut through
them.--'Tis wrong.  Believe me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which both
reason and conscience dictate--is to take our teeth or our fingers to
them.--Dr. Slop had lost his teeth--his favourite instrument, by extracting
in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortunately
slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, knock'd out three of the best
of them with the handle of it:--he tried his fingers--alas; the nails of
his fingers and thumbs were cut close.--The duce take it!  I can make
nothing of it either way, cried Dr. Slop.--The trampling over head near my
mother's bed-side increased.--Pox take the fellow!  I shall never get the
knots untied as long as I live.--My mother gave a groan.--Lend me your
penknife--I must e'en cut the knots at last--pugh!--psha!--Lord!  I have
cut my thumb quite across to the very bone--curse the fellow--if there was
not another man-midwife within fifty miles--I am undone for this bout--I
wish the scoundrel hang'd--I wish he was shot--I wish all the devils in
hell had him for a blockhead!--

My father had a great respect for Obadiah, and could not bear to hear him
disposed of in such a manner--he had moreover some little respect for
himself--and could as ill bear with the indignity offered to himself in it.

Had Dr. Slop cut any part about him, but his thumb--my father had pass'd it
by--his prudence had triumphed:  as it was, he was determined to have his
revenge.

Small curses, Dr. Slop, upon great occasions, quoth my father (condoling
with him first upon the accident) are but so much waste of our strength and
soul's health to no manner of purpose.--I own it, replied Dr. Slop.--They
are like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle Toby (suspending his whistling) fired
against a bastion.--They serve, continued my father, to stir the humours--
but carry off none of their acrimony:--for my own part, I seldom swear or
curse at all--I hold it bad--but if I fall into it by surprize, I generally
retain so much presence of mind (right, quoth my uncle Toby) as to make it
answer my purpose--that is, I swear on till I find myself easy.  A wife and
a just man however would always endeavour to proportion the vent given to
these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within himself--but
to the size and ill intent of the offence upon which they are to fall.--
'Injuries come only from the heart,'--quoth my uncle Toby.  For this
reason, continued my father, with the most Cervantick gravity, I have the
greatest veneration in the world for that gentleman, who, in distrust of
his own discretion in this point, sat down and composed (that is at his
leisure) fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to
the highest provocation which could possibly happen to him--which forms
being well considered by him, and such moreover as he could stand to, he
kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece, within his reach, ready for
use.--I never apprehended, replied Dr. Slop, that such a thing was ever
thought of--much less executed.  I beg your pardon, answered my father; I
was reading, though not using, one of them to my brother Toby this morning,
whilst he pour'd out the tea--'tis here upon the shelf over my head;--but
if I remember right, 'tis too violent for a cut of the thumb.--Not at all,
quoth Dr. Slop--the devil take the fellow.--Then, answered my father, 'Tis
much at your service, Dr. Slop--on condition you will read it aloud;--so
rising up and reaching down a form of excommunication of the church of
Rome, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his collections) had
procured out of the leger-book of the church of Rochester, writ by
Ernulphus the bishop--with a most affected seriousness of look and voice,
which might have cajoled Ernulphus himself--he put it into Dr. Slop's
hands.--Dr. Slop wrapt his thumb up in the corner of his handkerchief, and
with a wry face, though without any suspicion, read aloud, as follows--my
uncle Toby whistling Lillabullero as loud as he could all the time.

(As the geniuneness of the consultation of the Sorbonne upon the question
of baptism, was doubted by some, and denied by others--'twas thought proper
to print the original of this excommunication; for the copy of which Mr.
Shandy returns thanks to the chapter clerk of the dean and chapter of
Rochester.)


Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum.

Cap.  2.III.

Excommunicatio.

Ex auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et
sanctorum canonum, sanctaeque et entemeratae Virginis Dei genetricis
Mariae,--

--Atque omnium coelestium virtutum, angelorum, archangelorum, thronorum,
dominationum, potestatuum, cherubin ac seraphin, & sanctorum patriarchum,
prophetarum, & omnium apolstolorum & evangelistarum, & sanctorum
innocentum, qui in conspectu Agni soli digni inventi sunt canticum cantare
novum, et sanctorum martyrum et sanctorum confessorum, et sanctarum
virginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum Dei,--Excommunicamus,
et 
vel os s vel os
anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc
s
malefactorem, N.N. et a liminibus sanctae Dei ecclesiae sequestramus, et
aeternis
vel i n 
suppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum Dathan et Abiram, et cum his qui
dixerunt Domino Deo, Recede a nobis, scientiam viarum tuarum nolumus:  et
ficut aqua ignis extinguatur lu-
vel eorum
cerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resque-
n n  
rit, et ad satisfactionem venerit.  Amen.
os
Maledicat illum Deus Pater qui homi-
os
nem creavit.  Maledicat illum Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est. 
Maledicat
os
illum Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo ef-
os
fusus est.  Maledicat illum sancta crux, quam Christus pro nostra salute
hostem triumphans ascendit.
os
Maledicat illum sancta Dei genetrix et
os
perpetua Virgo Maria.  Maledicat illum sanctus Michael, animarum susceptor
sa-
os
crarum.  Maledicant illum omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et
potestates, omnisque militia coelestis.
os
Maledicat illum patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis numerus.  Maledicat
os
illum sanctus Johannes Praecursor et Baptista Christi, et sanctus Petrus,
et sanctus Paulus, atque sanctus Andreas, omnesque Christi apostoli, simul
et caeteri discipuli, quatuor quoque evangelistae, qui sua praedicatione
mundum universum converte-
os
runt.  Maledicat illum cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui Deo
bonis operibus placitus inventus est.
os
Maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, quae mundi vana causa honoris
Christi respuenda contempserunt.  Male-
os
dicant illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo
dilecti inveniuntur.
os
Maledicant illum coeli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis manentia.
i n  n
Maledictus sit ubicunque, fuerit, sive in domo, sive in agro, sive in via,
sive in semita, sive in silva, sive in aqua, sive in ecclesia.
i  n 
Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,---
manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo,
vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, quiescendo,
mingendo, cacando, flebotomando.
i  n
Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis.
i  n
Maledictus sit intus et exterius.
i  n  i
Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus
n   i  n
sit in cerebro.  Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in fronte, in
auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in naribus, in
dentibus, mordacibus, in labris sive molibus, in labiis, in guttere, in
humeris, in harnis, in brachiis, in manubus, in digitis, in pectore, in
corde, et in omnibus interioribus stomacho tenus, in renibus, in
inguinibus, in femore, in genitalibus, in coxis, in genubus, in cruribus,
in pedibus, et in unguibus.

Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque ad
plantam pedis--non sit in eo sanitas.

Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suae majestatis imperio--
--et insurgat adversus illum coelum cum omnibus virtutibus quae in eo
moventur ad damnandum eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit. 
Amen.  Fiat, fiat.  Amen.


Chapter 2.IV.

'By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of
the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of
our Saviour.'  I think there is no necessity, quoth Dr. Slop, dropping the
paper down to his knee, and addressing himself to my father--as you have
read it over, Sir, so lately, to read it aloud--and as Captain Shandy seems
to have no great inclination to hear it--I may as well read it to myself. 
That's contrary to treaty, replied my father:--besides, there is something
so whimsical, especially in the latter part of it, I should grieve to lose
the pleasure of a second reading.  Dr. Slop did not altogether like it,--
but my uncle Toby offering at that instant to give over whistling, and read
it himself to them;--Dr. Slop thought he might as well read it under the
cover of my uncle Toby's whistling--as suffer my uncle Toby to read it
alone;--so raising up the paper to his face, and holding it quite parallel
to it, in order to hide his chagrin--he read it aloud as follows--my uncle
Toby whistling Lillabullero, though not quite so loud as before.

'By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of
the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour, and of all
the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers,
cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of
all the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the
sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song of the holy
martyrs and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints
together, with the holy and elect of God,--May he' (Obadiah) 'be damn'd'
(for tying these knots)--'We excommunicate, and anathematize him, and from
the thresholds of the holy church of God Almighty we sequester him, that he
may be tormented, disposed, and delivered over with Dathan and Abiram, and
with those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, we desire none of thy
ways.  And as fire is quenched with water, so let the light of him be put
out for evermore, unless it shall repent him' (Obadiah, of the knots which
he has tied) 'and make satisfaction' (for them) 'Amen.

'May the Father who created man, curse him.--May the Son who suffered for
us curse him.--May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse
him' (Obadiah)--'May the holy cross which Christ, for our salvation
triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him.

'May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him.--May St.
Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him.--May all the angels and
archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse
him.'  (Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,--but
nothing to this.--For my own part I could not have a heart to curse my dog
so.)

'May St. John, the Praecursor, and St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter and
St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ's apostles, together curse
him.  And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their
preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful
company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found
pleasing to God Almighty, curse him' (Obadiah.)

'May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ have
despised the things of the world, damn him--May all the saints, who from
the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of
God, damn him--May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining
therein, damn him,' (Obadiah) 'or her,' (or whoever else had a hand in
tying these knots.)

'May he (Obadiah) be damn'd wherever he be--whether in the house or the
stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the
wood, or in the water, or in the church.--May he be cursed in living, in
dying.'  (Here my uncle Toby, taking the advantage of a minim in the second
bar of his tune, kept whistling one continued note to the end of the
sentence.--Dr. Slop, with his division of curses moving under him, like a
running bass all the way.)  'May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in
being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in
walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in
pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting!

'May he' (Obadiah) 'be cursed in all the faculties of his body!

'May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly!--May he be cursed in the hair of
his head!--May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex,' (that is a
sad curse, quoth my father) 'in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears,
in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his
fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in
his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers!

'May he be damn'd in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance,
down to the very stomach!

'May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,' (God in heaven forbid!
quoth my uncle Toby) 'in his thighs, in his genitals,' (my father shook his
head) 'and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-
nails!

'May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, from
the top of his head to the sole of his foot!  May there be no soundness in
him!

'May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty'--(Here
my uncle Toby, throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud Whew--
w--w--something betwixt the interjectional whistle of Hay-day! and the word
itself.--

--By the golden beard of Jupiter--and of Juno (if her majesty wore one) and
by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no
small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods
aerial and aquatick--to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-
gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal
goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they wore them)--all
which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up
together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the Pagan
establishment;--every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of
being stroken and sworn by--by all these beards together then--I vow and
protest, that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I would have
given the better of them, as freely as ever Cid Hamet offered his--to have
stood by, and heard my uncle Toby's accompanyment.

--'curse him!'--continued Dr. Slop,--'and may heaven, with all the powers
which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him' (Obadiah)
'unless he repent and make satisfaction!  Amen.  So be it,--so be it. 
Amen.'

I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil
himself with so much bitterness.--He is the father of curses, replied Dr.
Slop.--So am not I, replied my uncle.--But he is cursed, and damn'd
already, to all eternity, replied Dr. Slop.

I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby.

Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was just beginning to return my uncle Toby
the compliment of his Whu--u--u--or interjectional whistle--when the door
hastily opening in the next chapter but one--put an end to the affair.


Chapter 2.V.

Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the
oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and
because we have the spirit to swear them,--imagine that we have had the wit
to invent them too.

I'll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a
connoisseur:--though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in swearing,-
-as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the whole set of 'em
are so hung round and befetish'd with the bobs and trinkets of criticism,--
or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity--for I have fetch'd it
as far as from the coast of Guiney;--their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of
rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon
all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once,
than stand to be prick'd and tortured to death by 'em.

--And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?--Oh, against all
rule, my lord,--most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the
adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made
a breach thus,--stopping, as if the point wanted settling;--and betwixt the
nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he
suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and three
fifths by a stop watch, my lord, each time.--Admirable grammarian!--But in
suspending his voice--was the sense suspended likewise?  Did no expression
of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm?--Was the eye silent?  Did you
narrowly look?--I look'd only at the stop-watch, my lord.--Excellent
observer!

And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?--Oh!
'tis out of all plumb, my lord,--quite an irregular thing!--not one of the
angles at the four corners was a right angle.--I had my rule and compasses,
&c. my lord, in my pocket.--Excellent critick!

--And for the epick poem your lordship bid me look at--upon taking the
length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an
exact scale of Bossu's--'tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions.-
-Admirable connoisseur!

--And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in your way
back?--'Tis a melancholy daub! my lord; not one principle of the pyramid in
any one group!--and what a price!--for there is nothing of the colouring of
Titian--the expression of Rubens--the grace of Raphael--the purity of
Dominichino--the corregiescity of Corregio--the learning of Poussin--the
airs of Guido--the taste of the Carrachis--or the grand contour of Angelo.-
-Grant me patience, just Heaven!--Of all the cants which are canted in this
canting world--though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst--the cant of
criticism is the most tormenting!

I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to
kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of
his imagination into his author's hands--be pleased he knows not why, and
cares not wherefore.

Great Apollo! if thou art in a giving humour--give me--I ask no more, but
one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with
it--and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared,
with my compliments to--no matter.

Now to any one else I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and
imprecations which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two
hundred and fifty years last past as originals--except St. Paul's thumb--
God's flesh and God's fish, which were oaths monarchical, and, considering
who made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, 'tis not much matter
whether they were fish or flesh;--else I say, there is not an oath, or at
least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again
out of Ernulphus a thousand times:  but, like all other copies, how
infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!--it is thought to
be no bad oath--and by itself passes very well--'G-d damn you.'--Set it
beside Ernulphus's--'God almighty the Father damn you--God the Son damn
you--God the Holy Ghost damn you'--you see 'tis nothing.--There is an
orientality in his, we cannot rise up to:  besides, he is more copious in
his invention--possess'd more of the excellencies of a swearer--had such a
thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments,
knittings of the joints, and articulations,--that when Ernulphus cursed--no
part escaped him.--'Tis true there is something of a hardness in his
manner--and, as in Michael Angelo, a want of grace--but then there is such
a greatness of gusto!

My father, who generally look'd upon every thing in a light very different
from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an original.--He
considered rather Ernulphus's anathema, as an institute of swearing, in
which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder
pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great
learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;--for the same
reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his
chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into
one code or digest--lest, through the rust of time--and the fatality of all
things committed to oral tradition--they should be lost to the world for
ever.

For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath
from the great and tremendous oath of William the conqueror (By the
splendour of God) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (Damn your eyes)
which was not to be found in Ernulphus.--In short, he would add--I defy a
man to swear out of it.

The hypothesis is, like most of my father's, singular and ingenious too;--
nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own.


Chapter 2.VI.

--Bless my soul!--my poor mistress is ready to faint--and her pains are
gone--and the drops are done--and the bottle of julap is broke--and the
nurse has cut her arm--(and I, my thumb, cried Dr. Slop,) and the child is
where it was, continued Susannah,--and the midwife has fallen backwards
upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat.--
I'll look at it, quoth Dr Slop.--There is no need of that, replied
Susannah,--you had better look at my mistress--but the midwife would gladly
first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs
and speak to her this moment.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop's head--He had not
digested it.--No, replied Dr. Slop, 'twould be full as proper if the
midwife came down to me.--I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby,--and
but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become
of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.--Nor,
replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby's hobby-horsical reflection;
though full as hobby-horsical himself)--do I know, Captain Shandy, what
might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion
I find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of fingers
and thumbs to. . .--the application of which, Sir, under this accident of
mine, comes in so a propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might
have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a
name.


Chapter 2.VII.

Let us go back to the. . .--in the last chapter.

It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence
flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear
mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about
you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it.  A scar, an
axe, a sword, a pink'd doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-
ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot--but above all, a tender
infant royally accoutred.--Tho' if it was too young, and the oration as
long as Tully's second Philippick--it must certainly have beshit the
orator's mantle.--And then again, if too old,--it must have been unwieldly
and incommodious to his action--so as to make him lose by his child almost
as much as he could gain by it.--Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the
precise age to a minute--hid his Bambino in his mantle so cunningly that no
mortal could smell it--and produced it so critically, that no soul could
say, it came in by head and shoulders--Oh Sirs! it has done wonders--It has
open'd the sluices, and turn'd the brains, and shook the principles, and
unhinged the politicks of half a nation.

These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I
say, where orators wore mantles--and pretty large ones too, my brethren,
with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine,
marketable cloth in them--with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a
great style of design.--All which plainly shews, may it please your
worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does
at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the
world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.--We can conceal
nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.


Chapter 2.VIII.

Dr. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: 
for happening to have his green baize bag upon his knees, when he began to
parody my uncle Toby--'twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: 
for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-
invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them
ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the. . .,
which had he managed--my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown:  the
sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so
like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,--Dr. Slop
would never have given them up;--and my uncle Toby would as soon have
thought of flying, as taking them by force:  but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely
in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times
worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his
forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.

When a proposition can be taken in two senses--'tis a law in disputation,
That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most
convenient for him.--This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my
uncle Toby's side.--'Good God!' cried my uncle Toby, 'are children brought
into the world with a squirt?'


Chapter 2.IX.

--Upon my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back
of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby--and you have
crush'd all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly.  'Tis your
own fault, said Dr. Slop--you should have clinch'd your two fists together
into the form of a child's head as I told you, and sat firm.--I did so,
answered my uncle Toby.--Then the points of my forceps have not been
sufficiently arm'd, or the rivet wants closing--or else the cut on my thumb
has made me a little aukward--or possibly--'Tis well, quoth my father,
interrupting the detail of possibilities--that the experiment was not first
made upon my child's head-piece.--It would not have been a cherry-stone the
worse, answered Dr. Slop.--I maintain it, said my uncle Toby, it would have
broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a
granado) and turn'd it all into a perfect posset.--Pshaw! replied Dr. Slop,
a child's head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;--the sutures
give way--and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.--Not you,
said she.--I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.

Pray do, added my uncle Toby.


Chapter 2.X.

--And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may
not be the child's hip, as well as the child's head?--'Tis most certainly
the head, replied the midwife.  Because, continued Dr. Slop (turning to my
father) as positive as these old ladies generally are--'tis a point very
difficult to know--and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;--
because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head--there is a possibility
(if it is a boy) that the forceps. . ..

--What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and
then to my uncle Toby.--There is no such danger, continued he, with the
head.--No, in truth quoth my father--but when your possibility has taken
place at the hip--you may as well take off the head too.

--It is morally impossible the reader should understand this--'tis enough
Dr. Slop understood it;--so taking the green baize bag in his hand, with
the help of Obadiah's pumps, he tripp'd pretty nimbly, for a man of his
size, across the room to the door--and from the door was shewn the way, by
the good old midwife, to my mother's apartments.


Chapter 2.XI.

It is two hours, and ten minutes--and no more--cried my father, looking at
his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived--and I know not how it
happens, Brother Toby--but to my imagination it seems almost an age.

--Here--pray, Sir, take hold of my cap--nay, take the bell along with it,
and my pantoufles too.

Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of
'em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter.

Though my father said, 'he knew not how it happen'd,'--yet he knew very
well how it happen'd;--and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined
in his mind to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter by a
metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and its simple
modes, in order to shew my uncle Toby by what mechanism and mensurations in
the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and
the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to another, since
Dr. Slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period to so
inconceivable an extent.--'I know not how it happens--cried my father,--but
it seems an age.'

--'Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas.

My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of reasoning
upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it too--proposed
infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succession of ideas, and had
not the least apprehension of having it snatch'd out of his hands by my
uncle Toby, who (honest man!) generally took every thing as it happened;--
and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with
abstruse thinking;--the ideas of time and space--or how we came by those
ideas--or of what stuff they were made--or whether they were born with us--
or we picked them up afterwards as we went along--or whether we did it in
frocks--or not till we had got into breeches--with a thousand other
inquiries and disputes about Infinity Prescience, Liberty, Necessity, and
so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theories so many fine
heads have been turned and cracked--never did my uncle Toby's the least
injury at all; my father knew it--and was no less surprized than he was
disappointed, with my uncle's fortuitous solution.

Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.

Not I, quoth my uncle.

--But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about?

No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.

Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two
hands together--there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby--
'twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.--But I'll tell thee.--

To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend
infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other--we ought seriously to
sit down and consider what idea it is we have of duration, so as to give a
satisfactory account how we came by it.--What is that to any body? quoth my
uncle Toby.  (Vide Locke.)  For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon
your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive,
brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and thinking, and
smoking our pipes, or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we
know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the
continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else, commensurate
to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or
any such other thing co-existing with our thinking--and so according to
that preconceived--You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle Toby.

--'Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of time,
we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months--and of clocks (I wish
there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions
to us, and to those who belong to us--that 'twill be well, if in time to
come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service to us at all.

Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound man's
head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which
follow each other in train just like--A train of artillery? said my uncle
Toby--A train of a fiddle-stick!--quoth my father--which follow and succeed
one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the
inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.--I declare,
quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack,--Then, brother Toby,
I have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my father.


Chapter 2.XII.

--What a conjuncture was here lost!--My father in one of his best
explanatory moods--in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into the very
regions, where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it
about;--my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the
world;--his head like a smoke-jack;--the funnel unswept, and the ideas
whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with
fuliginous matter!--By the tomb-stone of Lucian--if it is in being--if not,
why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer
Cervantes!--my father and my uncle Toby's discourse upon Time and Eternity-
-was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my
father's humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the
Ontologic Treasury of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and
great men are ever likely to restore to it again.


Chapter 2.XIII.

Tho' my father persisted in not going on with the discourse--yet he could
not get my uncle Toby's smoke-jack out of his head--piqued as he was at
first with it;--there was something in the comparison at the bottom, which
hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon the table, and
reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand--but looking
first stedfastly in the fire--he began to commune with himself, and
philosophize about it:  but his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of
investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon
that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse--the
idea of the smoke jack soon turned all his ideas upside down--so that he
fell asleep almost before he knew what he was about.

As for my uncle Toby, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen revolutions,
before he fell asleep also.--Peace be with them both!--Dr. Slop is engaged
with the midwife and my mother above stairs.--Trim is busy in turning an
old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars, to be employed in the
siege of Messina next summer--and is this instant boring the touch-holes
with the point of a hot poker.--All my heroes are off my hands;--'tis the
first time I have had a moment to spare--and I'll make use of it, and write
my preface.


The Author's Preface

No, I'll not say a word about it--here it is;--in publishing it--I have
appealed to the world--and to the world I leave it;--it must speak for
itself.

All I know of the matter is--when I sat down, my intent was to write a good
book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold out--a wise,
aye, and a discreet--taking care only, as I went along, to put into it all
the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great Author and
Bestower of them had thought fit originally to give me--so that, as your
worships see--'tis just as God pleases.

Now, Agalastes (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be some wit
in it, for aught he knows--but no judgment at all.  And Triptolemus and
Phutatorius agreeing thereto, ask, How is it possible there should? for
that wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are
two operations differing from each other as wide as east from west--So,
says Locke--so are farting and hickuping, say I.  But in answer to this,
Didius the great church lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi
fallaciis, doth maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no
argument--nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a
syllogism;--but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for
it--so that the main good these things do is only to clarify the
understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order
to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which, if
left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.

Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice able criticks, and fellow-labourers
(for to you I write this Preface)--and to you, most subtle statesmen and
discreet doctors (do--pull off your beards) renowned for gravity and
wisdom;--Monopolus, my politician--Didius, my counsel; Kysarcius, my
friend;--Phutatorius, my guide;--Gastripheres, the preserver of my life;
Somnolentius, the balm and repose of it--not forgetting all others, as well
sleeping as waking, ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of
no resentment to you, I lump all together.--Believe me, right worthy,

My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own too,
in case the thing is not done already for us--is, that the great gifts and
endowments both of wit and judgment, with every thing which usually goes
along with them--such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick parts, and
what not, may this precious moment, without stint or measure, let or
hindrance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear it--scum and
sediment and all (for I would not have a drop lost) into the several
receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and
spare places of our brains--in such sort, that they might continue to be
injected and tunn'd into, according to the true intent and meaning of my
wish, until every vessel of them, both great and small, be so replenish'd,
saturated, and filled up therewith, that no more, would it save a man's
life, could possibly be got either in or out.

Bless us!--what noble work we should make!--how should I tickle it off!--
and what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing away for such
readers!--and you--just heaven!--with what raptures would you sit and read-
-but oh!--'tis too much--I am sick--I faint away deliciously at the
thoughts of it--'tis more than nature can bear!--lay hold of me--I am
giddy--I am stone blind--I'm dying--I am gone.--Help!  Help!  Help!--But
hold--I grow something better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when
this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great wits--we
should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end:--there would be so
much satire and sarcasm--scoffing and flouting, with raillying and
reparteeing of it--thrusting and parrying in one corner or another--there
would be nothing but mischief among us--Chaste stars! what biting and
scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with
breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places--there
would be no such thing as living for us.

But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we should
make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and though we should
abominate each other ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we
should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, milk
and honey--'twould be a second land of promise--a paradise upon earth, if
there was such a thing to be had--so that upon the whole we should have
done well enough.

All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present,
is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships well know,
that of these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so
bountifully wished both for your worships and myself--there is but a
certain quantum stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole
race of mankind; and such small modicums of 'em are only sent forth into
this wide world, circulating here and there in one bye corner or another--
and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from each
other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could be sufficient for
the wants and emergencies of so many great estates, and populous empires.

Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North
Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracks of the globe, which lie
more directly under the arctick and antartick circles, where the whole
province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together within
the narrow compass of his cave--where the spirits are compressed almost to
nothing--and where the passions of a man, with every thing which belongs to
them, are as frigid as the zone itself--there the least quantity of
judgment imaginable does the business--and of wit--there is a total and an
absolute saving--for as not one spark is wanted--so not one spark is given. 
Angels and ministers of grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have
been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty,
or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial
chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us!  For
mercy's sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we
can southwards into Norway--crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through
the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothmia;
coasting along it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so
on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side
of the Gulf of Finland, and the north-east of the Baltick, up to
Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria;--then stretching over directly
from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire--leaving Siberia
a little upon the left hand, till we got into the very heart of Russian and
Asiatick Tartary.

Now through this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good
people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have
just left:--for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very
attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit,
with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment, which, taking
the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with--
and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the
proper balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want
occasions to put them to use.

Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant
island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and humours runs
high--where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and
other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason--the
height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly
proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities--and accordingly
we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and
creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.

It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and
cold--wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and
settled way;--so that sometimes for near half a century together, there
shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst
us:--the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up--then all of a
sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like
fury--you would think they would never stop:--and then it is, that in
writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the
world before us.

It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind
of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction--that I
draw and set up this position as most true and veritable;

That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered
from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which
dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to
light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your reverences
and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal
it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was
no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer,
stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into
silence.  For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily
procured, as the exordium wished it--I tremble to think how many thousands
for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must
have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives--
running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without
ever getting to their journies end;--some falling with their noses
perpendicularly into sinks--others horizontally with their tails into
kennels.  Here one half of a learned profession tilting full but against
the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in
the dirt like hogs.--Here the brethren of another profession, who should
have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock
of wild geese, all in a row the same way.--What confusion!--what mistakes!-
-fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears--admirable!--trusting
to the passions excited--in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart--
instead of measuring them by a quadrant.

In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political
wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round--against the stream of corruption-
-by Heaven!--instead of with it.

In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against
predestination; perhaps worse--feeling his patient's pulse, instead of his
apothecary's--a brother of the Faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in
tears--drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;--
offering a fee--instead of taking one.

In that spacious Hall, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it,
driving a damn'd, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might
and main, the wrong way!--kicking it out of the great doors, instead of,
in--and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in
their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the
peace and preservation of mankind:--perhaps a more enormous mistake
committed by them still--a litigated point fairly hung up;--for instance,
Whether John o'Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o'Stiles his face, without
a trespass, or not--rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes,
which, with the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a
proceeding, might have taken up as many months--and if carried on upon a
military plan, as your honours know an Action should be, with all the
stratagems practicable therein,--such as feints,--forced marches,--
surprizes--ambuscades--mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of
generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides--
might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment
all that term for a centumvirate of the profession.

As for the Clergy--No--if I say a word against them, I'll be shot.--I have
no desire; and besides, if I had--I durst not for my soul touch upon the
subject--with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at
present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist
myself with so bad and melancholy an account--and therefore 'tis safer to
draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main
and principal point I have undertaken to clear up--and that is, How it
comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most
judgment.--But mark--I say, reported to be--for it is no more, my dear
Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon
trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.

This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already
weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith
make appear.

I hate set dissertations--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of
the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a
number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt
your own and your reader's conception--when in all likelihood, if you had
looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which
would have cleared the point at once--'for what hindrance, hurt, or harm
doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot,
a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of
a goldsmith's crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?'--I
am this moment sitting upon one.  Will you give me leave to illustrate this
affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?-
-they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two
gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to
let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly
as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun-beams.

I enter now directly upon the point.

--Here stands wit--and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like
the two knobs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on
which I am sitting.

--You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame--as
wit and judgment are of ours--and like them too, indubitably both made and
fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated
embellishments--to answer one another.

Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this
matter--let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (I
care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on--
nay, don't laugh at it,--but did you ever see, in the whole course of your
lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?--Why, 'tis as
miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense
and symmetry in the one as in the other:--do--pray, get off your seats only
to take a view of it,--Now would any man who valued his character a straw,
have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?--nay, lay
your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this
one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can
serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the
other?--and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you
would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would
be ten times better without any knob at all?

Now these two knobs--or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the
whole entablature--being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others,
as I have proved it, are the most needful--the most priz'd--the most
calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at--for all
these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of
a love of good fame or feeding--or so ignorant of what will do him good
therein--who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be,
or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of
both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought
to pass.

Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the
one--unless they laid hold of the other,--pray what do you think would
become of them?--Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e'en
have been contented to have gone with their insides naked--this was not to
be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we
are upon--so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they
been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted
under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry
at the same time against the lawful owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and
artifice--that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds--
was nevertheless bubbled here.  The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a
one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other
implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits
in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it--it was his
glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;--but
this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such
a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before
he philosophised upon it--on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and
so joined in with the cry, and halloo'd it as boisterously as the rest.

This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since--but your
reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the
title to it is not worth a groat:--which by-the-bye is one of the many and
vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for
hereafter.

As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too
freely--I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their
dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration--That I have no
abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long
beards, any farther than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on
purpose to carry on this self-same imposture--for any purpose--peace be
with them!--> mark only--I write not for them.


Chapter 2.XIV.

Every day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have it
mended--'tis not mended yet;--no family but ours would have borne with it
an hour--and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in the world
upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-hinges.--And yet
at the same time, he was certainly one of the greatest bubbles to them, I
think, that history can produce:  his rhetorick and conduct were at
perpetual handy-cuffs.--Never did the parlour-door open--but his philosophy
or his principles fell a victim to it;--three drops of oil with a feather,
and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his honour for ever.

--Inconsistent soul that man is!--languishing under wounds, which he has
the power to heal!--his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge!--his
reason, that precious gift of God to him--(instead of pouring in oil)
serving but to sharpen his sensibilities--to multiply his pains, and render
him more melancholy and uneasy under them!--Poor unhappy creature, that he
should do so!--Are not the necessary causes of misery in this life enow,
but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow;--struggle against
evils which cannot be avoided, and submit to others, which a tenth part of
the trouble they create him would remove from his heart for ever?

By all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops of oil to be
got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of Shandy Hall--the parlour
door hinge shall be mended this reign.


Chapter 2.XV.

When Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted
with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be
to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of
carrying them directly into his parlour.

Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of
hinges, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is
this.

Had the parlour door opened and turn'd upon its hinges, as a door should
do--

Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its
hinges--(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your
worship,--otherwise I give up my simile)--in this case, I say, there had
been no danger either to master or man, in corporal Trim's peeping in:  the
moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast asleep--the
respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as
death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had
found them:  but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticable,
that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of
order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its
account--this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after
dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person
who should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so
incessantly stepp'd in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his
repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it.

'When things move upon bad hinges, an' please your lordships, how can it be
otherwise?'

Pray what's the matter?  Who is there? cried my father, waking, the moment
the door began to creak.--I wish the smith would give a peep at that
confounded hinge.--'Tis nothing, an please your honour, said Trim, but two
mortars I am bringing in.--They shan't make a clatter with them here, cried
my father hastily.--If Dr. Slop has any drugs to pound, let him do it in
the kitchen.--May it please your honour, cried Trim, they are two mortar-
pieces for a siege next summer, which I have been making out of a pair of
jack-boots, which Obadiah told me your honour had left off wearing.--By
Heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore--I have
not one appointment belonging to me, which I set so much store by as I do
by these jack-boots--they were our great grandfather's brother Toby--they
were hereditary.  Then I fear, quoth my uncle Toby, Trim has cut off the
entail.--I have only cut off the tops, an' please your honour, cried Trim--
I hate perpetuities as much as any man alive, cried my father--but these
jack-boots, continued he (smiling, though very angry at the same time) have
been in the family, brother, ever since the civil wars;--Sir Roger Shandy
wore them at the battle of Marston-Moor.--I declare I would not have taken
ten pounds for them.--I'll pay you the money, brother Shandy, quoth my
uncle Toby, looking at the two mortars with infinite pleasure, and putting
his hand into his breeches pocket as he viewed them--I'll pay you the ten
pounds this moment with all my heart and soul.--

Brother Toby, replied my father, altering his tone, you care not what money
you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, 'tis but upon a
Siege.--Have I not one hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half
pay? cried my uncle Toby.--What is that--replied my father hastily--to ten
pounds for a pair of jack-boots?--twelve guineas for your pontoons?--half
as much for your Dutch draw-bridge?--to say nothing of the train of little
brass artillery you bespoke last week, with twenty other preparations for
the siege of Messina:  believe me, dear brother Toby, continued my father,
taking him kindly by the hand--these military operations of yours are above
your strength;--you mean well brother--but they carry you into greater
expences than you were first aware of;--and take my word, dear Toby, they
will in the end quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you.--What
signifies it if they do, brother, replied my uncle Toby, so long as we know
'tis for the good of the nation?--

My father could not help smiling for his soul--his anger at the worst was
never more than a spark;--and the zeal and simplicity of Trim--and the
generous (though hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby, brought him
into perfect good humour with them in an instant.

Generous souls!--God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too! quoth my
father to himself.


Chapter 2.XVI.

All is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs--I hear not
one foot stirring.--Prithee Trim, who's in the kitchen?  There is no one
soul in the kitchen, answered Trim, making a low bow as he spoke, except
Dr. Slop.--Confusion! cried my father (getting upon his legs a second
time)--not one single thing has gone right this day! had I faith in
astrology, brother, (which, by the bye, my father had) I would have sworn
some retrograde planet was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, and
turning every individual thing in it out of its place.--Why, I thought Dr.
Slop had been above stairs with my wife, and so said you.--What can the
fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen!--He is busy, an' please your
honour, replied Trim, in making a bridge.--'Tis very obliging in him, quoth
my uncle Toby:--pray, give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell
him I thank him heartily.

You must know, my uncle Toby mistook the bridge--as widely as my father
mistook the mortars:--but to understand how my uncle Toby could mistake the
bridge--I fear I must give you an exact account of the road which led to
it;--or to drop my metaphor (for there is nothing more dishonest in an
historian than the use of one)--in order to conceive the probability of
this error in my uncle Toby aright, I must give you some account of an
adventure of Trim's, though much against my will, I say much against my
will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out of its place
here; for by right it should come in, either amongst the anecdotes of my
uncle Toby's amours with widow Wadman, in which corporal Trim was no mean
actor--or else in the middle of his and my uncle Toby's campaigns on the
bowling-green--for it will do very well in either place;--but then if I
reserve it for either of those parts of my story--I ruin the story I'm
upon;--and if I tell it here--I anticipate matters, and ruin it there.

--What would your worship have me to do in this case?

--Tell it, Mr Shandy, by all means.--You are a fool, Tristram, if you do.

O ye powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)--which enable mortal
man to tell a story worth the hearing--that kindly shew him, where he is to
begin it--and where he is to end it--what he is to put into it--and what he
is to leave out--how much of it he is to cast into a shade--and whereabouts
he is to throw his light!--Ye, who preside over this vast empire of
biographical freebooters, and see how many scrapes and plunges your
subjects hourly fall into;--will you do one thing?

I beg and beseech you (in case you will do nothing better for us) that
wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several
roads meet in one point, as they have done just here--that at least you set
up a guide-post in the centre of them, in mere charity, to direct an
uncertain devil which of the three he is to take. 


Chapter 2.XVII.

Tho' the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition of
Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman, had fixed him in a resolution
never more to think of the sex--or of aught which belonged to it;--yet
corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself.  Indeed in my uncle
Toby's case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of
circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and
strong citadel.--In Trim's case there was a concurrence of nothing in the
world, but of him and Bridget in the kitchen;--though in truth, the love
and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating
him in all he did, that had my uncle Toby employed his time and genius in
tagging of points--I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down
his arms, and followed his example with pleasure.  When therefore my uncle
Toby sat down before the mistress--corporal Trim incontinently took ground
before the maid.

Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much cause to esteem and
honour--(why, or wherefore, 'tis no matter)--can it escape your
penetration--I defy it--that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-
chat have ever since been working upon Trim's and my uncle Toby's pattern.-
-I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, or Ricaboni say--(though
I never read one of them)--there is not a greater difference between a
single-horse chair and madam Pompadour's vis-a-vis; than betwixt a single
amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing
throughout a grand drama--Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind-
-is quite lost in five acts--but that is neither here nor there.

After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my
uncle Toby's quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which
shall be given in its proper place, my uncle Toby, honest man! found it
necessary to draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat indignantly.

Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself--or
with any one else--the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to
go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust--he contented
himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;--that is, he
kept others off;--for though he never after went to the house, yet he never
met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or
look kindly at her--or (as circumstances directed) he would shake her by
the hand--or ask her lovingly how she did--or would give her a ribbon--and
now-and-then, though never but when it could be done with decorum, would
give Bridget a. . .--

Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years; that is
from the demolition of Dunkirk in the year 13, to the latter end of my
uncle Toby's campaign in the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks
before the time I'm speaking of.--When Trim, as his custom was, after he
had put my uncle Toby to bed, going down one moon-shiny night to see that
every thing was right at his fortifications--in the lane separated from the
bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly--he espied his Bridget.

As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth
shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle Toby had made, Trim
courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: this was
not done so privately, but that the foul-mouth'd trumpet of Fame carried it
from ear to ear, till at length it reach'd my father's, with this untoward
circumstance along with it, that my uncle Toby's curious draw-bridge,
constructed and painted after the Dutch fashion, and which went quite
across the ditch--was broke down, and somehow or other crushed all to
pieces that very night.

My Father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle Toby's
hobby-horse; he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever gentleman
mounted; and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it, could never
think of it once, without smiling at it--so that it could never get lame or
happen any mischance, but it tickled my father's imagination beyond
measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than any one
which had yet befall'n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of entertainment
to him--Well--but dear Toby! my father would say, do tell me seriously how
this affair of the bridge happened.--How can you teaze me so much about it?
my uncle Toby would reply--I have told it you twenty times, word for word
as Trim told it me.--Prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would
cry, turning to Trim.--It was a mere misfortune, an' please your honour;--I
was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications, and in going too near the edge
of the fosse, I unfortunately slipp'd in--Very well, Trim! my father would
cry--(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod--but without interrupting
him)--and being link'd fast, an' please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs.
Bridget, I dragg'd her after me, by means of which she fell backwards soss
against the bridge--and Trim's foot (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the
story out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against
the bridge too.--It was a thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that
the poor fellow did not break his leg.--Ay truly, my father would say--a
limb is soon broke, brother Toby, in such encounters.--And so, an' please
your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was
broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.

At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate as to
say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards--my father would exhaust
all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a
panegyric upon the Battering-Rams of the ancients--the Vinea which
Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.--He would tell my uncle Toby of
the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many
hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation:-
-he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the Ballista which
Marcellinus makes so much rout about!--the terrible effects of the
Pyraboli, which cast fire;--the danger of the Terebra and Scorpio, which
cast javelins.--But what are these, would he say, to the destructive
machinery of corporal Trim?--Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge, or
bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold
out against such artillery.

My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this
ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in
doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it
set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of
violent coughing:  my uncle Toby leap'd up without feeling the pain upon
his groin--and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother's chair,
tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and
from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which
he pulled out of his pocket.--The affectionate and endearing manner in
which my uncle Toby did these little offices--cut my father thro' his
reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.--May my brains be knock'd
out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father
to himself--if ever I insult this worthy soul more!


Chapter 2.XVIII.

The draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered directly to set
about another--but not upon the same model:  for cardinal Alberoni's
intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle Toby rightly
foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt Spain and the
Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all
likelihood be either in Naples or Sicily--he determined upon an Italian
bridge--(my uncle Toby, by-the-bye, was not far out of his conjectures)--
but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead
as far of my uncle Toby in the cabinet, as my uncle Toby took it of him in
the field--convinced him, that if the king of Spain and the Emperor went
together by the ears, England and France and Holland must, by force of
their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;--and if so, he would say,
the combatants, brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it
again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of Flanders;--then what
will you do with your Italian bridge?

--We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle Toby.

When corporal Trim had about half finished it in that style--my uncle Toby
found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered
before.  It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in
the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the
other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the
weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle Toby to
raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand,
which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare--but
the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;--for by this
means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy's
possession--and pray of what use is the other?

The natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his bridge fast only at
one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, and
stand bolt upright--but that was rejected for the reason given above.

For a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one of that
particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, to hinder
a passage; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage--of which sorts
your worship might have seen three famous ones at Spires before its
destruction--and one now at Brisac, if I mistake not;--but my father
advising my uncle Toby, with great earnestness, to have nothing more to do
with thrusting bridges--and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it would but
perpetuate the memory of the Corporal's misfortune--he changed his mind for
that of the marquis d'Hopital's invention, which the younger Bernouilli has
so well and learnedly described, as your worships may see--Act. Erud. Lips.
an. 1695--to these a lead weight is an eternal balance, and keeps watch as
well as a couple of centinels, inasmuch as the construction of them was a
curve line approximating to a cycloid--if not a cycloid itself.

My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in
England--but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;--he talked however
about it every day--the bridge went not forwards.--We'll ask somebody about
it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim.


Chapter 2.XIX.

When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and
busy in making a bridge--my uncle Toby--the affair of the jack-boots having
just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain--took it instantly
for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d'Hopital's
bridge.--'tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby;--pray give my
humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.

Had my uncle Toby's head been a Savoyard's box, and my father peeping in
all the time at one end of it--it could not have given him a more distinct
conception of the operations of my uncle Toby's imagination, than what he
had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter
imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph--

When Trim's answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and
twisted it to pieces.


Chapter 2.XX.

--This unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father--God bless your
honour, cried Trim, 'tis a bridge for master's nose.--In bringing him into
the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose, Susannah
says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge
with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah's
stays, to raise it up.

--Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.


Chapter 2.XXI.

From the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of the
world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly been
gathering over my father.--A tide of little evils and distresses has been
setting in against him.--Not one thing, as he observed himself, has gone
right:  and now is the storm thicken'd and going to break, and pour down
full upon his head.

I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame
of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.--My nerves relax as
I tell it.--Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my
pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my life
prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should not--And this moment
that I last dipp'd my pen into my ink, I could not help taking notice what
a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity there appear'd in my manner
of doing it.--Lord! how different from the rash jerks and hair-brain'd
squirts thou art wont, Tristram, to transact it with in other humours--
dropping thy pen--spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books--as if thy
pen and thy ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing!


Chapter 2.XXII.

--I won't go about to argue the point with you--'tis so--and I am persuaded
of it, madam, as much as can be, 'That both man and woman bear pain or
sorrow (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal
position.'

The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself prostrate
across his bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the same time in
the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows, that ever
the eye of pity dropp'd a tear for.--The palm of his right hand, as he fell
upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and covering the greatest part of
both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way
backwards) till his nose touch'd the quilt;--his left arm hung insensible
over the side of the bed, his knuckles reclining upon the handle of the
chamber-pot, which peep'd out beyond the valance--his right leg (his left
being drawn up towards his body) hung half over the side of the bed, the
edge of it pressing upon his shin bone--He felt it not.  A fix'd,
inflexible sorrow took possession of every line of his face.--He sigh'd
once--heaved his breast often--but uttered not a word.

An old set-stitch'd chair, valanced and fringed around with party coloured
worsted bobs, stood at the bed's head, opposite to the side where my
father's head reclined.--My uncle Toby sat him down in it.

Before an affliction is digested--consolation ever comes too soon;--and
after it is digested--it comes too late:  so that you see, madam, there is
but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to
take aim at:--my uncle Toby was always either on this side, or on that of
it, and would often say, he believed in his heart he could as soon hit the
longitude; for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he drew the
curtain a little forwards, and having a tear at every one's service--he
pull'd out a cambrick handkerchief--gave a low sigh--but held his peace.


Chapter 2.XXIII.

--'All is not gain that is got into the purse.'--So that notwithstanding my
father had the happiness of reading the oddest books in the universe, and
had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking that ever man in it
was bless'd with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all--that it laid
him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical distresses; of which this
particular one, which he sunk under at present, is as strong an example as
can be given.

No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child's nose, by the edge of
a pair of forceps--however scientifically applied--would vex any man in the
world, who was at so much pains in begetting a child, as my father was--yet
it will not account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor will it
justify the un-christian manner he abandoned and surrendered himself up to.

To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour--and my
uncle Toby in his old fringed chair sitting beside him.


Chapter 2.XXIV.

--I think it a very unreasonable demand--cried my great-grandfather,
twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table.--By this account,
madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a shilling more--
and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it.--

--'Because,' replied my great-grandmother, 'you have little or no nose,
Sir.'--

Now before I venture to make use of the word Nose a second time--to avoid
all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of my
story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all
possible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be understood to
mean by the term:  being of opinion, that 'tis owing to the negligence and
perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else--
that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear and
demonstrative as those upon a Will o' the Wisp, or any other sound part of
philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do,
before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of
judgment--but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the
main word you have most occasion for--changing it, Sir, as you would a
guinea, into small coin?--which done--let the father of confusion puzzle
you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your
reader's head, if he knows how.

In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as I am engaged in--
the neglect is inexcusable; and Heaven is witness, how the world has
revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal
strictures--and for depending so much as I have done, all along, upon the
cleanliness of my readers imaginations.

--Here are two senses, cried Eugenius, as we walk'd along, pointing with
the fore finger of his right hand to the word Crevice, in the one hundred
and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this book of books,--here
are two senses--quoth he.--And here are two roads, replied I, turning short
upon him--a dirty and a clean one--which shall we take?--The clean, by all
means, replied Eugenius.  Eugenius, said I, stepping before him, and laying
my hand upon his breast--to define--is to distrust.--Thus I triumph'd over
Eugenius; but I triumph'd over him as I always do, like a fool.--'Tis my
comfort, however, I am not an obstinate one:  therefore

I define a nose as follows--intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my
readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition
soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the
temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile
to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my
definition--For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of
noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs--I
declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.


Chapter 2.XXV.

--'Because,' quoth my great grandmother, repeating the words again--'you
have little or no nose, Sir.'--

S'death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose,--'tis
not so small as that comes to;--'tis a full inch longer than my father's.--
Now, my great-grandfather's nose was for all the world like unto the noses
of all the men, women, and children, whom Pantagruel found dwelling upon
the island of Ennasin.--By the way, if you would know the strange way of
getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people--you must read the book;--find
it out yourself, you never can.--

--'Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.

--'Tis a full inch, continued my grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his
nose with his finger and thumb; and repeating his assertion--'tis a full
inch longer, madam, than my father's--You must mean your uncle's, replied
my great-grandmother.

--My great-grandfather was convinced.--He untwisted the paper, and signed
the article.


Chapter 2.XXVI.

--What an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small
estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.

My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving the
mark, than there is upon the back of my hand.

--Now, you must know, that my great-grandmother outlived my grandfather
twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a hundred and
fifty pounds half-yearly--(on Michaelmas and Lady-day,)--during all that
time.

No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my
father.--And as far as a hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon the
table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome,
which generous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down
money:  but as soon as ever he enter'd upon the odd fifty--he generally
gave a loud Hem! rubb'd the side of his nose leisurely with the flat part
of his fore finger--inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the
cawl of his wig--look'd at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it-
-and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out
his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.

Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no
allowances for these workings within us.--Never--O never may I lay down in
their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of
education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors!

For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses had
gradually been taking root in our family.--Tradition was all along on its
side, and Interest was every half-year stepping in to strengthen it; so
that the whimsicality of my father's brain was far from having the whole
honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.--For in
a great measure he might be said to have suck'd this in with his mother's
milk.  He did his part however.--If education planted the mistake (in case
it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.

He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he
did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out
against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.--And for
the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the
greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly
noses, following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it
up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.--He would often boast that the
Shandy family rank'd very high in king Harry the VIIIth's time, but owed
its rise to no state engine--he would say--but to that only;--but that,
like other families, he would add--it had felt the turn of the wheel, and
had never recovered the blow of my great-grandfather's nose.--It was an ace
of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head--and as vile a one for an
unfortunate family as ever turn'd up trumps.

--Fair and softly, gentle reader!--where is thy fancy carrying thee!--If
there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather's nose, I mean the external
organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face--
and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces,
should comprehend a full third--that is, measured downwards from the
setting on of the hair.

--What a life of it has an author, at this pass!


Chapter 2.XXVII.

It is a singular blessing, that nature has form'd the mind of man with the
same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is observed
in old dogs--'of not learning new tricks.'

What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever
existed be whisk'd into at once, did he read such books, and observe such
facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change
sides!

Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all this--He pick'd up an
opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.--It becomes
his own--and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than
give it up.

I am aware that Didius, the great civilian, will contest this point; and
cry out against me, Whence comes this man's right to this apple? ex
confesso, he will say--things were in a state of nature--The apple, is as
much Frank's apple as John's.  Pray, Mr. Shandy, what patent has he to shew
for it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he set his heart upon
it? or when he gathered it? or when he chew'd it? or when he roasted it? or
when he peel'd, or when he brought it home? or when he digested?--or when
he--?--For 'tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made it
not his--that no subsequent act could.

Brother Didius, Tribonius will answer--(now Tribonius the civilian and
church lawyer's beard being three inches and a half and three eighths
longer than Didius his beard--I'm glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so I
give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)--Brother Didius,
Tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the
fragments of Gregorius and Hermogines's codes, and in all the codes from
Justinian's down to the codes of Louis and Des Eaux--That the sweat of a
man's brows, and the exsudations of a man's brains, are as much a man's own
property as the breeches upon his backside;--which said exsudations, &c.
being dropp'd upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking
it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex'd,
by the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried home, roasted, peel'd,
eaten, digested, and so on;--'tis evident that the gatherer of the apple,
in so doing, has mix'd up something which was his own, with the apple which
was not his own, by which means he has acquired a property;--or, in other
words, the apple is John's apple.

By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his
opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they lay
out of the common way, the better still was his title.--No mortal claimed
them; they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting as
in the case above, so that they might well and truly be said to be of his
own goods and chattels.--Accordingly he held fast by 'em, both by teeth and
claws--would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on--and, in a word,
would intrench and fortify them round with as many circumvallations and
breast-works, as my uncle Toby would a citadel.

There was one plaguy rub in the way of this--the scarcity of materials to
make any thing of a defence with, in case of a smart attack; inasmuch as
few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books upon the
subject of great noses:  by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is
incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I am considering
what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted upon
worse subjects--and how many millions of books in all languages and in all
possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so
much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world.  What was to be
had, however, he set the greater store by; and though my father would oft-
times sport with my uncle Toby's library--which, by-the-bye, was ridiculous
enough--yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book and
treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much care
as my honest uncle Toby had done those upon military architecture.--'Tis
true, a much less table would have held them--but that was not thy
transgression, my dear uncle.--

Here--but why here--rather than in any other part of my story--I am not
able to tell:--but here it is--my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear
uncle Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.--Here let me
thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am pouring
forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and veneration for the
excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a
nephew's bosom.--Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head!--Thou
enviedst no man's comforts--insultedst no man's opinions--Thou blackenedst
no man's character--devouredst no man's bread:  gently, with faithful Trim
behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures,
jostling no creature in thy way:--for each one's sorrows, thou hadst a
tear,--for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling.

Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder--thy path from thy door to thy
bowling-green shall never be grown up.--Whilst there is a rood and a half
of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall
never be demolish'd.


Chapter 2.XXVIII.

My father's collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curious;
and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good
fortune hewever, to set off well, in getting Bruscambille's prologue upon
long noses, almost for nothing--for he gave no more for Bruscambille than
three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw
my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.--There are
not three Bruscambilles in Christendom--said the stall-man, except what are
chain'd up in the libraries of the curious.  My father flung down the money
as quick as lightning--took Bruscambille into his bosom--hied home from
Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a
treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way.

To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille is--inasmuch as a
prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either--'twill be no
objection against the simile--to say, That when my father got home, he
solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, 'tis ten to
one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress--that is, from
morning even unto night:  which, by-the-bye, how delightful soever it may
prove to the inamorato--is of little or no entertainment at all to by-
standers.--Take notice, I go no farther with the simile--my father's eye
was greater than his appetite--his zeal greater than his knowledge--he
cool'd--his affections became divided--he got hold of Prignitz--purchased
Scroderus, Andrea Paraeus, Bouchet's Evening Conferences, and above all,
the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much
to say by-and-bye--I will say nothing now.


Chapter 2.XXIX.

Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in
support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more
cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between
Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable
Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.--
Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any
one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can
any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on--let me beg of you,
like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it,
to bound it--and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till like
Tickletoby's mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship
into the dirt.--You need not kill him.--

--And pray who was Tickletoby's mare?--'tis just as discreditable and
unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.)
the second Punic war broke out.--Who was Tickletoby's mare!--Read, read,
read, read, my unlearned reader! read--or by the knowledge of the great
saint Paraleipomenon--I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the
book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I
mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the
next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its
sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and
truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.


(two marble plates)


Chapter 2.XXX.

'Nihil me paenitet hujus nasi,' quoth Pamphagus;--that is--'My nose has
been the making of me.'--'Nec est cur poeniteat,' replies Cocles; that is,
'How the duce should such a nose fail?'

The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it,
with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding
nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of
that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which
Heaven had bestow'd upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for
her on all sides.--My father pish'd and pugh'd at first most terribly--'tis
worth something to have a good name.  As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my
father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great
application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro' and thro'
in its most strict and literal interpretation--he could still make nothing
of it, that way.  Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my
father.--Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses
for nothing.--I'll study the mystick and the allegorick sense--here is some
room to turn a man's self in, brother.

My father read on.--

Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides
the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist
affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also;
for that in a case of distress--and for want of a pair of bellows, it will
do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire.)

Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had
sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the
seeds of all other knowledge--so that he had got out his penknife, and was
trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some
better sense into it.--I've got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried
my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.--You are near enough, brother,
replied my uncle, in all conscience.--Pshaw! cried my father, scratching
on--I might as well be seven miles off.--I've done it--said my father,
snapping his fingers--See, my dear brother Toby, how I have mended the
sense.--But you have marr'd a word, replied my uncle Toby.--My father put
on his spectacles--bit his lip--and tore out the leaf in a passion.


Chapter 2.XXXI.

O Slawkenbergius! thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrazias--thou sad
foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage or
other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and
no other cause, that I am conscious of.--Tell me, Slawkenbergius! what
secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how did it
sound in thy ears?--art thou sure thou heard'st it?--which first cried out
to thee--go--go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life--neglect
thy pastimes--call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature--
macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand Folio for
them, upon the subject of their noses.

How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius's sensorium--so that
Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch'd the key--and whose hand it
was that blew the bellows--as Hafen Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid
in his grave above fourscore and ten years--we can only raise conjectures.

Slawkenbergius was play'd upon, for aught I know, like one of Whitefield's
disciples--that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the
two masters it was that had been practising upon his instrument--as to make
all reasoning upon it needless.

--For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his
motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life
upon this one work--towards the end of his prolegomena, which by-the-bye
should have come first--but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it
betwixt the analytical contents of the book, and the book itself--he
informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of
discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and consider within himself
the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the main end and
design of his being;--or--to shorten my translation, for Slawkenbergius's
book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this passage--ever since I
understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing--or rather what was what--and
could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by
all who had gone before;--have I Slawkenbergius, felt a strong impulse,
with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up myself to this
undertaking.

And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a
stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man who
had ever entered it before him--and indeed, in many respects, deserves to
be en-nich'd as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least,
to model their books by--for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject--
examined every part of it dialectically--then brought it into full day;
dilucidating it with all the light which either the collision of his own
natural parts could strike--or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences
had impowered him to cast upon it--collating, collecting, and compiling--
begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote
or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned:  so that
Slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a model--
but as a thorough-stitched Digest and regular institute of noses,
comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known about them.

For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise)
valuable books and treatises of my father's collecting, wrote either, plump
upon noses--or collaterally touching them;--such for instance as Prignitz,
now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from
the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand
different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-houses in Silesia, which he
had rummaged--has informed us, that the mensuration and configuration of
the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any given tract of country,
except Crim Tartary, where they are all crush'd down by the thumb, so that
no judgment can be formed upon them--are much nearer alike, than the world
imagines;--the difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not
worth taking notice of;--but that the size and jollity of every individual
nose, and by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price,
is owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts
and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell'd and driven by the
warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it (bating
the case of idiots, whom Prignitz, who had lived many years in Turky,
supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)--it so happens, and
ever must, says Prignitz, that the excellency of the nose is in a direct
arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wearer's fancy.

It is for the same reason, that is, because 'tis all comprehended in
Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus (Andrea) who, all
the world knows, set himself to oppugn Prignitz with great violence--
proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a series of
stubborn facts, 'That so far was Prignitz from the truth, in affirming that
the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary--the nose begat the fancy.'

--The learned suspected Scroderus of an indecent sophism in this--and
Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scroderus had shifted the
idea upon him--but Scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis.

My Father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he
should take in this affair; when Ambrose Paraeus decided it in a moment,
and by overthrowing the systems, both of Prignitz and Scroderus, drove my
father out of both sides of the controversy at once.

Be witness--

I don't acquaint the learned reader--in saying it, I mention it only to
shew the learned, I know the fact myself--

That this Ambrose Paraeus was chief surgeon and nose-mender to Francis the
ninth of France, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or
succeeding kings (I know not which)--and that, except in the slip he made
in his story of Taliacotius's noses, and his manner of setting them on--he
was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more
knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand.

Now Ambrose Paraeus convinced my father, that the true and efficient cause
of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon which
Prignitz and Scroderus had wasted so much learning and fine parts--was
neither this nor that--but that the length and goodness of the nose was
owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse's breast--as the
flatness and shortness of puisne noses was to the firmness and elastic
repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively--which,
tho' happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his
nose was so snubb'd, so rebuff'd, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby,
as never to arrive ad mensuram suam legitimam;--but that in case of the
flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother's breast--by sinking into
it, quoth Paraeus, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted,
nourish'd, plump'd up, refresh'd, refocillated, and set a growing for ever.

I have but two things to observe of Paraeus; first, That he proves and
explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression:--for
which may his soul for ever rest in peace!

And, secondly, that besides the systems of Prignitz and Scroderus, which
Ambrose Paraeus his hypothesis effectually overthrew--it overthrew at the
same time the system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days
together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but
turn'd likewise the whole house and every thing in it, except my uncle
Toby, quite upside down.

Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never
surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-
door.

My mother, you must know--but I have fifty things more necessary to let you
know first--I have a hundred difficulties which I have promised to clear
up, and a thousand distresses and domestick misadventures crowding in upon
me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another.  A cow broke in
(tomorrow morning) to my uncle Toby's fortifications, and eat up two
rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced
his horn-work and covered way.--Trim insists upon being tried by a court-
martial--the cow to be shot--Slop to be crucifix'd--myself to be tristram'd
and at my very baptism made a martyr of;--poor unhappy devils that we all
are!--I want swaddling--but there is no time to be lost in exclamations--I
have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle Toby in his old
fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in
half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps'd already.--Of all the
perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in--this certainly is the
greatest, for I have Hafen Slawkenbergius's folio, Sir, to finish--a
dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the solution of
Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paraeus, Panocrates, and Grangousier to
relate--a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate, and all this in five
minutes less than no time at all;--such a head!--would to Heaven my enemies
only saw the inside of it!


Chapter 2.XXXII.

There was not any one scene more entertaining in our family--and to do it
justice in this point;--and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the table
close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the world
concerning this one article the more solemn--that I believe in my soul
(unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of
the supreme Maker and first Designer of all things never made or put a
family together (in that period at least of it which I have sat down to
write the story of)--where the characters of it were cast or contrasted
with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the
capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting
them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and instrusted with so
unlimited a confidence, as in the Shandy Family.

Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre
of ours--than what frequently arose out of this self-same chapter of long
noses--especially when my father's imagination was heated with the enquiry,
and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle Toby's too.

My uncle Toby would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt;
and with infinite patience would sit smoking his pipe for whole hours
together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every
accessible avenue to drive Prignitz and Scroderus's solutions into it.

Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason--or contrary to it--or that
his brain was like damp timber, and no spark could possibly take hold--or
that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military
disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's
doctrines--I say not--let schoolmen--scullions, anatomists, and engineers,
fight for it among themselves--

'Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had
every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle Toby, and render
out of Slawkenbergius's Latin, of which, as he was no great master, his
translation was not always of the purest--and generally least so where
'twas most wanted.--This naturally open'd a door to a second misfortune;--
that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle Toby's eyes--my
father's ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the
translation outmoved my uncle Toby's--neither the one or the other added
much to the perspicuity of my father's lecture.


Chapter 2.XXXIII.

The gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms--I mean in man--for in
superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits--'tis all done, may
it please your worships, as they tell me, by Intuition;--and beings
inferior, as your worships all know--syllogize by their noses:  though
there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease)
whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully
gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very
well out too:--but that's neither here nor there--

The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or--the great and
principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding
out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the
intervention of a third (called the medius terminus); just as a man, as
Locke well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the
same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their
equality, by juxta-position.

Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems
of noses, and observed my uncle Toby's deportment--what great attention he
gave to every word--and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with
what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it--surveying it
transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb--then fore-
right--then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and
fore-shortenings--he would have concluded my uncle Toby had got hold of the
medius terminus, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of
each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. 
This, by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted--his aim in all the pains
he was at in these philosophick lectures--was to enable my uncle Toby not
to discuss--but comprehend--to hold the grains and scruples of learning--
not to weigh them.--My uncle Toby, as you will read in the next chapter,
did neither the one or the other.


Chapter 2.XXXIV.

'Tis a pity, cried my father one winter's night, after a three hours
painful translation of Slawkenbergius--'tis a pity, cried my father,
putting my mother's threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spoke--that
truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses,
and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the
closest siege.--

Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle
Toby's fancy, during the time of my father's explanation of Prignitz to
him--having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the
bowling-green;--his body might as well have taken a turn there too--so that
with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the medius
terminus--my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and
all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating Hafen
Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokee.  But the word
siege, like a talismanic power, in my father's metaphor, wafting back my
uncle Toby's fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch--he open'd his
ears--and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and
shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit--my father
with great pleasure began his sentence again--changing only the plan, and
dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my
father apprehended from it.

'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother
Toby--considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their
solutions of noses.--Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle Toby.

--My father thrust back his chair--rose up--put on his hat--took four long
strides to the door--jerked it open--thrust his head half way out--shut the
door again--took no notice of the bad hinge--returned to the table--pluck'd
my mother's thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius's book--went hastily to his
bureau--walked slowly back--twisted my mother's thread-paper about his
thumb--unbutton'd his waistcoat--threw my mother's thread-paper into the
fire--bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill'd his mouth with bran--
confounded it;--but mark!--the oath of confusion was levell'd at my uncle
Toby's brain--which was e'en confused enough already--the curse came
charged only with the bran--the bran, may it please your honours, was no
more than powder to the ball.

'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long; for so long as they did
last, they led him a busy life on't; and it is one of the most
unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human
nature, that nothing should prove my father's mettle so much, or make his
passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science
met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle Toby's questions.--Had ten
dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many different places all at one
time--he could not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds-
-or started half so much, as with one single quaere of three words
unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career.

'Twas all one to my uncle Toby--he smoked his pipe on with unvaried
composure--his heart never intended offence to his brother--and as his head
could seldom find out where the sting of it lay--he always gave my father
the credit of cooling by himself.--He was five minutes and thirty-five
seconds about it in the present case.

By all that's good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and
taking the oath out of Ernulphus's digest of curses--(though to do my
father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. Slop in the affair of
Ernulphus) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth)--By all
that's good and great! brother Toby, said my father, if it was not for the
aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do--you would put a
man beside all temper.--Why, by the solutions of noses, of which I was
telling you, I meant, as you might have known, had you favoured me with one
grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different
kinds of knowledge have given the world of the causes of short and long
noses.--There is no cause but one, replied my uncle Toby--why one man's
nose is longer than another's, but because that God pleases to have it so.-
-That is Grangousier's solution, said my father.--'Tis he, continued my
uncle Toby, looking up, and not regarding my father's interruption, who
makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and
proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom,.--
'Tis a pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical--there is more
religion in it than sound science.  'Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle
Toby's character--that he feared God, and reverenced religion.--So the
moment my father finished his remark--my uncle Toby fell a whistling
Lillabullero with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.--

What is become of my wife's thread-paper?


Chapter 2.XXXV.

No matter--as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of
some consequence to my mother--of none to my father, as a mark in
Slawkenbergius.  Slawkenbergius in every page of him was a rich treasure of
inexhaustible knowledge to my father--he could not open him amiss; and he
would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in
the world, with the books which treated of them, were lost--should the
wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever
happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote or caused to be
written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should
they be forgot also--and Slawkenbergius only left--there would be enough in
him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again.  A
treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was necessary to
be known of noses, and every thing else--at matin, noon, and vespers was
Hafen Slawkenbergius his recreation and delight:  'twas for ever in his
hands--you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon's prayer-book--so
worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited was it with fingers and with
thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other.

I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius as my father;--there is a fund in
him, no doubt:  but in my opinion, the best, I don't say the most
profitable, but the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his
tales--and, considering he was a German, many of them told not without
fancy:--these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his
folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten tales-
-Philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore 'twas certainly wrong in
Slawkenbergius to send them into the world by that name!--there are a few
of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem rather
playful and sportive, than speculative--but in general they are to be
looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many independent facts, all of
them turning round somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject,
and added to his work as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.

As we have leisure enough upon our hands--if you give me leave, madam, I'll
tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad.


Slawkenbergii Fabella (As Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis is extremely
scarce, it may not be unacceptable to the learned reader to see the
specimen of a few pages of his original; I will make no reflection upon it,
but that his story-telling Latin is much more concise than his philosophic-
-and, I think, has more of Latinity in it.)

Vespera quadam frigidula, posteriori in parte mensis Augusti, peregrinus,
mulo fusco colore incidens, mantica a tergo, paucis indusiis, binis
calceis, braccisque sericis coccineis repleta, Argentoratum ingressus est.

Militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret dixit, se apud Nasorum
promontorium fuisse, Francofurtum proficisci, et Argentoratum, transitu ad
fines Sarmatiae mensis intervallo, reversurum.

Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit--Di boni, nova forma nasi!

At multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, carpum amento extrahens, e quo
pependit acinaces:  Loculo manum inseruit; et magna cum urbanitate, pilei
parte anteriore tacta manu sinistra, ut extendit dextram, militi florinum
dedit et processit.

Dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam nanum et valgum alloquens, virum adeo
urbanum vaginam perdidisse:  itinerari haud poterit nuda acinaci; neque
vaginam toto Argentorato, habilem inveniet.--Nullam unquam habui, respondit
peregrinus respiciens--seque comiter inclinans--hoc more gesto, nudam
acinacem elevans, mulo lento progrediente, ut nasum tueri possim.

Non immerito, benigne peregrine, respondit miles.

Nihili aestimo, ait ille tympanista, e pergamena factitius est.

Prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus ille, ni sexties major fit, meo
esset conformis.

Crepitare audivi ait tympanista.

Mehercule! sanguinem emisit, respondit miles.

Miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non ambo tetigimus!

Eodem temporis puncto, quo haec res argumentata fuit inter militem et
tympanistam, disceptabatur ibidem tubicine et uxore sua qui tunc
accesserunt, et peregrino praetereunte, restiterunt.

Quantus nasus! aeque longus est, ait tubicina, ac tuba.

Et ex eodem metallo, ait tubicen, velut sternutamento audias.

Tantum abest, respondit illa, quod fistulam dulcedine vincit.

Aeneus est, ait tubicen.

Nequaquam, respondit uxor.

Rursum affirmo, ait tubicen, quod aeneus est.

Rem penitus explorabo; prius, enim digito tangam, ait uxor, quam dormivero,

Mulus peregrini gradu lento progressus est, ut unumquodque verbum
controversiae, non tantum inter militem et tympanistam, verum etiam inter
tubicinem et uxorum ejus, audiret.

Nequaquam, ait ille, in muli collum fraena demittens, et manibus ambabus in
pectus positis, (mulo lente progrediente) nequaquam, ait ille respiciens,
non necesse est ut res isthaec dilucidata foret.  Minime gentium! meus
nasus nunquam tangetur, dum spiritus hos reget artus--Ad quid agendum? air
uxor burgomagistri.

Peregrinus illi non respondit.  Votum faciebat tunc temporis sancto
Nicolao; quo facto, sinum dextrum inserens, e qua negligenter pependit
acinaces, lento gradu processit per plateam Argentorati latam quae ad
diversorium templo ex adversum ducit.

Peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo includi, et manticam inferri jussit: 
qua aperta et coccineis sericis femoralibus extractis cum argento laciniato
(Greek), his sese induit, statimque, acinaci in manu, ad forum deambulavit.

Quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxorem tubicinis obviam euntem
aspicit; illico cursum flectit, metuens ne nasus suus exploraretur, atque
ad diversorium regressus est--exuit se vestibus; braccas coccineas sericas
manticae imposuit mulumque educi jussit.

Francofurtum proficiscor, ait ille, et Argentoratum quatuor abhinc
hebdomadis revertar.

Bene curasti hoc jumentam? (ait) muli faciem manu demulcens--me,
manticamque meam, plus sexcentis mille passibus portavit.

Longa via est! respondet hospes, nisi plurimum esset negoti.--Enimvero, ait
peregrinus, a Nasorum promontorio redii, et nasum speciosissimum,
egregiosissimumque quem unquam quisquam sortitus est, acquisivi?

Dum peregrinus hanc miram rationem de seipso reddit, hospes et uxor ejus,
oculis intentis, peregrini nasum contemplantur--Per sanctos sanctasque
omnes, ait hospitis uxor, nasis duodecim maximis in toto Argentorato major
est!--estne, ait illa mariti in aurem insusurrans, nonne est nasus
praegrandis?

Dolus inest, anime mi, ait hospes--nasus est falsus.

Verus est, respondit uxor--

Ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthinum olet--

Carbunculus inest, ait uxor.

Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes.

Vivus est ait illa,--et si ipsa vivam tangam.

Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum intactum fore usque
ad--Quodnam tempus? illico respondit illa.

Minimo tangetur, inquit ille (manibus in pectus compositis) usque ad illam
horam--Quam horam? ait illa--Nullam, respondit peregrinus, donec pervenio
ad--Quem locum,--obsecro? ait illa--Peregrinus nil respondens mulo
conscenso discessit.


Slawkenbergius's Tale

It was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very sultry day, in
the latter end of the month of August, when a stranger, mounted upon a dark
mule, with a small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of
shoes, and a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, entered the town of
Strasburg.

He told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the gates, that he
had been at the Promontory of Noses--was going on to Frankfort--and should
be back again at Strasburg that day month, in his way to the borders of
Crim Tartary.

The centinel looked up into the stranger's face--he never saw such a Nose
in his life!

--I have made a very good venture of it, quoth the stranger--so slipping
his wrist out of the loop of a black ribbon, to which a short scymetar was
hung, he put his hand into his pocket, and with great courtesy touching the
fore part of his cap with his left hand, as he extended his right--he put a
florin into the centinel's hand, and passed on.

It grieves, me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish bandy-
legg'd drummer, that so courteous a soul should have lost his scabbard--he
cannot travel without one to his scymetar, and will not be able to get a
scabbard to fit it in all Strasburg.--I never had one, replied the
stranger, looking back to the centinel, and putting his hand up to his cap
as he spoke--I carry it, continued he, thus--holding up his naked scymetar,
his mule moving on slowly all the time--on purpose to defend my nose.

It is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel.

--'Tis not worth a single stiver, said the bandy-legg'd drummer--'tis a
nose of parchment.

As I am a true catholic--except that it is six times as big--'tis a nose,
said the centinel, like my own.

--I heard it crackle, said the drummer.

By dunder, said the centinel, I saw it bleed.

What a pity, cried the bandy-legg'd drummer, we did not both touch it!

At the very time that this dispute was maintaining by the centinel and the
drummer--was the same point debating betwixt a trumpeter and a trumpeter's
wife, who were just then coming up, and had stopped to see the stranger
pass by.

Benedicity!--What a nose! 'tis as long, said the trumpeter's wife, as a
trumpet.

And of the same metal said the trumpeter, as you hear by its sneezing.

'Tis as soft as a flute, said she.

--'Tis brass, said the trumpeter.

--'Tis a pudding's end, said his wife.

I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, 'tis a brazen nose,

I'll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter's wife, for I will touch it
with my finger before I sleep.

The stranger's mule moved on at so slow a rate, that he heard every word of
the dispute, not only betwixt the centinel and the drummer, but betwixt the
trumpeter and trumpeter's wife.

No! said he, dropping his reins upon his mule's neck, and laying both his
hands upon his breast, the one over the other in a saint-like position (his
mule going on easily all the time) No! said he, looking up--I am not such a
debtor to the world--slandered and disappointed as I have been--as to give
it that conviction--no! said he, my nose shall never be touched whilst
Heaven gives me strength--To do what? said a burgomaster's wife.

The stranger took no notice of the burgomaster's wife--he was making a vow
to Saint Nicolas; which done, having uncrossed his arms with the same
solemnity with which he crossed them, he took up the reins of his bridle
with his left-hand, and putting his right hand into his bosom, with the
scymetar hanging loosely to the wrist of it, he rode on, as slowly as one
foot of the mule could follow another, thro' the principal streets of
Strasburg, till chance brought him to the great inn in the market-place
over-against the church.

The moment the stranger alighted, he ordered his mule to be led into the
stable, and his cloak-bag to be brought in; then opening, and taking out of
it his crimson-sattin breeches, with a silver-fringed--(appendage to them,
which I dare not translate)--he put his breeches, with his fringed cod-
piece on, and forth-with, with his short scymetar in his hand, walked out
to the grand parade.

The stranger had just taken three turns upon the parade, when he perceived
the trumpeter's wife at the opposite side of it--so turning short, in pain
lest his nose should be attempted, he instantly went back to his inn--
undressed himself, packed up his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in his cloak-
bag, and called for his mule.

I am going forwards, said the stranger, for Frankfort--and shall be back at
Strasburg this day month.

I hope, continued the stranger, stroking down the face of his mule with his
left hand as he was going to mount it, that you have been kind to this
faithful slave of mine--it has carried me and my cloak-bag, continued he,
tapping the mule's back, above six hundred leagues.

--'Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the master of the inn--unless a man has
great business.--Tut! tut! said the stranger, I have been at the promontory
of Noses; and have got me one of the goodliest, thank Heaven, that ever
fell to a single man's lot.

Whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of himself, the master of
the inn and his wife kept both their eyes fixed full upon the stranger's
nose--By saint Radagunda, said the inn-keeper's wife to herself, there is
more of it than in any dozen of the largest noses put together in all
Strasburg! is it not, said she, whispering her husband in his ear, is it
not a noble nose?

'Tis an imposture, my dear, said the master of the inn--'tis a false nose.

'Tis a true nose, said his wife.

'Tis made of fir-tree, said he, I smell the turpentine.--

There's a pimple on it, said she.

'Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper.

'Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself, said the inn-keeper's, wife, I
will touch it.

I have made a vow to saint Nicolas this day, said the stranger, that my
nose shall not be touched till--Here the stranger suspending his voice,
looked up.--Till when? said she hastily.

It never shall be touched, said he, clasping his hands and bringing them
close to his breast, till that hour--What hour? cried the inn keeper's
wife.--Never!--never! said the stranger, never till I am got--For Heaven's
sake, into what place? said she--The stranger rode away without saying a
word.

The stranger had not got half a league on his way towards Frankfort before
all the city of Strasburg was in an uproar about his nose.  The Compline
bells were just ringing to call the Strasburgers to their devotions, and
shut up the duties of the day in prayer:--no soul in all Strasburg heard
'em--the city was like a swarm of bees--men, women, and children, (the
Compline bells tinkling all the time) flying here and there--in at one
door, out at another--this way and that way--long ways and cross ways--up
one street, down another street--in at this alley, out of that--did you see
it? did you see it? did you see it?  O! did you see it?--who saw it? who
did see it? for mercy's sake, who saw it?

Alack o'day! I was at vespers!--I was washing, I was starching, I was
scouring, I was quilting--God help me!  I never saw it--I never touch'd
it!--would I had been a centinel, a bandy-legg'd drummer, a trumpeter, a
trumpeter's wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street and
corner of Strasburg.

Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the great city
of Strasburg, was the courteous stranger going on as gently upon his mule
in his way to Frankfort, as if he had no concern at all in the affair--
talking all the way he rode in broken sentences, sometimes to his mule--
sometimes to himself--sometimes to his Julia.

O Julia, my lovely Julia!--nay I cannot stop to let thee bite that thistle-
-that ever the suspected tongue of a rival should have robbed me of
enjoyment when I was upon the point of tasting it.--

--Pugh!--'tis nothing but a thistle--never mind it--thou shalt have a
better supper at night.

--Banish'd from my country--my friends--from thee.--

Poor devil, thou'rt sadly tired with thy journey!--come--get on a little
faster--there's nothing in my cloak-bag but two shirts--a crimson-sattin
pair of breeches, and a fringed--Dear Julia!

--But why to Frankfort?--is it that there is a hand unfelt, which secretly
is conducting me through these meanders and unsuspected tracts?

--Stumbling! by saint Nicolas! every step--why at this rate we shall be all
night in getting in--

--To happiness--or am I to be the sport of fortune and slander--destined to
be driven forth unconvicted--unheard--untouch'd--if so, why did I not stay
at Strasburg, where justice--but I had sworn!  Come, thou shalt drink--to
St. Nicolas--O Julia!--What dost thou prick up thy ears at?--'tis nothing
but a man, &c.

The stranger rode on communing in this manner with his mule and Julia--till
he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he arrived, he alighted--saw his
mule, as he had promised it, taken good care of--took off his cloak-bag,
with his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in it--called for an omelet to his
supper, went to his bed about twelve o'clock, and in five minutes fell fast
asleep.

It was about the same hour when the tumult in Strasburg being abated for
that night,--the Strasburgers had all got quietly into their beds--but not
like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen Mab,
like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger's nose, and without
reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and
dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there
were heads in Strasburg to hold them.  The abbess of Quedlingberg, who with
the four great dignitaries of her chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the
sub-chantress, and senior canonness, had that week come to Strasburg to
consult the university upon a case of conscience relating to their placket-
holes--was ill all the night.

The courteous stranger's nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal
gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four
great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the
whole night thro' for it--there was no keeping a limb still amongst them--
in short, they got up like so many ghosts.

The penitentiaries of the third order of saint Francis--the nuns of mount
Calvary--the Praemonstratenses--the Clunienses (Hafen Slawkenbergius means
the Benedictine nuns of Cluny, founded in the year 940, by Odo, abbe de
Cluny.)--the Carthusians, and all the severer orders of nuns, who lay that
night in blankets or hair-cloth, were still in a worse condition than the
abbess of Quedlingberg--by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling
from one side of their beds to the other the whole night long--the several
sisterhoods had scratch'd and maul'd themselves all to death--they got out
of their beds almost flay'd alive--every body thought saint Antony had
visited them for probation with his fire--they had never once, in short,
shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins.

The nuns of saint Ursula acted the wisest--they never attempted to go to
bed at all.

The dean of Strasburg, the prebendaries, the capitulars and domiciliars
(capitularly assembled in the morning to consider the case of butter'd
buns) all wished they had followed the nuns of saint Ursula's example.--

In the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the night before, the
bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven--there were no butter'd buns to
be had for breakfast in all Strasburg--the whole close of the cathedral was
in one eternal commotion--such a cause of restlessness and disquietude, and
such a zealous inquiry into that cause of the restlessness, had never
happened in Strasburg, since Martin Luther, with his doctrines, had turned
the city upside down.

If the stranger's nose took this liberty of thrusting himself thus into the
dishes (Mr. Shandy's compliments to orators--is very sensible that
Slawkenbergius has here changed his metaphor--which he is very guilty of:--
that as a translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done what he could to make
him stick to it--but that here 'twas impossible.) of religious orders, &c.
what a carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the laity!--'tis more
than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power to describe; tho', I
acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius with more gaiety of thought than I could
have expected from him) that there is many a good simile now subsisting in
the world which might give my countrymen some idea of it; but at the close
of such a folio as this, wrote for their sakes, and in which I have spent
the greatest part of my life--tho' I own to them the simile is in being,
yet would it not be unreasonable in them to expect I should have either
time or inclination to search for it?  Let it suffice to say, that the riot
and disorder it occasioned in the Strasburgers fantasies was so general--
such an overpowering mastership had it got of all the faculties of the
Strasburgers minds--so many strange things, with equal confidence on all
sides, and with equal eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to
concerning it, that turned the whole stream of all discourse and wonder
towards it--every soul, good and bad--rich and poor--learned and unlearned-
-doctor and student--mistress and maid--gentle and simple--nun's flesh and
woman's flesh, in Strasburg spent their time in hearing tidings about it--
every eye in Strasburg languished to see it--every finger--every thumb in
Strasburg burned to touch it.

Now what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to add, to so
vehement a desire--was this, that the centinel, the bandy-legg'd drummer,
the trumpeter, the trumpeter's wife, the burgomaster's widow, the master of
the inn, and the master of the inn's wife, how widely soever they all
differed every one from another in their testimonies and description of the
stranger's nose--they all agreed together in two points--namely, that he
was gone to Frankfort, and would not return to Strasburg till that day
month; and secondly, whether his nose was true or false, that the stranger
himself was one of the most perfect paragons of beauty--the finest-made
man--the most genteel!--the most generous of his purse--the most courteous
in his carriage, that had ever entered the gates of Strasburg--that as he
rode, with scymetar slung loosely to his wrist, thro' the streets--and
walked with his crimson-sattin breeches across the parade--'twas with so
sweet an air of careless modesty, and so manly withal--as would have put
the heart in jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin
who had cast her eyes upon him.

I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and yearnings
of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of Quedlingberg, the
prioress, the deaness, and sub-chantress, for sending at noon-day for the
trumpeter's wife:  she went through the streets of Strasburg with her
husband's trumpet in her hand,--the best apparatus the straitness of the
time would allow her, for the illustration of her theory--she staid no
longer than three days.

The centinel and bandy-legg'd drummer!--nothing on this side of old Athens
could equal them! they read their lectures under the city-gates to comers
and goers, with all the pomp of a Chrysippus and a Crantor in their
porticos.

The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand, read his also in
the same stile--under the portico or gateway of his stable-yard--his wife,
hers more privately in a back room:  all flocked to their lectures; not
promiscuously--but to this or that, as is ever the way, as faith and
credulity marshal'd them--in a word, each Strasburger came crouding for
intelligence--and every Strasburger had the intelligence he wanted.

'Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators in natural
philosophy, &c. that as soon as the trumpeter's wife had finished the
abbess of Quedlingberg's private lecture, and had begun to read in public,
which she did upon a stool in the middle of the great parade,--she
incommoded the other demonstrators mainly, by gaining incontinently the
most fashionable part of the city of Strasburg for her auditory--But when a
demonstrator in philosophy (cries Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an
apparatus, pray what rival in science can pretend to be heard besides him?

Whilst the unlearned, thro' these conduits of intelligence, were all busied
in getting down to the bottom of the well, where Truth keeps her little
court--were the learned in their way as busy in pumping her up thro' the
conduits of dialect induction--they concerned themselves not with facts--
they reasoned--

Not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than the
Faculty--had not all their disputes about it run into the affair of Wens
and oedematous swellings, they could not keep clear of them for their
bloods and souls--the stranger's nose had nothing to do either with wens or
oedematous swellings.

It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous mass
of heterogenous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the
nose, whilst the infant was in Utera, without destroying the statical
balance of the foetus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months
before the time.--

--The opponents granted the theory--they denied the consequences.

And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said they, was not laid
in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in the very first stamina and
rudiments of its formation, before it came into the world (bating the case
of Wens) it could not regularly grow and be sustained afterwards.

This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the effect
which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the increase and
prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest growth and expansion
imaginable--In the triumph of which theory, they went so far as to affirm,
that there was no cause in nature, why a nose might not grow to the size of
the man himself.

The respondents satisfied the world this event could never happen to them
so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs--For the
stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception of
food, and turning it into chyle--and the lungs the only engine of
sanguification--it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite
brought it:  or admitting the possibility of a man's overloading his
stomach, nature had set bounds however to his lungs--the engine was of a
determined size and strength, and could elaborate but a certain quantity in
a given time--that is, it could produce just as much blood as was
sufficient for one single man, and no more; so that, if there was as much
nose as man--they proved a mortification must necessarily ensue; and
forasmuch as there could not be a support for both, that the nose must
either fall off from the man, or the man inevitably fall off from his nose.

Nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried the opponents--else
what do you say to the case of a whole stomach--a whole pair of lungs, and
but half a man, when both his legs have been unfortunately shot off?

He dies of a plethora, said they--or must spit blood, and in a fortnight or
three weeks go off in a consumption.--

--It happens otherwise--replied the opponents.--

It ought not, said they.

The more curious and intimate inquirers after nature and her doings, though
they went hand in hand a good way together, yet they all divided about the
nose at last, almost as much as the Faculty itself

They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and geometrical
arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the human frame to its
several destinations, offices, and functions, which could not be
transgressed but within certain limits--that nature, though she sported--
she sported within a certain circle;--and they could not agree about the
diameter of it.

The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than any of the
classes of the literati;--they began and ended with the word Nose; and had
it not been for a petitio principii, which one of the ablest of them ran
his head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole controversy had
been settled at once.

A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood--and not only
blood--but blood circulating in it to supply the phaenomenon with a
succession of drops--(a stream being but a quicker succession of drops,
that is included, said he.)--Now death, continued the logician, being
nothing but the stagnation of the blood--

I deny the definition--Death is the separation of the soul from the body,
said his antagonist--Then we don't agree about our weapons, said the
logician--Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist.

The civilians were still more concise:  what they offered being more in the
nature of a decree--than a dispute.

Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could not
possibly have been suffered in civil society--and if false--to impose upon
society with such false signs and tokens, was a still greater violation of
its rights, and must have had still less mercy shewn it.

The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved the
stranger's nose was neither true nor false.

This left room for the controversy to go on.  It was maintained by the
advocates of the ecclesiastic court, that there was nothing to inhibit a
decree, since the stranger ex mero motu had confessed he had been at the
Promontory of Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. &c.--To this it
was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place as the
Promontory of Noses, and the learned be ignorant where it lay.  The
commissary of the bishop of Strasburg undertook the advocates, explained
this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, shewing them, that the
Promontory of Noses was a mere allegorick expression, importing no more
than that nature had given him a long nose:  in proof of which, with great
learning, he cited the underwritten authorities, (Nonnulli ex nostratibus
eadem loquendi formula utun.  Quinimo & Logistae & Canonistae--Vid. Parce
Barne Jas in d. L. Provincial.  Constitut. de conjec. vid. Vol. Lib. 4.
Titul. I. n. 7 qua etiam in re conspir.  Om de Promontorio Nas. Tichmak.
ff. d. tit. 3. fol. 189. passim. Vid. Glos. de contrahend. empt. &c. necnon
J. Scrudr. in cap. para refut. per totum.  Cum his cons. Rever. J. Tubal,
Sentent. & Prov. cap. 9. ff. 11, 12. obiter.  V. & Librum, cui Tit. de
Terris & Phras. Belg. ad finem, cum comment.  N. Bardy Belg. Vid. Scrip.
Argentotarens. de Antiq. Ecc. in Episc Archiv. fid coll. per Von Jacobum
Koinshoven Folio Argent. 1583. praecip. ad finem.  Quibus add. Rebuff in L.
obvenire de Signif. Nom. ff. fol. & de jure Gent. & Civil. de protib.
aliena feud. per federa, test. Joha. Luxius in prolegom. quem velim videas,
de Analy. Cap. 1, 2, 3.  Vid. Idea.) which had decided the point
incontestably, had it not appeared that a dispute about some franchises of
dean and chapter-lands had been determined by it nineteen years before.

It happened--I must say unluckily for Truth, because they were giving her a
lift another way in so doing; that the two universities of Strasburg--the
Lutheran, founded in the year 1538 by Jacobus Surmis, counsellor of the
senate,--and the Popish, founded by Leopold, arch-duke of Austria, were,
during all this time, employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except
just what the affair of the abbess of Quedlingberg's placket-holes
required)--in determining the point of Martin Luther's damnation.

The Popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate a priori, that from the
necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of October
1483--when the moon was in the twelfth house, Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in
the third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury, all got together in the fourth--
that he must in course, and unavoidably, be a damn'd man--and that his
doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damn'd doctrines too.

By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all at
once with Scorpio (Haec mira, satisque horrenda.  Planetarum coitio sub
Scorpio Asterismo in nona coeli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant
efficit Martinum Lutherum sacrilegum hereticum, Christianae religionis
hostem acerrimum atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione ad Martis coitum,
religiosissimus obiit, ejus Anima scelestissima ad infernos navigavit--ab
Alecto, Tisiphone & Megara flagellis igneis cruciata perenniter.--Lucas
Gaurieus in Tractatu astrologico de praeteritis multorum hominum
accidentibus per genituras examinatis.) (in reading this my father would
always shake his head) in the ninth house, with the Arabians allotted to
religion--it appeared that Martin Luther did not care one stiver about the
matter--and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of Mars--
they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming--with the
blast of which his soul (being steep'd in guilt) sailed before the wind, in
the lake of hell-fire.

The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this, was, that it must
certainly be the soul of another man, born Oct. 22, 83. which was forced to
sail down before the wind in that manner--inasmuch as it appeared from the
register of Islaben in the county of Mansfelt, that Luther was not born in
the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the 22d day of October, but on the
10th of November, the eve of Martinmas day, from whence he had the name of
Martin.

(--I must break off my translation for a moment; for if I did not, I know I
should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the abbess of
Quedlingberg--It is to tell the reader; that my father never read this
passage of Slawkenbergius to my uncle Toby, but with triumph--not over my
uncle Toby, for he never opposed him in it--but over the whole world.

--Now you see, brother Toby, he would say, looking up, 'that christian
names are not such indifferent things;'--had Luther here been called by any
other name but Martin, he would have been damn'd to all eternity--Not that
I look upon Martin, he would add, as a good name--far from it--'tis
something better than a neutral, and but a little--yet little as it is you
see it was of some service to him.

My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the
best logician could shew him--yet so strange is the weakness of man at the
same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of
it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many
stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decades full as entertaining as this I am
translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over
with half the delight--it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses
together--his Names and his Noses.--I will be bold to say, he might have
read all the books in the Alexandrian Library, had not fate taken other
care of them, and not have met with a book or passage in one, which hit two
such nails as these upon the head at one stroke.)

The two universities of Strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of
Luther's navigation.  The Protestant doctors had demonstrated, that he had
not sailed right before the wind, as the Popish doctors had pretended; and
as every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it--they were
going to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points he was off; whether
Martin had doubled the cape, or had fallen upon a lee-shore; and no doubt,
as it was an enquiry of much edification, at least to those who understood
this sort of Navigation, they had gone on with it in spite of the size of
the stranger's nose, had not the size of the stranger's nose drawn off the
attention of the world from what they were about--it was their business to
follow.

The abbess of Quedlingberg and her four dignitaries was no stop; for the
enormity of the stranger's nose running full as much in their fancies as
their case of conscience--the affair of their placket-holes kept cold--in a
word, the printers were ordered to distribute their types--all
controversies dropp'd.

'Twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of it--to a nut-
shell--to have guessed on which side of the nose the two universities would
split.

'Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.

'Tis below reason, cried the others.

'Tis faith, cried one.

'Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.

'Tis possible, cried the one.

'Tis impossible, said the other.

God's power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do any thing.

He can do nothing, replied the Anti-nosarians, which implies
contradictions.

He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.

As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's ear, replied the
Anti-nosarians.

He cannot make two and two five, replied the Popish doctors.--'Tis false,
said their other opponents.--

Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the
reality of the nose.--It extends only to all possible things, replied the
Lutherans.

By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he
thinks fit, as big as the steeple of Strasburg.

Now the steeple of Strasburg being the biggest and the tallest church-
steeple to be seen in the whole world, the Anti-nosarians denied that a
nose of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least by a middle-
siz'd man--The Popish doctors swore it could--The Lutheran doctors said
No;--it could not.

This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way, upon
the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of God--That
controversy led them naturally into Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Aquinas to
the devil.

The stranger's nose was no more heard of in the dispute--it just served as
a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity--and then they
all sailed before the wind.

Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.

The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the
contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate
degree--The less they understood of the matter the greater was their wonder
about it--they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied--saw
their doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brasssarians, the Turpentarians, on
one side--the Popish doctors on the other, like Pantagruel and his
companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle, all embarked out of sight.

--The poor Strasburgers left upon the beach!

--What was to be done?--No delay--the uproar increased--every one in
disorder--the city gates set open.--

Unfortunate Strasbergers! was there in the store-house of nature--was there
in the lumber-rooms of learning--was there in the great arsenal of chance,
one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and
stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of Fate to play
upon your hearts?--I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of
yourselves--'tis to write your panegyrick.  Shew me a city so macerated
with expectation--who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or
hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for seven-and-twenty
days together, who could have held out one day longer.

On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to
Strasburg.

Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly have made some
mistake in his numeral characters) 7000 coaches--15000 single-horse chairs-
-20000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with senators,
counsellors, syndicks--beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons,
concubines, all in their coaches--The abbess of Quedlingberg, with the
prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the procession in one
coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the four great dignitaries of his
chapter, on her left-hand--the rest following higglety-pigglety as they
could; some on horseback--some on foot--some led--some driven--some down
the Rhine--some this way--some that--all set out at sun-rise to meet the
courteous stranger on the road.

Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale--I say Catastrophe (cries
Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only
rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a Drama, but
rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it--it has
its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing
one out of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them--
without which a tale had better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius,
but be kept to a man's self.

In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I Slawkenbergius tied down
every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the
stranger and his nose.

--From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of
Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the
Protasis or first entrance--where the characters of the Personae Dramatis
are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.

The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened,
till it arrives at its state or height called the Catastasis, and which
usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of
my tale, betwixt the first night's uproar about the nose, to the conclusion
of the trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in the middle of the grand
parade:  and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute--to the
doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the Strasburgers upon the  beach
in distress, is the Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and
passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act.

This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers in the Frankfort
road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out
of a state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and
quietness.

This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the Catastrophe or Peripeitia
of my tale--and that is the part of it I am going to relate.

We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep--he enters now upon the
stage.

--What dost thou prick up thy ears at?--'tis nothing but a man upon a
horse--was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule.  It was not
proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master's word for
it; and without any more ifs or ands, let the traveller and his horse pass
by.

The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to Strasburg that
night.  What a fool am I, said the traveller to himself, when he had rode
about a league farther, to think of getting into Strasburg this night.--
Strasburg!--the great Strasburg!--Strasburg, the capital of all Alsatia! 
Strasburg, an imperial city!  Strasburg, a sovereign state!  Strasburg,
garrisoned with five thousand of the best troops in all the world!--Alas!
if I was at the gates of Strasburg this moment, I could not gain admittance
into it for a ducat--nay a ducat and half--'tis too much--better go back to
the last inn I have passed--than lie I know not where--or give I know not
what.  The traveller, as he made these reflections in his mind, turned his
horse's head about, and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted
into his chamber, he arrived at the same inn.

--We have bacon in the house, said the host, and bread--and till eleven
o'clock this night had three eggs in it--but a stranger, who arrived an
hour ago, has had them dressed into an omelet, and we have nothing.--

Alas! said the traveller, harassed as I am, I want nothing but a bed.--I
have one as soft as is in Alsatia, said the host.

--The stranger, continued he, should have slept in it, for 'tis my best
bed, but upon the score of his nose.--He has got a defluxion, said the
traveller.--Not that I know, cried the host.--But 'tis a camp-bed, and
Jacinta, said he, looking towards the maid, imagined there was not room in
it to turn his nose in.--Why so? cried the traveller, starting back.--It is
so long a nose, replied the host.--The traveller fixed his eyes upon
Jacinta, then upon the ground--kneeled upon his right knee--had just got
his hand laid upon his breast--Trifle not with my anxiety, said he rising
up again.--'Tis no trifle, said Jacinta, 'tis the most glorious nose!--The
traveller fell upon his knee again--laid his hand upon his breast--then,
said he, looking up to heaven, thou hast conducted me to the end of my
pilgrimage--'Tis Diego.

The traveller was the brother of the Julia, so often invoked that night by
the stranger as he rode from Strasburg upon his mule; and was come, on her
part, in quest of him.  He had accompanied his sister from Valadolid across
the Pyrenean mountains through France, and had many an entangled skein to
wind off in pursuit of him through the many meanders and abrupt turnings of
a lover's thorny tracks.

--Julia had sunk under it--and had not been able to go a step farther than
to Lyons, where, with the many disquietudes of a tender heart, which all
talk of--but few feel--she sicken'd, but had just strength to write a
letter to Diego; and having conjured her brother never to see her face till
he had found him out, and put the letter into his hands, Julia took to her
bed.

Fernandez (for that was her brother's name)--tho' the camp-bed was as soft
as any one in Alsace, yet he could not shut his eyes in it.--As soon as it
was day he rose, and hearing Diego was risen too, he entered his chamber,
and discharged his sister's commission.

The letter was as follows:

'Seig. Diego,

'Whether my suspicions of your nose were justly excited or not--'tis not
now to inquire--it is enough I have not had firmness to put them to farther
tryal.

'How could I know so little of myself, when I sent my Duenna to forbid your
coming more under my lattice? or how could I know so little of you, Diego,
as to imagine you would not have staid one day in Valadolid to have given
ease to my doubts?--Was I to be abandoned, Diego, because I was deceived?
or was it kind to take me at my word, whether my suspicions were just or
no, and leave me, as you did, a prey to much uncertainty and sorrow?

'In what manner Julia has resented this--my brother, when he puts this
letter into your hands, will tell you; He will tell you in how few moments
she repented of the rash message she had sent you--in what frantic haste
she flew to her lattice, and how many days and nights together she leaned
immoveably upon her elbow, looking through it towards the way which Diego
was wont to come.

'He will tell you, when she heard of your departure--how her spirits
deserted her--how her heart sicken'd--how piteously she mourned--how low
she hung her head.  O Diego! how many weary steps has my brother's pity led
me by the hand languishing to trace out yours; how far has desire carried
me beyond strength--and how oft have I fainted by the way, and sunk into
his arms, with only power to cry out--O my Diego!

'If the gentleness of your carriage has not belied your heart, you will fly
to me, almost as fast as you fled from me--haste as you will--you will
arrive but to see me expire.--'Tis a bitter draught, Diego, but oh! 'tis
embittered still more by dying un. . .--'

She could proceed no farther.

Slawkenbergius supposes the word intended was unconvinced, but her strength
would not enable her to finish her letter.

The heart of the courteous Diego over-flowed as he read the letter--he
ordered his mule forthwith and Fernandez's horse to be saddled; and as no
vent in prose is equal to that of poetry in such conflicts--chance, which
as often directs us to remedies as to diseases, having thrown a piece of
charcoal into the window--Diego availed himself of it, and whilst the
hostler was getting ready his mule, he eased his mind against the wall as
follows.


Ode.

Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love,
Unless my Julia strikes the key,
Her hand alone can touch the part,
Whose dulcet movement charms the heart,
And governs all the man with sympathetick sway.

2d.


O Julia!

The lines were very natural--for they were nothing at all to the purpose,
says Slawkenbergius, and 'tis a pity there were no more of them; but
whether it was that Seig. Diego was slow in composing verses--or the
hostler quick in saddling mules--is not averred; certain it was, that
Diego's mule and Fernandez's horse were ready at the door of the inn,
before Diego was ready for his second stanza; so without staying to finish
his ode, they both mounted, sallied forth, passed the Rhine, traversed
Alsace, shaped their course towards Lyons, and before the Strasburgers and
the abbess of Quedlingberg had set out on their cavalcade, had Fernandez,
Diego, and his Julia, crossed the Pyrenean mountains, and got safe to
Valadolid.

'Tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when Diego was in
Spain, it was not possible to meet the courteous stranger in the Frankfort
road; it is enough to say, that of all restless desires, curiosity being
the strongest--the Strasburgers felt the full force of it; and that for
three days and nights they were tossed to and fro in the Frankfort road,
with the tempestuous fury of this passion, before they could submit to
return home.--When alas! an event was prepared for them, of all other, the
most grievous that could befal a free people.

As this revolution of the Strasburgers affairs is often spoken of, and
little understood, I will, in ten words, says Slawkenbergius, give the
world an explanation of it, and with it put an end to my tale.

Every body knows of the grand system of Universal Monarchy, wrote by order
of Mons. Colbert, and put in manuscript into the hands of Lewis the
fourteenth, in the year 1664.

'Tis as well known, that one branch out of many of that system, was the
getting possession of Strasburg, to favour an entrance at all times into
Suabia, in order to disturb the quiet of Germany--and that in consequence
of this plan, Strasburg unhappily fell at length into their hands.

It is the lot of a few to trace out the true springs of this and such like
revolutions--The vulgar look too high for them--Statesmen look too low--
Truth (for once) lies in the middle.

What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one
historian--The Strasburgers deemed it a diminution of their freedom to
receive an imperial garrison--so fell a prey to a French one.

The fate, says another, of the Strasburgers, may be a warning to all free
people to save their money.--They anticipated their revenues--brought
themselves under taxes, exhausted their strength, and in the end became so
weak a people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so the
French pushed them open.

Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, 'twas not the French,--'twas Curiosity
pushed them open--The French indeed, who are ever upon the catch, when they
saw the Strasburgers, men, women and children, all marched out to follow
the stranger's nose--each man followed his own, and marched in.

Trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down ever since--
but not from any cause which commercial heads have assigned; for it is
owing to this only, that Noses have ever so run in their heads, that the
Strasburgers could not follow their business.

Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, making an exclamation--it is not the
first--and I fear will not be the last fortress that has been either won--
or lost by Noses.

The End of Slawkenbergius's Tale.


Chapter 2.XXXVI.

With all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father's fancy-
-with so many family prejudices--and ten decades of such tales running on
for ever along with them--how was it possible with such exquisite--was it a
true nose?--That a man with such exquisite feelings as my father had, could
bear the shock at all below stairs--or indeed above stairs, in any other
posture, but the very posture I have described?

--Throw yourself down upon the bed, a dozen times--taking care only to
place a looking-glass first in a chair on one side of it, before you do it-
-But was the stranger's nose a true nose, or was it a false one?

To tell that before-hand, madam, would be to do injury to one of the best
tales in the Christian-world; and that is the tenth of the tenth decade,
which immediately follows this.

This tale, cried Slawkenbergius, somewhat exultingly, has been reserved by
me for the concluding tale of my whole work; knowing right well, that when
I shall have told it, and my reader shall have read it thro'--'twould be
even high time for both of us to shut up the book; inasmuch, continues
Slawkenbergius, as I know of no tale which could possibly ever go down
after it.

'Tis a tale indeed!

This sets out with the first interview in the inn at Lyons, when Fernandez
left the courteous stranger and his sister Julia alone in her chamber, and
is over-written.


The Intricacies of Diego and Julia.

Heavens! thou art a strange creature, Slawkenbergius! what a whimsical view
of the involutions of the heart of woman hast thou opened! how this can
ever be translated, and yet if this specimen of Slawkenbergius's tales, and
the exquisitiveness of his moral, should please the world--translated shall
a couple of volumes be.--Else, how this can ever be translated into good
English, I have no sort of conception--There seems in some passages to want
a sixth sense to do it rightly.--What can he mean by the lambent
pupilability of slow, low, dry chat, five notes below the natural tone--
which you know, madam, is little more than a whisper?  The moment I
pronounced the words, I could perceive an attempt towards a vibration in
the strings, about the region of the heart.--The brain made no
acknowledgment.--There's often no good understanding betwixt 'em--I felt as
if I understood it.--I had no ideas.--The movement could not be without
cause.--I'm lost.  I can make nothing of it--unless, may it please your
worships, the voice, in that case being little more than a whisper,
unavoidably forces the eyes to approach not only within six inches of each
other--but to look into the pupils--is not that dangerous?--But it can't be
avoided--for to look up to the cieling, in that case the two chins
unavoidably meet--and to look down into each other's lap, the foreheads
come to immediate contact, which at once puts an end to the conference--I
mean to the sentimental part of it.--What is left, madam, is not worth
stooping for.


Chapter 2.XXXVII.

My father lay stretched across the bed as still as if the hand of death had
pushed him down, for a full hour and a half before he began to play upon
the floor with the toe of that foot which hung over the bed-side; my uncle
Toby's heart was a pound lighter for it.--In a few moments, his left-hand,
the knuckles of which had all the time reclined upon the handle of the
chamber-pot, came to its feeling--he thrust it a little more within the
valance--drew up his hand, when he had done, into his bosom--gave a hem! 
My good uncle Toby, with infinite pleasure, answered it; and full gladly
would have ingrafted a sentence of consolation upon the opening it
afforded:  but having no talents, as I said, that way, and fearing moreover
that he might set out with something which might make a bad matter worse,
he contented himself with resting his chin placidly upon the cross of his
crutch.

Now whether the compression shortened my uncle Toby's face into a more
pleasurable oval--or that the philanthropy of his heart, in seeing his
brother beginning to emerge out of the sea of his afflictions, had braced
up his muscles--so that the compression upon his chin only doubled the
benignity which was there before, is not hard to decide.--My father, in
turning his eyes, was struck with such a gleam of sun-shine in his face, as
melted down the sullenness of his grief in a moment.

He broke silence as follows:


Chapter 2.XXXVIII.

Did ever man, brother Toby, cried my father, raising himself upon his
elbow, and turning himself round to the opposite side of the bed, where my
uncle Toby was sitting in his old fringed chair, with his chin resting upon
his crutch--did ever a poor unfortunate man, brother Toby, cried my father,
receive so many lashes?--The most I ever saw given, quoth my uncle Toby
(ringing the bell at the bed's head for Trim) was to a grenadier, I think
in Mackay's regiment.

--Had my uncle Toby shot a bullet through my father's heart, he could not
have fallen down with his nose upon the quilt more suddenly.

Bless me! said my uncle Toby.


Chapter 2.XXXIX.

Was it Mackay's regiment, quoth my uncle Toby, where the poor grenadier was
so unmercifully whipp'd at Bruges about the ducats?--O Christ! he was
innocent! cried Trim, with a deep sigh.--And he was whipp'd, may it please
your honour, almost to death's door.--They had better have shot him
outright, as he begg'd, and he had gone directly to heaven, for he was as
innocent as your honour.--I thank thee, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby.--I never
think of his, continued Trim, and my poor brother Tom's misfortunes, for we
were all three school-fellows, but I cry like a coward.--Tears are no proof
of cowardice, Trim.--I drop them oft-times myself, cried my uncle Toby.--I
know your honour does, replied Trim, and so am not ashamed of it myself.--
But to think, may it please your honour, continued Trim, a tear stealing
into the corner of his eye as he spoke--to think of two virtuous lads with
hearts as warm in their bodies, and as honest as God could make them--the
children of honest people, going forth with gallant spirits to seek their
fortunes in the world--and fall into such evils!--poor Tom! to be tortured
upon a rack for nothing--but marrying a Jew's widow who sold sausages--
honest Dick Johnson's soul to be scourged out of his body, for the ducats
another man put into his knapsack!--O!--these are misfortunes, cried Trim,-
-pulling out his handkerchief--these are misfortunes, may it please your
honour, worth lying down and crying over.

--My father could not help blushing.

'Twould be a pity, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, thou shouldst ever feel
sorrow of thy own--thou feelest it so tenderly for others.--Alack-o-day,
replied the corporal, brightening up his face--your honour knows I have
neither wife or child--I can have no sorrows in this world.--My father
could not help smiling.--As few as any man, Trim, replied my uncle Toby;
nor can I see how a fellow of thy light heart can suffer, but from the
distress of poverty in thy old age--when thou art passed all services,
Trim--and hast outlived thy friends.--An' please your honour, never fear,
replied Trim, chearily.--But I would have thee never fear, Trim, replied my
uncle Toby, and therefore, continued my uncle Toby, throwing down his
crutch, and getting up upon his legs as he uttered the word therefore--in
recompence, Trim, of thy long fidelity to me, and that goodness of thy
heart I have had such proofs of--whilst thy master is worth a shilling--
thou shalt never ask elsewhere, Trim, for a penny.  Trim attempted to thank
my uncle Toby--but had not power--tears trickled down his cheeks faster
than he could wipe them off--He laid his hands upon his breast--made a bow
to the ground, and shut the door.

--I have left Trim my bowling-green, cried my uncle Toby--My father
smiled.--I have left him moreover a pension, continued my uncle Toby.--My
father looked grave.


Chapter 2.XL.

Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pensions and
Grenadiers?


Chapter 2.XLI.

When my uncle Toby first mentioned the grenadier, my father, I said, fell
down with his nose flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my uncle Toby
had shot him; but it was not added that every other limb and member of my
father instantly relapsed with his nose into the same precise attitude in
which he lay first described; so that when corporal Trim left the room, and
my father found himself disposed to rise off the bed--he had all the little
preparatory movements to run over again, before he could do it.  Attitudes
are nothing, madam--'tis the transition from one attitude to another--like
the preparation and resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in
all.

For which reason my father played the same jig over again with his toe upon
the floor--pushed the chamber-pot still a little farther within the
valance--gave a hem--raised himself up upon his elbow--and was just
beginning to address himself to my uncle Toby--when recollecting the
unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that attitude--he got upon his
legs, and in making the third turn across the room, he stopped short before
my uncle Toby; and laying the three first fingers of his right-hand in the
palm of his left, and stooping a little, he addressed himself to my uncle
Toby as follows:


Chapter 2.XLII.

When I reflect, brother Toby, upon Man; and take a view of that dark side
of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of trouble--when
I consider, brother Toby, how oft we eat the bread of affliction, and that
we are born to it, as to the portion of our inheritance--I was born to
nothing, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting my father--but my commission. 
Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle leave you a hundred and twenty
pounds a year?--What could I have done without it? replied my uncle Toby--
That's another concern, said my father testily--But I say Toby, when one
runs over the catalogue of all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful Items
with which the heart of man is overcharged, 'tis wonderful by what hidden
resources the mind is enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does,
against the impositions laid upon our nature.--'Tis by the assistance of
Almighty God, cried my uncle Toby, looking up, and pressing the palms of
his hands close together--'tis not from our own strength, brother Shandy--a
centinel in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to stand it out
against a detachment of fifty men.--We are upheld by the grace and the
assistance of the best of Beings.

--That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,--But
give me leave to lead you, brother Toby, a little deeper into the mystery.

With all my heart, replied my uncle Toby.

My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which
Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens; which
your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the
particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it--for he
holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the
thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is
reclaiming--'You grant me this--and this:  and this, and this, I don't ask
of you--they follow of themselves in course.'

So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and his
thumb, and reasoning with my uncle Toby as he sat in his old fringed chair,
valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs--O Garrick!--what a rich
scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly would I write
such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and secure my own behind
it.


Chapter 2.XLIII.

Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet
at the same time 'tis of so slight a frame, and so totteringly put
together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets
with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen
times a day--was it not, brother Toby, that there is a secret spring within
us.--Which spring, said my uncle Toby, I take to be Religion.--Will that
set my child's nose on? cried my father, letting go his finger, and
striking one hand against the other.--It makes every thing straight for us,
answered my uncle Toby.--Figuratively speaking, dear Toby, it may, for
aught I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that
great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which, like a
secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can't prevent the shock-
-at least it imposes upon our sense of it.

Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, as he was
coming closer to the point--had my child arrived safe into the world,
unmartyr'd in that precious part of him--fanciful and extravagant as I may
appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic
bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and
conducts--Heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes
for the prosperity of my child, I never once wished to crown his head with
more glory and honour than what George or Edward would have spread around
it.

But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him--I
must counteract and undo it with the greatest good.

He shall be christened Trismegistus, brother.

I wish it may answer--replied my uncle Toby, rising up.


Chapter 2.XLIV.

What a chapter of chances, said my father, turning himself about upon the
first landing, as he and my uncle Toby were going down stairs, what a long
chapter of chances do the events of this world lay open to us!  Take pen
and ink in hand, brother Toby, and calculate it fairly--I know no more of
calculation than this balluster, said my uncle Toby (striking short of it
with his crutch, and hitting my father a desperate blow souse upon his
shin-bone)--'Twas a hundred to one-cried my uncle Toby--I thought, quoth my
father, (rubbing his shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother
Toby.  a mere chance, said my uncle Toby.--Then it adds one to the chapter-
-replied my father.

The double success of my father's repartees tickled off the pain of his
shin at once--it was well it so fell out--(chance! again)--or the world to
this day had never known the subject of my father's calculation--to guess
it--there was no chance--What a lucky chapter of chances has this turned
out! for it has saved me the trouble of writing one express, and in truth I
have enough already upon my hands without it.--Have not I promised the
world a chapter of knots? two chapters upon the right and the wrong end of
a woman? a chapter upon whiskers? a chapter upon wishes?--a chapter of
noses?--No, I have done that--a chapter upon my uncle Toby's modesty? to
say nothing of a chapter upon chapters, which I will finish before I sleep-
-by my great grandfather's whiskers, I shall never get half of 'em through
this year.

Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother Toby, said my
father, and it will turn out a million to one, that of all the parts of the
body, the edge of the forceps should have the ill luck just to fall upon
and break down that one part, which should break down the fortunes of our
house with it.

It might have been worse, replied my uncle Toby.--I don't comprehend, said
my father.--Suppose the hip had presented, replied my uncle Toby, as Dr.
Slop foreboded.

My father reflected half a minute--looked down--touched the middle of his
forehead slightly with his finger--

--True, said he.


Chapter 2.XLV.

Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one
pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing,
and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know,
as my father and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour, there may be as
many chapters as steps:--let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it
than my destiny:--A sudden impulse comes across me--drop the curtain,
Shandy--I drop it--Strike a line here across the paper, Tristram--I strike
it--and hey for a new chapter.

The deuce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this affair--and
if I had one--as I do all things out of all rule--I would twist it and tear
it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when I had done--Am I warm?  I am,
and the cause demands it--a pretty story! is a man to follow rules--or
rules to follow him?

Now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chapters, which I promised
to write before I went to sleep, I thought it meet to ease my conscience
entirely before I laid down, by telling the world all I knew about the
matter at once:  Is not this ten times better than to set out dogmatically
with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world a story of a
roasted horse--that chapters relieve the mind--that they assist--or impose
upon the imagination--and that in a work of this dramatic cast they are as
necessary as the shifting of scenes--with fifty other cold conceits, enough
to extinguish the fire which roasted him?--O! but to understand this, which
is a puff at the fire of Diana's temple--you must read Longinus--read away-
-if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time over--never
fear--read him again--Avicenna and Licetus read Aristotle's metaphysicks
forty times through a-piece, and never understood a single word.--But mark
the consequence--Avicenna turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of
writing--for he wrote books de omni scribili; and for Licetus (Fortunio)
though all the world knows he was born a foetus, (Ce Foetus n'etoit pas
plus grand que la paume de la main; mais son pere l'ayant examine en
qualite de Medecin, & ayant trouve que c'etoit quelque chose de plus qu'un
Embryon, le fit transporter tout vivant a Rapallo, ou il le fit voir a
Jerome Bardi & a d'autres Medecins du lieu.  On trouva qu'il ne lui
manquoit rien d'essentiel a la vie; & son pere pour faire voir un essai de
son experience, entreprit d'achever l'ouvrage de la Nature, & de travailler
a la formation de l'Enfant avec le meme artifice que celui dont on se sert
pour faire ecclorre les Poulets en Egypte.  Il instruisit une Nourisse de
tout ce qu'elle avoit a faire, & ayant fait mettre son fils dans un pour
proprement accommode, il reussit a l'elever & a lui faire prendre ses
accroissemens necessaires, par l'uniformite d'une chaleur etrangere mesuree
exactement sur les degres d'un Thermometre, ou d'un autre instrument
equivalent.  (Vide Mich. Giustinian, ne gli Scritt. Liguri a 223. 488.)  On
auroit toujours ete tres satisfait de l'industrie d'un pere si experimente
dans l'Art de la Generation, quand il n'auroit pu prolonger la vie a son
fils que pour Puelques mois, ou pour peu d'annees.  Mais quand on se
represente que l'Enfant a vecu pres de quatre-vingts ans, & qu'il a compose
quatre-vingts Ouvrages differents tous fruits d'une longue lecture--il faut
convenir que tout ce qui est incroyable n'est pas toujours faux, & que la
Vraisemblance n'est pas toujours du cote la Verite.  Il n'avoit que dix
neuf ans lorsqu'il composa Gonopsychanthropologia de Origine Animae
humanae.  (Les Enfans celebres, revus & corriges par M. de la Monnoye de
l'Academie Francoise.)) of no more than five inches and a half in length,
yet he grew to that astonishing height in literature, as to write a book
with a title as long as himself--the learned know I mean his
Gonopsychanthropologia, upon the origin of the human soul.

So much for my chapter upon chapters, which I hold to be the best chapter
in my whole work; and take my word, whoever reads it, is full as well
employed, as in picking straws.


Chapter 2.XLVI.

We shall bring all things to rights, said my father, setting his foot upon
the first step from the landing.--This Trismegistus, continued my father,
drawing his leg back and turning to my uncle Toby--was the greatest (Toby)
of all earthly beings--he was the greatest king--the greatest lawgiver--the
greatest philosopher--and the greatest priest--and engineer--said my uncle
Toby.

--In course, said my father.


Chapter 2.XLVII.

--And how does your mistress? cried my father, taking the same step over
again from the landing, and calling to Susannah, whom he saw passing by the
foot of the stairs with a huge pin-cushion in her hand--how does your
mistress?  As well, said Susannah, tripping by, but without looking up, as
can be expected.--What a fool am I! said my father, drawing his leg back
again--let things be as they will, brother Toby, 'tis ever the precise
answer--And how is the child, pray?--No answer.  And where is Dr. Slop?
added my father, raising his voice aloud, looking over the ballusters--
Susannah was out of hearing.

Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father, crossing the landing
in order to set his back against the wall, whilst he propounded it to my
uncle Toby--of all the puzzling riddles, said he, in a marriage state,--of
which you may trust me, brother Toby, there are more asses loads than all
Job's stock of asses could have carried--there is not one that has more
intricacies in it than this--that from the very moment the mistress of the
house is brought to bed, every female in it, from my lady's gentlewoman
down to the cinder-wench, becomes an inch taller for it; and give
themselves more airs upon that single inch, than all their other inches put
together.

I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that 'tis we who sink an inch
lower.--If I meet but a woman with child--I do it.--'Tis a heavy tax upon
that half of our fellow-creatures, brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby--'Tis
a piteous burden upon 'em, continued he, shaking his head--Yes, yes, 'tis a
painful thing--said my father, shaking his head too--but certainly since
shaking of heads came into fashion, never did two heads shake together, in
concert, from two such different springs.

God bless / Deuce take 'em all--said my uncle Toby and my father, each to
himself.


Chapter 2.XVLIII.

Holla!--you, chairman!--here's sixpence--do step into that bookseller's
shop, and call me a day-tall critick.  I am very willing to give any one of
'em a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my uncle
Toby off the stairs, and to put them to bed.

--'Tis even high time; for except a short nap, which they both got whilst
Trim was boring the jack-boots--and which, by-the-bye, did my father no
sort of good, upon the score of the bad hinge--they have not else shut
their eyes, since nine hours before the time that doctor Slop was led into
the back parlour in that dirty pickle by Obadiah.

Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this--and to take up--
Truce.

I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observation upon the
strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as things
stand at present--an observation never applicable before to any one
biographical writer since the creation of the world, but to myself--and I
believe, will never hold good to any other, until its final destruction--
and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your
worships attending to.

I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and
having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third volume
(According to the preceding Editions.)--and no farther than to my first
day's life--'tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four
days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that
instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been
doing at it--on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back--was
every day of my life to be as busy a day as this--And why not?--and the
transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description--And for
what reason should they be cut short? as at this rate I should just live
364 times faster than I should write--It must follow, an' please your
worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write--and
consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have
to read.

Will this be good for your worships eyes?

It will do well for mine; and, was it not that my Opinions will be the
death of me, I perceive I shall lead a fine life of it out of this self-
same life of mine; or, in other words, shall lead a couple of fine lives
together.

As for the proposal of twelve volumes a year, or a volume a month, it no
way alters my prospect--write as I will, and rush as I may into the middle
of things, as Horace advises--I shall never overtake myself whipp'd and
driven to the last pinch; at the worst I shall have one day the start of my
pen--and one day is enough for two volumes--and two volumes will be enough
for one year.--

Heaven prosper the manufacturers of paper under this propitious reign,
which is now opened to us--as I trust its providence will prosper every
thing else in it that is taken in hand.

As for the propagation of Geese--I give myself no concern--Nature is all-
bountiful--I shall never want tools to work with.

--So then, friend! you have got my father and my uncle Toby off the stairs,
and seen them to bed?--And how did you manage it?--You dropp'd a curtain at
the stair-foot--I thought you had no other way for it--Here's a crown for
your trouble.


Chapter 2.XLIX.

--Then reach me my breeches off the chair, said my father to Susannah.--
There is not a moment's time to dress you, Sir, cried Susannah--the child
is as black in the face as my--As your what? said my father, for like all
orators, he was a dear searcher into comparisons.--Bless, me, Sir, said
Susannah, the child's in a fit.--And where's Mr. Yorick?--Never where he
should be, said Susannah, but his curate's in the dressing-room, with the
child upon his arm, waiting for the name--and my mistress bid me run as
fast as I could to know, as captain Shandy is the godfather, whether it
should not be called after him.

Were one sure, said my father to himself, scratching his eye-brow, that the
child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother Toby as not--
and it would be a pity, in such a case, to throw away so great a name as
Trismegistus upon him--but he may recover.

No, no,--said my father to Susannah, I'll get up--There is no time, cried
Susannah, the child's as black as my shoe.  Trismegistus, said my father--
But stay--thou art a leaky vessel, Susannah, added my father; canst thou
carry Trismegistus in thy head, the length of the gallery without
scattering?--Can I? cried Susannah, shutting the door in a huff.--If she
can, I'll be shot, said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark, and
groping for his breeches.

Susannah ran with all speed along the gallery.

My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.

Susannah got the start, and kept it--'Tis Tris--something, cried Susannah--
There is no christian-name in the world, said the curate, beginning with
Tris--but Tristram.  Then 'tis Tristram-gistus, quoth Susannah.

--There is no gistus to it, noodle!--'tis my own name, replied the curate,
dipping his hand, as he spoke, into the bason--Tristram! said he, &c. &c.
&c. &c.--so Tristram was I called, and Tristram shall I be to the day of my
death.

My father followed Susannah, with his night-gown across his arm, with
nothing more than his breeches on, fastened through haste with but a single
button, and that button through haste thrust only half into the button-
hole.

--She has not forgot the name, cried my father, half opening the door?--No,
no, said the curate, with a tone of intelligence.--And the child is better,
cried Susannah.--And how does your mistress?  As well, said Susannah, as
can be expected.--Pish! said my father, the button of his breeches slipping
out of the button-hole--So that whether the interjection was levelled at
Susannah, or the button-hole--whether Pish was an interjection of contempt
or an interjection of modesty, is a doubt, and must be a doubt till I shall
have time to write the three following favourite chapters, that is, my
chapter of chamber-maids, my chapter of pishes, and my chapter of button-
holes.

All the light I am able to give the reader at present is this, that the
moment my father cried Pish! he whisk'd himself about--and with his
breeches held up by one hand, and his night-gown thrown across the arm of
the other, he turned along the gallery to bed, something slower than he
came.


Chapter 2.L.

I wish I could write a chapter upon sleep.

A fitter occasion could never have presented itself, than what this moment
offers, when all the curtains of the family are drawn--the candles put out-
-and no creature's eyes are open but a single one, for the other has been
shut these twenty years, of my mother's nurse.

It is a fine subject.

And yet, as fine as it is, I would undertake to write a dozen chapters upon
button-holes, both quicker and with more fame, than a single chapter upon
this.

Button-holes! there is something lively in the very idea of 'em--and trust
me, when I get amongst 'em--You gentry with great beards--look as grave as
you will--I'll make merry work with my button-holes--I shall have 'em all
to myself--'tis a maiden subject--I shall run foul of no man's wisdom or
fine sayings in it.

But for sleep--I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin--I am no
dab at your fine sayings in the first place--and in the next, I cannot for
my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world--'tis the
refuge of the unfortunate--the enfranchisement of the prisoner--the downy
lap of the hopeless, the weary, and the broken-hearted; nor could I set out
with a lye in my mouth, by affirming, that of all the soft and delicious
functions of our nature, by which the great Author of it, in his bounty,
has been pleased to recompence the sufferings wherewith his justice and his
good pleasure has wearied us--that this is the chiefest (I know pleasures
worth ten of it); or what a happiness it is to man, when the anxieties and
passions of the day are over, and he lies down upon his back, that his soul
shall be so seated within him, that whichever way she turns her eyes, the
heavens shall look calm and sweet above her--no desire--or fear--or doubt
that troubles the air, nor any difficulty past, present, or to come, that
the imagination may not pass over without offence, in that sweet secession.

'God's blessing,' said Sancho Panca, 'be upon the man who first invented
this self-same thing called sleep--it covers a man all over like a cloak.' 
Now there is more to me in this, and it speaks warmer to my heart and
affections, than all the dissertations squeez'd out of the heads of the
learned together upon the subject.

--Not that I altogether disapprove of what Montaigne advances upon it--'tis
admirable in its way--(I quote by memory.)

The world enjoys other pleasures, says he, as they do that of sleep,
without tasting or feeling it as it slips and passes by.--We should study
and ruminate upon it, in order to render proper thanks to him who grants it
to us.--For this end I cause myself to be disturbed in my sleep, that I may
the better and more sensibly relish it.--And yet I see few, says he again,
who live with less sleep, when need requires; my body is capable of a firm,
but not of a violent and sudden agitation--I evade of late all violent
exercises--I am never weary with walking--but from my youth, I never looked
to ride upon pavements.  I love to lie hard and alone, and even without my
wife--This last word may stagger the faith of the world--but remember, 'La
Vraisemblance' (as Bayle says in the affair of Liceti) 'n'est pas toujours
du Cote de la Verite.'  And so much for sleep.


Chapter 2.LI.

If my wife will but venture him--brother Toby, Trismegistus shall be
dress'd and brought down to us, whilst you and I are getting our breakfasts
together.--

--Go, tell Susannah, Obadiah, to step here.

She is run up stairs, answered Obadiah, this very instant, sobbing and
crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break.

We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from
Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby's face for some time--we
shall have a devilish month of it, brother Toby, said my father, setting
his arms a'kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, women, wind--brother
Toby!--'Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby.--That it is, cried my
father--to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and riding triumph
in every corner of a gentleman's house--Little boots it to the peace of a
family, brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent
and unmoved--whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads.--

And what's the matter, Susannah?  They have called the child Tristram--and
my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about it--No!--'tis not my
fault, said Susannah--I told him it was Tristram-gistus.

--Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, said my father, taking down his hat-
-but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members
which a common reader would imagine!

--For he spake in the sweetest modulation--and took down his hat with the
genteelest movement of limbs, that ever affliction harmonized and attuned
together.

--Go to the bowling-green for corporal Trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking
to Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room.


Chapter 2.LII.

When the misfortune of my Nose fell so heavily upon my father's head;--the
reader remembers that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast himself down
upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human
nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and
descending movements from him, upon this misfortune of my Name;--no.

The different weight, dear Sir--nay even the different package of two
vexations of the same weight--makes a very wide difference in our manner of
bearing and getting through with them.--It is not half an hour ago, when
(in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil's writing for daily
bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished, and carefully wrote
out, slap into the fire, instead of the foul one.

Instantly I snatch'd off my wig, and threw it perpendicularly, with all
imaginable violence, up to the top of the room--indeed I caught it as it
fell--but there was an end of the matter; nor do I think any think else in
Nature would have given such immediate ease:  She, dear Goddess, by an
instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases, determines us to a sally of
this or that member--or else she thrusts us into this or that place, or
posture of body, we know not why--But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles
and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark
sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the
clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled
and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works:  so that this, like
a thousand other things, falls out for us in a way, which tho' we cannot
reason upon it--yet we find the good of it, may it please your reverences
and your worships--and that's enough for us.

Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for his life--nor
could he carry it up stairs like the other--he walked composedly out with
it to the fish-pond.

Had my father leaned his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour which way
to have gone--reason, with all her force, could not have directed him to
any think like it:  there is something, Sir, in fish-ponds--but what it is,
I leave to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt 'em to find out--
but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the
humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards
one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato,
nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any one of your noted lawgivers,
ever gave order about them.


Chapter 2.LIII.

Your honour, said Trim, shutting the parlour-door before he began to speak,
has heard, I imagine, of this unlucky accident--O yes, Trim, said my uncle
Toby, and it gives me great concern.--I am heartily concerned too, but I
hope your honour, replied Trim, will do me the justice to believe, that it
was not in the least owing to me.--To thee--Trim?--cried my uncle Toby,
looking kindly in his face--'twas Susannah's and the curate's folly betwixt
them.--What business could they have together, an' please your honour, in
the garden?--In the gallery thou meanest, replied my uncle Toby.

Trim found he was upon a wrong scent, and stopped short with a low bow--Two
misfortunes, quoth the corporal to himself, are twice as many at least as
are needful to be talked over at one time;--the mischief the cow has done
in breaking into the fortifications, may be told his honour hereafter.--
Trim's casuistry and address, under the cover of his low bow, prevented all
suspicion in my uncle Toby, so he went on with what he had to say to Trim
as follows:

--For my own part, Trim, though I can see little or no difference betwixt
my nephew's being called Tristram or Trismegistus--yet as the thing sits so
near my brother's heart, Trim--I would freely have given a hundred pounds
rather than it should have happened.--A hundred pounds, an' please your
honour! replied Trim,--I would not give a cherry-stone to boot.--Nor would
I, Trim, upon my own account, quoth my uncle Toby--but my brother, whom
there is no arguing with in this case--maintains that a great deal more
depends, Trim, upon christian-names, than what ignorant people imagine--for
he says there never was a great or heroic action performed since the world
began by one called Tristram--nay, he will have it, Trim, that a man can
neither be learned, or wise, or brave.--'Tis all fancy, an' please your
honour--I fought just as well, replied the corporal, when the regiment
called me Trim, as when they called me James Butler.--And for my own part,
said my uncle Toby, though I should blush to boast of myself, Trim--yet had
my name been Alexander, I could have done no more at Namur than my duty.--
Bless your honour! cried Trim, advancing three steps as he spoke, does a
man think of his christian-name when he goes upon the attack?--Or when he
stands in the trench, Trim? cried my uncle Toby, looking firm.--Or when he
enters a breach? said Trim, pushing in between two chairs.--Or forces the
lines? cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch like a pike.--Or
facing a platoon? cried Trim, presenting his stick like a firelock.--Or
when he marches up the glacis? cried my uncle Toby, looking warm and
setting his foot upon his stool.--


Chapter 2.LIV.

My father was returned from his walk to the fish-pond--and opened the
parlour-door in the very height of the attack, just as my uncle Toby was
marching up the glacis--Trim recovered his arms--never was my uncle Toby
caught in riding at such a desperate rate in his life! Alas! my uncle Toby!
had not a weightier matter called forth all the ready eloquence of my
father--how hadst thou then and thy poor Hobby-Horse too been insulted!

My father hung up his hat with the same air he took it down; and after
giving a slight look at the disorder of the room, he took hold of one of
the chairs which had formed the corporal's breach, and placing it over-
against my uncle Toby, he sat down in it, and as soon as the tea-things
were taken away, and the door shut, he broke out in a lamentation as
follows:


My Father's Lamentation.

It is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to
Ernulphus's curse, which was laid upon the corner of the chimney-piece--as
to my uncle Toby who sat under it--it is in vain longer, said my father, in
the most querulous monotony imaginable, to struggle as I have done against
this most uncomfortable of human persuasions--I see it plainly, that either
for my own sins, brother Toby, or the sins and follies of the Shandy
family, Heaven has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery
against me; and that the prosperity of my child is the point upon which the
whole force of it is directed to play.--Such a thing would batter the whole
universe about our ears, brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby--if it was so-
Unhappy Tristram! child of wrath! child of decrepitude! interruption!
mistake! and discontent!  What one misfortune or disaster in the book of
embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle thy
filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever thou camest into the
world--what evils in thy passage into it!--what evils since!--produced into
being, in the decline of thy father's days--when the powers of his
imagination and of his body were waxing feeble--when radical heat and
radical moisture, the elements which should have temper'd thine, were
drying up; and nothing left to found thy stamina in, but negations--'tis
pitiful--brother Toby, at the best, and called out for all the little helps
that care and attention on both sides could give it.  But how were we
defeated!  You know the event, brother Toby--'tis too melancholy a one to
be repeated now--when the few animal spirits I was worth in the world, and
with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been convey'd--were
all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the devil.--

Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against him;-
-and tried an experiment at least--whether calmness and serenity of mind in
your sister, with a due attention, brother Toby, to her evacuations and
repletions--and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of
nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.--My child was bereft
of these!--What a teazing life did she lead herself, and consequently her
foetus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? 
I thought my sister submitted with the greatest patience, replied my uncle
Toby--I never heard her utter one fretful word about it.--She fumed
inwardly, cried my father; and that, let me tell you, brother, was ten
times worse for the child--and then! what battles did she fight with me,
and what perpetual storms about the midwife.--There she gave vent, said my
uncle Toby.--Vent! cried my father, looking up.

But what was all this, my dear Toby, to the injuries done us by my child's
coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished, in this general
wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket unbroke,
unrifled.--

With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy in the womb
with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of
470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex--that
at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine net-work of the
intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters.

--Still we could have done.--Fool, coxcomb, puppy--give him but a Nose--
Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap--(shape him as you will) the door of
fortune stands open--O Licetus! Licetus! had I been blest with a foetus
five inches long and a half, like thee--Fate might have done her worst.

Still, brother Toby, there was one cast of the dye left for our child after
all--O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram!

We will send for Mr. Yorick, said my uncle Toby.

--You may send for whom you will, replied my father.


Chapter 2.LV.

What a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up and
two down for three volumes (According to the preceding Editions.) together,
without looking once behind, or even on one side of me, to see whom I trod
upon!--I'll tread upon no one--quoth I to myself when I mounted--I'll take
a good rattling gallop; but I'll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the
road.--So off I set--up one lane--down another, through this turnpike--over
that, as if the arch-jockey of jockeys had got behind me.

Now ride at this rate with what good intention and resolution you may--'tis
a million to one you'll do some one a mischief, if not yourself--He's
flung--he's off--he's lost his hat--he's down--he'll break his neck--see!--
if he has not galloped full among the scaffolding of the undertaking
criticks!--he'll knock his brains out against some of their posts--he's
bounced out!--look--he's now riding like a mad-cap full tilt through a
whole crowd of painters, fiddlers, poets, biographers, physicians, lawyers,
logicians, players, school-men, churchmen, statesmen, soldiers, casuists,
connoisseurs, prelates, popes, and engineers.--Don't fear, said I--I'll not
hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the king's highway.--But your horse throws
dirt; see you've splash'd a bishop--I hope in God, 'twas only Ernulphus,
said I.--But you have squirted full in the faces of Mess. Le Moyne, De
Romigny, and De Marcilly, doctors of the Sorbonne.--That was last year,
replied I.--But you have trod this moment upon a king.--Kings have bad
times on't, said I, to be trod upon by such people as me.

You have done it, replied my accuser.

I deny it, quoth I, and so have got off, and here am I standing with my
bridle in one hand, and with my cap in the other, to tell my story.--And
what in it?  You shall hear in the next chapter.


Chapter 2.LVI.

As Francis the first of France was one winterly night warming himself over
the embers of a wood fire, and talking with his first minister of sundry
things for the good of the state (Vide Menagiana, Vol. I.)--It would not be
amiss, said the king, stirring up the embers with his cane, if this good
understanding betwixt ourselves and Switzerland was a little strengthened.-
-There is no end, Sire, replied the minister, in giving money to these
people--they would swallow up the treasury of France.--Poo! poo! answered
the king--there are more ways, Mons. le Premier, of bribing states, besides
that of giving money--I'll pay Switzerland the honour of standing godfather
for my next child.--Your majesty, said the minister, in so doing, would
have all the grammarians in Europe upon your back;--Switzerland, as a
republic, being a female, can in no construction be godfather.--She may be
godmother, replied Francis hastily--so announce my intentions by a courier
to-morrow morning.

I am astonished, said Francis the First, (that day fortnight) speaking to
his minister as he entered the closet, that we have had no answer from
Switzerland.--Sire, I wait upon you this moment, said Mons. le Premier, to
lay before you my dispatches upon that business.--They take it kindly, said
the king.--They do, Sire, replied the minister, and have the highest sense
of the honour your majesty has done them--but the republick, as godmother,
claims her right, in this case, of naming the child.

In all reason, quoth the king--she will christen him Francis, or Henry, or
Lewis, or some name that she knows will be agreeable to us.  Your majesty
is deceived, replied the minister--I have this hour received a dispatch
from our resident, with the determination of the republic on that point
also.--And what name has the republick fixed upon for the Dauphin?--
Shadrach, Mesech, Abed-nego, replied the minister.--By Saint Peter's
girdle, I will have nothing to do with the Swiss, cried Francis the First,
pulling up his breeches and walking hastily across the floor.

Your majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself off.

We'll pay them in money--said the king.

Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, answered the
minister.--I'll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth Francis the First.

Your honour stands pawn'd already in this matter, answered Monsieur le
Premier.

Then, Mons. le Premier, said the king, by. . .we'll go to war with 'em.


Chapter 2.LVII.

Albeit, gentle reader, I have lusted earnestly, and endeavoured carefully
(according to the measure of such a slender skill as God has vouchsafed me,
and as convenient leisure from other occasions of needful profit and
healthful pastime have permitted) that these little books which I here put
into thy hands, might stand instead of many bigger books--yet have I
carried myself towards thee in such fanciful guise of careless disport,
that right sore am I ashamed now to intreat thy lenity seriously--in
beseeching thee to believe it of me, that in the story of my father and his
christian-names--I have no thoughts of treading upon Francis the First--nor
in the affair of the nose--upon Francis the Ninth--nor in the character of
my uncle Toby--of characterizing the militiating spirits of my country--the
wound upon his groin, is a wound to every comparison of that kind--nor by
Trim--that I meant the duke of Ormond--or that my book is wrote against
predestination, or free-will, or taxes--If 'tis wrote against any thing,--
'tis wrote, an' please your worships, against the spleen! in order, by a
more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and depression of the
diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles
in laughter, to drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gall-
bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his majesty's subjects, with all the
inimicitious passions which belong to them, down into their duodenums.


Chapter 2.LVIII.

--But can the thing be undone, Yorick? said my father--for in my opinion,
continued he, it cannot.  I am a vile canonist, replied Yorick--but of all
evils, holding suspence to be the most tormenting, we shall at least know
the worst of this matter.  I hate these great dinners--said my father--The
size of the dinner is not the point, answered Yorick--we want, Mr. Shandy,
to dive into the bottom of this doubt, whether the name can be changed or
not--and as the beards of so many commissaries, officials, advocates,
proctors, registers, and of the most eminent of our school-divines, and
others, are all to meet in the middle of one table, and Didius has so
pressingly invited you--who in your distress would miss such an occasion? 
All that is requisite, continued Yorick, is to apprize Didius, and let him
manage a conversation after dinner so as to introduce the subject.--Then my
brother Toby, cried my father, clapping his two hands together, shall go
with us.

--Let my old tye-wig, quoth my uncle Toby, and my laced regimentals, be
hung to the fire all night, Trim.


(page numbering skips ten pages)


Chapter 2.LX.

--No doubt, Sir,--there is a whole chapter wanting here--and a chasm of ten
pages made in the book by it--but the book-binder is neither a fool, or a
knave, or a puppy--nor is the book a jot more imperfect (at least upon that
score)--but, on the contrary, the book is more perfect and complete by
wanting the chapter, than having it, as I shall demonstrate to your
reverences in this manner.--I question first, by-the-bye, whether the same
experiment might not be made as successfully upon sundry other chapters--
but there is no end, an' please your reverences, in trying experiments upon
chapters--we have had enough of it--So there's an end of that matter.

But before I begin my demonstration, let me only tell you, that the chapter
which I have torn out, and which otherwise you would all have been reading
just now, instead of this--was the description of my father's, my uncle
Toby's, Trim's, and Obadiah's setting out and journeying to the visitation
at. . ..

We'll go in the coach, said my father--Prithee, have the arms been altered,
Obadiah?--It would have made my story much better to have begun with
telling you, that at the time my mother's arms were added to the Shandy's,
when the coach was re-painted upon my father's marriage, it had so fallen
out that the coach-painter, whether by performing all his works with the
left hand, like Turpilius the Roman, or Hans Holbein of Basil--or whether
'twas more from the blunder of his head than hand--or whether, lastly, it
was from the sinister turn which every thing relating to our family was apt
to take--it so fell out, however, to our reproach, that instead of the
bend-dexter, which since Harry the Eighth's reign was honestly our due--a
bend-sinister, by some of these fatalities, had been drawn quite across the
field of the Shandy arms.  'Tis scarce credible that the mind of so wise a
man as my father was, could be so much incommoded with so small a matter. 
The word coach--let it be whose it would--or coach-man, or coach-horse, or
coach-hire, could never be named in the family, but he constantly
complained of carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy upon the door of his
own; he never once was able to step into the coach, or out of it, without
turning round to take a view of the arms, and making a vow at the same
time, that it was the last time he would ever set his foot in it again,
till the bend-sinister was taken out--but like the affair of the hinge, it
was one of the many things which the Destinies had set down in their books
ever to be grumbled at (and in wiser families than ours)--but never to be
mended.

--Has the bend-sinister been brush'd out, I say? said my father.--There has
been nothing brush'd out, Sir, answered Obadiah, but the lining.  We'll go
o'horseback, said my father, turning to Yorick--Of all things in the world,
except politicks, the clergy know the least of heraldry, said Yorick.--No
matter for that, cried my father--I should be sorry to appear with a blot
in my escutcheon before them.--Never mind the bend-sinister, said my uncle
Toby, putting on his tye-wig.--No, indeed, said my father--you may go with
my aunt Dinah to a visitation with a bend-sinister, if you think fit--My
poor uncle Toby blush'd.  My father was vexed at himself.--No--my dear
brother Toby, said my father, changing his tone--but the damp of the coach-
lining about my loins, may give me the sciatica again, as it did December,
January, and February last winter--so if you please you shall ride my
wife's pad--and as you are to preach, Yorick, you had better make the best
of your way before--and leave me to take care of my brother Toby, and to
follow at our own rates.

Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description of this
cavalcade, in which Corporal Trim and Obadiah, upon two coach-horses a-
breast, led the way as slow as a patrole--whilst my uncle Toby, in his
laced regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep roads
and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning and arms, as
each could get the start.

--But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so
much above the stile and manner of any thing else I have been able to paint
in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without depreciating
every other scene; and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise
and balance, (whether of good or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from
whence the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results.  For my
own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little about it--
but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a
song--be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how
low you take it.

--This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the
lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well--(as Yorick told my
uncle Toby one night) by siege.--My uncle Toby looked brisk at the sound of
the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it.

I'm to preach at court next Sunday, said Homenas--run over my notes--so I
humm'd over doctor Homenas's notes--the modulation's very well--'twill do,
Homenas, if it holds on at this rate--so on I humm'd--and a tolerable tune
I thought it was; and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had
never found out how low, how flat, how spiritless and jejune it was, but
that all of a sudden, up started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so
rich, so heavenly,--it carried my soul up with it into the other world; now
had I (as Montaigne complained in a parallel accident)--had I found the
declivity easy, or the ascent accessible--certes I had been outwitted.--
Your notes, Homenas, I should have said, are good notes;--but it was so
perpendicular a precipice--so wholly cut off from the rest of the work,
that by the first note I humm'd I found myself flying into the other world,
and from thence discovered the vale from whence I came, so deep, so low,
and dismal, that I shall never have the heart to descend into it again.

> A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size--
take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.--And so much for
tearing out of chapters.


Chapter 2.LXI.

--See if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to
light their pipes!--'Tis abominable, answered Didius; it should not go
unnoticed, said doctor Kysarcius--> he was of the Kysarcii of the Low
Countries.

Methinks, said Didius, half rising from his chair, in order to remove a
bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him and
Yorick--you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit upon a
more proper place, Mr. Yorick--or at least upon a more proper occasion to
have shewn your contempt of what we have been about:  If the sermon is of
no better worth than to light pipes with--'twas certainly, Sir, not good
enough to be preached before so learned a body; and if 'twas good enough to
be preached before so learned a body--'twas certainly Sir, too good to
light their pipes with afterwards.

--I have got him fast hung up, quoth Didius to himself, upon one of the two
horns of my dilemma--let him get off as he can.

I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this sermon,
quoth Yorick, upon this occasion--that I declare, Didius, I would suffer
martyrdom--and if it was possible my horse with me, a thousand times over,
before I would sit down and make such another:  I was delivered of it at
the wrong end of me--it came from my head instead of my heart--and it is
for the pain it gave me, both in the writing and preaching of it, that I
revenge myself of it, in this manner--To preach, to shew the extent of our
reading, or the subtleties of our wit--to parade in the eyes of the vulgar
with the beggarly accounts of a little learning, tinsel'd over with a few
words which glitter, but convey little light and less warmth--is a
dishonest use of the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our
hands--'Tis not preaching the gospel--but ourselves--For my own part,
continued Yorick, I had rather direct five words point-blank to the heart.-
-

As Yorick pronounced the word point-blank, my uncle Toby rose up to say
something upon projectiles--when a single word and no more uttered from the
opposite side of the table drew every one's ears towards it--a word of all
others in the dictionary the last in that place to be expected--a word I am
ashamed to write--yet must be written--must be read--illegal--uncanonical--
guess ten thousand guesses, multiplied into themselves--rack--torture your
invention for ever, you're where you was--In short, I'll tell it in the
next chapter.


Chapter 2.LXII.

Zounds!--Z...ds! cried Phutatorius, partly to himself--and yet high enough
to be heard--and what seemed odd, 'twas uttered in a co