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NOW, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking, That I was confident the follow- ing memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the most compleat systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world ---- are you to imagine from thence, that I shall set out with a descrip- tion of what love is ? whether part God and part Devil, as Plotinus will have it ---- ---- Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as ten ---- to determine, with Ficinus, `` How many parts of it -- the one, -- and `` how 2 |
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`` how many the other ;'' -- or whether it is all of it one great Devil, from head to tail, as Plato has taken upon him to pronounce ; concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion : -- but my opinion of Plato is this ; that he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with doctor Bayn- yard, who, being a great enemy to blis- ters, as imagining that half a dozen of 'em on at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a herse and six -- rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was nothing in the world, but one great bouncing Cantharidei. ------ I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous liberty in arguing, but what Nazianzen cried out (that is polemically) to Philagrius ---- `` Euge!'' O rare! 'tis fine reasoning, Sir, indeed ! -- `` hoti philosopheis en Pathesi'' and |
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-- and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize about it in your moods and passions. Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to enquire, whe- ther love is a disease, ---- or embroil my- self with Rhasis and Dioscorides, whether the seat of it is in the brain or liver ; -- because this would lead me on, to an examination of the two very opposite manners, in which patients have been treated ---- the one, of Aætius, who always begun with a cooling glyster of hempseed and bruised cucumbers; -- and followed on with thin potations of water lillies and purslane -- to which he added a pinch of snuff, of the herb Hanea ; -- and where Aætius durst venture it, -- his topaz-ring. ---- The other, that of Gordonius, who (in his cap. 15 de Amore) directs they |
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they should be thrashed,`` ad putorem usque,'' ---- till they stink again. These are disquisitions, which my fa- ther, who had laid in a great stock of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with, in the progress of my uncle Toby's affairs : I must anticipate thus much, That from his theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my uncle Toby's mind, almost as much as his amours themselves) -- he took a single step into practice ; -- and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was making my uncle Toby a new pair of breeches, he produced Gordonius's effect upon my uncle Toby without the dis- grace. What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place : all that is need- 4 ful |
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ful to be added to the anecdote, is this, ---- That whatever effect it had upon my uncle Toby, ---- it had a vile effect upon the house ; ---- and if my uncle Toby had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had a vile effect upon my father too. ---- 'TWILL come out of itself by and bye. ---- All I con- tend for is, that I am not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is ; and so long as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the word itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in common with the rest of the world, why should I differ from it a moment before the time? ---- When I can |
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can get on no further, -- and find myself entangled on all sides of this mystick la- byrinth, -- my Opinion will then come in, in course, -- and lead me out. At present, I hope I shall be suffici- ently understood, in telling the reader, my uncle Toby fell in love : -- Not that the phrase is at all to my liking : for to say a man is fallen in love, -- or that he is deeply in love, -- or up to the ears in love, -- and sometimes even over head and ears in it, -- carries an idio- matical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man : -- this is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship, -- I hold to be dam- nable and heretical ; -- and so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will, -- my uncle Toby fell into it. VOL. VI. L -- And |
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---- And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation -- so wouldst thou : For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in this world, more concupiscible than widow Wadman. TO conceive this right, -- call for pen and ink -- here's paper ready to your hand. ---- Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind ---- as like your mistress as you can ---- as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you -- 'tis all one to me ---- please but your own fancy in it. |
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------ Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet ! -- so exquisite ! ---- Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it ? Thrice happy book ! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot misrepresent. AS Susannah was informed by an ex- press from Mrs. Bridget, of my uncle Toby's falling in love with her mistress, fifteen days before it happened, -- the contents of which express, Susan- nah communicated to my mother the next day, -- it has just given me an op- portunity of entering upon my uncle Toby's amours a fortnight before their existence. 2 I have |
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I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother, which will surprise you greatly. ------ Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was musing within himself about the hard- ships of matrimony, as my mother broke silence. ------ `` ---- My brother Toby, quoth she, `` is going to be married to Mrs. Wad- `` man.'' ---- Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives. It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked the meaning of a thing she did not under- stand. L 3 ---- That |
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---- That she is not a woman of sci- ence, my father would say -- is her mis- fortune -- but she might ask a question. -- My mother never did. ---- In short, she went out of the world at last without knowing whether it turned round, or stood still. ---- My father had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was, -- but she always forgot. For these reasons a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt them, than a proposition, -- a reply, and a re- joinder ; at the end of which, it gene- rally took breath for a few minutes, (as in the affair of the breeches) and then went on again. If he marries, 'twill be the worse for us, -- quoth my mother. 8 Not |
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Not a cherry-stone, said my father, -- he may as well batter away his means upon that, as any thing else. ---- To be sure, said my mother : so here ended the proposition, -- the reply, -- and the rejoinder, I told you of. lt will be some amusement to him, too, ---- said my father. A very great one, answered my mo- ther, if he should have children. ---- ---- Lord have mercy upon me, -- said my father to himself ---- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. C H A P. |
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I Am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegitable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby's story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now, |
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These |
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These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes. ---- In the fifth volume I have been very good, ---- the precise line I have described in it being this : |
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By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to Navarre, -- and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page, -- I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse's devils led me the round you see marked D. -- for as for c c c c c they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the great- est ministers of state ; and when com- pared |
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pared with what men have done, -- or with my own transgressions at the letters A B D -- they vanish into nothing. In this last volume I have done better still -- for from the end of Le Fever's episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby's campaigns, -- I have scarce step- ped a yard out of my way. If I mend at this rate, it is not im- possible ---- by the good leave of his grace of Benevento's devils ---- but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of going on even thus ; which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master's ruler, (borrowed for that purpose) turn- ing neither to the right hand or to the left. This |
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This right line, -- the path-way for Christians to walk in ! say divines ---- ---- The emblem of moral rectitude ! says Cicero ---- ---- The best line ! say cabbage-plan- ters ---- is the shortest line, says Archi- medes, which can be drawn from one given point to another. ---- I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart in your next birth- day suits ! ---- What a journey ! Pray can you tell me, -- that is, with- out anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines ---- by what mis- take ---- who told them so ---- or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of GRAVITATION. |
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