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``That it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;'' -- and I real- ly 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 abomi- nable, that a man should lose the ho- nour 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 digres- sions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the me- rit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader, -- not for want of penetration in him, -- but because 'tis an |
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an excellence seldom looked for, or ex- pected 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 of- ten 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 a-cross us, and led us a vagary some mil- lions 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 fa- VOL. I. L miliar |
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miliar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there touch'd in, 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, |
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thought, -- as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and discove- ries have come from some such trifling hints. Digressions, incontestably, are the sun- shine ; ---- 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 appe- tite to fail. All the dexterity is in the good cook- ery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose di- stress, in this matter, is truely pitiable : L 2 For |
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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 progres- sive movements, one wheel within ano- ther, 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. C H A P. |
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I HAVE a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy. -- Accord- ingly I set off thus. If the fixure of Momus's glass, in the human breast, according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had ta- ken place, ---- first, This foolish conse- quence would certainly have followed, -- That the very wisest and the 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 ta- L 3 ken |
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ken a man's character, but to have ta- ken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in, -- view'd the soul stark naked ; -- observ'd all her motions, -- her machinations ; -- traced all her maggots from their first engendering to their crawling forth ; -- watched her loose in her frisks, her gam- bols, her capricios ; and after some no- tice of her more solemn deportment, con- sequent 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 bio- grapher in this planet, -- in the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for him ; ---- for there the in- tense heat of the country, which is pro- ved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of |
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of red hot iron, -- must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of the inhabi- tants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them for the climate (which is the final cause) ; so that, betwixt them both, all the tene- ments of their souls, from top to bot- tom, may be nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the con- trary, 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 thro' ; -- his soul might as well, unless, for more ceremony, -- or the trifling advantage which the umbi- lical point gave her, ---- might, upon all L 4 other |
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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 specifick cha- racters 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 cha- racters with wind instruments. -- Virgil takes notice of that way in the affair of Dido and Æneas ; -- but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame ; -- and, moreover, be- |
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bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ig- norant that the Italians pretend to a ma- thematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a cer- tain wind instrument they use, -- which they say is infallible. -- I dare not men- tion the name of the instrument in this place ; -- 'tis sufficient we have it amongst us, -- but never think of making a draw- ing by it ; -- this is ænigmatical, and in- tended 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 in- quiry about it. There are others again, who will draw a man's character from no other helps in the world, but merely from his evacua- tions ; -- but this often gives a very in- correct |
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correct out-line, -- 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 me- thod, 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 call'd his Non-Naturals, -- is another question. There are others, fourthly, who dis- dain 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 de- vices |
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vices which the Pentagraphic Brethren * of the brush have shewn in taking co- pies. -- 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 determin'd to draw it by no * Pentagraph, an instrument to copy prints and pictures mechanically, and in any proportion. 6 |
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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. 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 |
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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 immedi- ately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE. -- By long journies and much friction, it so happens that the bo- dy 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 |
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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 Philo- sopher would use no other argument to the sceptic, who disputed with him against the |
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the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, and walking a-cross 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 car- ried 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. C H A P. |
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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 suc- cession of exfoliations from the oss pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the oss illeum, ---- both which bones were dismally crush'd, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the pa- rapet, |
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rapet, -- as by its size, -- (though 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 begin- ning business in London, and had taken a house ; -- and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two bro- thers, -- 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 ac- quaintance to step into the house on any VOL. I. M occasion, |
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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 be- guiles the pain of it ; -- my uncle's visit- ers 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 recei- ved much more, but that they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together, re- tarded his cure greatly ; and if he had not |
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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. |