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`` us, added my father, a single minute :'' ---- No matter if it be ten minutes, quoth my mother. ---- It will not detain us half a one, said my father. The Corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother Tom and the Jew's widow : the story went on -- and on ---- it had episodes in it ---- it came back, and went on ---- and on again ; there was no end of it ---- the reader found it very long ---- ---- G-- help my father! he pish'd fifty times at every new attitude, and gave the corporal's stick, with all its flourishings and danglings, to as many devils as chose to accept of them. When |
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When issues of events like these my father is waiting for are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advan- tage of changing the principle of expec- tation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. Curiosity governs the first moment ; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first ---- and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judg- ment -- 'tis a point of HONOUR. I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience ; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few |
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few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth. My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries to the end of Trim's story ; and from thence to the end of my uncle Toby's panegyric upon arms, in the chapter following it ; when seeing that instead of marching up to Mrs. Wadman's door, they both faced about and march'd down the ave- nue diametrically opposite to his expecta- tion -- he broke out at once with that little subacid soreness of humour which, in certain situations, distinguished his cha- racter from that of all other men. 4 C H A P. |
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---- ``NOW what can their two noddles be about?'' cried my father - - &c. - - - - I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications ---- ---- Not on Mrs. Wadman's premis- es! cried my father, stepping back ---- I suppose not : quoth my mother. I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, fausse-brayes, and cuvettes ------ ---- They are foolish things ---- said my mother. Now |
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Now she had a way, which by the bye, I would this moment give away my pur- ple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your reverences would imitate -- and that was never to re- fuse her assent and consent to any propo- sition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas to the principal word, or term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented her- self with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her -- but no more ; and so would go on using a hard word twenty years together -- and reply- ing to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any trouble to enquire about it. 3 This |
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This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, at the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than could have done the most petulant contradiction ---- the few which survived were the better for the cuvetts ---- -- ``They are foolish things;'' said my mother. ---- Particularly the cuvetts ; replied my father. 'Twas enough -- he tasted the sweet of triumph -- and went on. -- Not that they are, properly speak- ing, Mrs. Wadman's premises, said my father, partly correcting himself -- because she is but tenant for life ---- ---- That |
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---- That makes a great difference -- said my mother ---- -- In a fool's head, replied my fa- ther ---- Unless she should happen to have a child -- said my mother ---- ---- But she must persuade my brother Toby first to get her one -- ---- To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother. ---- Though if it comes to persuasion --- said my father -- Lord have mercy up- on them. Amen : said my mother, piano. Amen : cried my father, fortissimè. Amen : |
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Amen : said my mother again --- but with such a sighing cadence of personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father -- he instantly took out his almanac ; but before he could untie it, Yorick's congregation coming out of church became a full answer to one half of his business with it -- and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day -- left him as little in doubt as to the other part -- He put his almanac into his pocket. The first Lord of the Treasury, think- ing of ways and means, could not have returned home, with a more embarrassed look. C H A P. |
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UPON looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of hete- rogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly without which a book would not hold together a single year : nor is it a poor creeping digression (which but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on in the king's highway) which will do the business ---- no ; if it is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but by rebound. The |
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The only difficulty is raising powers suitable to the nature of the service : FANCY is capricious -- WIT must not be searched for -- and PLEASANTRY (good- natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her feet. ---- The best way for a man is to say his prayers ---- Only if it puts him in mind of his in- firmities and defects as well ghostly as bodily -- for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he has said them than before -- for other purposes, better. For my own part there is not a way either moral or mechanical under heaven that |
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that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this case : some- times by ad-dressing myself directly to the soul herself, and arguing the point over and over again with her upon the extent of her own faculties ---- ---- I never could make them an inch the wider ---- Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity : These are good,quoth I,in them- selves -- they are good, absolutely ; -- they are good, relatively ; -- they are good for health -- they are good for happiness in this world -- they are good for happiness in the next ---- In |
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In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted ; and there they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made it : as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it courage ; but then that snive- ling virtue of Meekness (as my father would always call it) takes it quite away again, so you are exactly where you started. Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have found to answer so well as this ---- ---- Certainly, if there is any depend- ence upon Logic, and that I am not blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me, merely upon this symptom of it, that I do not know what envy is : for never do E 2 I hit |
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I hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of good writ- ing, but I instantly make it public ; willing that all mankind should write as well as myself. ---- Which they certainly will, when they think as little. C H A P. |
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NOW in ordinary cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts rise heavily and pass gummous through my pen ---- Or that I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infa- mous writing, and cannot take a plumb- lift out of it for my soul ; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done ---- ---- I never stand conferring with pen and ink one moment ; for if a pinch of snuff or a stride or two across the room will not do the business for me -- I take a razor at once ; and having tried the edge E 3 of |
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of it upon the palm of my hand, with- out further ceremony, except that of first lathering my beard, I shave it off ; tak- ing care only if I do leave a hair, that it be not a grey one : this done, I change my shirt -- put on a better coat -- send for my last wig -- put my topaz ring upon my finger ; and in a word, dress myself from one end to the other of me, after my best fashion. Now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do : for consider, Sir, as every man chooses to be present at the shaving of his own beard (though there is no rule without an exception) and un- avoidably sits over against himself the whole time it is doing, in case he has a hand in it -- the Situation, like all others, has |
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has notions of her own to put into the brain. ---- ---- I maintain it, the conceits of a rough-bearded man are seven years more terse and juvenile for one single opera- tion ; and if they did not run a risk of being quite shaved away, might be carried up by continual shavings to the highest pitch of sublimity -- How Homer could write with so long a beard, I don't know ---- and as it makes against my hypothesis, I as little care ---- But let us return to the Toilet. Ludovicus Sorbonensis makes this en- tirely an affair of the body (exoterike praxis) as he calls it ---- but he is de- ceived : the soul and body are joint- E 4 sharers |
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sharers in everything they get : A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time ; and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him -- so that he has nothing to do but take his pen, and write like himself. For this cause, when your honours and reverences would know whether I writ clean and fit to be read, you will be able to judge full as well by looking into my Laundress's bill, as my book : there was one single month in which I can make it appear that I dirtied one and thirty shirts with clean writing ; and after all, was more abus'd, curs'd, cri- ticis'd and confounded, and had more mystic |
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mystic heads shaken at me, for what I had wrote in that one month, than in all the other months of that year put to- gether. ---- But their honours and reverences had not seen my bills. C H A P. |
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AS I ever had any intention of be- ginning the Digression, I am making all this preparation for, till I come to the 15th chapter ---- I have this chapter to put to whatever use I think proper ---- I have twenty this moment ready for it ---- I could write my chapter of Button-holes in it ---- Or my chapter of Pishes, which should follow them ---- Or my chapter of Knots, in case their reverences have done with them ---- they might lead me into mischief : the safest way is to follow the tract of the learned, |
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learned, and raise objections against what I have been writing, tho'I declare before- hand, I know no more than my heels how to answer them. And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire, as black as the very ink 'tis wrote with ---- (and by the bye, whoever says so is indebted to the muster-master general of the Gre- cian army, for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth'd a man as Thersites to continue upon his roll ---- for it has furnished him with an epithet) ---- in these productions, he will urge, all the personal washings and scrubbings upon earth do a sinking genius no sort of good ---- but just the contrary, inas- 4 much |