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[ 40 ]

right, Trim, as a soldier, -- but certainly
very wrong as a man.

  In the second place, for which, indeed,
thou hast the same excuse, continued my
uncle Toby, ---- when thou offeredst him
whatever was in my house, -- thou
shouldst have offered him my house too :
---- A sick brother officer should have
the best quarters, Trim, and if we had
him with us, -- we could tend and look
to him : ---- Thou art an excellent nurse
thyself, Trim, -- and what with thy care
of him, and the old woman's, and his
boy's, and mine together, we might re-
cruit him again at once, and set him
upon his legs. ------

  ---- In a fortnight or three weeks,
added my uncle Toby, smiling, -- he
might march. ---- He will never march,
                          an'



[ 41 ]

an' please your honour, in this world,
said the corporal : ---- He will march ;
said my uncle Toby, rising up from the
side of the bed, with one shoe off : ----
An' please your honour, said the cor-
poral, he will never march, but to his
grave : ---- He shall march, cried my
uncle Toby, marching the foot which
had a shoe on, though without advanc-
ing an inch, -- he shall march to his regi-
ment. ---- He cannot stand it, said the
corporal; ---- He shall be supported, said
my uncle Toby ; ---- He'll drop at last,
said the corporal, and what will become
of his boy ? ---- He shall not drop, said
my uncle Toby, firmly. ---- A-well-o'-day,
-- do what we can for him, said Trim,
maintaining his point, -- the poor soul
will die : ---- He shall not die, by G-- ,
cried my uncle Toby.
                          ---- The



[ 42 ]

  -- The ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew
up to heaven's chancery with the oath,
blush'd as he gave it in ; -- and the
RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down,
dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blot-
ted it out for ever.


C H A P. IX.

---- MY uncle Toby went to his
bureau, -- put his purse into
his breeches pocket, and having order-
ed the corporal to go early in the morn-
ing for a physician, -- he went to bed,
and fell asleep.



                          C H A P.



[ 43 ]


C H A P. X.

The Story of LE FEVER concluded.

THE sun looked bright the morn-
ing after, to every eye in the vil-
lage but Le Fever's and his afflicted son's ;
the hand of death press'd heavy upon
his eye-lids, ---- and hardly could the
wheel at the cistern turn round its circle,
-- when my uncle Toby, who had rose
up an hour before his wonted time, en-
tered the lieutenant's room, and without
preface or apology, sat himself down
upon the chair by the bed-side, and inde-
pendantly of all modes and customs,
opened the curtain in the manner an old
friend and brother officer would have
done it, and asked him how he did, --
how he had rested in the night, -- what
             8              was



[ 44 ]

was his complaint, -- where was his
pain, -- and what he could do to help
him : ---- and without giving him time
to answer any one of the enquiries, went
on and told him of the little plan which
he had been concerting with the corpo-
ral the night before for him. ----

  ---- You shall go home directly, Le
Fever
, said my uncle Toby, to my house,
-- and we'll send for a doctor to see
what's the matter, -- and we'll have an
apothecary, -- and the corporal shall be
your nurse ; ---- and I'll be your servant,
Le Fever.


  There was a frankness in my uncle
Toby, -- not the effect of familiarity, -- but
the cause of it, -- which let you at once
into his soul, and shewed you the good-
ness of his nature ; to this, there was
                          some-



[ 45 ]

something in his looks, and voice, and
manner, superadded, which eternally
beckoned to the unfortunate to come and
take shelter under him ; so that before
my uncle Toby had half finished the kind
offers he was making to the father, had
the son insensibly pressed up close to his
knees, and had taken hold of the breast
of his coat, and was pulling it towards
him. ---- The blood and spirits of Le
Fever
, which were waxing cold and
slow within him, and were retreating to
their last citadel, the heart, -- rallied
back, -- the film forsook his eyes for a
moment, -- he looked up wishfully in my
uncle Toby's face, -- then cast a look upon
his boy, ---- and that ligament, fine as
it was, -- was never broken. ------

  Nature instantly ebb'd again, ---- the
film returned to its place, ---- the pulse
                          flut-



[ 46 ]

fluttered ---- stopp'd ---- went on ----
---- throb'd ---- stopp'd again ---- mo-
ved ---- stopp'd ---- shall I go on ? ----
No.


C H A P. XI.

I Am so impatient to return to my own
story, that what remains of young
Le Fever's, that is, from this turn of
his fortune, to the time my uncle Toby
recommended him for my preceptor,
shall be told in a very few words, in the
next chapter. -- All that is necessary to
be added to this chapter is as follows. --

  That my uncle Toby, with young Le
Fever
in his hand, attended the poor
lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his
grave.
                          That



[ 47 ]

  That the governor of Dendermond paid
his obsequies all military honours, -- and
that Yorick, not to be behind hand --
paid him all ecclesiastic -- for he buried
him in his chancel : -- And it appears
likewise, he preached a funeral sermon
over him ---- I say it appears, -- for it
was Yorick's custom, which I suppose a
general one with those of his profession,
on the first leaf of every sermon which
he composed, to chronicle down the
time, the place, and the occasion of its
being preached : to this, he was ever
wont to add some short comment or
stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom,
indeed, much to its credit : -- For in-
stance, This sermon upon the jewish dispen-
sation -- I don't like it at all
; -- Though I
own there is a world of
WATER-LANDISH
knowledge in it, -- but 'tis all tritical, and
                          most




[ 48 ]

most tritically put together. ------ This is
but a flimsy kind of a composition ; what
was in my head when I made it ?


  ---- N. B. The excellency of this text
is, that it will suit any sermon, -- and of
this sermon, ---- that it will suit any
text
. ------

  ---- For this sermon I shall be hanged,
-- for I have stolen the greatest part of it.
Doctor
Paidagunes found me out. Set
a thief to catch a thief
. ------

  On the back of half a dozen I find
written, So, so, and no more ---- and
upon a couple Moderato ; by which, as
far as one may gather from Altieri's Ita-
lian
dictionary, -- but mostly from the
authority of a piece of green whipcord,
which seemed to have been the unravel-
             2              ling



[ 49 ]

ling of Yorick's whip-lash, with which
he has left us the two sermons marked
Moderato, and the half dozen of So, so,
tied fast together in one bundle by them-
selves, -- one may safely suppose he meant
pretty near the same thing.

  There is but one difficulty in the way
of this conjecture, which is this, that
the moderato's are five times better than
the so, so's ; -- shew ten times more know-
ledge of the human heart; -- have seventy
times more wit and spirit in them ; --
(and, to rise properly in my climax) --
discover a thousand times more genius ;
-- and to crown all, are infinitely more
entertaining than those tied up with them;
-- for which reason, whene'er Yorick's
dramatic sermons are offered to the world,
though I shall admit but one out of the
whole number of the so, so's, I shall,
  VOL. VI.        E            never-



[ 50 ]

nevertheless, adventure to print the two
moderato's without any sort of scruple.

  What Yorick could mean by the words
lentamente, -- tenutè, -- grave, -- and some-
times adagio, -- as applied to theological
compositions, and with which he has
characterized some of these sermons, I
dare not venture to guess. ---- I am more
puzzled still upon finding a l'octava alta !
upon one ; ---- Con strepito upon the back
of another ; ---- Scicilliana upon a third ;
---- Alla capella upon a fourth ; ----
Con l'arco upon this ; ---- Senza l'arco
upon that. ---- All I know is, that they
are musical terms, and have a mean-
ing ; ---- and as he was a musical man,
I will make no doubt, but that by some
quaint application of such metaphors to
the compositions in hand, they impressed
very distinct ideas of their several cha-
                          racters



[ 51 ]

racters upon his fancy, -- whatever they
may do upon that of others.

  Amongst these, there is that particular
sermon which has unaccountably led me
into this digression ---- The funeral ser-
mon upon poor Le Fever, wrote out
very fairly, as if from a hasty copy. -- I
take notice of it the more, because it
seems to have been his favourite compo-
sition ---- lt is upon mortality ; and is
tied length-ways and cross-ways with a
yarn thrum, and then rolled up and
twisted round with a half sheet of dirty
blue paper, which seems to have been
once the cast cover of a general review,
which to this day smells horribly of
horse-drugs. ---- Whether these marks
of humiliation were designed, -- I some-
thing doubt ; ---- because at the end of
the sermon, (and not at the beginning
             E 2              of



[ 52 ]

of it) -- very different from his way of
treating the rest, he had wrote ----
Bravo !
  ---- Though not very offensively,
---- for it is at two inches, at least,
and a half's distance from, and below
the concluding line of the sermon, at
the very extremity of the page, and in
that right hand corner of it, which, you
know, is generally covered with your
thumb ; and, to do it justice, it is wrote
besides with a crow's quill so faintly in a
small Italian hand, as scare as to sollicit
the eye towards the place, whether your
thumb is there or not, -- so that from the
manner of it, it stands half excused ;
and being wrote moreover with very pale
ink, diluted almost to nothing, -- 'tis
more like a ritratto of the shadow of va-
nity, than of VANITY herself -- of the
two, resembling rather a faint thought
             2              of



[ 53 ]

of transient applause, secretly stirring
up in the heart of the composer, than a
gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded
upon the world.

  With all these extenuations, I am
aware, that in publishing this, I do no
service to Yorick's character as a modest
man ; -- but all men have their failings !
and what lessens this still farther, and
almost wipes it away, is this; that the
word was struck through sometime af-
terwards (as appears from a different
tint of the ink) with a line quite across
it in this manner, BRAVO ---- as if
he had retracted, or was ashamed of the
opinion he had once entertained of it.

  These short characters of his sermons
were always written, excepting in this
one instance, upon the first leaf of his
             E 3              sermon,



[ 54 ]

sermon, which served as a cover to it ;
and usually upon the inside of it, which
was turned towards the text ; -- but at
the end of his discourse, where, perhaps,
he had five or six pages, and sometimes,
perhaps, a whole score to turn himself
in, -- he took a larger circuit, and, in-
deed, a much more mettlesome one ; --
as if he had snatched the occasion of un-
lacing himself with a few more frolick-
some strokes at vice, than the straitness
of the pulpit allowed. -- These, though
hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and
out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the
side of virtue -- ; tell me then, Mynheer
Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke,
why they should not be printed together ?


                          C H A P.



[ 55 ]


C H A P. XII.

WHEN my uncle Toby had turned
every thing into money, and
settled all accounts betwixt the agent
of the regiment and Le Fever, and be-
twixt Le Fever and all mankind, ----
there remained nothing more in my un-
cle Toby's hands, than an old regimental
coat and a sword ; so that my uncle Toby
found little or no opposition from the
world in taking administration. The
coat my uncle Toby gave the corporal ;
---- Wear it, Trim, said my uncle Toby,
as long as it will hold together, for the
sake of the poor lieutenant ---- And
this, ---- said my uncle Toby, taking up
the sword in his hand, and drawing it
out of the scabbard as he spoke ---- and
this, Le Fever, I'll save for thee, -- 'tis
             E 4              all



[ 56 ]

all the fortune, continued my uncle
Toby, hanging it up upon a crook, and
pointing to it, -- 'tis all the fortune, my
dear Le Fever, which God has left thee ;
but if he has given thee a heart to fight
thy way with it in the world, -- and thou
doest it like a man of honour, -- 'tis
enough for us.

  As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a
foundation, and taught him to inscribe
a regular polygon in a circle, he sent
him to a public school, where, except-
ing Whitsuntide and Christmas, at which
times the corporal was punctually dis-
patched for him, -- he remained to the
spring of the year, seventeen ; when the
stories of the emperor's sending his army
into Hungary against the Turks, kindling
a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his
Greek and Latin without leave, and
                          throw-



[ 57 ]

throwing himself upon his knees before
my uncle Toby, begged his father's sword,
and my uncle Toby's leave along with it,
to go and try his fortune under Eu-
gene
. -- Twice did my uncle Toby forget
his wound, and cry out, Le Fever ! I will
go with thee, and thou shalt fight be-
side me -- And twice he laid his hand
upon his groin, and hung down his head
in sorrow and disconsolation. ------

  My uncle Toby took down the sword
from the crook, where it had hung un-
touched ever since the lieutenant's death,
and delivered it to the corporal to
brighten up ; ---- and having detained
Le Fever a single fortnight to equip him,
and contract for his passage to Leghorn,
-- he put the sword into his hand, ----
If thou art brave, Le Fever, said my
uncle Toby, this will not fail thee, ----
                          but



[ 58 ]

but Fortune, said he, (musing a little)
---- Fortune may ---- And if she does,
-- added my uncle Toby, embracing
him, come back again to me, Le Fever,
and we will shape thee another course.

  The greatest injury could not have op-
pressed the heart of Le Fever more than
my uncle Toby's paternal kindness ; ----
he parted from my uncle Toby, as the
best of sons from the best of fathers ----
both dropped tears ---- and as my uncle
Toby gave him his last kiss, he slipped
sixty guineas, tied up in an old purse of
his father's, in which was his mother's
ring, into his hand, -- and bid God bless
him.

                          C H A P.



[ 59 ]


C H A P. XIII.

LE Fever got up to the Imperial army
just time enough to try what me-
tal his sword was made of, at the defeat
of the Turks before Belgrade ; but a se-
ries of unmerited mischances had pur-
sued him from that moment, and trod
close upon his heels for four years toge-
ther after : he had withstood these buf-
fetings to the last, till sickness overtook
him at Marseilles, from whence he wrote
my uncle Toby word, he had lost his
time, his services, his health, and, in
short, every thing but his sword ; ----
and was waiting for the first ship to re-
turn back to him.

  As this letter came to hand about six
weeks before Susannah's accident, Le
                          Fever




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