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T H E L I F E A N D O P I N I O N S O F TRISTRAM SHANDY, G E N T L E M A N.
V O L. III. L O N D O N : Printed for R. and J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall. M.DCC.LXI. |
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L I F E and O P I N I O N S O F T R I S T R A M S H A N D Y, Gent. ________________________________ ---- ``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 wish- ed it at first *) ---- `` I wish, Dr. Slop,'' quoth my uncle Toby, ``you had seen what ``prodigious armies we had in Flanders.'' * Vid. Vol. II, p. 159. A 3 My |
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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 unexpect- ed manner upon a man : the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is, for the party wished at, instantly to get up 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 |
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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 dis- pute 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 re- turning it ; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and continued look- ing 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 A 4 east |
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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. `` -- 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 |
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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 conse- quence 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 the 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 |
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or not indifferent, just as the case hap- pens. 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, in- stead 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, call'd out for his hand- kerchief, 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 |
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had been resolved to make a fool of him- self by holding the wig stiff in his left hand -- or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow joint, or arm- pit) -- 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 mat- ter, ---- 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 mis- chief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my father's situation. C H A P. |
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IT was not an easy matter in any king's reign, (unless you were as a lean a sub- ject 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 ap- proaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicholas ; ---- the idea of which drew off his attention so entirely 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 |
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along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack, -- but particularly of that one, where he re- ceived his wound upon his groin. My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seem- ed to rush up into his face ---- my uncle Toby dismounted immediately. -- I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o' horseback. ------ 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 excep- tion however in this case, and that is, when |
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when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of a gum- taffeta, and the body-lining to it, of a sarcenet or thin persian. Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dyonisius Heracleotes, Antipater, Panætius and Possidonius amongst the Greeks ; -- Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans ; -- Pantenus and Clemens Alexan- drinus and Montaigne amongst the Chris- tians ; and a score and a half of good ho- nest, 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 out- sides of them all to pieces ; -- in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one |
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one of the insides of 'em 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 de- clare the lining to it, ---- as far as I am a judge of the matter, it is not a three- penny piece the worse ; -- pell mell, hel- ter 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 gum- miness in my lining, ---- by heaven ! it had all of it long ago been fray'd and fretted to a thread. -- You Messrs. the monthly Review- 2 ers ! |
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ers ! ---- 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 pro- tection of that Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your af- fairs, -- 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 3 ``should |
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``should I hurt thee? This world is surely ``wide enough to hold both thee and me.'' ANY man, madam, reasoning up- wards, and observing the prodi- gious suffusion of blood in my father's countenance, -- by means of which, (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face, as I told you) he must have redden'd, pictorically and scientinti- cally speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural co- lour : ---- any man, madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, toge- ther with the violent knitting of my fa- ther's brows, and the extravagant contor- tion of his body during the whole affair, -- would have concluded my father in a rage ; and taking that for granted, ---- VOL B had |
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had he been a lover of such kind of con- cord as arises from two such instruments being put into exact tune, -- he would in- stantly 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's Scarlatti -- con furia , -- like mad. ---- Grant me patience ! ---- What has con furia, -- con strepito, ---- or any other hurlyburly word whatever to do with harmony ? Any man, I say, madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart inter- preted 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 4 my |
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my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good will -- my fa- ther at length went on as follows. ---- ``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 begot- ten, 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 beget- ting 'em, -- though these in my opinion, B 2 are |
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