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Dominichino, -- the corregiescity of Corregio, -- the learning of Poussin, -- the airs of Guido, -- the taste of the Carrachi's, -- or the grand contour of Angelo. ------ Grant me patience, just heaven ! ---- Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, ---- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting ! I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagi- nation into his author's hands, ---- be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore. Great Apollo ! if thou art in a giving humour, ---- give me, ---- I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with 2 a single |
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a single spark of thy own fire along with it, ---- and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to ---- no matter. Now to any one else, I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and impreca- tions, which we have been puffing off up- on the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past, as originals, ---- ex- cept St. Paul's thumb, ---- God's flesh and God's fish, which were oaths mo- narchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss ; and as kings oaths, 'tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh; ---- else, I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of Ernulphus, a thou- sand times : but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of |
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of the original ! -- It is thought to be no bad oath, -- and by itself passes very well ---- ``G---d damn you.'' ---- Set it beside Ernulphus's ---- ``God Almighty the Father damn you, -- God the Son damn you, -- God the Holy Ghost damn you,'' -- you see 'tis nothing. -- There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to : besides, he is more copious in his in- vention, ---- possess'd more of the excel- lencies of a swearer, ---- had such a tho- rough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knit- tings of the joints, and articulations, -- that when Ernulphus cursed, -- no part es- caped him. -- 'Tis true, there is something of a hardness in his manner, -- and, as in Michael Angelo, a want of grace, ---- but then there is such a greatness og gusto ! -- My father, who generally look'd upon every |
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every thing in a light very different from all mankind, ---- would, after all, never allow this to be an original. ---- He con- sider'd rather Ernulphus's anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected to- gether all the laws of it; ---- for the same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tri- bonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest, -- lest through the rust of time, -- and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever. For this reason my father would oft- times affirm, there was not an oath, from the |
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the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror, (By the splendour of God) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger, (Damn your eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus. ---- In short, he would add, -- l defy a man to swear out of it. The hypothesis is, like most of my father's, singular and ingenious too; ---- nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own. ---- BLESS my soul ! ---- my poor mistress is ready to faint, ---- and her pains are gone, ---- and the drops are done, ---- and the bottle of julap is broke, -- and the nurse has cut her arm, ---- (and I, my thumb, cried Dr. Slop) and |
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and the child is where it was, continued Susannah, ---- and the midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat. ---- I'll look at it, quoth Dr. Slop. ---- There is no need of that, replied Susan- nah, ---- you had better look at my mis- tress, ---- but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment. Human nature is the same in all pro- fessions. The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop's head. -- He had not di- gested it. -- No, replied Dr. Slop, 'twould be full as proper, if the midwife came down to me . -- I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby, -- and but for it, VOL. E after |
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after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten. ------ Nor, replied Dr. Slop (parodying my uncle Toby's hobby-horsi- cal reflection, though full as hobby-hor- sically himself) -- do l know, Captain Shandy, what might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at pre- sent, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to * * * * * * ---- the appli- cation of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so a propos, that with- out it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a name. C H A P. |
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LET us go back to the * * * * * * ---- in the last chapter. It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you, in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink'd- doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three- halfpenny pickle pot, ---- but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred. -- Tho' if it was too young, and the oration as long as Tully's second Philippick, -- it must certainly have beshit the orator's E 2 mantle. |
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mantle. ---- And then again, if too old, -- it must have been unwieldy and in- commodious to his action, -- so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it. -- Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute, -- hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it, -- and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders, ---- Oh, Sirs ! it has done wonders. ---- It has open'd the sluices, and turn'd the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles, -- and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five and twenty yards of good purple |
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purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them, ---- with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great stile of design. ------ All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within, and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose. ------ We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. DR. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumenta- tion : for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle Toby, ---- 'twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him : for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new E 3 invented |
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invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, where your reverences took so much notice of the * * * * * *, which had he managed, -- my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown : the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a raveline, -- Dr. Slop would never have given them up ; ---- and my uncle Toby would as soon thought of flying, as taking them by force : but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they sel- dom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it. When a proposition can be taken in two senses, ---- 'tis a law in disputation That the respondent may reply to which of |
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of the two he pleases, or finds most con- venient for him. ---- This threw the ad- vantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby's side. ---- ``Good God !'' cried my uncle Toby, `` are children brought into the world with a squirt ?'' ---- UPON my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of the skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby, -- and you have crush'd all my knuckles in- to the bargain with them, to a jelly. 'Tis your own fault, said Dr. Slop, ---- you should have clinch'd your two fists toge- ther into the form of a child's head, as I told you, and sat firm. ---- I did so, an- swered my uncle Toby. ---- Then the points of my forceps have not been suffi- E 4 ciently |
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ciently arm'd, or the rivet wants closing -- or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward, ---- or possibly --- 'Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities, ---- that the ex- periment was not first made upon my child's head piece. ---- It would not have been a cherry stone the worse, an- swered Dr. Slop. I maintain it, said my uncle Toby, it would have broke the ce- rebellum, (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turned it all into a perfect posset. Pshaw ! replied Dr. Slop, a child's head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple ; ---- the su- tures give way, ---- and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after. ---- Not you, said she. -- I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father. Pray do, added my uncle Toby. C H A P. |
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---- AND pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child's hip, as well as the child's head ? ---- 'Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop, (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are, ---- 'tis a point very dif- ficult to know, -- and yet of the greatest consequence to be known ; ---- because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head, -- there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. ---- What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle Toby. ---- There is no such |
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such danger, continued he, with the head. -- No, in truth, quoth my father, -- but when your possibility has taken place at the hip, ---- you may as well take off the head too. -- It is morally impossible the reader should understand this, -- 'tis enough Dr. Slop understood it ; -- so taking the green bays bag in his hand, with the help of Obadiah's pumps, he tripp'd pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door, ---- and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old mid- wife, to my mother's apartment. IT is two hours, and ten minutes, -- and no more, ---- cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah 1 |
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Obadiah arrived, ---- and I know not how it happens, brother Toby, ---- but to my imagination it seems almost an age. ---- Here ---- pray, Sir, take hold of my cap, -- nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too. ---- Now, Sir, they are all at your service ; and I freely make you a present of 'em, on condition, you give me all your at- tention to this chapter. Though my father said, `` he knew not ``how it happen'd,'' --- yet he knew very well, how it happen'd ; ---- and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind, to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and |
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and its simple modes, in order to shew my uncle Toby, by what mechanism and men- surations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to another, since Dr. Slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period, to so inconceivable an ex- tent. ---- `` I know not how it happens, ---- cried my father, ---- `` but it seems `` an age.'' -- 'Tis owing, entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas. My father, who had an itch in com- mon with all philosophers, of reasoning upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it too, -- proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succes- sion of ideas, and had not the least appre- hension |
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hension of having it snatch'd out of his hands by my uncle Toby, who (honest man !) generally took every thing as it happened ; ---- and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking ; -- the ideas of time and space, ---- or how we came by those ideas, ---- or of what stuff they were made, -- or whether they were born with us, ---- or we pick'd them up afterwards as we went along, -- or whether we did it in frocks, -- or not till we had got into breeches, -- with a thousand other inquiries and disputes about INFINITY,PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY, and so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theo- ries, so many fine heads have been turned and crack'd, -- never did my uncle Toby's the least injury at all ; my father knew it, ---- and was no less surprised, than he was |
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was disappointed with my uncle's fortui- tous solution. Do you understand the theory of that affair ? replied my father. Not I, quoth my uncle. ---- But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about. ---- No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby. Gracious heaven ! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two hands together, -- there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby, -- 'twere almost a pity to exchange it for a know- ledge. ------ But I'll tell thee. ---- To |
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To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other, ---- we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is, we have of duration, so as to give a satisfacto- ry account, how we came by it. -- What is that to anybody ? quoth my uncle Toby. * For if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, bro- ther, that whilst you and I are talking to- gether, and thinking and smoaking our pipes : or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co existing with our think- * Vid. Locke. |