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that, cried my father -- I should be sorry to appear with a blot in my escutcheon before them ---- Never mind the bend- sinister, said my uncle Toby, putting on his tye-wig -- No, indeed, said my father, -- you may go with my aunt Dinah to a visitation with a bend-sinister, if you think fit -- My poor uncle Toby blush'd. My father was vexed at himself -- No -- my dear brother Toby, said my father, changing his tone -- but the damp of the coach-lining about my loins, may give me the Sciatica again, as it did December, January, and February last winter -- so if you please you shall ride my wife's pad -- and as you are to preach, Yorick, you had better make the best of your way before, -- and leave me to take care of my brother Toby, and to follow at our own rates. L 4 Now |
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Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description of this cavalcade, in which corporal Trim and Obadiah, upon two coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow as a patrol -- whilst my uncle Toby, in his laced regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep roads and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning and arms, as each could get the start. -- But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so much above the stile and manner of any thing else I have been able to paint in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without depreciating every other scene ; and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, (whether of good or bad) betwixt chap- ter and chapter, from whence the just proportions |
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proportions and harmony of the whole work results. For my own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little about it -- but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song -- be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it. -- -- This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well -- (as Yorick told my uncle Toby one night) by siege -- My uncle Toby looked brisk at the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it. I'm to preach at court next Sunday, said Homenas -- run over my notes -- so I humm'd over doctor Homenas's notes -- the modulation's very well -- 'twill do, Homenas, |
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Homenas, if it holds on at this rate -- so on I humm'd -- and a tolerable tune I thought it was ; and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how spi- ritless and jejune it was, but that all of a sudden, up started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heavenly -- it car- ried my soul up with it into the other world ; now had I, (as Montaigne com- plained in a parallel accident) -- had I found the declivity easy, or the ascent accessible -- certes I had been outwitted -- Your notes, Homenas, I should have said, are good notes, -- but it was so per- pendicular a precipice -- so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first note I humm'd, I found myself flying into the other world, and from thence discovered the vale from whence I came, so deep, so low, and dismal, that |
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that I shall never have the heart to de- scend into it again.  A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size -- take my word, is a dwarf in more ar- ticles than one -- And so much for tear- ing out of chapters. -- SEE if he is not cutting it all into slips, and giving them about him to light their pipes ! -- 'Tis abominable, answered Didius ; it should not go unno- ticed, said doctor Kysarcius -- he was of the Kysarcij of the low countries. Methinks, said Didius, half rising from his chair, in order to remove a bottle |
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bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him and Yorick -- you might have spared this sarcastick stroke, and have hit upon a more proper place, Mr. Yorick -- or at least upon a more proper occasion to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about : If the Sermon is of no better worth than to light pipes with -- 'twas certainly, Sir, not good enough to be preached before so learned a body ; and if 'twas good enough to be preached before so learned a body -- 'twas certainly, Sir, too good to light their pipes with afterwards. -- I have got him fast hung up, quoth Didius to himself, upon one of the two horns of my dilemma -- let him get off as he can. I have |
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I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this sermon, quoth Yorick, upon this occasion, -- that I declare, Didius, I would suffer martyr- dom -- and if it was possible my horse with me, a thousand times over, before I would sit down and make such another : I was delivered of it at the wrong end of me -- it came from my head instead of my heart -- and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the writing and preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it, in this manner. -- To preach, to shew the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit -- to parade it in the eyes of the vulgar with the beggarly accounts of a little learning, tinseled over with a few words which glitter, but convey little light and less warmth -- is a dishonest use of the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our hands -- 'Tis not preaching the |
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the gospel -- but ourselves -- For my own part, continued Yorick, I had rather direct five words point blank to the heart -- As Yorick pronounced the word point blank, my uncle Toby rose up to say something upon projectiles ---- when a single word, and no more, uttered from the opposite side of the table, drew every one's ears towards it -- a word of all others in the dictionary the last in that place to be expected -- a word I am ashamed to write -- yet must be written -- must be read ; -- illegal -- uncanonical -- guess ten thousand guesses, multiplied into themselves -- rack -- torture your in- vention for ever, you're where you was -- In short, I'll tell it in the next chapter. 1 C H A P. |
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ZOUNDS! ------------------------- ------------------------------------ ------------------ Z----ds ! cried Phu- tatorius, partly to himself -- and yet high enough to be heard -- and what seemed odd, 'twas uttered in a construction of look, and in a tone of voice, somewhat between that of a man in amazement, and of one in bodily pain. One or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the expression and mixture of the two tones as plainly as a third or a fifth, or any other chord in musick -- were the most puzzled and per- plexed with it -- the concord was good in itself -- but then 'twas quite out of the key, |
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key, and no way applicable to the subject stated ; -- so that with all their knowledge, they could not tell what in the world to make of it. Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didius's hands, in order to bemawl Yorick to some purpose -- and that the desperate monosyllable Z----ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him ; so that my uncle Toby's good nature felt a pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing Phutatorius stop short, without any attempt or desire to go on -- a third party began to suppose, 3 that |
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that it was no more than an involuntary respiration, casually forming itself into the shape of a twelve-penny oath -- with- out the sin or substance of one. Others, and especially one or two who sat next him, looked upon it on the con- trary, as a real and substantial oath pro- pensely formed against Yorick, to whom he was known to bear no good liking -- which said oath, as my father philoso- phized upon it, actually lay fretting and fuming at that very time in the upper regions of Phutatorius's purtenance ; and so was naturally, and according to the due course of things, first squeezed out by the sudden influx of blood, which was driven into the right ventricle of Phutatorius's heart, by the stroke of sur- prize which so strange a theory of preaching had excited. VOL. IV. M How |
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How finely we argue upon mistaken facts ! There was not a soul busied in all these various reasonings upon the mono- syllable which Phutatorius uttered, -- who did not take this for granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely, that Phutatorius's mind was intent upon the subject of debate which was arising be- tween Didius and Yorick ; and indeed as he looked first towards the one, and then towards the other, with the air of a man listening to what was going forwards, -- who would not have thought the same ? But the truth was, that Phutatorius knew not one word or one syllable of what was passing -- but his whole thoughts and at- tention were taken up with a transaction which was going forwards at that very instant within the precincts of his own Galli- |
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Galligaskins, and in a part of them, where of all others he stood most interested to watch accidents : So that notwithstand- ing he looked with all the attention in the world, and had gradually skrewed up every nerve and muscle in his face, to the utmost pitch the instrument would bear, in order, as it was thought, to give a sharp reply to Yorick, who sat over- against him -- Yet I say, was Yorick never once in any one domicile of Phutatorius's brain -- but the true cause of his excla- mation lay at least a yard below. This I will endeavour to explain to you with all imaginable decency. You must be informed then, that Gastripheres, who had taken a turn into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how things went on -- observing a wicker- M 2 basket |
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basket of fine chesnuts standing upon the dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of them might be roasted and sent in, as soon as dinner was over -- Gastri- pheres inforcing his orders about them, that Didius, but Phutatorius especially, were particularly fond of 'em. About two minutes before the time that my uncle Toby interrupted Yorick's harangue -- Gastripheres's chesnuts were brought in -- and as Phutatorius's fondness for 'em, was uppermost in the waiter's head, he laid them directly before Phuta- torius, wrapt up hot in a clean damask napkin. Now whether it was physically impos- sible, with half a dozen hands all thrust into the napkin at a time -- but that some one chesnut, of more life and rotundity than |
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than the rest, must be put in motion -- it so fell out, however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table ; and as Phutatorius sat straddling under -- it fell perpendicularly into that particular aperture of Phutatorius's breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all Johnson's dictionary -- let it suffice to say -- it was that particular aperture, which in all good societies, the laws of decorum do strictly require, like the temple of Janus ( in peace at least) to be universally shut up. The neglect of this punctilio in Phuta- torius (which by the bye should be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to this accident. -- M 3 -- Accident, |
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-- Accident, I call it, in compliance to a received mode of speaking, -- but in no opposition ot the opinion either of Acrites or Mythogeras in this matter ; I know they were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of it -- and are so to this hour, That there was nothing of acci- dent in the whole event -- but that the chesnut's taking that particular course, and in a manner of its own accord -- and then falling with all its heat directly into that one particular place, and no other ---- was a real judgment upon Phutatorius, for that filthy and obscene treatise de Concubinis retinendis, which Phutatorius had published about twenty years ago -- and was that identical week going to give the world a second edition of. It is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy ---- much undoubtedly may |
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may be wrote on both sides of the question -- all that concerns me as an hi- storian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to the reader, that the hiatus in Phutatorius's breeches was sufficiently wide to receive the ches- nut ; -- and that the chesnut, some how or other, did fall perpendicularly and piping hot into it, without Phutatorius's perceiving it, or any one else at that time. The genial warmth which the chestnut imparted, was not undelectable for the first twenty or five and twenty seconds, -- and did no more than gently solicit Phu- tatorius's attention towards the part : -- But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain, -- the soul of Phutatorius, toge- M 4 ther |
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ther with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deliberation, ratiocination, memory, fancy, with ten battalions of animal spirits, all tumultuously crouded down, through different defiles and cir- cuits, to the place in danger, leaving all his upper regions, as you may imagine, as empty as my purse. With the best intelligence which all these messengers could bring him back, Phutatorius was not able to dive into the secret of what was going forwards below, nor could he make any kind of conjecture, what the devil was the matter with it : However, as he knew not what the true cause might turn out, he deemed it most prudent, in the situation he was in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a stoic ; which, with the help of some wry |
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wry faces and compursions of the mouth, he had certainly accomplished, had his imagination continued neuter -- but the sallies of the imagination are ungovern- able in things of this kind -- a thought instantly darted into his mind, that tho' the anguish had the sensation of glowing heat -- it might, notwithstanding that, be a bite as well as a burn ; and if so, that possibly a Newt or an Asker, or some such detested reptile, had crept up, and was fastening his teeth -- the horrid idea of which, with a fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the chesnut, seized Phutatorius with a sudden panick, and in the first terrifying disorder of the passion it threw him, as it has done the best generals upon earth, quite off his guard ; -- the effect of which was this, that he leapt incontinently up, uttering as he rose that interjection of surprise so much |
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much discanted upon, with the aposio- pestick-break after it, marked thus, Z----ds -- which, though not strictly canonical, was still as little as any man could have said upon the occasion ; ---- and which, by the bye, whether cano- nical or not, Phutatorius could no more help than he could the cause of it. Though this has taken up some time in the narrative, it took up little more time in the transaction, than just to al- low time for Phutatorius to draw forth the chesnut, and throw it down with violence upon the floor -- and for Yorick, to rise from his chair, and pick the chesnut up. It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind : -- What incredible weight they have in forming 1 and |
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