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TRISTRAM SHANDY
1
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY
GENTLEMAN
LAURENCE STERNE
THE MACY LIBRARY
A-
J' "
Printed in the United States of America
To the Right Honourable
Mr Pn T
SIR,
Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from
his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it
is written in a bye corner of the kingdom, and in a retired
thatched house, where I live in a constant endeavour to
fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of
life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a
man smiles, — but much more so, when he laughs, it adds
something to this Fragment of Life.
I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by
taking it — (not under your Protection, — it must protect it-
self, but) — into the country with you; where, if I am ever
told, it has made you smile; or can conceive it has beguiled
you of one moment's pain — I shall think myself as happy
as a minister of state; perhaps much happier than any
one (one only excepted) that I have read or heard of.
I amy great sir,
(^and zvhat is more to \our Honour^
I am, good sir.
Your Well-wisher, and
most humble Felloiu-stihject,
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
rACK
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy:
Book I,
I
Book II, . .
.
70
Book III,
140
Book IV,
217
Book V,
309
Book VI,
370
Book VII,
432
Book VIII,
489
Book IX,
547
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY
GENTLEMAN
Tapaccci Tooc 'AvGpcLnouc cu za OpaYM^Ta,
'AAAd ra nzp\ tcLv IlpaYiJaTojv AoYMaxa.
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.
ROOK I
Chapter i
I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of
them, as they were in duty both equally hound to it, had
minded what they were about when they begot me; had they
duly considered how much depended upon what they were
then doing; — that not only the production of a rational
Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy
formation and temperature of his bodv, perhaps his genius
and the ver)' cast of his mind; — and, for aught thcv knew
to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might
take their turn from the humours and dispositions which
were then uppermost; — Had they duly weighed and con-
sidered all this, and proceeded accordingly, — I am verily
persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the
world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me. —
Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing
as many of you may think it; — you have all, I dare say,
heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from
father to son, etc. etc. — and a great deal to that purpose: —
Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a
man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages
in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and
the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that
when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong,
'tis not a halfpenny matter, — away they go cluttering like
hey-go mad ; and by treading the same steps over and over
again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as
2 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used
to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive
them off it.
"Pray, my Dear," quoth my mother, "have you not
forgot to wind up the clock?" "Good G — !" cried my
father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate
his voice at the same time, — "Did ever woman, since the
creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly
question?" Pray, what was your father saying? — Nothing.
Chaffer 2
— Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that
I can see, either good or bad. — Then, let me tell you. Sir,
it was a very unseasonable question at least, — because it
scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it
was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the
HoMUNCULUS, and conducted him safe to the place destined
for his reception.
The Homunculus, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a
light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of
folly or prejudice; — to the eye of reason in scientific re-
search, he stands confessed — a Being guarded and circum-
scribed with rights. — The minutest philosophers who, by
the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls
being inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably,
that the Homunculus is created by the same hand, — en-
gendered in the same course of nature, — endowed with the
same locomotive powers and faculties with us: — That he
consists as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries,
ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands,
genitals, humours, and articulations; — is a Being of as
much activity, — and, in all senses of the word, as much
and as truly our fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of
England. — He may be benefited, — he may be injured, —
he may obtain redress; — in a word, he has all the claims and
CHAP. 3 TRISTRAM SHANDY 3
rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorf, or the best
ethic writers allow to arise out of that state and relation.
Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in
his way alone! — or that, through terror of it, natural to so
young a traveller, my little Gentleman had got to his
journey's end miserably spent; — his muscular strength and
virility worn down to a thread; — his own animal spirits
ruffled beyond description, — and that in this sad disordered
state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or
a series of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long.
Ions: months together. — I tremble to think what a founda-
tion had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body
and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher
could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights.
Chaffer j
To my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for
the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an
excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close
reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily
complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as
my uncle Toby well remembered, upon his observing a most
unaccountable obliquity, (as he called it) in my manner of
setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which
I had done it, — the old gentleman shook his head, and in a
tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach, —
he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified
in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made
upon me, That I should neither think nor act like any other
man's child: — "But alas!" continued he, shaking his head
a second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling
down his cheeks, "My Tristram's misfortunes began nine
months before ever he came into the world."
— My mother, who was sitting by, looked up, — but she
knew no more than her backside what my father meant, —
4 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
but my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, who had been often in-
formed of the affair, — understood him very well.
Chapter ^
I KNOW there are readers in the world, as well as many
other good people in it, who are no readers at all, — who find
themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole
secret from first to last, of everything which concerns you.
It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and
from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one
soul living, that I have been so very particular already. As
my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the
world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks, pro-
fessions, and denominations of men whatever, — be no less
read than the Pil grinds Progress itself — and in the end,
prove the very thing which Montaigne dreaded his Essays
should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window; — I
find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn;
and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little further
in the same way: For which cause, right glad I am, that I
have begun the history of myself in the way I have done;
and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in it, as
Horace says, ab Ovo.
Horace, I know does not recommend this fashion alto-
gether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic
poem or a tragedy; — (I forget which,) — besides, if it was
not so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon; — for in writing
what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his
rules, nor to any man's rules that ever lived.
To such, however, as do not choose to go so far back into
these things, I can give no better advice, than that they skip
over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare be-
forehand, 'tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.
Shut the door -^ —
I was begot in the night, betwixt the first Sunday and the first
CHAP. 4 TRISTRAM SHANDY 5
Mondav in the month of March, in the year of our Lord
one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positire I
was, — But how I came to be so very particular in my ac-
count of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing
to another small anecdote known only in our own family,
but now made public for the better clearing up this point.
My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey
merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order
to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county
of , was, I believe, one of the most regular men in
everything he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or
matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen
of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a
slave, — he had made it a rule for many years of his life —
on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the
whole year, — as certain as ever the Sunday-night came, —
to wn'nd up a large house-clock, which we had standing on
the backstairs head, with his own hands: — And being some-
where between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I
have been speaking of, — he had likewise gradually brought
some other little family concernments to the same period,
in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get
them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued
and pestered with them the rest of the month.
It was attended with but one misfortune, which, in a
great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I
fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from
an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection
in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could
never hear the said clock wound up, — but the thoughts of
some other things unavoidably popped into her head — and
vice versa: — Which strange combination of ideas, the sa-
gacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these
things better than most men, afl'irms to have produced more
wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.
6 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
But this by the bye.
Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-
book, which now lies upon the table, "That on Lady-day,
which was on the 25th of the same month in which I date
my geniture, — my father set out upon his journey to Lon-
don, with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster
school"; and, as it appears from the same authority, "That
he did not get down to his wife and family till the second
week in May following," — it brings the thing almost to a
certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the
next chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of doubt.
— But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all Decem-
ber, — January, and February? — Why, Madam, — he was
all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.
Chapter 5
On the fifth day of November, 17 18, which to the era fixed
on, was as near nine calendar months as any husband could
in reason have expected, — was I Tristram Shandy, Gentle-
man, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world
of ours. — I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any
of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never
could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared
worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer
for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours, —
which, o' my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take
to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest; —
not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be
born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could any
how contrive to be called up to public charges, and employ-
ments of dignity or power; — but that is not my case; — and
therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market
has gone in it; — for which cause I affirm it over again to
be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made; — for I can
truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it,
CHAP. 6 TRISTRAM SHANDY' 7
to this, thnt I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma
I got in skating against the wind in Flanders; — I have heen
the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and
though I will not wrong her by saying. She has ever made
me feel the weight of any great or signal evil; — yet with
all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, that in
every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where
she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has
pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross
accidents as ever small Hero sustained.
Chafter 6
In the beginning; of the last chapter, I informed you exactly
when I was born; but I did not inform you how, No, that
particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself; —
besides. Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers
to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you
into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.
— "^'ou must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you
see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping
and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and
of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you
a better relish for the other: As you proceed farther with
mc, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning be-
twixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one
of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship. — O dirm
prafclartim! — then nothing which has touched me will be
th<}ught trirting in its nature, or tedious in its telling. There-
fore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think
me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting
out — bear with me, — and let me go on, and tell my story
my own way: — Or, if I should seem now and then to trifle
upon the road, — or should sometimes put on a fool's cap with
a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along, — don't
fly off, — but rather courteously give me credit for a little
8 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
more wisdom than appears upon my outside; — and as we
jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any
thing, — only keep your temper.
Chapter 7
In the same village where my father and my mother dwelt,
dwelt also a thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body
of a midwife, who with the help of a little plain good sense,
and some years' full employment in her business, in which
she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a
great deal to those of dame Nature, — had acquired, in her
way, no small degree of reputation in the world: — by which
the word worldy need I in this place inform your worship,
that I would be understood to mean no more of it, than a
small circle described upon the circle of the great world, of
four English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the
cottage where the good old woman lived, is supposed to be
the centre? — She had been left, it seems, a widow in great
distress, with three or four small children, in her forty-
seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent
carriage, — grave deportment, — a woman moreover of few
words, and withal an object of compassion, whose distress,
and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly
lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with
pity; and having often lamented an inconvenience, to which
her husband's flock had for many years been exposed, inas-
much as there was no such thing as a midwife, of any kind
or degree, to be got at, let the case have been never so
urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding;
which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads,
the country thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was
almost equal to fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes
next to iiaving no midwife at all; it came into her head,
that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole
parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little
CHAP. 7 TRISTRAM SHANDY 9
instructed in some of the plain principles of the business, in
order to set her up in it. As no woman thereabouts was
better qualified to execute the plan she had formed than her-
self, the gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and
havnng great influence over the female part of the parish,
she found no difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of her
wishes. In truth, the parson joined his interest with his
wife's in the whole affair; and in order to do things as
they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law
to practice, as his wife had given by institution, — he cheer-
fully paid the fees for the ordinary's licence himself,
amounting in the whole, to the sum of eighteen shillings
and four pence; so that betwixt them both, the good woman
was fully invested in the real and corporal possession of her
ofl'ice, together with all its rights, members, and appur-
tenances whatsoever.
These last words, you must know, were not according to
the old form in which such licences, faculties, and powers
usually ran, which in like cases had heretofore been granted
to the sisterhood. But it was according to a neat Formula
of Didius his own devising, who having a particular turn
for taking to pieces, and new framing over again, all kinds
of instruments in that way, not only hit upon this daintv
amendment, but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons
in the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in
order to have this wham-wham of his inserted.
I own I never could envy Didius in these kinds of fancies
of his: — But every man to his own taste. — Did not Dr.
Kunastrokius, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the
greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses' tails, and
plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had
tweezers always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that,
Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting
Solomon himself, — have they not had their Hobby-Horses;
— their running horses, — their coins and their cockle-shells,
10 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,
— their maggots and their butterflies? — and so long as a
man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the
King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up
behind him, — pray. Sir, what have either you or I to do
with it?
Chafter 8
— De gusdbus non est dispjttnnduw ; — that is, there is no
disputing against Hobby-Horses; and for my part, I seldom
do ; nor could I with any sort of grace, had I been an enemy
to them at the bottom; for happening, at certain intervals
and changes of the moon, to be both fiddler and painter,
according as the fly stings: — Be it known to you, that I keep
a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor
do I care who knows it) I frequently ride out and take the
air; — though sometimes, to my shame be it spoken, I take
somewhat longer journeys than what a wise man would
think altogether right. — But the truth is, — I am not a wise
man; — and besides am a mortal of so little consequence
in the world, it is not much matter what I do: so I seldom
fret or fume at all about it: Nor does it much disturb my
rest, when I see such great Lords and tall Personages as
hereafter follow: — such, for instance, as my Lord A, B,
C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so on, all
of a row, mounted upon their several horses, some with
large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace;
— others on the contrary, tucked up to their very chins,
with whips across their mouths, scouring and scampering it
away like so many little party-coloured devils astride a
mortgage, — and as if some of them were resolved to break
their necks. — So much the better — say I to myself; — for
in case the worst should happen, the world will make a shift
to do excellently well without them; and for the rest, —
why — God speed them — e'en let them ride on without op-
position from me; for were their lordships unhorsed this
CHAP. 9 TRISTRAM SHANDY n
ver)- night — 'tis ten to one but that many of them would be
worse mounted by one half before to-morrow morning.
Not one of these instances therefore can be said to break
in upon my rest. — But there is an instance, which I own
puts me off my guard, and that is, when I see one born for
great actions, and what is still more for his honour, whose
nature ever inclines him to good ones; — when I behold such
a one, my Lord, like yourself, whose principles and conduct
are as generous and noble as his blood, and whom, for th.it
reason, a corrupt world cannot spare one moment; — when
I see such a one, my Lord, mounted, though it is but for a
minute beyond the time which mv love to mv country has
prescribed tt) him, and my zeal for his glory wishes, — then,
my Lord, I cease to be a philosopher, and in the first trans-
port of an honest impatience, I wish the Hobby-Horse, with
all his fraternity, at the Devil.
"Mv Lord,
"I maintain this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its
singularity in the three great essentials of matter, form, and
place: I beg, therefore, you will accept it as such, and that
you will permit me to lay it, with the most respectful hu-
mility, at your Lordship's feet, — when you are upon them,
— which you can be when you please; — and that is, my
Lord, whenever there is occasion for it, and I will add, to
the best purposes too. I have the honour to be,
''My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
and most devoted,
and most humble servant,
"Tristr.am Shandy."
Chapter i)
I SOLEMNLY declare to all mankind, that the above dedica-
tion was made for no one Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Poten-
12 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
tate, — Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, of this, or
any other Realm in Christendom; — nor has it yet been
hawked about, or offered publicly or privately, directly or
indirectly, to any one person or personage, great or small;
but is honestly a true Virgin-Dedication untried on, upon
any soul living.
I labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any
offence or objection which might arise against it from the
manner in which I propose to make the most of it; — which
is the putting it up fairly to public sale; which I now do.
— Every author has a way of his own in bringing his
points to bear; — for my own part, as I hate chaffering and
higgling for a few guineas in a dark entry; — I resolved
within myself, from the very beginning, to deal squarely
and openly with your Great Folks in this affair, and try
whether I should not come off the better by it.
If therefore there is any one Duke, Marquis, Earl, Vis-
count, or Baron, in these his Majesty's dominions, who
stands in need of a tight, genteel dedication, and whom the
above will suit, (for by the bye, unless it suits in some de-
gree I will not part with it) — it is much at his service for
fifty guineas; — which I am positive is twenty guineas less
than it ought to be afforded for, by any man of genius.
My Lord, if you examine it over again, it is far from
being a gross piece of daubing, as some dedications are. The
design, your Lordship sees, is good, — the colouring trans-
parent, — the drawing not amiss; — or to speak more like a
man of science, — and measure my piece in the painter's
scale, divided into 20, — I believe, my Lord, the outlines will
turn out as 12, — the composition as 9, — the colouring as 6,
— the expression 13 and a half, — and the design, — if I may
be allowed, my Lord, to understand my own design, and
supposing absolute perfection in designing, to be as 20, — I
think it cannot well fall short of 19. Besides all this, —
there is keeping in it, and the dark strokes in the Hobby-
CHAP. 10 TRISTRAM SHANDY' 13
Horse, (which is a secondary figure, and a kind of back-
ground to the whole) give great force to the principal lights
in your own figure, and make it come off wonderfully; —
and besides, there is an air of originality in the tout ensemble.
Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid
into the hands of Mr. Dodsley, for the benefit of the author,
and in the next edition care shall be taken that this chapter
be expunged, and your Lordship's titles, distinctions, arms,
and good actions, be placed at the front of the preceding
chapter: All which, from the words, De gustibus non est
disputandumy and whatever else in this book relates to
Hobby-Horses, but no more, shall stand dedicated to your
Lordship. — The rest I dedicate to the Moon, who, by the
bye, of all the Patrons or Matrons I can think of, has most
power to set my book a-going, and make the world run mad
after it.
Bright Goddess,
If thou art not too busy with Candid and Miss Cune-
gund's aflfairs, — take Tristram Shandy's under thy protec-
tion also.
Chapter 1 o
Whatever degree of small merit the act of benignity in
favour of the midwife might justly claim, or in whom that
claim truly rested, — at first sight seems not very material
to this history; — certain however it was, that the gentle-
woman, the parson's wife, did run away at that time with
the whole of it: And yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking
but that the parson himself, though he had not the good
fortune to hit upon the design first, — yet, as he heartily con-
curred in it the moment it was laid before him, and as
heartily parted with his money to carry it into execution, had
a claim to some share of it, — if not to a full half of what-
ever honour was due to '\t.
14 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
The world at tliat time was pleased to determine the
matter otherwise.
Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to
give a probable guess at the grounds of this procedure.
Be it known then, that, for about five years before the
date of the midwife's licence, of which you have had so
circumstantial an account, — the parson we have to do with
had made himself a country-talk by a breach of all decorum,
which he had committed against himself, his station, and his
office; — and that was in never appearing better, or other-
wise mounted, than upon a lean, sorry, jack-ass of a horse,
value about one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all
description of him, was full brother to Rosinante, as far as
similitude congenial could make him; for he answered his
description to a hair-breadth in every thing, — except that I
do not remember 'tis any where said, that Rosinante was
broken- winded; and that, moreover, Rosinante, as is the
happiness of most Spanish horses, fat or lean, — was un-
doubtedly a horse at all points.
I know very well that the Hero's horse was a horse of
chaste deportment, which may have given grounds for the
contrary opinion: But it is as certain at the same time, that
Rosinante's continency (as may be demonstrated from the
adventure of the Yanguesian carriers) proceeded from no
bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the temperance
and orderly current of his blood. — And let me tell you,
Madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the
world, in behalf of which you could not say more for your
life.
Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice
to every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic
work, — I could not stifle this distinction in favour of Don
Quixote's horse; — in all other points, the parson's horse, I
say, was just such another, — for he was as lean, and as lank,
and as sorry a jade, as Humility herself could have bestrided.
cHAi>. 10 TRISTRAM SHANDY 15
In the estimation of here and there a man of weak jmlg-
mcnt, it was greatly in the parson's povser to have helped
the figure of this horse of his, — for he was master of a very
handsome demi-pcaked saddle, quilted on the seat with green
plush, garnished with a double row of silver-headed studs,
and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a housing
altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging
of black lace, terminating in a deep, black, silk fringe,
pottdri' d'oTy — all which he had purchased in the pride and
prime of his life, together with a grand embossed bridle,
ornamented at all points as it should be. — But not caring
to banter his beast, he had hung all these up behind his study
door: — and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted him with
just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the figure and value
of such a steed might well and truly deserve.
In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neigh-
bouring visits to the gentry who lived around him, — you
will easily comprehend, that the parson, so appointed, would
both hear and see enough to keep his philosophy from rust-
ing. To speak the truth, he never could enter a village, but
he caught the attention of both old and young. — Labour
stood still as he passed — the bucket hung suspended in the
middle of the well, — the spinning-wheel forgot its round,
— even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood
gaping till he had got out of sight; and as his movement
was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon
his hands to make his observations, — to hear the groans of
the serious, — and the laughter of the light-hearted; — all
which he bore with excellent tranquillity. — His character
was, — he loved a jest in his heart — and as he saw himself in
the true point of ridicule, he would say he could not be
angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which he so
strongly saw himself: So that to his friends, who knew his
foible was not the love of money, and who therefore made
the less scruple in bantering the extravagance of his humour
i6 TRISTRAM SHANDY booki
— instead of giving the true cause, — he chose rather to join
in the laugh against himself; and as he never carried one
single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether
as spare a figure as his beast, — he would sometimes insist
upon it, that the horse was as good as the rider deserved; —
that they were, centaur-like, — both of a piece. At other
times, and in other moods, when his spirits were above the
temptation of false wit, — he would say, he found himself
going off fast in a consumption; and, with great gravity,
would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat horse,
without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his
pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode
upon, not only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits.
At different times he would give fifty humorous and ap-
posite reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-
winded horse, preferably to one of mettle; — for on such a
one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully
de vanitate niundi et fuga saeculij as with the advantage of a
death's-head before him; — that, in all other exercitations,
he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along, — to as
much account as in his study; — that he could draw up an
argument in his sermon, — or a hole in his breeches, as
steadily on the one as in the other; — that brisk trotting and
slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two in-
compatible movements. — But that upon his steed — he could
iHiite and reconcile every thing, — he could compose his ser-
mon, — he could compose his cough, — and, in case nature
gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to
sleep. — In short, the parson upon such encounters would
assign any cause but the true cause, — and he withheld the
true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought
it did honour to him.
But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first
years of this gentleman's life, and about the time when the
superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been
CHAP. 10 TRISTRAM SHANDY 17
his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will, — to run into
the opposite extreme. — In the language of the county where
he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and gen-
erally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in
his stable always ready for saddling; and as the nearest mid-
wife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than
seven miles, and in a vile country, — it so fell out that the
poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without
some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an
unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and
more distressful than the last, — as much as he loved his
beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of
which was generally this, that his iiorse was either clapped,
or spavined, or greazed; — or he was twitter-boned, or
broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen
him, which would let him carry no flesh; — so that he had
every nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of, — and a
good horse to purchase in his stead.
What the loss in such a balance might amount to, com-
viunibus annis, I would leave to a special jury of sufferers in
the same traffic, to determine; — but let it be what it would,
the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a mur-
mur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he
found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and
upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he
found it not only disproportioned to his other expenses, but
withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from
any other act of generosity in his parish: Besides this, he
considered that with half the sum thus galloped away, he
could do ten times as much good; — and what still weighed
more with him than all other considerations put together,
was this, that it confined all his charity into one particular
:hannel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted,
namely to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his
parish; reserving notiiiiiLr f<>r thr impotent, — nothing for
i8 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
the aged, — nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was
hourly called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness, and
affliction dwelt together.
For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expense;
and there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him
clearly out of it; — and these were, either to make it an
irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any
application whatever, — or else be content to ride the last
poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches
and infirmities, to the very end of the chapter.
As he dreaded his own constancy in the first — he very
cheerfully betook himself to the second; and though he
could very well have explained it, as I said, to his honour, —
yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit above it; choosing
rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter
of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story,
which might seem a panegyric upon himself,
I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined senti-
ments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in
his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest
refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha, whom, by
the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would actually
have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest
hero of antiquity.
But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in
view was to shew the temper of the world in the whole of
this aflfair. — For you must know, that so long as this ex-
planation would have done the parson credit, — the devil a
soul could find it out, — I suppose his enemies would not,
and that his friends could not. — But no sooner did he
bestir himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the ex-
penses of the ordinary licence to set her up, — but the whole
secret came out; every horse he had lost, and two horses
more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of
their destruction, were known and distinctly remembered. —
CHAP. II TRISTRAM SHAM)^'
19
The story ran like wildfire — "The parson had a returning
fit of pride which had just seized him; and he was going to
be well mounted once again in his life; and if it was so,
'twas plain as the sun at noon-dav, he would pocket the ex-
pense of the licence, ten times told, the very first year: — So
that ever)- body was left to judge what were his views in
this act of charity."
What were his views m this, and in every other action of
his life, — or rather what were the opinions which floated
in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought
which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in
upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep.
About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune
to be made entirely easy upon that score, — it being just so
long since he left his parish, — and the whole world at the
same time behind him, — and stands accountable to a Judge
of whom he will have no cause to complain.
But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men.
Order them as they will, they pass thro' a certain medium,
which so twists and refracts them from their true directions
— that, with all the titles, to praise which a rectitude of
heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless forced
to live and die without it.
Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful ex-
ample. — But to know by what means this came to pass,
— and to make that knowledge of use to you, I insist upon it
that you read the two following chapters, which contain
such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its
moral along with it. — When this is done, if nothing stops
us in our way, we will go on with the midwife.
Chapter i r
\ ORICK was this parson's name, and, what is vcrv remark-
able in it, (as appears from a most ancient account of the
family, wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect
20 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for near, — I
was within an ace of saying nine hundred years; — but I
would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth,
however indisputable in itself; — and therefore I shall con-
tent myself with only saying — It had been exactly so spelt,
without the least variation or transposition of a single letter,
for I do not know how long; which is more than I would
venture to say of one half of the best surnames in the king-
dom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone
as many chops and changes as their owners. — Has this been
owing to the pride, or to the shame of the respective pro-
prietors? — In honest truth, I think sometimes to the one,
and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has
wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day so
blend and confound us altogether, that no one shall be
able to stand up and swear, "That his own great grandfather
was the man who did either this or that."
This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the
prudent care of the Yorick family, and their religious
preservation of these records I quote, which do farther
inform us. That the family was originally of Danish extrac-
tion, and had been transplanted into England as early as
in the reign of Horwendillus, king of Denmark, in whose
court, it seems, an ancestor of this Mr. Yorick's, and from
whom he was lineally descended, held a considerable post
to the day of his death. Of what nature this considerable
post was, this record saith not; — It only adds, That, for
near two centuries, it had been totally abolished, as alto-
gether unnecessary, not only in that court, but in every
other court of the Christian world.
It has often come into my head, that this post could be no
other than that of the king's chief Jester; — and that Ham-
let's Yorick, in our Shakespeare, many of whose plays, you
know, are founded upon authenticated facts, was certainly
the very man.
cHAi'. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 21
I have not the time to look into Saxo-Grainmaticus's
Danish history to know the certainty <if this; — but if you
have leisure, and can easily get at the book, you may do it
full as well yourself.
I had just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr.
Noddy's eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied
as governor, riding along with him at a prodigious rate thro'
most parts of Europe, and of which original journey per-
formed by us two, a most delectable narrative will be given
in the progress of this work; I had just time, I say, and that
was all, to prove the truth of an observation made by a long
sojourner in that country; — namely, "That nature was
neither very lavish, nor was she very sting)' in her gifts of
genius and capacity to its inhabitants; — but, like a discreet
parent, was moderately kind to them all; observing such an
equal tenor in the distribution of her favours, as to bring
them, in those points, pretty near to a level with each other;
so that you will meet with few instances in that kingdom of
refined parts; but a great deal of good plain household un-
derstanding amongst all ranks of people, of which every
body has a share"; which is, I think, very right.
With us, you see, the case is quite dijfferent: — we are all
ups and downs in this matter; — you are a great genius; or
'tis fifty to one. Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;
— not that there is a total want of intermediate steps, — no,
— we are not so irregular as that comes to; — but the two
extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this
unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions
of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune her-
self not being more so in the bequest of her goods and
chattels than she.
This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to
Yorick's extraction, who, by what I can remember of him,
and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not
to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole
22 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
crasis; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run
out: — I will not philosophize one moment with you about it;
for happen how it would, the fact was this: — That instead
of that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and
humours, you would have looked for, in one so extracted; —
he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a com-
position, — as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions; —
with as much life and whim, and ga'ite de coeur about him,
as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put
together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one
ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world;
and, at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how
to steer his course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of
thirteen: So that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of
his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a
day of somebody's tackling; and as the grave and more slow-
paced were oftenest in his way, — you may likewise imagine,
'twas with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most
entangled. For aught I know there might be some mixture
of unlucky wit at the bottom of such Fracas: — For, to speak
the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition
in his nature to gravity; — not to gravity as such; — for
where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or
serious of mortal men for days and weeks together; — but
he was an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared
open war against it, only as it appeared a cloak for igno-
rance, or for folly: and then, whenever it fell in his way,
however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much
quarter.
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that
Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add, — of the
most dangerous kind too, — because a sly one; and that he
verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were
bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-
month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven
CHAP. 11 TRISTRAM SHANDY 23
In the naked temper which a nurr\ heart discovered, he
would say there was no danger, — hut to itself; — whereas the
very essence of gravity was design, and consequently dc
ceit; — 'twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for
more sense and knowledge than a man was worth ; and that,
with all its pretensions, — it was no hetter, hut often worse,
than what a French wit had long ago defined it, — viz. "A
mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the
mind"; — which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great
imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of
gold.
But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and un-
practised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and
foolish on every other subject of discourse where policy is
wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no impression but
one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed
spoken of; which impression he would usually translate into
plain English without any periphrasis; — and too oft with-
out much distinction of either person, time, or place; — so
that when mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous
proceeding — he never gave himself a moment's time to re-
flect who was the hero of the piece, — what his station, — or
how far he had power to hurt him hereafter; — but if it was
a dirty action, — without more ado, — The man was a dirty
fellow, — and so on. — And as his comments had usually the
ill fate to be terminated either in a bon mot, or to be en-
livened throughout with some drollery or humour of expres-
sion, it gave wings to Yorick's indiscretion. In a word, tho'
he never sought, yet, at the same time, as he seldom shunned
occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without much
ceremony: — he had but too manv temptations in life, of
scattering his wit and his humour, — his gibes and his jests
about him. — They were not lost for want of gathering.
What were the consequences, and what was Yorick's
catastrophe thereupon, you will read \n the next chapter.
24 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
Chafter 1 2
The Mortgager and Mortgagee differ the one from the
other, not more in length of purse, than the Jester and Jestee
do, in that of memory. But in this the comparison between
them runs, as the scholiasts call it, upon all-four; which, by
the bye, is upon one or two legs more than some of the best
of Homer's can pretend to; — namely, That the one raises
a sum, and the other a laugh at your expense, and thinks no
more about it. Interest, however, still runs on in both cases;
— the periodical or accidental payments of it, just serving to
keep the memory of the affair alive; till, at length, in some
evil hour, — pop comes the creditor upon each, and by de-
manding principal upon the spot, together with full interest
to the very day, makes them both feel the full extent of
their obligations.
As the reader (for I hate your //j) has a thorough knowl-
edge of human nature, I need not say more to satisfy him,
that my Hero could not go on at this rate without some slight
experience of these incidental mementos. To speak the
truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a multitude of
small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding Eu-
genius's frequent advice, he too much disregarded; think-
ing, that as not one of them was contracted thro' any
malignancy; — but, on the contrary, from an honesty of
mind, and a mere jocundity of humour, they would all of
them be crossed out in course.
Eugenius would never admit this; and would often tell
him, that one day or other he would certainly be reckoned
with; and he would often add, in an accent of sorrowful
apprehension, — to the uttermost mite. To which Yorick,
with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often answer
with a pshaw! — and if the subject was started in the fields,
— with a hop, skip, and a jump at the end of it; but if close
pent up in the social chimney-corner, where the culprit was
CHAR 12 TRISTRAM SHANDY 25
barricadocd in, with a table and a couple of arm-chairs, and
could not so readily fly off in a tangent, — Eugenius would
then go on with his lecture upon discretion in words to this
purpose, though somewhat better put together.
Trust me, dear Yorick, this unwary pleasantry of thine
will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties,
which no after- wit can extricate thee out of. — In these
sallies, too oft, I see, it happens, that a person laughed at,
considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all
the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and when
thou viewest him in that light too, and reckons up his friends,
his family, his kindred and allies, — and musters up with
them the many recruits which will list under him from a
sense of common danger; — 'tis no extravagant arithmetic to
say, that for cvcrj' ten jokes, — thou hast got an hundred
enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of
wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them,
thou wilt never be convinced it is so.
I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there
is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in
these sallies — I believe and know them to be truly honest and
sportive: — But consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot dis-
tinguish this, — and that knaves will not: and thou knowest
not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make merry
with the other: — whenever they associate for mutual de-
fence, depend upon it, they will carry on the war in such
a manner against thee, my dear friend, as to make thee
heartily sick of it, and of thy life too.
Revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of
dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity
of conduct shall set right. — The fortunes of thy house shall
totter, — thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed
on every side of it, — thy faith questioned, — thy works belied,
— thy wit forgotten, — thy learning trampled on. To wind
up the last scene of thy tragedy, Cruelty and Cowardice,
26 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
twin ruffians, hired and set on by Malice in the dark, shall
strike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes: — The best
of us, my dear lad, lie open there, — and trust me, — trust
me, Yorick, when to gratify a private appetite, it is once re-
solved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall
be sacrificed, 'tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from
any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it
up with.
Yorick scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his des-
tiny read over to him, but with a tear stealing from his eye,
and a promissory look attending it, that he was resolved,
for the time to come, to ride his tit with more sobriety. —
Kut, alas, too late! — a grand confederacy, with ***** and
***** at the head of it, was formed before the first predic-
tion of it. — The whole plan of the attack, just as Eugenius
had foreboded, was put in execution all at once, — with so
little mercy on the side of the allies, — and so little sus-
picion in Yorick, of what was carrying on against him, —
that when he thought, good easy man! full surely prefer-
ment was o' ripening, — thev had smote his root, and then
he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him.
Yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable gal-
lantry for some time; till, overpowered by numbers, and
worn out at length by the calamities of the war, — but more
so, by the ungenerous manner in which it was carried on, —
he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his spirits
in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was
generally thought, quite broken-hearted.
What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion was as
follows:
A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius
stept in with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell
of him. Upon his drawing Yorick's curtain, and asking
liow he felt himself, Yorick looking up in his face took
hold of his hand, — and after thanking him for the man\-
CHAP. 12 TRISTRAM SHANDY 27
tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was
their fate to meet hereafter, — he would thank him again
and again, — he told him, he was within a few hours of
giving his enemies the slip for ever. — I hope not, answered
Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the
tenderest tone that ever man spoke. — I hope not, Yorick,
said he. — Yorick replied, with a look up, and a gentle
squeeze of Eugenius's hand, and that was all, — but it cut
Eugenius to his heart. — Come, — come, "\'orick, quoth Eu-
genius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within
him, — my dear lad, be comforted, — let not all thy spirits
and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou most
wants them; — who knows what resources are in store, and
what the power of God may yet do for theer — Yorick laid
his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head; — For
my part, continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered
the words, — I declare I know not, Yorick, how to part with
thee, and would gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius,
cheering up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee
to make a bishop, and that I mav live to see it. — I beseech
thee, Eugenius, quoth '^'orick, taking off his night-cap as well
as he could with his left hand, — his right being still grasped
close in that of Eugenius, — I beseech thee to take a view of
my head. — I see nothing that ails it, replitd Eugenius.
Then, alas! mv friend, said Yorick, let me tt-11 \()u, that 'tis
so bruised and mis-shapened with the blows which *****
and *****j and some others have so unhandsomely given mc
in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Panc^a, that should
I recover, and ".Mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down
from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit it."
— "^'orick's last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips
ready to depart as he uttered this: — yet still it was uttered
with something of a Cervantick tone; — and as he spoke it,
Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up
for a moment in his eyes; — faint picture of those flashes
28
TRISTRAM SHANDY
BOOK I
of his spirit, which (as Shakespeare said of his ancestor) Avere
wont to set the table in a roar!
Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his
friend was broke: he squeezed his hand, — and then walked
softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick fol-
lowed Eugenius with his eyes to the door, — he then closed
them, — and never opened them more.
He lies buried in the corner of his churchyard, in the
parish of , under a plain marble slab, which his friend
Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave,
with no more than these three words of inscription, serving
both for his epitaph and elegy.
Alas, poor YORICK!
Ten times a day has Yorick's ghost the consolation to hear
his monumental inscription read over with such a variety of
plaintive tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him;
— a foot-way crossing the church-yard close by the side of
his grave, — not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast
a look upon it, — and sighing as he walks on,
Alas, poor YORICK!
CHAP. 13 TRISTRAM SHANDY 29
Chafter /j
It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has
been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to mention
her again to him, merely to put him in mind that there is
such a body still in the world, and whom, upon the best
judgment I can form upon my own plan at present, — I am
going to introduce to him for good and all : But as fresh
matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall
out betwixt the reader and myself, which may require im-
mediate dispatch; — 'twas right to take care that the poor
woman sliould not be lost in the meantime; — because when
she is wanted we can no way do without her.
I think I told you that this good woman was a person of
no small note and consequence throughout our whole village
and township; — that her fame had spread itself to the very
out-edge and circumference of that circle of importance, of
which kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his
back or no, — has one surrounding him; — which said circle,
by the way, whenever 'tis said that such a one is of great
weight and importance in the world, — I desire may be
enlarged or contracted in your worship's fancy, in a com-
pound ratio of the station, profession, knowledge, abilities,
height and depth ( measuring both ways) of the personage
brought before you.
In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four
or five miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish,
but extended itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets in
the skirts of the next parish ; which made a considerable thing
of it. I must add. That she was, moreover, very well looked
on at one large grange-house, and some other odd houses and
farms within two or three miles, as I said, from the smoke
of her own chimney: — But I must here, once for all, inform
you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and ex-
plained in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which
30
TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
with many other pieces and developments of this work, will
be added to the end of the twentieth volume, — not to swell
the work, — I detest the thought of such a thing; — but by
way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to such
passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be
cither of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful mean-
ing, after my life and my opinions shall have been read
over (now don't forget the meaning of the word) by all
the world; — which, betwixt you and mc, and in spite of all
the gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of all that
their worships shall undertake to write or say to the con-
trary, — I am determined shall be the case. — I need not tell
your worship, that all this is spoken in confidence.
Chapter 14
Upon looking into my mother's marriage-settlement, in
order to satisfy myself and reader in a point necessary to be
cleared up, before we could proceed any farther in this his-
tory; — I had the good fortune to pop upon the very thing I
wanted before I had read a day and a half straight forwards,
— it might have taken me up a month; — which shews plainly
that when a man sits down to write a history, — tho' it be
but the history of Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he
knows no more than his heels what lets and confounded
hindrances he is to meet with in his way, — or what a dance
be may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is
over. Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a
muleteer drives on his mule, — straight forward; — for in-
stance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever
once turning his head aside either to the right hand or to
the left, — he might venture to foretell you to an hour when
he should get to his journey's end: — but the thing is, morally
speaking, impossible: P\jr, if he is a man of the least spirit
he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make
with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no
CHAP. 15 TRISTRAM SHANDY 31
ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself
perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help
standing still to look at than he can fly, he will moreover
have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon :
Panegyrics to paste up at this door;
Pasquinades at that: — All which hoth the man and his
mule are quite exempt from. To sum up all; there are
archives at every stage to be looked into, and rolls, records,
documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever and
anon calls him back to stay the reading of: — In short, there
is no end of it; — for my own part, I declare I have been at
it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could,^
and am not vet born: — I have just been able, and that's all,
to tell you when it happened, but not hozv ; — so that you see
the thing is yet far from being accomplished.
These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no con-
ception of when I first set out; but which, I am convinced
now, will rather increase than diminish as I advance, — have
struck out a hint which I am resolved to follow; — and that
is, — not to be in a hurry; but to go on leisurely, writing and
publishing two volumes of my life every year; — which, if I
am suffered to go on quietly, and can make a tolerable
bargain with my bookseller, I shall continue to do as long
as I live.
Chapter 75
The article in my mother's marriage-settlement, which I
told the reader I was at the pains to search for, and whicli,
now that I have found it, I think proper to Lay before him, — .
32 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
is so much more fully expressed in the deed itself, than ever
I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it
out of the lawyer's hand: — It is as follows.
"i^nb tf)i£f Snticnture further WHtntsattf), That the
said Walter Shandy, merchant, in consideration of the said
intended marriage to be had, and, by God's blessing, to be
well and truly solemnized and consummated between the
said Walter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux aforesaid, and
divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him
thereunto specially moving, — doth grant, covenant, con-
descend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully agree to and
with John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs., the above-
named Trustees, &c, &c. — tO tDlt, — That in case it should
hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to
pass, — That the said Walter Shandy, merchant, shall have
left off business before the time or times, that the said
Elizabeth Mollineux shall, according to the course of nature
or otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing forth chil-
dren; — and that, in consequence of the said Walter Shandy
having so left off business, he shall in despite, and against
the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said Elizabeth
Mollineux, — make a departure from the city of London, in
order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at Shandy Hall,
in the county of , or at any other country-seat, castle,
hall, mansion-house, messuage or grange-house, now pur-
chased, or hereafter to be purchased, or upon any part or
parcel thereof: — That then, and as often as the said Eliza-
beth Mollineux shall happen to be enceint with child or
children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten,
upon the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, during her
said coverture, — he the said Walter Shandy shall, at his
own proper cost and charges, and out of his own proper
monies, upon good and reasonable notice, which is hereby
agreed to be within six weeks of her the said Elizabeth Mol-
lineux's full reckoning, or time of supposed and computed
CHAP. 15 TRISTRAM SHANDY 33
delivery, — pa) , or cause to be paid, the sum oi one hundred
and twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to John
Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. or assigns, — upon trust
and confidence, and for and unto the use and uses, intent,
end, and purpose following: — ^fjat ii tO £(ap, — 7'hat
the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be
paid into the hands of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, or to
be otherwise applied by them the said Trustees, for the well
and truly hiring of one coach, with able and sufficient
horses, to carry and convey the body of the said Elizabeth
Mollineux, and the child or children which she shall be
then and there enceint and pregnant with, — unto the city of
London; and for the further paying and defraying of all
other incidental costs, charges, and expenses whatsoever, —
in and about, and for, and relating to, her said intended
delivery and Iving-in, in the said city or suburbs thereof.
And that the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall and may, from
time to time, and at all such time and times as are here
covenanted and "agreed upon, — peaceably and quietly hire
the said coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and
regress throughout her journey, in and from the said coach,
according to the tenor, true intent, and meaning of these
presents, without any let, suit, trouble, disturbance, molesta-
tion, discharge, hindrance, forfeiture, eviction, vexation, in-
terruption, or incumbrance whatsoever. — And that it shall
moreover be lawful to and for the said Elizabeth Mollineux,
from time to time, and as oft or often as she shall well and
truly be advanced in her said pregnancy, to the time hereto-
fore stipulated and agreed upon, — to live and reside in such
place or places, and in such family or families, and with
such relations, friends, and other persons within the said
city of London, as she at her own will and pleasure, not-
withstanding her present coverture, and as if she was a
jcmmr sole and unmarried, — shall think fit. — 3lnb tfjlfi
Snbenture f urttjcr tDltnefiSCtfj, That for the more effectually
34 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
carrying of the said covenant into execution, the said Walter
Shandy, merchant, doth hereby grant, bargain, sell, release,
and confirm unto the said John Dixon, and James Turner,
Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and assigns, in their actual
possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of bargain
and sale for a year to them the said John Dixon, and James
Turner, Esqrs. by him the said Walter Shandy, merchant,
thereof made;- which said bargain and sale for a year,
bears date the day next before the date of these presents, and
by force and virtue of the statute for transferring of uses
into possession, — ^U that the manor and lordship of
Shandy, in the county of , with all the rights, members,
and appurtenances thereof; and all and every the messuages,
houses, buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gardens, back-
sides, tofts, crofts, garths, cottages, lands, meadows, feed-
ings, pastures, marshes, commons, woods, underwoods,
drains, fisheries, v/aters, and water-courses; ^-together with
all rents, reversions, services, annuities, fee-farms, knights'
fees, views of frankpledge, escheats, reliefs, mines, quarries,
goods and chattels of felons and fugitives, felons of them-
selves, and put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and all
other royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions, privi-
leges and hereditaments whatsoever. — ^nbal£>0 the advow-
son, donation, presentation, and free disposition of the
rectory or parsonage of Shandy aforesaid, and all and ever*,-
the tenths, tithes, glebe-lands." — In three words — "My
mother was to lay in, (if she chose it) in London."
But in order to put a stop to the practice of any untair
play on the part of my mother, which a marriage-article of
this nature too manifestly opened a door to, and which
indeed had never been thought of at all, hut for my uncle
Toby Shandy; — a clause was added in security of my
father, which was this: — "That in case my mother here-
after should, at any time, put my father to the trouble and
expense of a London journey, upon false cries and tokens; —
CHAP. i6 TRISTRAM SHANDY 35
that for every such instance, she should forfeit all the right
and title which the covenant gave her to the next turn; —
but to no more, — and so on, toties quoties, in as effectual a
manner, as if such a covenant betwixt them had not been
made." — This, by the way, was no more than what was
reasonable; — and vet, as reasonable as it was, I have ever
thought it hard that the whole weight of the article should
have fallen entirely, as it did, upon myself.
But I was begot and born to misfortunes: — for my poor
mother, whether it was wind or water — or a compound of
both, — or neither; — or whether it was simplv the mere
swell of imagination and fancy in her; — or how far a
strong wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her
judgment: — in short, whether she was deceived or deceiv-
ing in this matter, it no way becomes me to decide. The
fact was this. That in the latter end of September 17 17,
which was the year before I was born, mv mother having
carried my father up to town much against the grain, — he
peremptorily insisted upon the clause; — so that I was
doomed, by marriage-articles, to have my nose squeezed as
flat to my face, as if the destinies had actually spun mc
without one.
How this event came about, — and what a train of vexa-
tious disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have
pursued me from the mere loss, or rather compression, of
this one single member, — shall be laid before the reader all
in due time.
Chapter 1 6
Mv father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down
with my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a
humour. The first twenty or five-and-twenty miles he did
nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and indeed
my mother too, about the cursed expense, which he said
might every shilling of it haye been saved; — then what
36 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
vexed him more than every thing else was, the provoking
time of the year, — which, as I told you, was towards the
end of September, when his wall-fruit and green gages
especially, in which he was very curious, were just ready
for pulling: — "Had he been whistled up to London, upon
a Tom Fool's errand, in any other month of the whole
year, he should not have said three words about it."
For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down,
but the heavy blow he had sustained from the loss of a son,
whom it seems he had fully reckoned upon in his mind, and
registered down in his pocket-book, as a second staff for his
old age, in case Bobby should fail him. The disappointment
of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, than all
the money which the journey, etc., had cost him, put to-
gether, — rot the hundred and twenty pounds, — he did not
mind it a rush.
From Stilton, all the way to Grantham, nothing in the
whole affair provoked him so much as the condolences of his
friends, and the foolish figure they should both make at
church, the first Sunday; — of which, in the satirical vehe-
mence of his wit, now sharpened a little by vexation, he
would give so many humorous and provoking descriptions, —
and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights and
attitudes in the face of the whole congregation; — that my
mother declared, these two stages were so truly tragi-comical,
that she did nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from
one end to the other of them all the way.
From Grantham, till they had crossed the Trent, my
father was out of all kind of patience at the vile trick and
imposition which he fancied my mother had put upon him
in this affair — "Certainly," he would say to himself, over
and over again, "the woman could not be deceived herself —
if she could, — what weakness!" — tormenting word! —
which led his imagination a thorny dance, and before all was
over, played the deuce and all with him; — for sure as ever
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 37
the uord weakness was uttered, and struck full upon his
brain — so sure it set him upon running divisions upon how
many kinds of weaknesses there were; — that there was such
a thing as weakness of the body, — as well as weakness of the
mind, — and then he would do nothing but syllogize within
liimself for a stage or two together. How far the cause of
all these vexations might, t)r might not, have arisen out of
himself.
In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude
springing out of this one affair, ail fretting successively in
his mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever was
her journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down. — In
a word, as she complained to my uncle Toby, he would
have tired out the patience of any flesh alive.
Chapter 1 7
Though my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in
none of the best of moods, — pshawing and pishing all the
way down, — yet he had the complaisance to keep the worst
part of the story still to himself; — which was the resolution
he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle
Toby's clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him;
nor was it till the very night in which I was begot, which wa&
thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of
his design: \\hen mv father, liappening, as you remember,
to be a little chagrined and out of temper, — took occasion
as they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over
what was to come, — to let her know that she must accommo-
date herself as well as she could to the bargain made between
them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lie-in of her
next child in the country, to balance the last year's journey.
My father was a gentleman of many virtues, — but he
had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or
might not, add to the number. — 'Tis known by the name of
perseverance in a good cause, — and of obstinacy in a bad
38 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she
knew 'twas to no purpose to make any remonstrance, — so
she e'en resolved to sit down quietly, and make the most
of it.
Chapter i8
As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined,
that my mother should lie-in of me in the country, she took
her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was
three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to
cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often
heard me mention; and before the week was well got
round, as the famous Dr. Manningham was not to be had,
she had to come to a final determination in her mind, —
notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within so
near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had
expressly wrote a five shillings book upon the subject of
midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders
of the sisterhood itself, — but had likewise super-added many
curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the
foetus in cross births, and some other cases of danger, which
belay us in getting into the world; notwithstanding all this,
my mother, I say, was absolutely determined to trust her
life, and mine with it, into no soul's hand but this old
woman's only. — Nov/ this I like; — when we cannot get at
the very thing we wish — never to take up with the next best
in degree to it: — no; that's pitiful beyond description; — it
is no more than a week from this very day, in which I am
now writing this book for the edification of the world; —
which is March 9, 1759, — that my dear, dear Jenny, observ-
ing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of
five-and-twenty shillings a yard, — told the mercer, she was
sorry she had given him so much trouble; — and immediately
went and bought herself a yard-wide stuflF of ten-pence a
yard, — 'Tis the duplication of one and the same greatness
CHAP. i8 TRISTRAM SHANDY 39
of soul; only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in
my mother's case, was that she could not heroine it into so
violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation
might have wished, because the old midwife had really
some little claim to be depended upon, — as much, at least,
as success could give her; having, in the course of her prac-
tice of near twenty years in the parish, brought every mother's
son of them into the world without any one slip or accident
which could fairly be laid to her account.
These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not alto-
gether satisfy some few scruples and uneasiness which hung
upon my father's spirits in relation to this choice. — To say
nothing of the natural workings of humanity and justice —
or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love, all
which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible
in a case of this kind; — he felt himself concerned in a
particular manner, that all should go right in the present
case; — from the accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should
any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at Shandy-
Hall. — He knew the world judged by events and would add
to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him with
the whole blame of it. — "Alas o'day; — had Mrs. Shandy,
poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town
just to lie-in and come down again; — which, they say, she
begged and prayed for upon her bare knees, — and which, in
my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr. Shandy got
with her, — was no such mighty matter to have complied
with, the lady and her babe might both of 'em have been
alive at this hour."
This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;
— and yet, it was not merely to shelter himself, — nor was it
altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he
seemed so extremely anxious about this point; — my father
had extensive views of things, — and stood moreover, as he
thought, deeply concerned in it for the public good, from the
40 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance
might be put to.
He was very sensible that all political writers upon the
subject had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the
beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign down to his own
time, that the current of men and money towards the
metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another, — set in
so strong, — as to become dangerous to our civil rights, —
though, by the bye, — a current was not the image he took
most delight in, — a distemper was here his favourite meta-
phor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by
maintaining it was identically the same in the body national
as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits were
driven up into the head faster than they could find their
ways down; — a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which
was death in both cases.
There was little danger, he would say, of losing our lib-
erties by French politics or French invasions; — nor was he
so much in pain of a consumption from the mass of cor-
rupted matter and ulcerated humours in our constitution,
which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined; — but he
verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off,
all at once, in a state-apoplexy; — and then he would say,
"The Lord have mercy upon us all."
My father was never able to give the history of this dis-
temper, — without the remedy along with it.
"Was I an absolute prince," he would say, pulling up his
breeches with both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair,
"I would appoint able judges, at every avenue of my metrop-
olis, who should take cognizance of every fool's business
who came there; — and if, upon a fair and candid hearing, it
appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, and
come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children,
farmer's sons, etc. etc., at his backside, they should all be
CHAP. 1 8 TRISTRAM SHANDY' 41
sent back, from constable to constable, like vagrants as thcv
were, to the place of their legal settlements. By this means
I shall take care, that mv metropolis tottered not thro' its
own weight; — that the head be no longer too big for the
body; — that the extremes, now wasted and pinned in, be
restored to their due share of nourishment, and regain with
it their natural strength and beauty: — I would effectually
provide. That the meadows and corn-fields of my dominions,
should laugh and sing; — that good cheer and hospitality
flourish once more; — and that such weight and influence be
put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of my kingdom,
as should counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now
taking from them.
"Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen's seats," he
would ask, with some emotion, as he walked across the room,
"throughout so many delicious provinces in France?
Whence is it that the few remaining Chateaus amongst
them are so dismantled, — so unfurnished, and in so ruinous
and desolate a condition? — Because, Sir," (he would say)
"in that kingdom no man has any countr)'-interest to sup-
port; — the little interest of any kind which any man has
anywhere in it, is concentrated in the court, and the looks
of the Grand Monarch: by the sunshine of whose counte-
nance, or the clouds which pass across it, every French man
lives or dies."
Another political reason which prompted my father so
strongly to guard against the least evil accident in my
mother's lying-in in the country-, — was. That any such
instance would infallibly throw a balance of power, too
great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in his
own, or higher stations; — which, with the many other
usurped rights which that part of the constitution was hourly
establishing, — would, in the end, prove fatal to the mon-
archical system of domestic government established in the
first creation of things by God.
42 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
In this point he was entirely of Sir Robert Filmer's
opinion, That the plans and institutions of the greatest
monarchies in the eastern parts of the world, were, origi-
nally, all stolen from that admirable pattern and prototype
of this household and paternal power; — which, for a cen-
tury, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating
away into a mixed government; — the form of M'hich, how-
ever desirable in great combinations of the species, — was
very troublesome in small ones, — and seldom produced any-
thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.
For all these reasons, private and public, put together, —
my father was for having the man-midwife by all means, —
my mother by no means. My father begged and intreated,
she would for once recede from her prerogative in this mat-
ter, and suffer him to choose for her; — my mother, on the
contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to choose
for herself, — and have no mortal's help but the old
woman's. — What could my father do? He was almost
at his wit's end; — talked it over with her in all moods; —
placed his arguments in all lights; — argued the matter with
her like a christian, — like a heathen, — like a husband, — like
a father, — like a patriot, — like a man: — My mother
answered every thing only like a woman; which was a
little hard upon her; — for as she could not assume and
fight it out behind such a variety of characters, — 'twas no
fair match: — 'twas seven to one. — What could my mother
do? — She had the advantage (otherwise she had been cer-
tainly overpowered) of a small reinforcement of chagrin
personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and enabled her
to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an advan-
tage, — that both sides sung Te Deum. In a word, my
mother was to have the old woman, — and the operator
was to have licence to drink a bottle of wine with my father
and my uncle Toby Shandy in the back parlour, — for which
bo was to be paid five guineas.
CHAP. 1 8 TRISTRAM SHANDY 43
I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a
caveat in the breast of my fair reader; — and it is this, —
Not to take it absolutely for granted, from an unguarded
word or two which I have dropped in it, — "That I am a
married man." — I own, the tender appellation of my dear,
dear Jennv, — with some other strokes of conjugal knowl-
edge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough,
have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a
determination against me. — All I plead for, in this case.
Madam, is strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to
me as well as to yourself, — as not to prejudge, or receive
such an impression of me, till you have better evidence, than,
I am positive, at present can be produced against me. — Not
that I can be so vain or unreasonable. Madam, as to desire
vou should therefore think, that my dear, dear Jenny is my
kept mistress; — no, — that would be flattering my character
in the other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which,
perhaps, it has no kind of right to. All I contend for, is
the utter impossibility-, for some volumes, that you, or the
most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know how this
matter really stands. — It is not impossible, but that my dear,
dear Jenny! tender as the appellation is, may be my child. —
Consider, — I was born in the year eighteen. — Nor is there
anything unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that
my dear Jenny may be my friend. — Friend! — My friend.
— Surely, Madam, a friendship between the two sexes may
subsist, and be supported without — Fy! Mr. Shandy: —
Without any thing. Madam, but that tender and delicious
sentiment, which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a
difference of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and
sentimental parts of the best French Romances; — it will
really. Madam, astonish you to see with what a variety of
chaste expressions this delicious sentiment, which I have the
honour to speak of, is dressed out.
U TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
Chapter ig
I WOULD sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in
geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman
of my father's great good sense, — knowing, as the reader
must have observed him, and curious too in philosophy, —
wise also in political reasoning, — and in polemical (as he
will find) no way ignorant, — could be capable of enter-
taining a notion in his head, so out of the common track, —
that I fear the reader, when I come to mention it to him,
if he is the least of a choleric temper, will immediately
throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily
at it; — and if he is of a grave and saturnine case, he will,
at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extrava-
gant; and that was in respect to the choice and imposition
of christian names, on which he thought a great deal more
depended than what superficial minds were capable of con-
<:eiving.
His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange
kind of magic bias, which good or bad names, as he called
them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct.
The hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more
seriousness, — nor had he more faith, — or more to say on
the powers of necromancy in dishonouring his deeds, — or on
Dulcinea's name, in shedding lustre upon them, than my
father had on those of Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the
one hand — or of Nyky and Simkin on the other. How manv
Caesars and Pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of
the names, have been rendered worthy of them? And
how many, he would add, are there, who might have done
exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and
spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemused into nothing.^
I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened)
my father would say— that you do not heartily subscribe to
this opinion of mine, — which, to those, he would add, who
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 45
have not carefully sifted it to the bottom, — I own has an
air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it; — and yet,
my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am
morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to
you, — not as a party in the dispute, — hut as a judge, and
trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and
candid disquisition in this matter; — you are a person free
from any narrow prejudices of education as most men; —
and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into you, — of a
liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely
because it wants friends. Your son, — your dear son, — from
whose sweet and open temper you have so much to expect. —
Your Billy, Sir! — would you, for the world, have called
him Judas? — Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, laying
his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address, —
and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the
nature of the argumentiitn ad homlnem absolutely re-
quires, — Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had
proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse
along with it, would you have consented to such a desecra-
tion of him? — O my God! he would say, looking up, if I
know your temper right. Sir — you are incapable of it; —
)ou would have trampled upon the offer; — you would have
thrown the temptation at the tempter's head with ab-
horrence.
Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire,
with that generous contempt of money, which you shew
me in the whole transaction, is really noble; — and what
renders it more so, is the principle of it; — the working of a
parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very
hypothesis, namelv, That was your son called Judas, — the
sordid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name,
would have accompanied him through life like his shadow,
and, in the end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite,
Sir, of your example.
4<> TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
I never knew a man able to answer this argument. — But,
indeed, to speak of my father as he was; — he was certainly
irresistible; — both in his orations and disputations; — he was
born an orator; — 0£oSiSaKTOC. — Persuasion hung upon his
lips, and the elements of Logic and Rhetoric were so blended
up in him, — and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess at the
weaknesses and passions of his respondent, — that Nature
might have stood up and said, — "This man is eloquent." —
In short, whether he wms on the weak or the strong side of
the question, 'twas hazardous in either case to attack him. —
And yet, 'tis strange he had never read Cicero, nor Quintilian
de Oratorey nor Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus
amongst the ancients; — nor Vossius, nor Scioppius, nor
Ramus, nor Farnaby amongst the moderns; — and what is
more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least
light or spark of subtlety struck into his mind, by one single
lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch
logician or commentator; — he knew not so much as in what
the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argu-
ment ad hominem consisted; so that I well remember, when
he went up along with me to enter my name at Jesus College
in ****, — it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy
tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society, —
that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools,
should be able to work after that fashion with them.
To work with them in the best manner he could, was what
my father was, however, perpetually forced upon; — for he
had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comic kind to
defend — most of which notions, I verily believe, at first
entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la
Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for
half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them,
dismiss them till another day.
I mention this, not only as a matter of hypothesis or con-
jecture upon the progress and establishment of my father's
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 47
many odd opinions, — but as a warning to the learned reader
against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who, after a
free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into our
brains, — at length claim a kind of settlement there, — work-
ing sometimes like yeast; — but more generally after the
manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest, — but end-
ing in downright earnest.
Whether this was the case of the singularity of my
father's notions — or that his judgment, at length, became
the dupe of his wit; — or how far, in many of his notions,
he might, though odd, be absolutely right; — the reader, as he
comes at them, shall decide. All that I maintain here, is,
that in this one, of the influence of christian names, how-
ever it gained footing, he was serious; — he was all uni-
formity; — he was systematical, and, like all systematic
reasoncrs, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist
and torture every thing in nature, to support his hypothesis.
In a word, I repeat it over again; — he was serious; and, in
consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience when-
ever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have
known better, — as careless and as indifferent about the
name they imposed upon their child, — or more so, than in the
choice of Ponto or Cupid for their puppy-dog.
This, he would say, looked ill; — and had, moreover, this
particular aggravation in it, viz.. That when once a vile
name was wrongfully or injudiciouslv given, 'twas not like
the case of a man's character, which, when wronged, might
hereafter be cleared; — and, possibly, some time or other, if
not in the man's life, at least after his death, — be, somehow
or other, set to rights with the world: But the injury of this,
he would say, could never be undone; — nay, he doubted even
whether an act of parliament could reach it: — He knew as
well as vou, that the legislature assumed a power over sur-
names; — but for very strong reasons, which he could give.
48 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step
farther.
It was observable, that tho' my father, in consequence of
this opinion, had, as I have told you, the strongest likings and
dislikings towards certain names; — that there were still
numbers of names which hung so equally in the balance
before him, that they were absolutely indifferent to him.
Jack, Dick, and Tom were of this class: These my father
called neutral names; — affirming of them, without a satire,
That there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as
wise and good men, since the world began, who had indif-
ferently borne them; — so that, like equal forces acting
against each other in contrary directions, he thought they
mutually destroyed each other's effects; for which reason,
he would often declare, He would not give a cherry-stone
to choose amongst them. Bob, which was my brother's
name, was another of these neutral kinds of christian names,
which operated very little either way; and as my father
happened to be at Epsom, when it was given him, — he would
oft-times thank Heaven it was no worse. Andrew was
something like a negative quantity in Algebra with him; —
'twas worse, he said, than nothing. — William stood pretty
high: — Numps again was low with him: — and Nick, he
said, was the Devil.
Eut, of all the names in the universe, he had the most
unconquerable aversion for Tristram; — he had the lowest
and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the
world, — thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum
naturay but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that
in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye,
he was frequently involved, — he would sometimes break
off in a sudden and spirited Epiphonema, or rather Erotesis,
raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of
the discourse, — and demand it categorically of his antago-
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANJ)^ 49
m'st, Whether he would take upon him to s.iy, ho had ever
rcineiTibcred, — whether he had ever read, — or even whether
he had ever heard tell of a man, called IVistram, performing
any thing great or worth recording? — No, — he would say, —
Tristram! — The thing is impossible.
WHiat could be wanting in my father but to liavc wrote a
hook to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots
it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions, —
unless he gives them proper vent: — It was the identical thing
which m\' father did: — for in the year sixteen, which was
two )ears before I was born, he was at the pains of writing
an express Dissertation simply upon the word Tristram, —
shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the
grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.
When this story is compared with the title-page, — Will
not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul? — to see
an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho' singular,
— yet inoffensive in his notions, — so played upon in them bv
cross purposes; — to look down upon the stage, and see him
baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes;
to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against
him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had pur-
posedly been planned and pointed against him, merely to
insult his speculations. — In a word, to behold such a one,
in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day
suffering sorrow; — ten times in a day calling the child of
his prayers Tristram! — Melancholy dissyllable of sound!
which, to his ears, was unison to Nincompoop, and every
name vituperative under heaven. — By his ashes! I swear it,
— if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in
traversing the purposes of mortal man, — it must have been
here; — and \i it was not necessary I should be born before
I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an
account of it.
50 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
Chapter 20
-How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading
the last chapter? I told you in it. That my mother was not
a papist. — Papist! You told me no such thing, Sir. —
Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that I told you
as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could tell you
such a thing. — Then, Sir, I must have missed a page. — No,
Madam, — you have not missed a word. — Then I was
asleep. Sir. — My pride, Madam, cannot allow you that
refuge. — Then, I declare, I know nothing at all about the
matter. — That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your
charge; and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that
you immediately turn back, that is, as soon as you get to the
next full stop, and read the whole chapter over again, I
have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of
wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and
therefore shall make her no apology for it when she re-
turns back: — 'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept
into thousands besides herself, — of reading straight for-
wards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep
erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read
over as it should be, would infallibly impart with them —
The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and
draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of
which made Pliny the younger affirm, "That he never read
a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it." The stories
of Greece and Rome, run over without this turn and appli-
cation, — do less service, I affirm it, than the history of
Parismus and Parismenus, or of the Seven Champions of
England, read with it.
But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over
again the chapter. Madam, as I desired you? — You have:
And (lid you not observe the passage, upon the second read-
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDY 51
ing, which admits the inference? — Not a word like it!
Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one
of the chapter, where I take upon me to say, "It was necessary
I should be born before I was christened." Had my mother.
Madam, been a Papist, that consequence did not follow.
It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but
more so to the Republic of letters; — so that my own is quite
swallowed up in the consideration of it, — that this self-same
vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things, has got so
strongly into our habit and humour, — and so wholly intent
are we upon satisfying the impatience of our concupiscence
that way, — that nothing but the gross and more carnal parts
of a composition will go down: — The subtle hints and sly
communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards, — the
heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the
other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left
in the bottom of the ink-horn.
I wish the male-reader has not passed by many a one, as
quaint and curious as this one, in which the female-reader
has been detected. I wish it may have its effects; — and that
all good people, both male and female, from her example,
may be taught to think as well as read.^
' The Romish Rituals direct the baptizine of the child, in cases of
danger, before it is bom; — but upon this proviso, That some part
or other of the child's body he seen by the baptizcr: — But the
Doctors of the Sorbonne, by a deliberation held amongst them, April
10, 1733, — have enlarged the powers of the midwifes, by determin-
ing. That though no part of the child's body should appear,— that
baptism shall, nevertheless, be administered to it by injection,— ^jr
le moyen d'une petite camiUe,—.\n?.\\ck a squirt.— 'T\i very strange
that St. Thomas Aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, both
for tying and untyinir the knots of school-divinity, — should, after
so miich pains bestowed upon this. — give up the point at last, as a
second La chose impossible, — "Infantes in maternis uteris existentes
(quoth St. Thomas!) baptizari possunt niillo modo." — O Thomas!
Thoma>:
If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism by
injection, as presented to the Doctors of the Sorbonne, with their
consultation thereupon, it is as follows.
52 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
Memoire presente a Messieurs les Docteurs
DE Sorbonne."
Un Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente a Messieurs les Doc-
teurs de Sorbonne, ^u'il y a des cas, quoique tres rares, ou unc
mere ne sgauroit accoucher, & meme ou I'enfant est tellemcnt
renferme dans le sein da sa mere, qu'il ne fait paroitre aucunc
partie de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas, suivant les Rituels,
dc lui conferer, du moins sous condition, le bapteme. Le
Chirurgien, qui consulte, pretend, par le moyen d'une petite
canulle, de pouvoir baptiser immediatement I'enfant, sans
faire aucun tort a la mere. — II demand si ce moyen, qu'il
vient de proposer, est permis & legitime, & s'il peut s'en
servir dans les cas qu'il vient d'exposer.
Reponse.
Le Conseil estime, que la question proposee souffre dc
grandes difficultes. Les Theologiens posent d'un cote pour
principe, que le bapteme, qui est une naissance spirituellc,
suppose une premiere naissance; il faut etre ne dans Ic
monde, pour renaitre en Jesus Christ, comme ils I'enseignent.
S. Thomas, 3 part, quaest. 88, artic. 1 1, suit cette doctrine
comme une verite constante; Ton ne peut, dit ce S. Doctcur,
baptiser les en fans qui sont renfcrmes dans le sein de leurs
meres, & S. Thomas est fonde sur ce, que les en fans ne sont
point nes, & ne peuvcnt etre comptes parmi les autres
hommes; d'ou il conclud, qu'ils ne peuvent etre I'objet d'une
action exterieure, pour regevoir par leur ministere, les sacre-
mens necessaires au salut : Pueri in maternis uteris existentes
nondum frodierunt in lucem ut cum aliis horn ini bus vitam
ducant; iinde non fnssunt suhjici nctioni humanae, ut fer
eorum ministerium sncranipntn recif'iant ad salutem. Les
-Vide Deventcr, Paris edit., 4to, 1734, p. 366.
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDY
53
rituels ordonnent dans la pratique ce que les theologi'ens ont
etabli sur les memes matieres, & ils deffendent tous d'une
maniere uniforme, de baptiser les enfans qui sont renfcrmes
dans le sein de leurs meres, s'ils ne font paroitre quelque
partie de leurs corps. Le concours des thcologiens, & des
rituels, qui sont les regies des dioceses, paroit former une
autorite qui termine la question presente; cepcndant le
conseil de conscience considerant d'un cote, que le raisonne-
ment des theologiens est uniquement fonde sur une raison
de convenance, & que la deffense des rituels suppose que Ton
ne peut baptiser immcdiatement les enfans ainsi rcnfermcs
dans le sein de leurs meres, ce qui est contre la supposition
presente; & d'un autre cote, considerant que les memes theo-
logiens enseignent, que I'on peut risquer les sacremens que
Jesus Christ a etablis comme des movens faciles, mais neces-
saires pour sanctifier les hommes; & d'ailleurs estimant, que
les enfans renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient
etre capables de salut, parcequ'ils sont capables de damna-
tion; — pour ces considerations, & en egard a I'exposc, suivant
lequel on assure avoir trouve un moyen certain de baptiser
ces enfans ainsi renfermes, sans faire aucun tort a la mere,
le Conseil cstime que I'on pourroit se servir du moyen pro-
pose, dans la confiance qu'il a, que Dieu n'a point laisse ces
sortes d'enfans sans aucuns sccours, & supposant, comme il
est expose, que le moyen dont il s'agit est propre a leur
procurer le baptC-me; cependant comme il s'agiroit, en
autorisant la pratique propose, de changer une regie univer-
sellement etablie, le Conseil croit que cclui qui consulte doit
s'addresser a son eveque, & a qui il appartient de juger de
I'utilitc, & du danger du moyen propose, & comme, sous le
bon plaisir de 1 'eveque, le Conseil estime qu'il faudroi;:
recourir au Pape, qui a le droit d'cxpliqucr les regies de
I'eglise, & d'y deroger dans le cas, ou la loi ne s^auroit
obliger, quelque sage & quelque utile que paroisse la maniere
54 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
de baptiser dent il s'agit, le Conseil ne pourroit I'approuver
sans le concours dc ces deux autoritcs. On conseile au
moins a celui qui consulte, de s'addresser a son eveque, & de
lui faire part de la presente decision, afin que, si le prelat
entre dans les raisons sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignes
s'appuyent, il puisse etre autorise dans le cas de necessite, ou
il risqueroit trop d'attendre que la permission fiit demandee
& accordee d'employer le moyen qu'il propose si avantageux
au salut de Ten f ant. Au reste, le Conseil, en estimant que
I'on pourroit s'en servir, croit cependant, que si les enfans
dont il s'agit, venoient au monde, contre I'esperance de
ceux qui se seroient servis du meme moyen, il seroit neces-
saire de les baptiser sous condition; & en cela le Conseil se
con forme a tous les rituels, qui en autorisant le bapteme d'un
enfant qui fait paroitre quelque partie de son corps, enjoi-
gnent neantmoins, & ordonnent de le baptiser sous condition,
s'il vient heureusement au monde.
Delibere en Sorbonne, le lo Avril, 1733.
A. Le Moyne.
L. De Romigny.
De Marcilly.
Mr. Tristram Shandy's compliments to Messrs. Le
Moyne, De Romigny, and De Marcilly; hopes they all
rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation. — He
begs to know, whether after the ceremony of marriage, and
before that of consummation, the baptizing all the Homun-
culi at once, slapdash, by injection, would not be a shorter
and safer cut still; on condition, as above. That if the
Homunculi do well, and come safe into the world after this,
that each and every of them shall be baptized again {sous
condition) — And provided, in the second place, That the
thing can be done, which Mr. Shandy apprehends it may,
far le moye^i d*une fettte canulley and sans faire aucun tort
au fere.
CHAP. 21 TRISTRAM SHANDY 55
Chapter 21
— I WONDER what's all that noise, and running backwards
and forwards for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing
himself, after an hour and a half's silence, to my uncle
Toby, — who, you must know, was sitting on the opposite
side of the fire, smoking his social pipe all the time, in mute
contemplation of a new pair of black plush breeches which
he had got on: — What can they be doing, brother? — quoth
my father, — we can scarce hear ourselves talk.
I think, replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his
mouth, and striking the head of it two or three times upon
the nail of his left thumb, as he began his sentence, — \
think, says he: — But to enter rightly into my uncle Toby's
sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to enter
first a little into his character, the outlines of which I shall
just give you, and then the dialogue between him and mv
father will go on as well again.
Pray what was that man's name, — for I write in such a
hurry, I have no time to recollect or look for it, — who first
made the observation, "That there was great inconsistency
in our air and climate"? Whoever he was, 'twas a just
and good observation in him. — But the corollary drawn
from it, namely, "That it is this which has furnished us
with such a variety of odd and whimsical characters"; —
that was not his; — it was found out by another man, at
least a century and a half after him: Then again, — that this
copious store-house of original materials, is the true and
natural cause that our Comedies are so much better than
those of France, or any others that either have, or can be
wrote upon the Continent: — that discovery was not fully
made till about the middle of King William's reign, —
when the great Dryden, in writing one of his long prefaces,
(if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed
toward the latter end of Queen Anne, the great Addison
56 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
began to patronize the notion, and more fully explained it
to the world in one or two of his Spectators; — but the dis-
covery was not his. — Then, fourthly and lastly, that this
strange irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an
irregularity in our characters, — doth thereby, in some sort,
make us amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry
with when the weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,
— that observation is my own; — and was struck out by me
this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and betwixt the hours
of nine and ten in the morning.
Thus — thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this
great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our
eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our
knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical,
nautical, mathematical, enigmatical, technical, biographical,
romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other
branches of it, (most of 'em ending as these do, in teal)
have for these two centuries and more, gradually been creep-
ing upwards towards that 'AK|jyj of their perfections, from
which, if we may form a conjecture from the advances of
these last seven years, we cannot possibly be far off.
When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end
to all kind of v/ritings whatsoever; — the want of all kind
of writing will put an end to all kind of reading; — and that
in time. As war begets poverty; poverty peace, — must, in
course, put an end to all kind of knowledge, — and then —
we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words,
be exactly where we started.
— Happy! thrice happy times! I only wish that the era
of my begetting, as well as the mode and manner of it, had
been a little altered, — or that it could have been put off,
with any convenience to my father or mother, for some
twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the
literary world might have stood some chance. —
CHAP. 21 TRISTRAM SHANDY 57
But I forget my uncle 1 oby, whom all this while we
liave left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe.
His humour was of that particular species, which does
honour to our atmosphere; and I should have made no
scruple of ranking him amongst one of the first-rate pro-
ductions of it, had not there appeared too many strong lines
in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he derived
the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either
wind or water, or any modifications or combinations of
them whatever: And I have, therefore, oft-times wondered,
that my father, tho' I believe he had his reasons for it, upon
his observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my course,
when I was a boy, — should never once endeavour to account
for them in this way: for all the Shandy Family were of an
original character throughout: — I mean the males, — the fe-
males had no character at all, — except, indeed, my great
aunt Dinah, who, about sixty years ago, was married and
got with child by the coachman, for which my father, ac-
cording to his hypothesis of christian names, would often
say, She might thank her godfathers and godmothers.
It will seem verj' strange, — and I would as soon think of
dropping a riddle in the reader's way, which is not my in-
terest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come to
pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after it had
happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the
peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, be-
tween my father and my uncle Toby. One would have
thought, that the whole force of the misfortune should have
spent and wasted itself in the family at first, — as is generally
the case. — But nothing ever wrought with our family after
the ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this happened,
it might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions
are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done
the Shandy Family any good at ill, it might lie waiting till
apt times and circumstances should give it an opportuiut\
58 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
to discharge its office. — Observe, I determine nothing upon
this. — My way is ever to point out to the curious, different
tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the
events I tell; — not with a pedantic Fescue, — or in the de-
cisive manner of Tacitus, who outwits himself and his
reader; — but with the officious humility of a heart devoted
to the assistance merely of the inquisitive; — to them I write,
— and by them I shall be read, — if any such reading as this
could be supposed to hold out so long, — to the very end of
the world.
Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved
for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how
and in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the
cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to
operate, is what I am able to explain with great exactness,
and is as follows:
My uncle Toby Shandy, Madam, was a gentleman, who,
with the virtues which usually constitute the character of a
man of honour and rectitude, — possessed one in a very emi-
nent degree, which is seldom or never put into the catalogue;
and that was a most extreme and unparalleled modesty of
nature; — though I correct the word nature, for this reason,
that I may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to
a hearing, and that is. Whether this modesty of his was
natural or acquired. — Whichever way my uncle Toby came
by it, 'twas nevertheless modesty in the truest sense of it;
and that is, Madam, not in regard to words, for he was so
unhappy as to have very little choice in them — but to things;
— and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and it arose to
such a height in hiin, as almost to equal, if such a thing
could be, even the modesty of a woman: That female nicety,
Madam, and inward cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your
sex, which makes you so much the awe of ours.
You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby had con-
tracted all this from this very source; — that he had spent a
CHAP. 21 TRISTRAM SHANDY 59
great part of his time in converse with your sex; and that
from a thorough knowledge of you, and the force of
imitation which such fair examples render irresistible, he
had acquired this amiable turn of mind.
I wish I could say so, — for unless it was with his sister-
in-law, my father's wife and my mother — my uncle Tobj
scarce exchanged three words with the sex in as many years;
— no, he got it, Madam, by a blow. — A blow! — Yes,
Madam, it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke off by
a ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of
Namur, which struck full upon my uncle Toby's groin. —
Which way could that affect it? The story of that,
.Madam, is long and interesting; — but it would be running
my history all upon heaps to give it you here. — 'Tis for an
episode hereafter; and every circumstance relating to it, in
its proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you: — 'Till
then, it is not in my power to give farther light into this
matter, or say more than what I have said already, — That
my uncle Toby was a gentleman of unparalleled modesty,
which happening to be somewhat subtilized and rarified by
the constant heat of a little family pride, — they both so
wrought together within him, that he could never hear to
hear the aifair of my aunt Dinah touched upon, but with
the greatest emotion. — The least hint of it was enough
to make the blood fly into his face; — but when my father
enlarged upon the story in mixed companies, which the
illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,
— the unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of
the family would set my uncle Toby's honour and modesty
o'bleeding; and he would often take my father aside, in
the greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell him,
he would give him any thing in the world, only to let the
storA' rest.
My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness
for my uncle Toby, that ever one brother bore towards
6o TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
another, and would have done anything in nature, which
one brother in reason could have desired of another, to have
made my uncle Toby's heart easy in this, or any other point.
But this lay out of his power.
— My father, as I told you, was a philosopher in grain,
— speculative, — systematical; — and my aunt Dinah's affair
was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogra-
dation of the planets to Copernicus: — The backslidings of
Venus in her orbit fortified the Copernican system, called
so after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt Dinah
in her orbit, did the same service in establishing my father's
system, which, I trust, will for ever hereafter be called
the Shandean System, after his.
In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had
as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever; — and neither
he, nor, I dare say, Copernicus, would have divulged the
affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to
the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they
thought, to truth. — Amicus Plato, my father would say,
construing the words to my uncle Toby, as he went along,
Afnicus Plato; that is, Dinah was my aunt; — sed magis
arnica Veritas — but Truth is my sister.
This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my
uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. The
one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace re-
corded, — and the other would scarce ever let a day pass
to an end without some hint at it.
For God's sake, my uncle Toby would cry, — and for
my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy, —
do let this story of our aunt's and her ashes sleep in peace;
— how can you, — how can you have so little feeling and
compassion for the character of our family? — What is the
character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would
reply. — Nay, if you come to that — what is the life of a
family? — The life of a family! — my uncle Toby would
CHAP. 21 TRISTRAM SHANDY 6l
say, throwing himself back in his arm-chair, and lifting up
his hands, his eyes, and one leg. — Yes, the life, — my father
would say, maintaining his point. How many thousands of
'em are there every year that come cast away, (in all civilized
countries at least) — and considered as nothing but common
air, in competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of
things, my uncle Toby would answer, — every such in-
stance is downright Murder, let who will commit it. —
There lies your mistake, my father would reply; — for, in
Foro Sc'ient'iae there is no such thing as Murder, — 'tis only
Death, brother.
My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any
other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen
bars of Lillabullero. — You must know it was the usual
channel thro' which his passions got vent, when any thing
shocked or surprised him: — but especially when any thing,
which he deemed very absurd, was offered.
As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the com-
mentators upon them, that I remember, have thought proper
to give a name to this particular species of argument, — I
here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. First,
That, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes, it may
stand as much distinguished for ever, from every other
species of argument — as the Argiimentum ad Verecundiam,
ex Absurdoy ex Fortiori, or any other argument whatso-
ever: — And, secondly, That it may be said by my children's
children, when my head is laid to rest, — that their learned
grandfather's head had been busied to as much purpose once,
as other people's; — That he had invented a name, — and
generously thrown it into the Treasury of the Ars Logica,
for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole
science. And, if the end of disputation is more to silence
than convince, — they may add, if they please, to one of the
best arguments too.
I do therefore, by these presents, strictly order and com-
62 TRISTRAM SHANDY booki
mand, That it be known and distinguished by the name and
title of the Argumentum Fistnlatorium, and no other; —
and that it rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinurn
and the Argutyientum ad Crumenaniy and for ever here-
after be treated of in the same chapter.
As for the Argumentum T7-tfod'tum.y which is never used
but by the woman against the man; — and the Argumentum
nd Rern, which, contran'wise, is made use of by the man
only against the woman; — As these two are enough in con-
science for one lecture; — and, moreover, as the one is the
best answer to the other, — let them likewise be kept apart
and be treated of in a place by themselves.
Chapter 2 2
The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph
Hall, who was Bishop of Exeter in King James the First's
reign, tells us in one of his Decads, at the end of his divine
art of meditation, imprinted at London, in the year i6io,
by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, "That it is an
abominable thing for a man to commend himself"; — and
I really think it is so.
And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in
a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to
be found out; — I think it is full as abominable, that a man
should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with
the conceit of it rotting in his head.
This is precisely my situation.
For in this long digression which I was accidentally led
into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is
a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has
all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader, — not for
want of penetration in him, — but because 'tis an excellence
seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression; —
and it is this: That tho' my digressions are all fair, as you
observe, — and that I fly off from what I am about, as far,
CHAP. 22 TRISTRAM SHANDY 63
and as often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I
constantly take care to order atfairs so that my main busi-
ness docs not stand still in my absence.
I was just going, for example, to have given you the
great outlines of mv uncle Toby's most whimsical character;
— when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us,
and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very
heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you
perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character
went on gently all the time; — not the great contours of it
— that was impossible, — but some familiar strokes and faint
designations of it, were here and there touched on, as we
went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my
uncle Toby now than you was before.
By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a
species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into
it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance
with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it
is progressive too, — and at the same time.
This, Sir, is a ven- different stor\' from that of the
earth's moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with
her progress in her elliptic orbit which brings about the
year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons
we enjov; — though I own it suggested the thought, — as I
believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and dis-
coveries have come from such trifling hints.
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; — they are
the life, the soul of reading! — take them out of this book,
for instance, — you might as well take the book along with
them; — one cold eternal winter would reign in every page
of it; restore them to the writer; — he steps forth like a
bridegroom, — bids AU-hail; brings in variety, and forbids
the appetite to fail.
All the dexterity is in the good cookery and manage-
ment of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the
64 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter,
is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression, — from that
moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock still; — and
if he goes on with his main work, — then there is an end
of his digression.
— This is vile work. — For which reason, from the be-
ginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work
and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and
have so complicated and involved the digressive and progres-
sive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole
machine, in general, has been kept a-going; — and, what's
more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases
the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and
good spirits.
Chapter 2j
I HAVE a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very
nonsensically, and I will not baulk my fancy. — Accord-
ingly I set oif thus:
If the fixture of Momus's glass in the human breast,
according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critic,
had taken place, — first. This foolish consequence would
certainly have followed, — That the very wisest and very
gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid
window-money every day of our lives.
And, secondly, That had the said glass been there set up,
nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have
taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone
softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and looked in,
— viewed the soul stark naked; — observed all her motions,
— her machinations; — traced all her maggots from their
first engendering to their crawling forth; — watched her
loose in her frisks, her gambols, lier capricios; and after
some notice of her more solemn deportment, consequent
upon such frisks, etc., — then taken your pen and ink and set
down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn
CHAP. 23 TRISTRAM SHANDY 65
to: — But this is an advantage not to be had by the biog-
rapher in this planet J — in the planet Mercury (belike) it
may be so, if not better still for him; — for there the intense
heat of the countr)', which is proved by computators, from
its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red-
hot iron, — must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies
of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them for
the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them
both, all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom,
may be nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can
shew to the contrary, but one fine transparent body of clear
glass (bating the umbilical knot) — so that, till the in-
habitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the
rays of light, in passing through them, become so mon-
strously refracted, — or return reflected from their surfaces
in such transverse lines to the eye, that a man cannot be
seen through; — his soul might as well, unless for mere
ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the umbilical
point gave her, — might, upon all other accounts, I say, as
well play the fool out o' doors as in her own house.
But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants
of this earth; — our minds shine not through the body, but
are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystallized flesh
and blood; so that, if we would come to the specific char-
acters of them, wc must go some other way to work.
Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit
has been forced to take, to do this thing with exactness.
Some, for instance, draw all their characters with wind-
instruments. — Virgil takes notice of that way in the affair
of Dido and Aeneas; — but it is as fallacious as the breath
of fame; — and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I
am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical
exactness in their designations of one particular sort of
character among them, from the forte or fiano of a certain
wind-instrument they use, — which they say is infallible. —
66 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;
— 'tis sufficient we have it amongst us, — but never think of
making a drawing by it; — this is enigmatical, and intended
to be so, at least ad fofulum: — And therefore, I beg,
Madam, when you come here, that you read on as fast as
you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about it.
There are others again, who will draw a man's character
from no other helps in the world, but merely from his
evacuations; — but this often gives a very incorrect outline,
— unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions too;
and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound
one good figure out of them both.
I should have no objection to this method, but that I
think it must smell too strong of the lamp — and be rendered
still more operose, by forcing you to have an eye to the rest of
his Non-naturals. — Why the most natural actions of a man's
life should be called his Non-naturals, — is another question.
There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of
these expedients; — not from any fertility of their own, but
from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed
from the honourable devices which the Pentagraphic Breth-
ren of the brush have shewn in taking copies. — These, you
must know, are your great historians.
One of these you will see drawing a full-length char-
acter against the light; — that's illiberal, — dishonest, — and
hard upon the character of the man who sits.
Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you
in the Camera; — that is most unfair of all, — because, there
you are sure to be represented in some of your most ridicu-
lous attitudes.
To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you
my uncle Toby's character, I am determined to draw it by
no mechanical help whatever; — nor shall my pencil be
guided by any one wind-instrument which ever was blown
upon, either on this, or on the other side of the Alps; —
CHAP. 24 TRISTRAM SHAND'^' 67
nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges, —
or touch upon his Non-naturals; — but, in a word, I will
draw my uncle Toby's character from his Hobby-Horse.
Chapter 24
If I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all
patience for my uncle Toby's character, — I would here
previously have convinced him that there is no instrument
so fit to draw such a thing with, as that which I have pitched
upon.
A man and his Hobby-Horse, tho' I cannot say that they
act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the
soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a
communication between them of some kind; and my opinion
rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner
of electrified bodies, — and that, by means of the heated
parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with
the back of the Hobby-Horse, — by long journeys and much
friction, it so happens, that the body of the rider is at length
filled as full of Hobby-Horsical matter as it can hold; — so
that if you are able to give but a clear description of the
nature of the one, you mav form a prcttv exact notion of
the genius and character of the other.
Now the Hobby-Horse which mv uncle Toby always rode
upon, was in my opinion an Hobby-Horse well worth giving
a description of, if it was only upon the score of his great
singularity; — for you might have travelled from York to
Dover, — from Dover to Penzance in Cornwall, and from
Penzance to "\'ork back again, and not have seen such
another upon the road; or if you had seen such a one, what-
ever haste you had been in, you must infallibly have stopped
to have taken a view of him. Indeed, the gait and figure
of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike was he, from
his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, that it
was now and then made a matter of dispute, — whether he
68 TRISTRAM SHANDY book i
was really a Hobby-Horse or no: but as the Philosopher
would use no other argument to the Sceptic, who disputed
with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising
up upon his legs, and walking across the room; — so would
my uncle Toby use no other argument to prove his Hobby-
Horse was a Hobby-Horse indeed, but by getting upon his
back and riding him about; — leaving the world, after that,
to determine the point as it thought fit.
In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so
much pleasure, and he carried my uncle Toby so well, —
that he troubled his head very little with what the world
either said or thought about it.
It is now high time, however, that I give you a descrip-
tion of him: — But to go on regularly, I only beg you will
give me leave to acquaint you first, how my uncle Toby
came by him.
Chaffer 25
The wound in my uncle Toby's groin, which he received
at the siege of Namur, rendering him unfit for the service,
it was thought expedient he should return to England, in
order, if possible, to be set to rights.
He was four years totally confined, — part of it to his
bed, and all of it to his room: and in the course of his cure,
which was all that time in hand, suffered unspeakable
miseries, — owing to a succession of exfoliations from the
OS fub'iSy and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix
called the os i/liu//iy — both which bones were dismally
crushed, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I
told you was broke off the parapet, — as by its size, — (tho'
it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along
to think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle
Toby's groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone
itself, than to the projectile force of it, — which he would
often tell him was a great liappiness.
CHAP. 25 TRISTRAM SHANDY 69
My father at that time was just beginning business in
London, and had taken a house; — and as the truest friend-
ship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers, —
and that mv father thought my uncle Toby could no where
be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house, — he
assigned him the very best apartment in it. — And what
was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he
would never suffer a friend or an acquaintance to step into
the house on any occasion, but he would take him by the
hand, and lead him upstairs to see his brother Toby, and
chat an hour by his bedside.
The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it;
— my uncle's visitors at least thought so, and in their daily
calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that belief,
thev would frequently turn the discourse to that subject, —
and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on
to the siege itself.
These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle
Toby received great relief from them, and would have
received much more, but that they brought him into some
unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together,
retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an
expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe
they would have laid him in his grave.
What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were, — 'tis
impossible for you to guess; — If you could, — I should
blush; not as a relation, — not as a man, — nor even as a
woman, — but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I
set no small store by myself upon this very account, that
my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing.
And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour,
that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment
or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in
the next page, — I would tear it out of my book.
BOOK II
Chafter i
I HAVE begun a new book, on purpose that I might have
room enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in
which my uncle Toby was involved, from the many dis-
courses and interrogations about the siege of Namur, where
he received his wound.
I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history
of King William's wars, — but if he has not, — I then in-
form him, that one of the most memorable attacks in that
siege, was that which was made by the English and Dutch
upon the point of the advanced counterscarp, between the
gate of St. Nicolas, which inclosed the great sluice or
water-stop, where the English were terribly exposed to the
shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St. Roch:
The issue of which hot dispute, in three words, was this;
That the Dutch lodged themselves upon the counter-guard,
— and that the English made themselves masters of the
covered-way before St. Nicolas-gate, nothwithstanding the
gallantry of the French officers, who exposed themselves
upon the glacis sword in hand.
As this was the principal attack of which my uncle Toby
was an eye witness at Namur, — the army of the besiegers
being cut off, by the confluence of the Maes and Sambre,
from seeing much of each other's operations, — my uncle
Toby was generally more eloquent and particular in his ac-
count of it; and the many perplexities he was in, arose out
of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling
his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the dif-
ferences and distinctions between the scarp and counter-
scarp, — the glacis and covered-way, — the half-moon and
70
CHAP. I I'RISrRAM SHANDY 71
ravelin, — ns to make his company fully comprehend where
and what he was about.
W^riters themselves are too apt to confound these terms;
so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to
explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions,
that my uncle Toby did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and
sometimes himself too.
To speak the truth, unless the company my father led up
stairs were tolerabl)' clear-headed, or my uncle Toby was
in one of his explanatory moods, 'twas a difficult thing, do
what he could, to keep the discourse free from obscurity.
What rendered the account of this affair the more in-
tricate to my uncle Toby, was this, — that in the attack of
the counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas, extending
itself from the bank of the Maes, quite up to the great
water-stop, — the ground was cut and cross cut with such
a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all
sides, — and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast
amongst them, that frequently he could neither get back-
wards or forwards to have his life; and was oft-times
obliged to give up the attack upon that very account only.
These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle Toby Shandy
more perturbations than you would imagine: and as my
father's kindness to him was continuallv dragging up fresh
friends and fresh enquirers, — he had but a verv imeasy
task of it.
No doubt mv uncle Tobv had great commantl of himself,
— and could guard appearances, I believe, as well as most
men; — yet any one may imagine, that when he could not
retreat out of the ravelin without getting into the half-
moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down
the counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of
slipping into the ditch, but that he must have fretted and
fumed inwardly: — He did so; — and the little and hourly
vexations, which may seem trifling and of no account to the
72 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
man who has not read Hippocrates, yet, whoever has read
Hippocrates, or Dr. James Mackenzie, and has considered
well the effects which the passions and affections of the
mind have upon the digestion — (Why not of a wound as
well as of a dinner?) — may easily conceive what sharp
paroxysms and exacerbations of his wound my uncle Toby
must have undergone upon that score only.
— My uncle Toby could not philosophize upon it; — 'twas
enough he felt it was so, — and having sustained the pain
and sorrows of it for three months together, he was re-
solved some way or other to extricate himself.
He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the
anguish and nature of the wound upon his groin suffering
him to lie in no other position, when a thought came into
his head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and have it
pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the fortifica-
tion of the town and citadel of Namur, with its environs,
it might be a means of giving him ease. — I take notice of
his desire to have the environs along with the town and
citadel, for this reason, — because my uncle Toby's wound
was got in one of the traverses, about thirty toises from the
returning angle of the trench, opposite to the salient angle
of the demi-bastion of St. Roch: — so that he was pretty
confident he could stick a pin upon the identical spot of
ground where he was standing on when the stone struck
him.
All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him
from a world of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved
the happy means, as you will read, of procuring my uncle
Toby his Hobby-Horse.
Chaffer 2
There is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expense
of making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things
so badly, as to let your critics and gentry of refined taste
CHAP. 2 TRISTRAM SHANDY 73
run it down: Nor is there any thing so likely to make them
do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is
full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest
of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no
such thing as a critic (by occupation) at table.
— I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have
left half a dozen places purposely open for them; — and in
the next place, I pay them all court. — Gentlemen, I kiss
your hands, I protest no company could give me half the
pleasure, — by my soul I am glad to see you — I beg only
you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down
without any ceremony, and fall on heartily.
I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point
of carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a
seventh open for them, — and in this very spot I stand on ;
but being told by a Critic, (tho' not by occupation, — but bv
nature) that I had acquitted myself well enough, I shall fill
it up directly, h(jping, in the mean time, that I shall be able
to make a great deal of more room next year.
— How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle Toby,
who, it seems, was a military man, and whom you have
represented as no fool, — be at the same time such a con-
fused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed fellow, as — Go
look.
So, Sir Critic, I could have replied; but I scorn ir. —
'Tis language unurbane, — and only befitting the man who
cannot give clear and satisfactory accounts of things, or dive
deep enough into the first causes of human ignorance and
confusion. It is moreover the reply valiant — and there-
fore I reject it: for tho' it might have suited my uncle
Toby's character as a soldier excellently well, — and had he
not accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the
Lillabulleroy as he wanted no courage, 'tis the very answer
he would have given ; yet it would by no means have done
for me. You see as plain as can be, that I write as a man
74 TRISTRAM SHANDY book n
of erudition; that even my similes, my allusions, my illus-
trations, my metaphors, are erudite, — and that I must sus-
tain my character properly, and contrast it properly too, —
else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I should be
undone; — at this very moment that I am going here to
fill up one place against a critic, — I should have made an
opening for a couple.
— Therefore I answer thus:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read,
did you ever read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the
Human Understanding? — Don't answer me rashly — be-
cause many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it —
and many have read it who understand it not: — If either of
these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in
three words what the book is. — It is a history, — A history!
of who? what? where? when? Don't hurry yourself —
It is a history-book. Sir, (which may possibly recommend
it to the world) of what passes in a man's own mind; and
if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe
me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysic
circle.
But this by the way.
Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look
down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that
the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a man,
is threefold.
Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight
and transient impressions made by the objects, when the said
organs are not dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a
sieve, not able to retain what it has received. — Call down
Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give you my cap and
bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that
Dolly herself should understand it as well as Malebranch.
— When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has
thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her
CHAP. 2 TRISTRAM SHANDY 75
right side; — take that opportunity to recollect that the organs
and faculties of perception can, by nothing in this world be
so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which
Dolly's hand is in search of. — Your organs are not so dull
that I should inform vou — 'tis an inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly
fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over
hardened, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from
the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very
well. If Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees- wax, or
of a temper too soft, — tho' it mav receive, — it will not hold
the impression, how hard soever Dolly thrusts against it; and
last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble,
but applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings
the bell; — in any one of these three cases the print left
by the thimble will he as imlike the prototype as a brass-
jack.
Now you must understand that not one of these
was the true cause of the confusion in my uncle Toby's
discourse; and it is for that very reason I enlarge upon
them so long, after the manner of great physiologists — to
shew the world, v\hat it did 7iot arise from.
What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a
fertile source of obscurity it is, — and ever will be, — and
that is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed
the clearest and most exalted understandings.
It is ten to one (at Arthur's) whether you have ever read
the literary histories of past ages; — if you have, what ter-
rible battles, 'yclept logomachies, have they occasioned and
perpetuated with so much gall and ink-shed, — that a good-
n.itured man cannot read the accounts of them without
tears in his eyes.
Gentle critic! when thou hast weighed all this, and con-
sidered within thyself how much of th\ own knowledge,
discourse, and conversation has been pestered and disordered,
76 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
at one time or other, by this, and this only: — What a pudder
and racket in Councils about ouci'a and Onooraoic; and in
the Schools of the learned about power and about spirit; —
about essences, and about quintessences; — about substances,
and about space. — What confusion in greater Theatres from
words of little meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when
thou considerest this, thou wilt not wonder at my uncle
Toby's perplexities, — thou wilt drop a tear of pity upon his
scarp and his counterscarp; — his glacis and his covered-way;
— his ravelin and his half-moon: 'Twas not by ideas, — by
Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words.
Chapter 5
When my uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind,
he began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost
diligence, to the study of it; for nothing being of more im-
portance to him than his recovery, and his recovery depend-
ing, as you have read, upon the passions and affections of
his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest care to make
himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to talk
upon it without emotion.
In a fortnight's close and painful application, which, by
the bye, did my uncle Toby's wound, upon his groin, no
good, — he was enabled, by the help of some marginal docu-
ments at the feet of the elephant, together with Gobesius's
military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the
Flemish, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity;
and before he was two full months gone, — he was right
eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the
advanced counterscarp with great order; — but having, by
that time, gone much deeper into the art, than what his first
motive made necessary, my uncle Toby was able to cross
the Maes and Sambre; make diversions as far as Vauban'?
line, the abbey of Salsines, etc., and give his visitors as dis-
tinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the
CHAP. 3 TRISTRAM SHANDY 77
gate of St. Nicolas, where he had the honour to receive his
wound.
But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, in-
creases ever with the acquisition of it. The more my uncle
Toby pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it! —
by the same process and electrical assimilation, as I told
you, through which I ween the souls of connoisseurs them-
selves, by long friction and incumbition, have tlie happi-
ness, at length, to get all be-virtued — be-pictured, — be-
buttcrflied, and be-fiddled.
The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain of
science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his
thirst, so that before the first year of his confinement had
well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in Italy
or Flanders, of which, by one means or other, he had not
procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully
collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their demoli-
tions, their improvements, and new works, all which he
would read with that intense application and delight, that
he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his
dinner.
In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli
and Cataneo, translated from the Italian; — likewise Ste-
vinus, Moralis, the Chevalier de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn,
Sheeter, the Count de Pagan, the Marshal Vauban, Mons.
Blondel, with almost as many more books of military archi-
tecture, as Don Quixote was found to have of chivalry,
when the curate and barber invaded his library.
Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in
August, ninety-nine, my uncle Toby found it necessary tc
understand a little of projectiles: — and having judged it
best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he
began with N. Tartaglia, who it seems was the first man
who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball's doing all
that mischief under the notion of a ri^ht line — This N.
78 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
Tartaglia proved to my uncle Toby to be an impossible
thing.
— Endless is the search of Truth.
No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the
cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and
resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road the
ball did go: For which purpose he was obliged to set off
afresh with old Maltus, and studied him devoutly. — He
proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, by cer-
tain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the
precise part to be a Parabola — or else an Hyperbola, — and
that the parameter, or latus rectum^ of the conic section of
the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct
ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of
incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal plane;
— and that the semi-parameter, — stop! my dear uncle Toby
— stop! — go not one foot farther into this thorny and be-
wildered track, — intricate are the steps! intricate are the
mazes of this labyrinth ! intricate are the troubles which the
pursuit of this bewitching phantom Knowledge will bring
upon thee. — O my uncle; — fly — fly, fly from it as from
a serpent. — Is it fit — good-natured man! thou should'st sit
up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy
blood with hectic watchings? — Alas! 'twill exasperate thy
symptoms, — check thy perspirations — evaporate thy spirits
— waste thy animal strength, — dry up thy radical moisture,
bring thee into a costive habit of body, — impair thy health,
— and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age. — O my
uncle! my uncle Toby.
Chaffer ^
I WOULD not give a groat for that man's knowledge in pen-
craft, who does not understand this, — that the best plain
narrative in the world, tacked very close to the last spirited
apostrophe to my uncle Toby — would have felt both cold
CHAP. 4 TRISTRAM SHANDY' 79
and vapid upon the reader's palate; — therefore I forthwith
put an end to the chapter, though I was in the middle of my
StOf)'.
— Writers of my stamp have one principle in common
with painters. Where an exact copying makes our pic-
tures less striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even
more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty.
This is to be understood cum grano salts ; but be it as it will,
— as the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the
apostrophe cool, than any thing else, — 'tis not very material
whether upon any other score the reader approves of it or not.
In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby per-
ceiving that the parameter and semi-parameter of the conic
section angered his wound, he left off the study of pro-
jectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the
practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which,
like a spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled
force.
It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon
the daily regularity of a clean shirt, — to dismiss his barber
unshaven, — and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient
to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it,
as not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it went
on: when, lo! — all of a sudden, for the change was quick
as lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his recovery, —
complained to my father, grew impatient with the surgeon:
— and one morning, as he heard his foot coming up stairs,
he shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in
order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of the
cure, which, he told him, might surely have been accom-
plished at least by that time: — He dwelt long upon the mis-
eries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his four years'
melancholy imprisonment; — adding, that had it not been
for the kind looks and fraternal cheerings of the best of
brothers, — he had long since sunk under his misfortunes. —
8o TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
My father was by: My uncle Toby's eloquence brought
tears into his eyes; — 'twas unexpected: — My uncle Toby,
by nature was not eloquent; — it had the greater effect; —
The surgeon was confounded; — not that there wanted
grounds for such, or greater marks of impatience, — but
'twas unexpected too; in the four years he had attended
him, he had never seen any thing like it in my uncle Toby's
carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or dis-
contented word; — he had been all patience, — all submission.
— We lose the right of complaining sometimes by for-
bearing it; — but we often treble the force: — The surgeon
was astonished; but much more so, when he heard my uncle
Toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his healing up the
wound directly, — or sending for Monsieur Ronjat, the
king's scrjeant-surgeon, to do it for him.
The desire of life and health is implanted in man's na-
ture; — the love of liberty and enlargement is a sister-pas-
sion to it: These my uncle Toby had in common with his
species; — and either of them had been sufficient to account
for his earnest desire to get well and out of doors; — but I
have told you before, that nothing wrought with our family
after the common way; — and from the time and manner
in which this eager desire shewed itself in the present case,
the penetrating reader will suspect there was some other
cause or crotchet for it in my uncle Toby's head: — There
was so, and 'tis the subject of the next chapter to set forth
what that cause and crotchet was. I own, when that's done,
'twill be time to return back to the parlour fire-side, where
we left my uncle Toby in the middle of his sentence.
Chafter 5
When a man gives himself up to the government of a rul-
ing passion, — or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse
grows headstrong, — farewell cool reason and fair discretion !
My uncle Toby's wound was near well, and as soon as
CHAP. 5 TRISTRAM SHANDY 8i
the surgeon recovered his surprise, .ind (.ouKl get leave to
say as much — he told him, 'twas just luginning to incar-
nate; and that if no fresh exfoliation happened, which there
was no sign of, — it would be dried up in five or six weeks.
The sound of as many Olympiads, twelve hjurs before,
would have conveyed an idea of shorter dur.^tion to my
uncle Toby's mind. — The succession of his ideas was now
rapid, — lie broiled with impatience to put his design in execu-
tion; — and so, without consulting farther with any soul
living, — which, by the bye, I think is right, when you are
predetermined to take no one soul's advice, — he privately
ordered Trim, his man, to pack up a bundle of lint and
dressings, and hire a chariot-and-four to be at the door
exactly by twelve o'clock that day, when he knew my father
would be upon 'Change. — So leaving a bank-note upon the
table for the surgeon's care of him, and a letter of tender
thanks for his brother's — he packed up his maps, his books
of fortification, his instruments, etc., and by the help of a
crutch on one side, and Trim on the other, — my uncle
Toby embarked for Shandy-Hall.
The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigra-
tion was as follows*
The table in my uncle Toby's room, and at which, the
night before this change happened, he was sitting with his
maps, etc., about him — being somewhat of the smallest,
for that infinity of great and small instruments of knowl-
edge which usually lay crowded upon it — he had the acci-
dent, in reaching over for his tobacco-box, to throw down
his compasses, and in stooping to take the compasses up,
with his sleeve he threw down his case of instruments and
snuflFers; — and as the dice took a run against him, in his
endeavouring to catch the snuffers in falling — he thrust
Monsieur Blondel oflF the table, and Count dc Pagan o'top
of him.
'Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle Toby
82 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
was, to think of redressing these evils by himself, — he rung
his bell for his man Trim; Trim, quoth my uncle
Toby, prithee see what confusion I have here been making
— I must have some better contrivance. Trim, — Can'st not
thou take my rule, and measure the length and breadth of
this table, and then go and bespeak me one as big again? —
Yes, an' please your Honour, replied Trim, making a bow;
but I hope your Honour will be soon well enough to get
down to your country-seat, where, — as your Honour takes
so much pleasure in fortification, we could manage this
matter to a T.
I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle
Toby's, who went by the name of Trim, had been a cor-
poral in my uncle's own company, — his real name was
James Butler, — but having got the nick-name of Trim in
the regiment, my uncle Toby, unless when he happened
to be very angry with him, would never call him by any
other name.
The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a
wound on his left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of
Landen, which was two years before the affair of Namur;
— and as the fellow was well-beloved in the regiment, and
a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle Toby took him
for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending
my uncle Toby in the camp and in his quarters as a valet,
groom, barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from
first to last, waited upon him and served him with great
fidelity and affection.
My uncle Toby loved the man in return, and what at-
tached him more to him still, was the similitude of their
knowledge. — For Corporal Trim, (for so, for the future,
I shall call him) by four years' occasional attention to his
Master's discourse upon fortified towns, and the advantage
of prying and peeping continually into his Master's plans,
etc., exclusive and besides what he gained Hobby-Horsically,
CHAP. 5 TRISTRAM SHANDY 83
as a body-servant, Non Hobby Horslcal per se; — had become
no mean proficient in the science; and was thought, by the
cook and chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature
of strongholds as my uncle Toby himself.
I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal
Trim's character, — and it is the only dark line in it. — The
fellow loved to advise, — or rather to hear himself talk;
his carriage, however, was so perfectly respectful, 'twas
easy to keep him silent when you had him so; but set his
tongue a-going, — you had no hold of him — he was voluble
— the eternal interlardings of "your Honour," with the re-
spectfulness of Corporal Trim's manner, interceding so
strong in behalf of his elocution, that though you might
have been incommoded, — you could not well be angry. Mv
uncle Toby was seldom either the one or the other with him
— or, at least, this fault, in Trim, broke no squares with
them. My uncle Toby, as I said, loved the man; — and
besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful servant, — but as
an humble friend, — he could not bear to stop his mouth.
— Such was Corporal Trim.
If I durst presume, continued Trim, to give your Honour
my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter. — Thou art
welcome. Trim, quoth my uncle Toby — speak, — speak
what thou thinkcst upon the subject, man, without fear.
Why then, replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratch-
ing his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back
from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,
— I think, quoth Trim, advancing his left, which was his
lame leg, a little forwards, — and pointing with his right
hand open towards a map of Dunkirk, which was pinned
against the hangings, — I think, quoth Corporal Trim, with
humble submission to your Honour's better judgment, —
that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make
but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it
h'jre upon paper, compared to what your Honour and I
84 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
could make of it were we in the country by ourselves, and
had but a rood, or a rood and a half of ground to do what
we pleased with: As summer is coming on, continued Trim,
your Honour might sit out of doors, and give me the nog-
raphy — (Call it ichnography, quoth my uncle,) — of the
town or citadel, your Honour was pleased to sit down before,
— and I will be shot by your Honour upon the glacis of it,
if I did not fortify it to your Honour's mind — 1 dare say
thou would'st, Trim, quoth my uncle. — For if your Honour,
continued the Corporal, could but mark me the polygon,
with its exact lines and angles — That I could do very well,
quoth my uncle. — I would begin with the fosse, and if
your Honour could tell me the proper depth and breadth —
I can to a hair's breadth. Trim, replied my uncle. — I would
throw out the earth upon this hand towards the town for the
scarp, — and on that hand towards the campaign for the
counterscarp. — Very right. Trim, quoth my uncle Toby: —
And when I had sloped them to your mind, — an' please
your Honour, I would face the glacis, as the finest fortifi-
cations are done in Flanders, with sods, — and as your
Plonour knows they should be, — and I would make the walls
and parapets with sods too. — The best engineers call them
gazons. Trim, said my uncle Toby. — Whether they are
gazons or sods, is not much matter, replied Trim; your
Honour knows they are ten. times beyond a facing either of
brick or stone. — I know they are, Trim, in some respects, —
quoth my uncle Toby, nodding his head; — for a cannonball
enters into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any
rubbish down with it, which might fill the fosse, (as was the
case at St. Nicolas's gate) and facilitate the passage over it.
Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal
Trim, better than any officer in his Majesty's service; —
hut would your Honour please let the bespeaking of the
table alone, and let us but go into the country, I would work
under your Honour's directions like a horse, and make
CHAP. 5 TRISTRAM SHANDY 85
fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their
batteries, saps, ditches, and palisades, that it should be worth
all the world's riding twenty miles to go and see it.
My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went
on; — but it was not a blush of guilt, — of modesty, — or of
anger, — it was a blush of joy; — he was fired with Corporal
Trim's project and description. — Trim! said my uncle
Toby, thou hast said enough. — We might begin the cam-
paign, continued Trim, on the very day that his Majesty
and the Allies take the field, and demolish them town by
town as fast as — Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no more,
'^'our Honour, continued Trim, might sit in your arm-
chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your
orders, and I would — Say no more. Trim, quoth my uncle
Toby — Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure
and good pastime, — but good air, and good exercise, and
good health, — and your Honour's wound would be well in
a month. Thou hast said enough. Trim, — quoth mv uncle
Toby (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket) — I like
thy project mightily. — And if your Honour pleases, I'll this
moment go and buy a pioneer's spade to take down with us,
and I'll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple of —
Say no more. Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up
upon one leg, quite overcome with rapture, — and thrusting
a guinea into Trim's hand, — Trim, said my uncle Tobv, say
no more; — but go down. Trim, this moment, my lad, and
bring up my supper this instant.
Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper, —
to no purpose: — Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle
Toby's head, he could not taste it. — Trim, quoth my uncle
Toby, get me to bed. — 'Twas all one. — Corporal Trim's
description had fired his imagination, — my uncle Toby could
not shut his eyes. — The more he considered it, the more be-
witching the scene appeared to him;so that, two full hours
before day-light, he had come to a final determination, and
86 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim's
decampment.
My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his
own, in the village where my father's estate lay at Shandy,
which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate
of about one hundred pounds a-year. Behind this house,
and contiguous to it, wa« a kitchen-garden of about half an
acre; and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by
a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just
about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for; — so
that as Trim uttered the words, "A rood and a half of
ground to do what they would with," — this identical bowl-
ing-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously
painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby's
fancy; — which was the physical cause of making him
change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that
immoderate degree I spoke of.
Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with
more heat and expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to
enjoy this self-same thing in private; — I say in private; —
for it was sheltered from the house, as I told you, by a tall
yew hedge, and was covered on the other three sides, from
mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering shrubs:
— so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little con-
tribute to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle
Toby's mind. — Vain thought! however thick it was planted
about, — or private soever it might seem, — to think, dear
uncle Toby, of enjoying a thing which took up a whole
rood and a half of ground, — and not have it known!
How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this
matter, — with the history of their campaigns, which were
no way barren of events, — may make no uninteresting un-
derplot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama. — At
present the scene must drop, — and change for the parlour
fire-side.
CHAP. 6 TRISTRAM SHANDY 87
Chapter 6
— What can they be doing, brother? said my father. — I
think, replied my uncle Toby, — taking, as I told you, his
pipe from his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it as
he began his sentence; — I think, replied he, — it would not
be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.
Pray, what's all that racket over our heads, Obadiahr —
quoth my father; — my brother and I can scarce hear our-
selves speak.
Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow towards his left
shoulder, — my Mistress is taken very badly. — And where's
Susannah running down the garden there, as if they were
going to ravish her? — Sir, she is running the shortest cut
into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old midwife. —
Then saddle a horse, quoth mv father, and do you go di-
rectly for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, with all our services,
— and let him know your mistress is fallen into labour — and
that I desire he will return with you with all speed.
It is ver)^ strange, says my father, addressing himself to
my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door, — as there is so
expert an operator as Dr. Slop so near, — that my wife
should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of
hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one mis-
fortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman; — and
not only the life of my child, brother, — but her own life,
and with it the lives of all the children I might, perad-
venture, have begot out of her hereafter.
Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, my sister does
it to save the expense: — A pudding's end, — replied my
father, — the Doctor must be paid the same for inaction as
action, — if not better, — to keep him in temper.
— Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world,
quoth my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his heart, — but
Modesty. — My sister, I dare say, added he, does not care
88 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
to let a man come so near her ****. T will not say whether
my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not; — 'tis
for his advantage to suppose he had, — as, I think, he could
have added no One Word which would have improved it.
If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived
^t the period's end, — then the world stands indebted to the
sudden snapping of my father's tobacco-pipe for one of the
iieatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which
Rhetoricians style the Aposiopesis — Just Heaven! how does
>;he Pocu f'ni and the Poco meno of the Italian artists; — the
insensible more or less, determine the precise line of beauty
in the sentence, as well as in the statue! How do the slight
touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the fiddle-stick, et
caeteruy — :give the true swell, which gives the true pleasure!
— O my countrymen; — be nice; — be cautious of your lan-
guage; — and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon
what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend.
— "My sister, mayhap," quoth my uncle Toby, "does
not choose to let a man come so near her ****_" Make this
dash, — 'tis an Aposiopesis. — Take the dash away, and write
Backside, — 'tis Bawdy. — Scratch Backside out, and put Cov-
ered-way in, 'tis a Metaphor; and, I dare say, as fortification
ran so much in my uncle Toby's head, that if he had been
left to have added one word to the sentence, — that word
was it.
But whether that was the case or not the case; — or
whether the snapping of my father's tobacco-pipe, so criti-
cally, happened through accident or anger, will be seen
in due time.
Chaffer 7
Tho' my father was a good natural philosopher, — yet he
was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason,
when his tobacco-pipe snapped short in the middle, — he had
nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two
ciiAP. 7 TRISTRAM SHANDY 89
pieces, and thrown them gently upon tlic back of the fire. —
He did no such thing; — he threw them with all the violence
in the world; — and, to give the action still more emphasis,
— he started upon both his legs to do it.
This looked something like heat; — and the maimer of his
reply to what my uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.
— "Not choose," quoth my father, (repeating my uncle
Toby's words) "to let a man come so near her!" — By
Heaven, brother Toby! you would try the patience of Job;
— and I think I have the plagues of one already without
it. — Why? — Where? — Wherein? — Wherefore? — Upon
what account? replied my uncle Toby, in the utmost aston-
ishment. — To think, said my father, of a man living to
your age, brother, and knowing so little about women! — I
know nothing at all about them, — replied my uncle Toby:
And I think, continued he, that the shock I received the
year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with
widow Wadman; — which shock you know I should not
have received, but from my total ignorance of the sex, —
has given me just cause to say, That I neither know nor do
pretend to know anything about 'em or their concerns either.
— Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at
least, know so much as the right end of a woman from
the wrong.
It is said in Aristotle's Master Piece, "That when a man
doth think of any thing which is past, — he looketh down
upon the ground; — but that when he thinketh of some-
thing that is to come, he looketh up towards the heavens."
My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of neither, for he
looked horizontally. — Right end! quoth my uncle Tobj,
muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his
two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small
crevice, formed by a bad joint in the chimnev-piece — Right
end of a woman! — I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no
more which it is than the man in the moon; — and if I was
90 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
to think, continued my uncle Toby (keeping his eye still
fixed upon the bad joint) this month together, I am sure I
should not be able to find it out.
Then, brother Toby, replied my father, I will tell you.
Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling
a fresh pipe) — every thing in this world, my dear brother
Toby, has two handles. — Not always, quoth my uncle Toby.
— At least, replied my father, every one has two hands, —
which comes to the same thing. — Now, if a man was to
sit down coolly, and consider within himself the make,
the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience
of all the parts which constitute the whole of that animal,
called Woman, and compare them analogically — I never
understood rightly the meaning of that word, — quoth my
uncle Toby. —
Analogy, replied my father, is the certain relation and
agreement which different — Here a devil of a rap at the
door snapped my father's definition (like his tobacco-pipe)
in two, — and, at the same time, crushed the head of as
notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in
the womb of speculation; — it was some months before my
father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:
— And, at this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the
subject of the dissertation itself, — (considering the confu-
sion and distresses of our domestic misadventures, which arc
now coming thick one upon the back of another) whether
I shall be able to find a place for it in the third volume
or not.
Chafter 8
It is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading since
my uncle Toby rung the bell, when Obadiah was ordered
to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife; —
so that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed
Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering
CHAP. 8 JRIS'IRAM SHANDY
91
the emergency too, both to go and conic; — though, morally
and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to
get on his boots.
If the hypercritic will go upon this; and is resolved after
all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance be-
twixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door; — and,
after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen
seconds, and three fifths, — should take upon him to insult
over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability
of time; — I would remind him, that the idea of duration,
and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and
succession of our ideas, — and this is the true scholastic
pendulum, — and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in
this matter, — abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all
other pendulums whatever.
I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but
poor eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-
midwife's house; — and that whilst Obadiah has been going
those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle Toby
from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England: —
That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years; —
and have since travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot-
and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into
Yorkshire, — all which put together, must have prepared the
reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the
stage, — as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a
concerto between the acts.
If my hypercritic is intractable, alledging, that two min-
utes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and
thirteen seconds, — when I have said all I can about them;
and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will
damn me biographically, rendering my book from this ver)-
moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book
apocryphal: — If I am thus pressed — I then put an end to
the whole objection and controversy about it all at once, —
92 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above three-
score yards from the stable-yard before he met with Dr.
Slop; — and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met
with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself; — but this had better begin a new
chapter.
Chapter p
Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a
Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular
height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly,
which might have done honour to a Serjeant in the horse-
guards.
Such were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, which, — if
you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have
not, I wish you would; — you must know, may as certainly
be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes
as three hundred.
Imagine such a one, — for such, I say, were the outlines
of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot,
waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little di-
minutive pony, of a pretty colour — but of strength, — alack!
— scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a
fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition. — They
were not. — Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a
strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop,
and making all practicable speed the adverse way.
Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.
Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile oflp, posting iji a
narrow lane directly toward him, at that monstrous rate, —
splashing and plunging like a devil thro' thick and thin, as
he approached, would not such a phenomenon, with such a
vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its
axis, — have been a subject of just apprehension to Dr. Slop
in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's comets? — To
CHAF. 9 TRISTRAM SHANDY 93
say nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of Obadiah and the
coach-horse. — In my idea, the vortex alojic of 'cm was
enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at
least the doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do
you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have
been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that
he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall,
and had approached to within sixty yards of it, and within
five yards of a suildcn turn, made by an acute angle of the
garden-wall, — and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane, —
when Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid,
furious, — pop,- -full upon him! — Nothing, I think, in na-
ture, can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,
— so i::iprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as
Dr. Slop was.
What could Dr. Slop do? — he crossed himself -f —
Pugh! — but the doctor. Sir, was a Papist. — No matter; he
had better have kept hold of the pummel. — He had so; —
nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all;
for in crossing himself he let go his whip, — and in attempt-
ing to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle's skirt,
as it slipped, he lost his stirrup, — in losing which he lost his
seat; — and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by
the bye, shews what little advantage there is in crossing)
the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that
without waiting for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to
its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the style
and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other con-
sequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would
have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve
inches deep in the mire.
Obadiah pulled off his cap twice to Dr. Slop; — once as
he was falling, — and then again when he saw him seated. — ■
Ill-timed complaisance; — had not the fellow better have
stopped his horse, and got off and helped him? — Sir, he did
94 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
all that his situation would allow; but the Momentum of
the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah could not do it
all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. Slop,
before he could fully accomplish it any how; — and at the
last, when he did stop his beast, 'twas done with such an
explosion of mud, that Obadiah had better have been a
league off. In short, never was a Dr. Slop so beluted, and
so transubstantiated, since that affair came into fashion.
Chapter lO
When Dr. Slop entered the back parlour, where my father
and my uncle Toby were discoursing upon the nature of
women, — it was hard to determine whether Dr. Slop's
figure, or Dr. Slop's presence, occasioned more surprise to
them ; for as the accident liappencd so near the house, as
not to make it worth while for Obadiah to remount him, —
Obadiah had led him in as he was, unwiped, unappointed,
unannealed, with all his stains and blotches on him. — He
stood like Hamlet's ghost, motionless and speechless, for a
full minute and a half at the parlour-door (Obadiah still
holding his hand) with all the majesty of mud. His hinder
parts, upon which he had received his fall, totally besmeared,
— and in every other part of him, blotched over in such a
manner with Obadiah's explosion, that you would have
sworn (without mental reservation) that every grain of it
had taken effect.
Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle Toby to have
triumphed over my father in his turn; — for no mortal, who
had beheld Dr. Slop in that pickle, could have dissented from
so much, at least, of my uncle Toby's opinion, "That may-
hap his sister might not care to let such a Dr. Slop come so
near her *+**." But it was the Argumentum ad hominem;
and if my uncle Toby was not very expert at it, you may
think, he might not care to use it. — No; the reason was, —
'twas not his nature to insult.
CHAP. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 95
Dr, Slop's presence at that time, was no less problematical
than the mode of it; tho' it is certain, one moment's re-
flexion in my father might have solved it; for he had
apprized Dr. Slop but the week before, that my mother was
at her full reckoning; and as the doctor had heard nothing
since, 'twas natural and very political too in him, to have
taken a ride to Shandy-Hall, as he did, merely to see how
matters went on.
But my father's mind took unfortunately a wrong turn
in the investigation; running, like the hypercritic's, alto-
gether upon the ringing of the bell and the rap upon the
door, — measuring their distance, and keeping his mind so
intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of noth-
ing else, — commonplace infirmity of the greatest mathe-
maticians! working with might and main at the demonstra-
tion, and so wasting all their strength upon it, that they have
none left in them to draw the corollary, to do good with.
The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door,
struck likewise strong upon the scnsorium of my uncle
Toby, — but it excited a very different train of thoughts; —
the two irreconcileable pulsations instantly brought Stevinus,
the great engineer, along with them, into my uncle Toby's
mind. What business Stevinus had in this aflFair, — is the
greatest problem of all: — It shall be solved, — but not in the
next chapter.
Chapter IJ
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I
think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As
no one, who knows what he is about in good company,
would venture to talk all; — so no author, who understands
the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would
presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay
to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter
96 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn,
as well as yourself.
For my own part, I am eternally paying him compli-
ments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to
keep his imagination as busy as my own.
'Tis his turn now; — I have given an ample description
of Dr. Slop's sad overthrov/, and of his sad appearance in
the back-parlour; — his imagination must now go on with
it for a while.
Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. Slop has told his
tale — and in what words, and with what aggravations, his
fancy chooses; — Let him suppose, that Obadiah has told his
tale also, and with such rueful looks of aifected concern, as
he thinks best will contrast the two figures as they stand by
each other. — Let him imagine, that my father has stepped
upstairs to see my mother. — And, to conclude this work of
imagination, — let him imagine the doctor washed, — rubbed
down, and condoled, — felicitated, — got into a pair of Oba-
diah's pumps, stepping forwards towards the door, upon the
very point of entering upon action.
Truce! — truce, good Dr. Slop! — stay thy obstetric hand;
— return it safe into thy bosom to keep it warm — little dost
thou know what obstacles, — little dost thou think what hid-
den causes, retard its operation! — Hast thou. Dr. Slop, —
hast thou been intrusted with the secret articles of the
solemn treaty, which has brought thee into this place? —
Art thou aware that at this instant, a daughter of Lucina is
put obstetrically over thy head? Alas! — 'tis too true. —
Besides, great son of Pilumnus! what canst thou do? —
Thou hast come forth unarmed; — thou hast left thy tire-
tete, — thy new-invented forceps, — thy crotchet, — thy squirt,
and all thy instruments of salvation and deliverance, behind
thee, — By Heaven! at this moment they are hanging up in
a green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at the bed's head!
CHAP. 12 TRISTRAM SHANDY 97
— Ring; — call; — send Obadiah hack upon the coach-horse
to bring them with all speed.
— Make great haste, Obadiah, quoth my father, and I'll
give thee a crown! — and quoth my uncle Toby, I'll give
him another.
Chafter 12
'^'OL'R sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle Toby,
addressing himself to Dr. Slop, (all three of them sitting
down to the fire together, as my uncle Toby began to speak)
— instantly brought the great Stevinus into my head, who,
you must know, is a favourite author with me. — Then,
added my father, making use of the argument Ad Cru-
vienarriy — I will lay twentv guineas to a single crown-piece,
(which will serve to give away to Obadiah when he gets
back) that this same Stevinus was some engineer or other, —
or has wrote something or other, either directly or indi-
rectly, upon the science of fortification.
He h.as so, — replied my uncle Toby. — I knew it, said mv
father, though, for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind
of connection there can be betwixt Dr. Slop's sudden com-
ing, and a discourse upon fortification; — yet I feared it. —
Talk of what we will, brother, — or let the occasion be never
so foreign or unfit for the subject, — you are sure to bring
it in. I would not, brother Toby, continued my father, —
I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and
hornworks. — That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr.
Slop, interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately
at his pun.
Denis the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the
insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father; — he
would grow testy upon it at any time; — but to be broke in
upon by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad, he would
say, as a fillip upon the nose; — he saw no diflFercnce.
98 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Dr.
Slop, — the curtins my brother Shandy mentions here, have
nothing to do with bedsteads; — tho', I know Du Cange
says, "That bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken their
name from them"; nor have the hornworks he speaks of
any thing in the world to do with the hornworks of cuckol-
dom : — But the Curtin, Sir, is the word we use in fortifica-
tion, for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between
the two bastions and joins them — Besiegers seldom offer to
carry on their attack directly against the curtin, for this
reason, because they are so well flanked. ('Tis the case of
other curtains, quoth Dr. Slop, laughing.) However, con-
tinued my uncle Toby, to make them sure, we generally
choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to
extend them beyond the fosse or ditch: — The common men,
who know very little of fortification, confound the ravelin
and the half-moon together, — tho' they are very different
things; — not in their figure or construction, for we make
them exactly alike in all points; — for they always consist
of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges not
straight, but in form of a crescent: — Where then lies the
difference.'' (quoth my father, a little testily.) — In their
situations, answered my uncle Toby: — For when a ravelin,
brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when
a ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a
ravelin; — it is a half-moon; — a half-moon likewise is a
half-mo©n, and no more, so long as it stands before its
bastion; — but was it to change place, and get before the
curtin, — 'twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon,
in that case, is not a half-moon; — 'tis no more than a
ravelin. — I think, quoth my father, that the noble science
of defence has its weak sides — as well as others.
— As for the horn work (high! ho! sighed my father)
which, continued my uncle Toby, my brother was speak-
ing of, they are a very considerable part of an outwork; —
CHAP. 12 TRISTRAM SHANDY 99
they arc called by the French engineers, Otivragr a corncy
and we generally make them to cover such places as we sus-
pect to be weaker than the rest; — 'tis formed by two epaul-
ments or demi-bastions — they are very pretty, — and if you
will take a walk, I'll engage to shew you one well worth
your trouble. — I own, continued my uncle Toby, when we
crown them, — they are much stronger, but then they are
very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, so that,
in my opinion, they arc most of use to cover or defend the
head of a camp; otherwise the double tcnaille — By the
mother who bore us! — brother Toby, quoth my father, not
able to hold out any longer, — you would provoke a saint; —
here have you got us, I know not how, not only souse into
the middle of the old subject again: — But so full is your
head of these confounded works, that though my wife is
this moment in the pains of labour, and you hear her cry
out, yet nothing will serve "you but to carry off the man-
midwife. — Accoucheur^ — if you please, quoth Dr. Slop.
— With all my heart, replied my father, I don't care what
they call you, — but I wish the whole science of fortifica-
tion, with all its inventors, at the devil; — it has been the
death of thousands, — and it will be mine in the end. — I
would not, I would not, brother Toby, have my brains so
full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins,
half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur,
and of all the towns in Flanders with it.
My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries; — not
from want of courage, — I have told you in a former chap-
ter, "that he was a man of courage": — And will add here,
that where just occasions presented, or called it forth, — I
know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken
shelter; — nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuse-
ness of his intellectual parts; — for he felt this insult of
my father's as feelingly as a man could do; — but he was
of a peaceful, placid nature, — no jarring element in it, —
100 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
all was mixed up so kindly within him; my uncle Toby
had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.
— Go — says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one
which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly
all dinner-time, — and which after infinite attempts, he had
caught at last, as it flew by him; — I'll not hurt thee, says
my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the
room, with the fly in his hand, — I'll not hurt a hair of thy
head: — Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his
hand as he spoke, to let it escape; — go, poor devil, get thee
gone, why should I hurt thee? — This world surely is wide
enough to hold both thee and me.
I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether
it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my
nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole
frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation; —
or how far the manner and expression of it might go
towards it; — or in what degree, or by what secret magic, —
a tone of voice and harmony of movement, attuned by
mercy, might find a passage to my heart, I know not; —
this I know, that the lesson of universal good-will then
taught and imprinted by my uncle Toby, has never since
been worn out of my mind: And tho' I would not depreciate
what the study of the Literae human'tores, at the university,
have done for me in that respect, or discredit the other helps
of an expensive education bestowed upon me, both at home
and abroad since; — yet I often think that I owe one half
of my philanthropy to that one accidental impression.
£^^ This is to serve for parents and governors instead of
a whole volume upon the subject.
I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle Toby's
picture, by the instrum.ent with which I drew the other
parts of it, — that taking in no more than the mere Hobby-
Horsical likeness: — this is a part of his moral character.
My father, in this patient endurance of wrongs, which I
CHAP. 12 I'RISTRAM SHANDY loi
mention, was vcr)' difFerent, as the reader must long ago
have noted; he had a much more acute and quick sensibility
of nature, attended with a little soreness of temper; tho'
this never transported him to any thing which looked like
malignancy: — yet in the little rubs and vexations of life,
'twas apt to shew itself in a droUish and witty kind of
peevishness: — He was, however, frank and generous in his
nature; — at all times open to conviction; and in the little
ebullitions of this subacid humour towards others, but par-
ticularly towards my uncle Toby, whom he truly loved: —
he would feel more pain, ten times told (except in the affair
of my aunt Dinah, or where an hypothesis was concerned)
than what he ever gave.
The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them,
reflected light upon each other, and appeared with great
advantage in this affair which arose about Stevinus.
I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a Hobby-Horsc, —
that a man's Hobbv-Horse is as tender a part as he has
about him; and that these unprovoked strokes at my uncle
Toby's could not be unfelt by him. — No: — as I said above,
my uncle Toby did feel them, and very sensibly too.
Pray, Sir, what said her — How did he behave? — O,
Sir! — it was great: For as soon as my father had done in-
sulting his Hobby-Horsc, — he turned his head without the
least emotion, from Dr. Slop, to whom he was addressing
his discourse, and looking up into my father's face, with a
countenance spread over with so much good-nature; — so
placid; — so fraternal; — so inexpressibly tender towards
him: — it penetrated my father to his heart: He rose up
hastily from his chair, and seizing hold of both my uncle
Tobv's hands as he spoke: — Brother Toby, said he — I beg
thy pardon; — forgive, I pray thee, this rash humour which
my mother gave me. — My dear, dear brother, answered my
uncle Toby, rising up by my father's help, say no more
about it; — you are heartily welcome, had it been ten times
102 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
as much, brother. But 'tis ungenerous, replied my father,
to hurt any man; — a brother worse; — but to hurt a brother
of such gentle manners, — so unprovoking, — and so un-
resenting; — 'tis base: — By Heaven, 'tis cowardly. — You are
heartily welcome, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, — had it
been fifty times as much. — Besides, what have I to do, my
dear Toby, cried my father, either with your amusements
or your pleasures, unless it was in my power (which it is
not) to increase their measure?
— Brother Shandy, answered my uncle Toby, looking
wistfully in his face, — you are much mistaken in this point:
— for you do increase my pleasure very much, in begetting
children for the Shandy family at your time of life. — But,
by that. Sir, quoth Dr. Slop. Mr. Shandy increases his own.
— Not a jot, quoth my father.
Chapter /j
My brother does it, quoth my uncle Toby, out of principle.
— In a family way, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop. — Pshaw! —
said my father, — 'tis not worth talking of.
Chapter /</
At the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle
Toby were left both standing, like Brutus and Cassius, at
the close of the scene, making up their accounts.
As my father spoke the three last words, — he sat down;
— my uncle Toby exactly followed his example, only, that
before he took his chair, he rung the bell, to order Corporal
Trim, who was in waiting, to step home for Stevinus: — my
uncle Toby's house being no farther off than the opposite
side of the way.
Some men would have dropped the subject of Stevinus;
— but my uncle Toby had no resentment in his heart, and
he went on with the subject, to shew my father that he had
none.
CHAP. 14 TRISTRAM SHANDY 103
Your sudden appearance, Dr. Slop, quoth my uncle, re-
suming his discourse, instantly brought Stevinus into my
head. (My father, you may be sure, did not offer to lay
anv more wagers upon Stevinus's head.) — Because, con-
tinued my uncle Tohv, the celebrated sailing chariot, which
belonged to Prince Maurice, and was of such wonderful
contrivance and velocity, as to carry half a dozen people
thirty German miles, in I don't know how few minutes, —
was invented by Stevinus, that great mathematician and en-
gineer.
You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth
Dr. Slop (as the fellow is lame), of going for Stevinus's
account of it, because in my return from Leyden thro' the
Hague, I walked as far as Schevling, which is two long
miles, on purpose to take a view of it.
That's nothing, replied my uncle Toby, to what the
learned Peireskius did, who walked a matter of five hundred
miles, reckoning from Paris to Schevling, and from Schev-
ling to Paris back again, in order to see it, — and nothing
else.
Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.
The more fool Peireskius, replied Dr. Slop. But mark,
'twas out of no contempt of Peireskius at all; — but that
Peireskius's indefatigable labour in trudging so far on foot,
out of love for the sciences, reduced the exploit of Dr. Slop,
in that affair, to nothing: — the more fool Peireskius, said
he again. — Why so: — replied my father, taking his brother's
part, not only to make reparation as fast as he could for
the insult he had given him, which sat still upon my father's
mind; — but partly, that my father began really to interest
himself in the discourse. — Why so? — said he. Why is
Peireskius, or any man else, to be abused for an appetite
for that, or any other morsel of sound knowledge: For not-
withstanding I know nothing of the chariot in question,
continued he, the inventor of it must have had a very me-
104 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
chanical head ; and tho' I cannot guess upon what principles
of philosophy he has achieved it; — yet certainly his machine
has been constructed upon solid ones, be they what they
will, or it could not have answered at the rate my brother
mentions.
It answered, replied my uncle Toby, as well, if not bet-
ter; for, as Peireskius elegantly expresses it, speaking of the
velocity of its motion, Tarn citus erat, quarn erat ventus;
which, unless I have forgot my Latin, is, that it was as
swift as the wind itself.
But pray, Dr. Slop, quoth my father, interrupting my
uncle (tho' not without begging pardon for it at the same
time) upon what principles was this self -same chariot set
a-going? — Upon very pretty principles to be sure, replied
Dr. Slop: — And I have often wondered, continued he,
evading the question, why none of our gentry, who live
upon large plains like this of ours, — (especially they whose
wives are not past child-bearing) attempt nothing of this
kind; for it would not only be infinitely expeditious upon
sudden calls, to which the sex is subject, — if the wind only
served, — but would be excellent good husbandry to make
use of the winds, which cost nothing, and which eat noth-
ing, rather than horses, which (the devil take 'em) both
cost and eat a great deal.
For that very reason, replied my father, "Because they
cost nothing, and because they eat nothing," — the scheme is
bad; — it is the consumption of our products, as well as the
manufactures of them, which gives bread to the hungry,
circulates trade, — brings in money, and supports the value
of our lands; — and tho', I own, if I was a Prince, I would
generously recompense the scientific head which brought
forth such contrivances; — yet I would as peremptorily sup-
press the use of them.
My father here had got into his element, — and was go-
ing on as prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as
CHAP. 15 TRISTRAM SHANDY 105
my uncle Toby had before, upon his of fortification; — but
to the loss of much sound knowledge, the destinies in the
morning had decreed that no dissertation of any kind should
be spun by my father that day, — for as he opened his mouth
to begin the next sentence.
Chapter 75
In popped Corporal Trim with Stevinus: — But 'twas too
late, — all the discourse had been exhausted without him,
and was running into a new channel.
— You may take the book home again, Trim, said my
uncle Toby, nodding to him.
But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling, — look
first into it, and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing
chariot in it.
Corporal Trim, by being in the service, had learned to
obey, — and not to remonstrate; — so taking the book to a
side-table, and running over the leaves; An' please your
Honour, said Trim, I can see no such thing; — however,
continued the Corporal, drolling a little in his turn, I'll
make sure work of it, an' please your Honour; — so taking
hold of the two covers of the book, one in each hand, and
letting the leaves fall down, as he bent the covers back,
he gave the book a good sound shake.
There is something falling out, however, said Trim, an'
please your Honour; — but it is not a chariot, or any thing
like one: — Prithee, Corporal, said my father, smiling, what
is it then? — I think, answered Trim, stooping to take it up,
— 'tis more like a sermon, — for it begins with a text of
scripture, and the chapter and verse; — and then goes on, not
as a chariot, but like a sermon directly.
The company smiled.
I cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle
Toby, for such a thing as a sermon to have got into my
Stevinus.
io6 TRISTRAM SHAND^- book ii
I think 'tis a sermon, rt-plicd Trim; — hut if it please your
Honours, as it is a fair liand, I will read you a page; — for
Trim, you must know, loved to hear himself read almost
as well as talk.
I have ever a strong propensity, said my father, to look
into things which cross my way, by such strange fatalities
as these; — and as we have nothing better to do, at least till
Obadiah gets back, I shall be obliged to you, brother, if Dr.
Slop has no objection to it, to order the Corporal to give us
a page or two of it, — if he is as able to do it, as he seems
willing. An' please your Honour, quoth Trim, I officiated
two whole campaigns, in Flanders, as clerk to the chaplain
of the regiment. — He can read it, quoth my uncle Toby, as
well as I can. — Trim, I assure you, was the best scholar
in my company, and should have had the next halberd, but
for the poor fellow's misfortune. Corporal Trim laid his
hand upon his heart, and made an humble bow to his
master; — then laying down his hat upon the floor, and
taking up the sermon in his left hand, in order to have his
right at liberty, — he advanced, nothing doubting, into the
middle of the room where he could best see, and be best
seen by his audience.
Chapter i6
— If you have any objection, — said my father, addressing
himself to Dr. Slop. Not in the least, replied Dr. Slop; —
for it does not appear on which side of the question it is
wrote; — it may be a composition of a divine of our church,
as well as yours, — so that we run equal risks. — 'Tis wrote
upon neither side, quoth Trim, for 'tis only upon Conscience,
an' please your Honours.
Trim's reason put his audience into good humour, — all
but Dr. Slop, who turning his head about towards Trim,
looked a little angry.
CHAP, i; TRISTRAM SHANDY 107
Begin, Trim, — and read distinctly, quoth my father. —
I will, an' please your Honour, replied the Corporal, making
a bow, and bespeaking attention with a slight movement of
his right hand.
Chaffer //
— But before the Corporal begins, I must first give you
a description of his attitude; — otherwise he will naturally
stand represented, by your imagination, in an uneasy posture,
— stiff, — perpendicular, — dividing the weight of his bodv
equally upon both legs; — his eye fixed, as if on duty; — his
look determined, — clenching the sermon in his left hand,
like his firelock. — In a word, you would be apt to paint
Trim, as if he was standing in his platoon ready for action.
— His attitude was as unlike all this as you can conceive.
He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent
forwards just so far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and
a half upon the plain of the horizon; — which sound orators,
to whom I address this, know very well to be the true per-
suasive angle of incidence; — in any other angle you may
talk and preach; — 'tis certain; — and it is done every dav;
— but with what effect, — I leave the world to judge!
The necessit)' of this precise angle of 85 degrees and
a half to a mathematical exactness, — does it not shew us,
by the way, how the arts and sciences mutually befriend
each other:
How the deuce Corporal Trim, who knew not so much
as an acute angle from an obtuse one, came to hit it so
exactly; — or whether it was chance or nature, or good sense
or imitation, etc., shall be commented upon in that part of
the cyclopaedia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental
parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar,
the coffee-house, the bed-chamber, and fire-side, fall under
consideration.
/o8 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
He stood, — for 1 repeat it, to take the picture of him in
at one view, with his body swayed, and somewhat bent for-
wards, — his right leg from under him, sustaining seven-
eighths of his whole weight, — the foot of his left leg, the
defect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude, ad-
vanced a little, — not laterally, nor forwards, but in a line
betwixt them; — his knee bent, but that not violently, —
but so as to fall within the limits of the line of beauty; —
and I add, of the line of science too; — for consider, it had
one-eighth part of his body to bear up; — so that in this case
the position of the leg is determined, — because the foot
could be no further advanced, or the knee more bent, than
what would allow him, mechanically to receive an eighth
part of his whole weight under it, and to carry it too.
iJ^P This I recommend to painters: — need I add, — to
orators! — I think not; for unless they practise it, — they
must fall upon their noses.
So much for Corporal Trim's body and legs. — He held
the sermon loosely, not carelessly, in his left hand, raised
something above his stomach, and detached a little from his
breast; — his right arm falling negligently by his side, as
nature and the laws of gravity ordered it, — but with the
palm of it open and turned towards his audience, ready to aid
the sentiment in case it stood in need.
Corporal Trim's eyes and the muscles of his face were
in full harmony with the other parts of him; — he looked
frank, — unconstrained, — something assured, — but not bor-
dering upon assurance.
Let not the critic ask how Corporal Trim could come by
all this. — I've told him it should be explained; — but so
he stood before my father, my uncle Toby, and Dr. Slop,
— so swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and with such
an oratorical sweep throughout the whole figure, — a statu-
ary might have modelled from it; — nay, I doubt whether
CHAP. I- TRISTRAM SHANDY 109
the oldest Fellow of a College, — or the Hebrew Professor
himself, could have much mended it.
Trim made a bow, and read as follows:
The sermon
Hebrews xiii. 18
— For xve trust ivf have a good Conscience
"Trust! — Trust we have a good conscience!"
[Certainly, Trim, quoth my father, interrupting him,
you give that sentence a very improper accent; for you curl
up your nose, man, and read it with such a sneering tone,
as if the Parson was going to abuse the Apostle.
He is, an' please your Honour, replied Trim. Pugh! said
my father, smiling.
Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Trim is certainly in the right; for
the writer (who I perceive is a Protestant) by the snappish
manner in which he takes up the apostle, is certainly going
to abuse him; — if this treatment of him has not done it
already. But from whence, replied my father, have you
concluded so soon. Dr. Slop, that the writer is of oui"
church r — for aught I can see yet, — he may be of any
church. — Because, answered Dr. Slop, if he was of ours, —
he durst no more take such a licence, — than a bear by his
beard: — If, in our communion, Sir, a man was to insult an
apostle, — a saint, — or even the paring of a saint's nail, —
he would have his eyes scratched out. — What, by the saint?
quoth my uncle Toby. No, replied Dr. Slop, he would
have an old house over his head. Pray is the Inquisition
an ancient building, answered my uncle Toby, or is it a
modern oner — I know nothing of architecture, replied Dr.
Slop. — An' please your Honours, quoth Trim, the Inquisi-
tion is the vilest — Prithee spare thy description. Trim, I hate
the verv name of it, said my father. — No matter for that,
answered Dr. Slop, — it has its uses; for thu' I'm no great
no TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
advocate for it, yet, in such a case as this, he would soon
be taught better manners; and I can tell him, if he went
on at that rate, would be flung into the Inquisition for his
pains. God help him then, quoth my uncle Toby. Amen,
added Trim; for Heaven above knows, I have a poor
brother who has been fourteen years a captive in it. — I never
heard one word of it before, said my uncle Toby, hastily:
— How came he there. Trim? — O, Sir! the story will make
your heart bleed, — as it has made mine a thousand times; —
but it is too long to be told now; — your Honour shall hear
it from first to last some day when I am working beside you
in our fortifications; — but the short of the story is this; —
That my brother Tom went over a servant to Lisbon, — and
then married a Jew's widow, who kept a small shop, and sold
sausages, which somehow or other, was the cause of his
being taken in the middle of the night out of his bed, where
he was lying with his wife and two small children, and
carried directly to the Inquisition, where, God help him,
continued Trim, fetching a sigh from the bottom of his
heart, — the poor honest lad lies confined at this hour; he
was as honest a soul, added Trim, (pulling out his handker-
chief) as ever blood warmed. —
— The tears trickled down Trim's cheeks faster than he
could well wipe them away. — A dead silence in the room en-
sued for some minutes. — Certain proof of pity!
Come, Trim, quoth my father, after he saw the poor fel-
low's grief had got a little vent, — read on, — and put this
melancholy story out of thy head: — I grieve that I inter-
rupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon again; — for if the
first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as thou say est, I have
a great desire to know what kind of provocation the apostle
has given.
Corporal Trim wiped his face, and returned his handker-
chief into his pocket, and, making a bow as he did it, — he
began again.]
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY in
The sermon
Hebrews xiii. i8
— For ive trust ^ve have a good Conscience. —
"Trust! trust we have a good conscience! Surely if there
is any thing in this life which a man may depend upon, and
to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon
the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very thing, —
whether he has a good conscience or no."
[I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. Slop.]
"If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the
true state of this account; — he must be privy to his own
thoughts and desires; — he must remember his past pursuits,
and know certainly the true springs and motives, which, in
general, have governed the actions of his life."
[I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. Slop. ]
"In other matters wc may be deceived bv false appear-
ances; and, as the wise man complains, 'hardly do we guess
aright at the things that are upon the earth, and with labour
do we find the things that are before us.' But here the mind
has all the evidence and facts within herself; — is conscious
of the web she has wove; — knows its texture and fineness,
and the exact share which every passion has had in work-
ing upon the several designs which virtue or vice has planned
before her."
[The language is good, and I declare Trim reads very
well, quoth my father.]
"Now, — as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge
which the mind has v\ ithin herself of this; and the judgment,
either of approbation or censure, which it unavoidably makes
upon the successive actions of our lives; 'tis plain you will
say, from the very terms of the proposition, — whenever this
inward tcstimonv goes against a man, and he stands self-
accused, that he must necessarily be a guilty man. — And, on
112 TRISTRAM SHANDY book u
the contrary, when the report is favourable on his side, and
his heart condemns lu"m not: — that it is not a matter of trust,
as the apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty and fact,
that the conscience is good, and that the man must be good
also."
[Then the apostle is altogether in the v/rong, I suppose,
quoth Dr. Slop, and the Protestant divine is in the right.
Sir, have patience, replied my father, for I think it will pres-
ently appear that St. Paul and the Protestant divine are both
of an opinion. — And nearly so, quoth Dr. Slop, as east is to
west; — but this, continued he, lifting both hands, comes
from the liberty of the press.
It is no more, at the worst, replied my uncle Toby, than
the liberty of the pulpit; for it does not appear that the ser-
mon is printed, or ever likely to be.
Go on, Trim, quoth my father.]
"At first sight this may seem to be a true state of the case :
and I make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong
is so truly impressed upon the mind of man, — that did no
such thing ever happen, as that the conscience of a man, by
long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures it may) in-
sensibly become hard; — and, like some tender parts of his
body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by de-
grees that nice sense and perception with which God and
nature endowed it: — Did this never happen; or was it certain
that self-love would never hang the least bias upon the judg-
ment; — or that the little interests below could rise up and
perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass
them about with clouds and thick darkness: — Could no such
thing as favour and affection enter this sacred Court: — Did
Wit disdain to take a bribe in it; — or was ashamed to shew
its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment : Or,
lastly, were we assured that Interest stood always uncon-
cerned whilst the cause was hearing — and that Passion never
got into the judgment-seat, and pronounced sentence in the
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 113
stead of Reason, which is supposed always to preside and
determine upon the case: — Was this truly so, as the objection
must suppose; — no doubt then the religious and moral state
of a man would be exactly what he himself esteemed it: —
and the guilt or innocence of every man's life could be
known, in general, by no better measure, than the degrees of
his own approbation and censure.
"I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does ac-
cuse him (as it seldom errs on that side) that he is guilty;
and unless in melancholy and hypochondriac cases, we may
safely pronounce upon it, that there is always sufficient
grounds for the accusation.
"But the converse of the proposition will not hold true; — ■
namely, that whenever there is guilt, the conscience must ac-
cuse; and if it does not, that a man is therefore innocent. —
This is not fact — So that the common consolation which some
good christian or other is hourly administering to himself, —
that he thanks God his mind does not misgive him; and that,
consequently, he has a good conscience, because he hath a
quiet one, — is fallacious; — and as current as the inference is,
and as infallible as the rule appears at first sight, yet when
you look nearer to it, and try the truth of this rule upon plain
facts, — you see it liable to so much error from a false appli-
cation; — the principle upon which it goes so often perverted ;
— the whole force of it lost, and sometimes so vilely cast
away, that it is painful to produce the common examples
from human life, which confirm the account.
"A man shall be vicious and utterly debauched in his prin-
ciples; — exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live
shameless, in the open commission of a sin which no reason
or pretence can justify, — a sin by which, contrary to all
the workings of humanity, he shall ruin for ever the deluded
partner of his guilt; — rob her of her best dowry; and not
only cover her own head with dishonour; — but involve a
whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her sake.
114 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
Surely, you will think conscience must lead such a man a
trouhlesome life; he can have no rest night or day from its
reproaches.
"Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this time,
than break in upon him; as Elijah reproached the god Baal,
■ — this domestic god 'was either talking, or pursuing, or was
in a journey, or peradventure he slept and could not be
awoke.'
"Perhaps He was gone out in company with Honour to
fight a duel: to pay off some debt at play; — or dirty an-
nuity, the bargain of his lust; Perhaps Conscience all this
time was engaged at home, talking aloud against petty lar-
ceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes
as his fortune and rank of life secured him against all temp-
tation of committing; so that he lives as merrily" — [If he
was of our church, tho', quoth Dr. Slop, he could not] —
"sleeps as soundly in his bed ; — and at last meets death as un-
concernedly; — perhaps much more so, than a much better
man."
[All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. Slop, turning to
my father, — the case could not happen in our church. — It
happens in ours, however, replied my father, but too often.
— I own, quoth Dr. Slop, (struck a little with my father's
frank acknowledgment) — that a man in the Romish church
may live as badly; — but then he cannot easily die so. —
'Tis little matter, replied my father, with an air of indif-
ference, — how a rascal dies. — I mean, answered Dr. Slop, he
would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments. — Pray
how many have you in all, said my uncle Toby, — for I al-
ways forget? — Seven, answered Dr. Slop. — Flumph! — said
my uncle Toby ; tho' not accented as a note of acquiescence,
— but as an interjection of that particular species of surprise,
when a man in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing
than he expected. — Humph! replied my uncle Toby. Dr.
Slop, who had an ear, understood my uncle Toby as well as
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 115
if he had wrote a whole volume against the seven sacraments.
— Humph! replied Dr. Slop, (stating my uncle looby's
argument over again to him) — Whv, Sir, are there not seven
cardinal virtues: — Seven mortal sins? — Seven golden can-
dlesticks? — Seven heavens? — 'Tis more than I know, re-
plied my uncle Toby. — Are there not seven wonders of
the world? — Seven days of the creation? — Seven planets?
— Seven plagues: — That there are, quoth mv father with
a most affected gravity. But prithee, continued he, go on
with the rest of thy characters. Trim.]
"Another is sordid, unmerciful," (here Trim waved his
right hand) "a strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either
of private friendship or public spirit. Take notice how he
passes bv the widow and orphan in their distress, and sees
all the miseries incident to human life without a sigh or a
prayer." [An' please your honours, cried Trim, I think this
a viler man than the other.]
"Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occa-
sions? — No; thank God there is no occasion, 'I pay every
man his own; — T have no fornication to answer to mv con-
science; — no faithless vows or promises to make up; — I have
debauched no man's wife or child; thank God, I am not as
other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who
stands before me.'
"A third is crafty and designing in his nature. View his
whole life; — 'tis nothing but a cunning contexture of dark
arts and unequitable subterfuges, basely to defeat the true
intent of all laws, — plain-dealing and the safe enjoyment of
our several properties. — ^'ou will see such a one working out
a frame of little designs upon the ignorance and perplexities
of the poor and needv man; — shall raise a fortune upon the
inexperience of a vouth, or the unsuspecting temper of his
friend, who would have trusted him with his life.
"W'hen old age comes on, and repentance calls him to
look back upon his black account, and state it over again with
ii6 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
hib conscience — Conscience looks into the Statutes at Large;
— finds no express law broken by what he has done; — per-
ceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels in-
curred; — sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison
opening his gates upon him: — What is there to affright his
conscience? — Conscience has got safely entrenched behind
the Letter of the Law; sits there invulnerable, fortified with
Ca£les( and 3Cveport£5 so strongly on all sides;— that it is
not preaching can dispossess it of its hold."
[Here Corporal Trim and my uncle Toby exchanged
looks with each other. — Aye, aye, Trim! quoth my uncle
Toby, shaking his hv;ul, — these arc but sorry fortifications,
Trim. — O! very poor work, answered Trim, to what your
Honour and I make of it. — The character of this last man,
said Dr. Slop, interrupting Trim, is more detestable than all
the rest; and seems to have been taken from some pettifog-
ging Lawyer amongst you: — Amongst us, a man's conscience
>:ould not possibly continue so long blinded, — three times in
a year, at least, he must go to confesison. Will that restore
it to sight? quoth my uncle Toby. — Go on, Trim, quoth my
father, or Obadiah will have got back before thou hast got
to the end of thy sermon. — 'Tis a very short one, replied
Trim. — I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle Toby, for I
like it hugely. — Trim went on.]
"A fourth man shall want even this refuge; — shall break
through all their ceremony of slow chicane; — scorns the
doubtful workings of secret plots and cautious trains to bring
about his purpose; — See the barefaced villain, how he
cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders! — Horrid! — But indeed
much better was not to be expected, in the present case — the
poor man was in the dark! — his priest had got the keeping of
his conscience; — and all he would let him know of it, was,
That lie must believe in the Pope; — go to Mass; — cross him-
self; — tell his beads; — be a good Catholic, and that this, in
^11 conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven. What;
CHAP, i; TRISTRAM SHANDY 117
— it he perjures! — Why; — he had a mental reservation in
it. — But if he is so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you
represent him; — if he robs, — if he stabs, will not conscience,
on every such act, receive a wound itself? — Ave, — but the
man has carried it to confession; — the wound digests there,
and will do well enough, and in a short time be quite healed
up by absolution. O Poperv! what has thou to answer for? —
when, not content with the too many natural and fatal ways,
thro' which the heart of man is every day thus treacherous
to itself above all things; — thou hast wilfully set open the
wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary traveller,
too apt, God knows, to go astray of himself; and confidently
speak peace to himself, when there is no peace.
"Of this the common instances which I have drawn out
of life, are too notorious to require much evidence. If any
man doubts the reality of them, or thinks it impossible for
a man to be such a bubble to himself, — I must refer him a
moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to trust
my appeal with his own heart.
"Let him consider in how different a degree of detestation,
numbers of wicked actions stand there, tho' equally bad and
vicious in their own natures; — he will soon find, that such of
them as strong inclination and custom have prompted him to
commit, are generally dressed out and painted with all the
false beauties which a soft and a flattering hand can give
them; — and that the others, to which he feels no propensity,
appear, at once, naked and deformed, surrounded with all
the true circumstances of folly and dishonour.
"When David surprised Saul sleeping in the cave, and cut
off the skirt of his robe — we read his heart smote him for
what he had done: — But in the matter of Uriah, where a
faithful and gallant servant, whom he ought to have loved
and honoured, fell to make way for his lust, — where con-
science had so much greater reason to take the alarm, his
heart smote him not. A whole year had almost passed from
ii8 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
the first commission of that crime, to the time Nathan was
sent to reprove him; and we read not once of the least sor-
row or compunction of heart which he testified, during all
that time, for what he had done.
"Thus conscience, this once able monitor, — placed on
high as a judge within us, and intended by our Maker as a
just and equitable one too, — ^by an unhappy train of causes
and impediments, takes often such imperfect cognizance of
what passes, — does its ofiice so negligently, — sometimes so
corruptly, — that it is not to be trusted alone; and therefore
T/e find there is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of joining
i^nother principle with it, to aid, if not govern, its determi-
nations.
"So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of
infinite importance to you not to be misled in, — namely, in
what degree of real merit you stand either as an honest man,
an useful citizen, a faithful subject to your king, or a good
servant to your God, — call in religion and morality. — Look,
What is written in the law of God? — How readest thou? —
Consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of jus-
tice and truth; — what say they?
"Let Conscience determine the matter upon these reports;
— and then if thy heart condemns thee not, which is the
case the apostle supposes, — the rule will be infallible"; —
[Here Dr. Slop fell asleep] — "thou wilt have confidence
towards God; — that is, have just grounds to believe the
judgment thou hast passed upon thyself, is the judgment of
God; and nothing else but an anticipation of that righteous
sentence which will be pronounced upon thee hereafter by
that Being, to whom thou art finally to give an account of
thy actions.
" 'Blessed is the man,' indeed, then, as the author of the
book of Ecclesiasticus expresses it, 'who is not pricked with
the multitude of his sins: Blessed is the man whose heart
hath not condemned him; v^hether he be rich, or whether he
CHAP. 17 TRIS'I'RAM SHANDY 119
be poor, it Ik- havt- ;i good heart' (a heart thus guided and
informed) 'he shall at all times rejoice in a cheerful counte-
nance; his mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men
that sit above upon a tower on high.' " — [A tower has no
strength, quoth my uncle Toby, unless 'tis flanked.] — "In
the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a thousand
casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better security for his
behaviour than all the causes and restrictions put together,
which law-makers are forced to multiply: — 'Forced,' I sav,
as things stand; human laws not being a matter of original
choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to fence against the
mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law
unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions
made, — that in all such corrupt and misguided cases, where
principles and the checks of conscience will not make us up-
right, — to supply their force, and, by the terrors of gaols
and halters, oblige us to it."
[I see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been
composed to be preached at the Temple, — or at some
Assize. — I like the reasoning, — and am sorry that Dr. Slop
has fallen asleep before the time of his conviction: — for it
is now clear, that the Parson, as I thought at first, never
insulted St. Paul in the least; — nor has there been, brother,
the least difference between them. — A great matter, if they
had differed, replied my uncle Toby, — the best friends in
the world may differ sometimes. — True, — brother Toby,
quoth my father, shaking hands with him, we'll fill our
pipes, brother, and then Trim shall go on.
Well, — what dost thou think of it.'' said my father,
speaking to Corporal Trim, as he reached his tobacco-box.
I think, answered the Corporal, that the seven watch-men
upon the tower, who, I suppose, are all sentinels there, —
are more, an* please your Honour, than were necessary; —
and, to go on at that rate, would harass a regiment all to
pieces, which a commanding officer, who loves his men, will
120 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
never do, if he can help it, because two sentinels, added the
Corporal, are as good as twenty. — I have been a commanding
officer myself in the Corps de Garde a hundred times, con-
tinued Trim, rising an inch higher in his figure, as he spoke,
— and all the time I had the honour to serve his Majesty
King William, in relieving the most considerable ports, I
never left more than two in my life. — Very right, Trim,
quoth my uncle Toby, — but you do not consider. Trim, that
the towers, in Solomon's days, were not such things as our
bastions, flanked and defended by other works; — this, Trim,
was an invention since Solomon's death; nor had they horn-
works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his time; — or such
a fosse as we make with a curvette in the middle of it, and
with covered ways and counterscarps pallisadoed along it, to
guard against a Coup de main: — So that the seven men upon
the tower were a party,! dare say, from the Corps de Garde y
set there, not only to look out, but to defend it. — They could
be no more, an' please your Honour, than a Corporal's
Guard. — My father smiled inwardly, but not outwardly; —
the subject being rather too serious, considering what had
happened, to make a jest of. — So putting his pipe into his
mouth, which he had just lighted, — he contented himself
with ordering Trim to read on. He read on as follows:]
"To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our
mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by
the eternal measures of right and wrong: — The first of
these will comprehend the duties of religion; — the second,
those of morality, which are so inseparably connected to-
gether, that you cannot divide these two tables, even in
imagination, (tho' the attempt is often made in practice}
without breaking and mutually destroying them both.
"I said the attempt is often made; and so it is; — there
being nothing more common than to see a man who has no
sense at all of religion, and indeed has so much honesty as to
pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest affront.
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 121
should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral character, —
or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to
the uttermost mite.
"When there is some appearance that it is so, — tho' one is
unwilling even to suspect the appearance of so amiable a vir-
tue as moral honesty, yet were we to look into the grounds
of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we should find little
reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive.
"Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the
subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation
than either his interest, his pride, his case, or some such little
and changeable passion as will give us but small dependence
upon his actions in matters of great distress.
"I will illustrate this by an example.
"I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually
call in," [There is no need, cried Dr. Slop, (waking) to call
in any physician in this case] "to be neither of them men
of much religion: I hear them make a jest of it every day,
and treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, as to put the
m.itter past doubt. Well; — notwithstanding this, I put my
fonune into the hands of the one: — and what is dearer still
to me, I trust my life to the honest skill of the other.
"Now let me examine what is my reason for this great
confidence. Why, in the first place, I believe there is no
probability that either of them will employ the power I put
into their hands to my disadvantage; — I consider that honesty
serves the purposes of this life: — I know their success in the
world depends upon the fairness of their characters. — In a
word, I'm persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurt-
ing themselves more.
"But put it otherwise, namely, that interest lay, for once,
on the other side; that a case should happen, wherein the one,
without stain to his reputation, could secrete mv fortune, and
leave me naked in the world; — or that the other could send
122 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
me out of it, and enjoy an estate by my death, without dis-
honour to himself or his art: — In this case, what hold have
I of either of them? — Religion, the strongest of all motives,
is out of the question; — Interest, the next most powerful
motive in the world, is strongly against me: — What have I
left to cast into the opposite scale to balance this temptation?
— Alas! I have nothing, — nothing but what is lighter than
a bubble — I must lie at the mercy of Honour, or some such
capricious principle — Strait security for two of the most
valuable blessings! — my property and myself.
"As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality
without religion; — so on the other hand, there is nothing
better to be expected from religion without morality; never-
theless, 'tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral char-
acter stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion
of himself in the light of a religious man.
"He shall not only be covetous, revengeful, implacable, —
but even wanting in points of common honesty; yet inas-
much as he talks aloud against the infidelity of the age, — is
zealous for some points of religion, — goes twice a day to
church, — attends the sacraments, — and amuses himself with
a few instrumental parts of religion, — shall cheat his con-
science into a judgment, that, for this, he is a religious man,
and has discharged truly his duty to God: And you will find
that such a man, through force of this delusion, generally
looks down with spiritual pride upon every other man who
has less affectation of piety, — though, perhaps, ten times
more real honesty than himself.
" 'This likewise is a sore evil under the sun'; and I be-
lieve, there is no one mistaken principle, which, for its time,
has wrought more serious mischiefs. — For a general proof
of this, — examine the history of the Romish church"; —
(Well, what can you make of that? cried Dr. Slop] — "see
what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed," —
[They may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr. Slop.] —
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 123
"have all been sanctified by a religion not strictly governed
by morality.
"In how many kingdoms of the world" — [Here Trim
kept waving his right hand from the sermon to the extent of
his arm, returning it backwards and forwards to the con-
clusion of the paragraph.]
"In how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading
sword of this misguided saint-errant, spared neither age nor
merit, or sex, or condition? — and, as he fought under the
banners of a religion which set him loose from justice and
humanity, he shewed none; mercilessly trampled upon both,
— heard neither the cries of the unfortimatc, nor pitied their
distresses."
[I have been in many a battle, an' please your Honour,
quoth Trim, sighing, but never in so melancholy a one as
this, — I would not have drawn a trigger in it against these
poor souls, — to have been made a general officer. — Why?
what do you understand of the affair? said Dr. Slop, look-
ing towards Trim, with something more of contempt than
the Corporal's honest heart deserved. — What do you know,
friend, about this battle you talk of? — I know, replied Trim,
that I never refused quarter in my life to any man who cried
out for it; — but to a woman or a child, continued Trim,
before I would level my musket at them, I would lose my
life a thousand times. — Here's a crown for thee, Trim, to
drink with Obadiah to-night, quoth my uncle Toby, and I'll
give Obadiah another too. — God bless your Honour, replied
Trim, — I had rather these poor women and children had
it. — Thou art an honest fellow, quoth my uncle Tobv.
— My father nodded his head, — as much as to say, — and
so he is. —
But prithee. Trim, said my father, make an end, — for I
see thou hast but a leaf or two left.
Corporal Trim read on.]
"If the testimony of past centuries in this matter is not
124 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
sufficient, — consider at this instant, how the votaries of that
religion r.re every day thinking to do service and honour to
God, by actions which are a dishonour and scandal to them-
selves.
"To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into
tlie prisons of the Inquisition." — [God help my poor brother
Tom.] — "Behold Religion, with Mercy and Justice chained
down under her feet, — there sitting ghastly upon a black
tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments of torment.
Hark! — hark! what a piteous groan!" — [Here Trim's face
turned as pale as ashes.] — "See the melancholy wretch who
uttered it" — [Here the tears began to trickle down.] —
"just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock trial,
and endure the utmost pains that a studied system of cruelty
has been able to invent." — [D — n them all, quoth Trim,
his colour returning into his face as red as blood.] — "Be-
hold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors, — his
body so wasted with sorrow and confinement." — [Oh! 'tis
my brother, cried poor Trim in a most passionate exclama-
tion dropping the sermon upon the ground, and clapping his
hands together — I fear 'tis poor Tom. My father's and
my uncle Toby's heart yearned with sympathy for the poor
fellow's distress; even Slop himself acknowledged pity for
him. — Why, Trim, said my father, this is not a history, —
'tis a sermon thou art reading; prithee begin the sentence
again.] — "Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his
tormentors, — his body so wasted with sorrow and confine-
ment, you \A\\ see every nerve and muscle as it suffers.
"Observe the last movement of that horrid engine!" —
[I would rather face a cannon, quoth Trim, stamping.] —
"See what convulsions it has thrown him into! — Consider
the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched, —
what exquisite tortures he endures by it!" — [I hope 'tis not
in Portugal.] — " 'Tis all nature can bear! Good God! see
how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 125
lips!" [I would not read another line of it, quoth Trim,
for all this world; — I fear, an' please your Honours, all
this is in Portugal, where my poor brother Tom is. I tell
thee, Trim, again, quoth my father, 'tis not an historical
account, — 'tis a description. — 'Tis only a description, honest
man, quoth Slop, there's not a word of truth in it. — That's
another story, replied my father. — However, as Trim reads
it with so much concern, — 'tis cruelty to force him to go on
with it. — Give me hold of the sermon, Trim, — I'll finish
it for thee, and thou may'st go. I must stay and hear it
too, replied Trim, if your Honour will allow me; — tho'
I would not read it myself for a Colonel's pay. Poor
Trim! quoth my uncle Toby. My father went on.] —
'' — Consider the nature of the posture in which he now
lies stretched, — what exquisite torture he endures by it! —
'Tis all nature can bear! Good God! Sec how it keeps
his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips, — willing to
take its leave, — but not suffered to depart! — Behold the
unhappy wretch led back to his cell!" — [Then, thank God,
however, quoth Trim, they have not killed him.] — "See him
dragged out of it again to meet the flames, and the insults
in his last agonies, which this principle, — this principle, that
there can be religion without mercy, has prepared for him."
— [Then, thank God, — he is dead, quoth Trim, — he is out
of his pain, — and they have done their worst at him. — O
Sirs! — Hold your peace. Trim, said my father, going on
with the sermon, lest Trim should incense Dr. Slop, — we
shall never have done at this rate.]
"The surest way to try the merit of any disputed notion
is, to trace down the consequences such a notion has pro-
duced, and compare them with the spirit of Christianity; —
'tis the short and decisive rule which our Saviour hath left
us, for these and such like cases, and it is worth a thousand
arguments — 'By their fruits yc shall know them.'
"I will add no further to the length of this sermon, than
126 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
by two or three short and independent rules deducible from
it.
"First, Whenever a man talks loudly against religion,
always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which
have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good
belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbours, and
where they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other cause
but quietness' sake.
"Secondly, When a man, thus represented, tells you in
any particular instance, — That such a thing goes against his
conscience, — always believe he means exactly the same
thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes against his
stomach; — a present want of appetite being generally the
true cause of both.
"In a word, — trust that man in nothing, who has not a
Conscience in every thing.
"And, in your own case, remember this plain distinction,
a mistake in which has ruined thousands, — that your
conscience is not a law: — No, God and reason made the
law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;
— not, like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows
of his own passions, — but like a British judge in this land
of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faith-
lullv declares that law which he knows already written."
FINIS.
Thou hast read the sermon extremely well. Trim, quoth
my father. — If he had spared his comments, replied Dr.
Slop, — he would have read it much better. I should have
read it ten times better. Sir, answered Trim, but that my
heart was so full. — That was the very reason. Trim, replied
my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as
thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued
my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop, would take part
in what they deliver as deeply as this poor fellow has done, —
as their compositions are fine; — [I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop]
CHAP, i; TklSTRA.M SHAM)^- 127
— I maintain it, — that the clocjiicncc of our pulpits, with
such suhjccts to enflame it, would he a model for the whole
world: — But alas! continued mv father, and I own it. Sir,
with sorrow, that, like French politicians in this respect,
what thev gain in the cabinet they lose in the field. — 'Twere
a pity, quoth my uncle, that this should be lost. I like the
sermon well, replied my father, — 'tis dramatic, — and there
is something in that way of writing, when skilfully man-
aged, which catches the attention. — We preach much in that
way with us, said Dr. Slop. — I know that very well, said
my father, — but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr.
Slop, full as much as his assent, simply, could have pleased
him. — But in this, added Dr. Slop, a little piqued, — our
sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never intro-
duce any character into them below a patriarch or a pa-
triarch's wife, or a martyr or a saint. — There are some very
bad characters in this, however, said my father, and I do
not think the sermon a jot the worse for 'em. — But pray,
quoth my uncle Toby, — whose can this be.^ — How could
it get into my Stevinus? A man must be as great a con-
jurer as Stevinus, said my father, to resolve the second
question: — The first, I think, is not so difficult; — for un-
less my judgment greatly deceives me, — I know the author,
for 'tis wrote, certainly, by the parson of the parish.
The similitude of the style and manner of it, with those
my father constantly had heard preached in his parish-church,
was the ground of his conjecture, — proving it as strongly, as
an argument a friori could prove such a thing to a philosophic
mind. That it was Yorick's and no one's else: — It was
proved to be so, a fosterioriy the day after, when Yorick sent
a servant to my uncle Toby's house to enquire after it.
It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds
of knowledge, had borrowed Stevinus of my uncle Toby,
and had carelessly popped his sermon, as soon as he had
made it, into the middle of Stevinus; and by an act of for-
128 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
getfulness, to which he was ever subject, he had sent Stevinus
home, and his sermon to keep liim company.
Ill-fated sermon! Thou wast lost, after this recovery of
thee, a second time, dropped thro' an unsuspected fissure in
thy master's pocket, down into a treacherous and a tattered
lining, — trod deep into the dirt by the left hind-foot of his
Rosinante inhumanly stepping upon thee as thou falledst; —
buried ten days in the mire, — raised up out of it by a beggar,
— sold for a halfpenny to a parish-clerk, — transferred to
his parson, — lost for ever to thy own, the remainder of his
days, — nor restored to his restless Manes till this very
moment, that I tell the world the story.
Can the reader believe, that this sermon of Yorick's was
preached at an assize, in the cathedral of York, before a
thousand witnesses, ready to give oath of it, by a certain
prebendary of that church, and actually printed by him when
he had done, — and within so short a space as two years and
three months after Yorick's death? — Yorick indeed was
never better served in his life; but it was a little hard
to maltreat him after, and plunder him after he was laid in
his grave.
However, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect
charity with Yorick, — and, in conscious justice, printed but
a few copies to give away; — and that I am told he could
moreover have made as good a one himself, had he thought
fit, — I declare I would not have published this anecdote to
the world; — nor do I publish it with an intent to hurt his
character and advancement in the church; — I leave that to
others; — but I find myself impelled by two reasons, which
I cannot withstand.
The first is. That in doing justice, I may give rest to
Yorick's ghost; — which — as the country-people, and some
others, believe, — still walks.
The second reason is, That, by laying open this story to
the world, I gain an opportunity of informing it, — That in
CHAP. i8 TRISTRAM SHANDY 129
case the character of parson Yorick, and this sample ot his
sermons, is liked, — there are now in the possession of the
Shandy family, as many as will make a handsome volume,
at the world's service, — and much good may they do it.
Chapter 18
Obadiah gained the two crowns without dispute; for he
came in jingling, with all the instruments in the green bays
bag we spoke of, slung across his body, just as Corporal Trim
went out of the room.
It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. Slop, (clearing up
his looks) as we are in a condition to be of some service to
Mrs. Shandy, to send up stairs to know how she goes on.
I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to
come down to us upon the least difficulty; — for you must
know, Dr. Slop, continued my father, with a perplexed kind
of a smile upon his countenance, that by express treaty,
solemnly ratified between me and my wife, you are no more
than an auxiliary in this affair, — and not so much as that, —
unless the lean old mother of a midwife above stairs cannot
do without you. — Women have their particular fancies, and
in points of this nature, continued my father, where they
bear the whole burden, and suffer so much acute pain for
the advantage of oui families, and the good of the species, —
they claim a right of deciding, en Souveraines, in whose
hands, and in what fashion, they choose to undergo it.
They arc in the right of it, — quoth my uncle Toby. But,
Sir, replied Dr. Slop, not taking notice of my uncle Toby's
opinion, but turning to my father, — they had better govern
in other points; — and a father of a family, who wishes its
perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange this preroga-
tive with them, and give up some other rights in lieu of it.
— I know not, quoth my father, answering a little too
testily, to be quite dispassionate in what he said, — I know
not, quoth he, what we have left to give up, in lieu of who
130 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
shall bring our children into the world, unless that, — or
who shall beget them. — One would almost give up any thing,
replied Dr. Slop. — I beg your pardon, — answered my uncle
Toby. — Sir, replied Dr. Slop, it would astonish you to
know what improvements we have made of late years in
all branches of obstetrical knowledge, but particularly in
that one single point of the safe and expeditious extraction
of the foetus, — which has received such lights, that, for my
part (holding up his hands) I declare I wonder how the
world has — I wish, quoth my uncle Toby, you had seen
what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.
Chapter ig
I HAVE dropped the curtain over this scene for a minute, —
to remind you of one thing, — and to inform you of another.
What I have to inform you, comes, I own, a little out of
its due course; — for it should have been told a hundred and
fifty pages ago, but that I foresaw then 'twould come in pat
hereafter, and be of more advantage here than elsewhere. —
Writers had need look before them, to keep up the spirit
and connection of v/hat they liavc in hand.
When these two things arc done, — the curtain shall be
drawn up again, and my imcle Toby, my father, and Dr.
Slop, shall go on with their discourse, without any more
interruptions.
First, then, the matter which I ha\e to remind you of, is
this;- — that from the specimens of singularity in my father's
notions in the point of christian names, and that other pre-
vious point thereto, — ^•ou was led, I think, into an opinion,
(and I am sure I said as much) that my father was a gentle-
man altogether as odd and whimsical in fifty other opinions.
Ill truth, there was not a stage in the life of man, from the
very first act of his begetting, — down to the lean and slip-
pered pantaloon in his second childishness-, but he had some
favourite notion to himself, springing out of it, as sceptical,
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 131
and as far out, of the high-way of thinking, as these two
which havfc been explained.
— Mr. Shandy, my father, Sir, would see nothing in the
light in which others placed it; — he placed things in his own
light; — he would weigh nothing in common scales; — no,
he was too refined a researcher to lie open to so gross an im-
position. — To come at the exact weight of things in the
scientific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, should be
almost invisible, to avoid all friction from popular tenets;
— without this the minutiae of philosophy, which would
always turn the balance, will have no weight at all. Knowl-
edge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in in-
finitum; — that the grains and scruples were as much a part
of it, as the gravitation of the whole world. — In a word,
he would say, error was error, — no matter where it fell, —
whether in a fraction, — or a pound, — 'twas alike fatal to
truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as
inevitably by a mistake in the dust of a butterfly's wing, — as
in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven
put together.
He would often lament that it was for want of consider-
ing this properly, and of applying it skilfully to civil mat-
ters, as well as to speculative truths, that J^^ many things in
this world were out of joint; — that the political arch was
giving way; — and that the very foundations of our excel-
lent constitution, in church and state, were so sapped as
estimators had reported.
You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone peo-
ple. Whyr he would ask, making use of the sorites or
syllogism of Zeno and Chrysippus, without knowing it be-
longed to them. — Why? why are we a ruined people? —
Because we are corrupted. — Whence is it, dear Sir, that we
are corrupted? — Because we are needy; — our poverty, and
not our wills, consent. — And wherefore, he would add, arc
we needy? — From the neglect, he would answer, of our
132 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
pence and our halfpence: — Our bank notes, Sir, our guineas,
— nay our shillings take care of themselves.
'Tis the same, he would say^ throughout the whole circle
of the sciences; — the great, the established points of them,
are not to be broken in upon. — The laws of nature will de-
fend themselves; — but error — (he would add, looking
earnestly at my mother) — error, Sir, creeps in thro' the
minute holes and small crevices which human nature leaves
unguarded.
This turn of thinking in my father, is what I had to
remind you of: — The point you are to be informed of, and
which I have reserved for this place, is as follows.
Amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which
my father had urged my mother to accept of Dr. Slop's
assistance preferably to that of the old woman, — there was
one of a very singular nature; which, when he had done
arguing the manner with her as a Christian, and came to
argue it over again with her as a philosopher, he had put
his whole strength to, depending indeed upon it as his sheet-
anchor. — It failed him; tho' from no defect in the argu-
ment itself; but that, do what he could, he was not able
for his soul to make her comprehend the drift of it. —
Cursed luck! — said he to himself, one afternoon, as he
walked out of the room, after he had been stating it for
an hour and a half to her, to no manner of purpose; — cursed
luck! said he, biting his lip as he shut the door, — for a man
to be master of one of the finest chains of reasoning in
nature, — and have a wife at the same time with such a
head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference within
side of it, to save his soul from destruction.
This argument, though it was entirely lost upon my
mother — had more weight with him, than all his other argu-
ments joined together: — I will therefore endeavour to do it
justice, — and set it forth with all the perspicuity I am mas-
ter of.
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 133
My father set out upon the strength of these two fol-
lowing axioms:
First. That an ounce of a man's own wit, was worth a
ton of other people's; and,
Secondly, (Which by the bye, was the ground-work of
the first axiom, — tho' it comes last) That every man's wit
must come from every man's own soul, — and no other
body's.
Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by
nature equal, — and that the great difference betvreen the
most acute and the most obtuse understanding — was from
no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance
above or below another, — but arose merely from the lucky
or unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the
soul principally took up her residence, — he had made it the
subject of his enquiry to find out the identical place.
Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of
this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where Dcs
Cartes had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the
brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion for her
about the size of a marrow pea; tho', to speak the truth,
as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place, — 'twas
no bad conjecture; — and my father had certainly fallen
with that great philosopher plumb into the centre of the
mistake, had it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued
him out of it, by a stor)' he told him of a Walloon oflficer at
the battle of Landen, who had one part of his brain shot
away by a musket-ball, — and another part of it taken out
after by a French surgeon; and after all, recovered, and did
his duty very well without it.
If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is noth-
ing but the separation of the soul from the body; and if it is
true that people can walk about and do their business with-
out brains, — then certes the soul does not inhabit there.
Q. E. D.
134 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant
juice which Coglionissimo Born, the great Milanese physi-
cian affirms^ in a letter to Bartholine, to have discovered in
the cellulae of the occipital parts of the cerebellum, and
which he likewise affirms to be the principal seat of the
reasonable soul, (for, you must know, in these latter and
more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man
living, — the one, according to the great Mctheglingius, be-
ing called the Anunus^ the other, the An'mia;) — as for the
opinion, I say, of Borri, — my father could never subscribe
to it by any means; the very idea of so noble, so refined, so
immaterial, and so exalted a being as the AnhiWy or even
the Animus^ taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling,
like a tadpole all day long, both summer and winter, in a
puddle, — or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin
soever, he would say, shocked his imagination; he would
scarce give the doctrine a hearing.
What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of
any, was that the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the
soul, and to which place all intelligences were referred, and
from whence all her mandates were issued, — was in, or
near, the cerebellum, — or rather somewhere about the
medulla, oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by
Dutch anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the
organs of the seven senses concentered, like streets and wind-
ing alleys, into a square.
So far there was nothing singular in my father's opinion,
— he had the best of philosophers, of all ages and climates,
to go along with him. — But here he took a road of his own,
setting up another Shandcan hypothesis upon these corner-
stones they had laid for him; — and wliich said hypothesis
equally stood its ground; whether the subtlety and fineness
of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of
the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the
cerebellum itself; which opinion he favoured.
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 135
He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in
the act of propagation of each individual, which required
all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of
this incomprehensible contexture, in which wit, memory,
fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of
good natural parts, do consist; — that next to this and his
christian name, which were the two original and most effi-
cacious causes of all; — that the third cause, or rather what
logicians call the Causa sine qua tion, and without which all
that was done was of no manner of significance, — was the
preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the
havoc which was generally made in it by the violent com-
pression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by
the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by
that foremost.
— This requires explanation.
My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon look-
ing into Lithopacdus Senonesis dc Partii difficiliy published
by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, that the lax and
pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the bones of the
cranium having no sutures at that time, was such, — that by
force of the woman's efforts, which, in strong labour-pains,
was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds
avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it; — it so happened,
that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed
and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of
dough, such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to
make a pie of. — Good God! cried my father, what havoc
1 The author is here twice mistaken; — for Lithopacdus should be
wrote thus, Lilhopaedii Semonensis Icon. The second mistake is. that
this Lithopaedus is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child.
The account of this, published by Athosius 15S0, may be seen at the
end of Cordaeus's works in Spachius. Mr. Tristram Shandy ha?
been led into this error, cither from secinc Lithopaedus's name of
late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr. , or by mistaking
Lithopacdus for TrinecavcUius, — from the too great sinulitude of the
names.
136 TRISTRAM SHANDY book 11
and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and
tender texture of the cerebellum! — Or if there is such a
juice as Borri pretends, — is it not enough to make the
clearest liquid in the world both feculent and mothery?
But how great was his apprehension, when he farther
understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of
the head, not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum, —
but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum
towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of
the understanding! — Angels and ministers of grace defend
us! cried my father, — can any soul withstand this shock? —
No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered as
we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better
than a puzzled skein of silk, — all perplexity, — all confusion
within-side.
But when my father read on, and was let into the secret,
that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy
for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet; — that
instead of the cerebrum being propelled towards the cere-
bellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled sim-
ply toward the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of
hurt: — By heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to
drive out what little wit God has given us, — and the pro-
fessors of the obstetric art are lifted into the same con-
spiracy. — What is it to me which end of my son comes
foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and
his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has
conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as
proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your
begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing
you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.
When my father was gone with this about a month, there
was scarce a phenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 137
he coiikl not readily solve hv it; — it accounted for the eldest
son being the greatest blockhead in the family. — Poor devil,
he would say, — he made way for the capacity of his younger
brothers. — It unriddled the observations of drivellers and
monstrous heads, — shewing a priori, it could not be other-
wise, — unless **** I don't know what. It wonderfully ex-
plained and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius,
and that spritclier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of
minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-
place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-
shine, etc. — which for aught we knew, might as well rarefy
and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one
extreme, — as they are condensed in colder climates by the
other; — but he traced the affair up to its spring-head; —
shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter
tax upon the fairest parts of the creation; — their pleasures
more; — the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the
pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that
the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;
— nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as
a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced, — so
that the soul might just act as she liked.
When my father had got so far, — what a blaze of light
did the accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the tower-
ing geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast
upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was
no injury done to the sensorium; — no pressure of the head
against the pelvis; — no propulsion of the cerebrum towards
the cerebellum, either by the os fubis on this side, or the os
coxygis on that; — and pray, what were the happy conse-
quences? Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the opera-
tion a name; — and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was
born so before ever the operation had a name; — your Scipio
Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,
— who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to
T38 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ii
the hypothesis: — These, and many more who figured high
in the annals of fame, — all came side-way, Sir, into the
world.
The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six
weeks together in my father's head; — he had read, and was
Nitisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the
matrix, were not mortal; — so that the belly of the mother
might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the
child. — He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my
mother, — merely as a matter of fact; b\it seeing her turn
as pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the
operation flattered his hopes, — he thought it as well to say
no more of it, — contenting himself with admiring, — what
he thought was to no purpose to propose.
This was my father Mr. Shandy's hypothesis; concerning
which I have only to add, that my brother Bobby did as
great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any
one of the great heroes we spoke of: For happening not
only to be christened, as I told you, but to be born too,
when my father was at Epsom, — being moreover my
mother's first child, — coming into the world with his head
foremost, — and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful
slow parts, — my father spelt all these together into his
opinion: and as he had failed at one end, — he was deter-
mined to trv the other.
This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood,
who are not easily to be put out of their way, — and was
therefore one of my father's great reasons in favour of a
man of science, whom he could better deal with.
Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for
my father's purpose; — for though this new invented forceps
was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to
be the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he
had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the
very thing which ran in mv father's fancv; — tho' not with
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 139
a view to the soul's good in extracting by the feet, as was
my father's system, — but for reasons merely obstetrical.
This will account for the coalition betwixt my father
and Dr. Slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little
hard against my uncle Toby. — In what manner a plain man,
with nothing but common sense, could bear up against two
such allies in science, — is hard to conceive. — You may con-
jecture upon it, if you please, — and whilst your imagination
is in motion, vou may encourage it to go on, and discover
by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass,
that my uncle Tobv got his nn)dt.'Sty by the wound he re-
ceived upon his groin. — You may raise a system to account
for the loss of my nose by marriage-articles, — and shew the
world how it could happen, that I should have the misfor-
tune to be called Tristram, in opposition to my father's
hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family. Godfathers
and Godmothers not excepted. — These, with fifty other
points left yet unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if
you have time; — but I tell you beforehand it will be in
vain, for not the sage Alquife, the magician in Don Belianis
of Greece, nor the no less famous Urganda, the sorceress, his
wife, (were they alive) could pretend to come within a
league of the truth.
The reader will be content to wait for a full explana-
tion of these matters till the next year, — when a series of
things will be laid open which he little expects.
BOOK III
Multitudinis imperitae non formido judicia; meis tamen, rogo, par-
cant opusculis — in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria,
a seriis vicissim ad jocos transire.
— Joan. Saresberiensis, Episcopus Lugdun.
Ckaper i
— "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 wished at first) — "I wish. Dr. Slop," quoth my uncle
Toby, "you had seen what prodigious armies we had in
Flanders."
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 diflFerence in the case;
— nothing is more dangerous. Madam, than a wish coming
sideways in this unexpected 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 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 will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter
of wishes. —
Dr. Slop did noi understand the nature of this defence;
— he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the
dispute for four minutes and a half; — five had been fatal
to it: — my father saw the danger — the dispute was one of
140
CHAP. 2 TRISTRAM SHANDY 141
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
returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded,
and continued looking 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 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 actual!)- begun to count the
brass nails upon the arm of his chair, — mv father thought
there was no time to be lost with my uncle Toby, so took
up the discourse as follows.
Chapter 2
" — What prodigious armies vou 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 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 consequence 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 everv thing in this 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 not indifferent, just as the
case happens?
142 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
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, instead 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, called out for his
handkerchief, 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 been resolved
to make a fool of himself 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 matter, — consider what
a devil of a figure my father made of himself.
In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, and in the be-
ginning 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 mischief, had he been hammering
at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for
one in my father's situation.
Chafter 5
It was not an easy matter in any king's reign (unless you
were as lean a subject 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 thou-
sand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it
was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby dis-
covered the transverse zig-zaggcrv of my father's approaches
towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had
CHAP. 4 TRISTRAM SHANDY 143
done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicolas; — 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 with it, to measure the returning: angles of
the traverses of that attack, — but particularly of that one,
where he received his wound upon his groin.
My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the
blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face — my uncle
Tobv dismounted immediatclv.
— I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o' horse-
back. —
Cknficr ^
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, — vou rumple the other. There is
one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when
you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin
made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet,
or thin persian.
Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionvsius Hcr-
acleotcs, Antipater, Panaetius, and Posidonius amongst the
Greeks; — Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;
— Pantaenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne
amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good,
honest, 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 f ridged
the outside of them all to pieces; — in short, you might have
played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not
one of the insides of them would have been one button the
worse, for all you had done to ihc-m.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat
144 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
after this sort: — for never poor jerkin has been tickled oif at
such a rate as it has been these last nine months together, —
and yet I declare, 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, helter-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 gumminess
in my lining, — by heaven! it had all of it long ago been
frayed and fretted to a thread.
— You Messrs. the Monthly reviewers! — 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 protection of that
Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you
and your affairs, — 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 remem-
ber 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
buzzed about his nose all dinner-time, — "Go, — go, poor
devil," quoth he, — "get thee gone, — why should I hurt
thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both
thee and me."
Chafter 5
Any man. Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the
prodigious suffusion of blood in my father's countenance, —
by means of which (as all the blood in his body seemed to
rush into his face, as I told you) he must have reddened,
pictorially and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and
a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour: — any
man. Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this,
CHAP. 6 TRISTRAM SHAM)^ 145
together with the viDlent knitting <>t my father's brows,
and the extravagant contortion ot his body during the whole
affair, — would have concluded my tathcr in a rage; and
talcintr that for granted, — had he been a lover of such kind
of concord as arises from two such instruments being put
in exact tune, — he would instantly have screwed 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 Scarlatti — con furia, — like mad.
— Grant me patience! — What has con furia, — con strepitOy
— or any other hurly burly whatever to do with iiarmony:
Any man, I sav, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the be-
nignity of whose heart interpreted 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 Tobv blamed nothing but the tailor who cut the
pocket hole; — so sitting still till my father had got his
handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his
face with inexpressible good-will — my father, at length,
went on as follows.
Chapter 6
"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 begotten, 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 begetting 'em — though these,
in mv opinion, are well worth considering, — but the dangers
and difficulties our children are beset with, after they are
got forth into the world, are enow — little need is there to
expose them to unnecessary ones in their passage to it. — Arc
these dangers, quoth my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon
146 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
my father's knee, and looking up seriously in his face for
an answer, — are these dangers greater now o' days, brother,
than in times past? Brother Toby, answered my father, if
a child was but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy,
and the mother did well after it, — our forefathers never
looked farther. — My uncle Toby instantly withdrew his
hand from off my father's knee, reclined his body gently
back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see
the cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory
muscles along his cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around
his lips to do their duty — he whistled LUlahullero.
Chaffer j
Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling LUlahullero to my
father, — Dr. Slop was stamping, and cursing and damning
at Obadiah at a most dreadful rate, — it would have done
your heart good, and cured you. Sir, for ever of the vile
sin of swearing, to have heard him ; I am determined there-
fore to relate the whole affair to you.
When Dr. Slop's maid delivered the green baize bag with
her master's instruments in it, to Obadiah, she very sensibly
exhorted him to put his head and one arm through the
strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so undoing
the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any
more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as this,
in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any
thing should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed Obadiah
threatened, they consulted to take it off again; and in the
great care and caution of their hearts, they had taken the
two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of
tile bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which
Obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn to-
gether with all the strength of his body.
This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended;
but was no remedy against some evils which neither he or
CHAP. 8 TRISTRAM SHANDY 147
she foresaw. The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag
was tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the
bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah
could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle,
what with the tirr-trir, forceps, and squirt, as would have
been enough, had Hymen been taking a jaunt that way, to
have frightened him out of the country; but when Obadiah
accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to
prick his coach-horse into a full gallop — by Heaven! Sir,
the jingle was incredible.
As Obadiah had a wife and three children — the turpii-
tude of fornication, and the many other political ill conse-
quences of this jingling, never once entered his brain, — he
had however his objection, which came home to himself,
and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the
greatest patriots. — "The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to
hear himself whistle."
Chapter 8
As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instru-
mental music he carried with him, — he very considerately
set his imagination to work, to contrive and to invent by what
means he should put himself in a condition of enjoying it.
In all distresses (except musical) where small cords arc
wanted, nothing is so apt to enter a man's head as his hat-
band: — the philosophy of this is so near the surface — I scorn
to enter into it.
As Obadiah's was a mixed case — mark, Sirs, — I say, a
mixed case; for it was obstetrical, — scriptical, squirtical,
papistical — and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in
it, — caball-istical — and only partly musical; — Obadiah
made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient
which offered; — so taking hold of the bag and instruments,
and griping them hard together with one hand, and with
the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the
148 TRISTRAM SHANDY book in
hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down
to the middle of it, — he tied and cross-tied them all fast
together from one end to the other (as you would cord a
a trunk) with such a multiplicity of roundabouts and
intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection
or point where the strings met, — that Dr. Slop must have
had three fifths of Job's patience at least to have unloosed
them. — I think in my conscience, that had Nature been in
one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest
— and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started together — there
is no man living who had seen the bag with all that Obadiah
had done to it, — and known likewise the great speed the
Goddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have
had the least doubt remaining in his mind — which of the
two would have carried off the prize. My mother. Madam,
had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly —
at least, by twenty knots. — Sport of small accidents, Tris-
tram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be! had that
trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had, —
thy afiFairs had not been so depressed — (at least by the de-
pression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the for-
tunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which
have so often presented themselves in the course of thy
life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so
irrecoverably abandoned — as thou hast been forced to leave
them; — but 'tis over, — all but the account of 'em, which
cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the
world.
Chapter g
Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes
upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with
my uncle Toby about midwifery put him in mind of it) —
the very same thought occurred. — 'Tis God's mercy, quoth
he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy has had so bad a time of
it, — else she might have been brought to bed seven times
CHAP. 10 TRISTRAM SHANDY 149
told, before one half of these knots could have got untied.
— But here you must distinguish — the thought floated only
in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple
proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are
ever)' day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice
of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards
or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive
them to one side.
A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother's
bed, did the proposition the very service I am speaking of.
Bv all that's unfortunate, quoth Dr. Slop, unless I make
haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is.
Chafter 10
In the case of knots, — by which, in the first place, I would
not be understood to mean slip-knots — because in the course
of my life and opinions — mv opinions concerning them
will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe
of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy, — a little man, —
but of high fancy: — he rushed into the duke of Monmouth's
affair: — nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that par-
ticular species of knots called bow-knots; — there is so little
address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them,
that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.
— But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your
reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish
tight, hard knots, made bona fidcy as Obadiah made his; —
in which there is no quibbling provision made by the dupli-
cation and return of the two ends of the strings thro' the
annulus or noose made by the second implication of them — to
get them slipped and undone by. — I hope you apprehend me.
In the case of these knots then, and of the several ob-
structions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots
cast in our way in getting through life — every hasty man
can whip out his penknife and cut through them. — 'Ti?
150 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
wrong. Believe mc, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which
both reason and conscience dictate — is to take our teeth or
our fingers to them. — Dr. Slop had lost his teeth — his fa-
vourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or
by some misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had
formerly, in a hard labour, knocked out three of the best
of them with the handle of it: — he tried his fingers — alas;
the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close. — The
deuce take it! I can make nothing of it either way, cried
Dr. Slop. — The trampling over head near my mother's bed-
side increased. — Pox take the fellow! I shall never get the
knots untied as long as I live. — My mother gave a groan. —
Lend me your penknife — I must e'en cut the knots at last —
pugh! — psha! — Lord! I have cut my thumb quite across to
the very bone — curse the fellow — if there was not another
man-midwife within fifty miles — I am undone for this bout
— I wish the scoundrel hanged — I wish he was shot — I wish
all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead! —
My father had a great respect for Obadiah, and could
not bear to hear him disposed of in such a manner — he had
moreover some little respect for himself — and could as
ill bear with the indignity offered to himself in it.
Had Dr. Slop cut any part about him, but his thumb —
my father had passed it by — his prudence had triumphed:
as it was, he was determined to have his revenge.
Small curses. Dr. Slop, upon great occasions, quoth my
father (condoling with him first upon the accident) are
hut so much waste of our strength and soul's health to no
manner of purpose. — I own it, replied Dr. Slop. — They are
like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle Toby (suspending his
whistling) fired against a bastion. — They serve, continued
my father, to stir the humours — but carry oflF none of their
acrimony: — for my own part, I seldom swear or curse at all
— I hold it bad — but if I fall into it by surprise, I generally
retain so much presence of mind (right, quoth my uncle
CHAP. lo 'IRIS'IRAM SHAM)^' 151
Toby) as to make it answer my purpose — that i\, I swear
on till I find myself easy. A wise and a just man however
would always endeavour to proportion the vent given to
these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring
within himself — but to the size and ill intent of the offence
upon which they are to fall. — "Injuries come only from the
heart," — quoth my uncle Toby. For this reason, continued
my father, with the most Cervantic gravity, I have the
greatest veneration in the world for that gentleman, who,
in distrust of his own discretion in this point, sat down and
composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of swearing suit-
able to all cases, from the lowest to the highest provocation
which could possiblv happen to him — which forms being
well considered by him, and such moreover as he could
stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece,
within his reach, ready for use. — I never apprehended, re-
plied Dr. Slop, that such a thing was ever thought of — much
less executed. I beg your pardon, answered my father; I
was reading, though not using, one of them to my brother
Toby this morning, whilst he poured out the tea — 'tis here
upon the shelf over my head; — but if I remember right,
'tis too violent for a cut of the thumb. — Not at all, quoth
Dr. Slop — the devil take the fellow. — Then, answered my
father, 'Tis much at your service. Dr. Slop — on condition
vou will read it aloud; — so rising up and reaching down a
form of excommunication of the church of Rome, a copy
of which, my father (who was curious in his collections)
had procured out of the leger-book of the church of
Rochester, writ by Ernulphus the bishop — with a most af-
fected seriousness of look and voice, which might have
cajoled Ernulphus himself — he put it into Dr. Slop's
hands. — Dr. Slop wrapt his thumb up in the corner of his
handkerchief, and with a wry face, though without any
suspicion, read aloud, as follows — my uncle Toby whistling
Lilkibullero as loud as he could all the time.
152 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum.
CAP. XI
EXCOMMUNICATIO
Ex auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
Sancti, et sanctorum canonum, sanctaeque et intemeratae
Virginis Dei genetricis Mariae, —
— Atque omnium coelestium virtutum, angelorum,
archangelorum, thronorum, dominationum, potestatuum,
cherubin ac seraphin, & sanctorum patriarchum, prophet-
arum, & omnium apostolorum & evangelistarum, &
sanctorum innocentum, qui in conspectu Agni soli digni
inventi sunt canticum cantare novum, et sanctorum mar-
tyrum et sanctorum confessorum, et sanctarum virginum,
atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum Dei, —
vel OS s
Excommunicamus, et anathematizamus hunc furem, vel
vel OS s
hunc malefactorem, N. N. et a liminibus sanctae Dei
veil
ecclesiae sequestramus, et aeternis suppliciis excruciandus,
As the genuineness of the consultation of the Sorbonne upon the
question of baptism, was doubted by some, and denied bj' others —
'twas thought proper to print the original of this excommunication;
for the copy of which Mr. Shandy returns thanks to the chapter clerk
of the dean and chapter of Rochester.
CHAP. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 153
Chapter 11
"By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, and of the holy canons, and of the iindcfilcd
Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour." I
think there is no necessity, quoth Dr. Slop, dropping the
paper down to his knee, and addressing himself to my
father — as you have read it over. Sir, so lately, to read it
aloud — and as Captain Shandy seems to have no great in-
clination to hear it — I may as well read it to myself. That's
contrary- to treaty, replied my father: — besides, there is
something so whimsical, especially in the latter part of it, I
should grieve to lose the pleasure of a second reading. Dr.
Slop did not altogether like it, — hut my uncle Toby offcr-
insr at that instant to ^ive over whistlin2:, and read it himself
to them; — Dr. Slop thought he might as well read it under
the cover of my uncle Toby's whistling — as suffer my uncle
Toby to read it alone; — so raising up the paper to his face,
and holding it quite parallel to it, in order to hide his
chagrin — he read it aloud as follows — my uncle Toby
whistling LillabullerOy though not quite so loud as before.
"By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, and of the undenled Virgin Mary, mother and
patroness of our Saviour, and of all the celestial virtues,
angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubins and
seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all
the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who
in the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the
new song of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of the
holy virgins, and of all the saints, together with the holy and
elect of God, — May he" (Obadiah) "be damned" (for ty-
ing these knots) — "We excommunicate, and anathematize
him, and from the thresiiolds of the holy churcli of God
Almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented.
154 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
n
mancipetur, cum Dathan et Abiram, et cum his qui
dixerunt Domino Deo, Recede a nobis, scientiam viarum
tuarum nolumus: et sicut aqua ignis extinguitur, sic ex-
vel eorum n
tinguatur lucerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resipuerit,
n
et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen.
OS
Maledicat ilium Deus Pater qui hominem creavit.
OS
Maledicat ilium Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est.
OS
Maledicat ilium Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo effusus
OS
est. Maledicat ilium sancta crux, quam Christus pro
nostra salute hostem triumphans ascendit.
OS
Maledicat ilium sancta Dei genetrix et perpetua Virgo
OS
Maria. Maledicat ilium sanctus Michael, animarum sus-
os
ceptor sacrarum. Maledicant ilium omnes angeli et
archangeli, principatus et potestates, omnisque militia
coelestis.
OS
Maledicat ilium patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis
OS
numerus. Maledicat ilium sanctus Johannes Praecusor ct
Baptista Christi, et sanctus Petrus, et sanctus Paulus, atque
sanctus Andreas, omnesque Christi apostoli, simul et
caeteri discipuli, quatuor quoque cvnngclistac, qui sua
praedicatione mundum universum converterunt. Mak-
es
dicat ilium cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui
Deo bonis operibus placitus inventus est.
OS
Maledicant ilium sacrarum virginum chori, quae mundi
vana causa honoris Christi respuenda contempserunt.
OS
Maledicant ilium omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque
in finem seculi Deo dilecti inveniuntur.
CHAP. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 155
disposed, and delivered over with Dathan and Abiram, and
with those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, we
desire none of thy ways. And as fire is quenched with
water, so let the light of him be put out for evermore, unless
it shall repent him" (Obadiah, of the knots which he has
tied) "and make satisfaction" (for them) "Amen,"
"May the Father who created man, curse him. — May
the Son who suffered for us, curse him. — May the Holv
Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him (Obadiah)
— May the holy cross which Christ, for our salvation tri-
umphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him.
"May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God,
curse him. — May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls,
curse him. — May all the angels and archangels, princi-
palities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him."
[Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle
Toby, — but nothing to this. — For my own part I could not
have a heart to curse my dog so.]
"May St. John, the Praecursor, and St. John the Baptist,
and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all othei
Christ's apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of
his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching
converted the universal world, and may the holy and won-
derful company of martyrs and confessors who by their
holy works are found pleasing to God Almighty, curse
him" (Obadiah).
"May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the
honour of Christ have despised the things of the world,
damn him — May all the saints, who from the beginnine
of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of
God, damn him —
156 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
OS
Maledicant ilium coeli et terra, ct omnia sancta in cis
manentia.
n n
Maledictus sit ubicunque fuerit, sive in domo, sive in
agro, sive in via, sive in semita, sive in silva, sive in aqua,
sive in ecclesia.
i n
Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo, —
munducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormi-
tando, dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo,
jacendo, operando, quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, fleboto-
mando.
i n
Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis,
i n
Maledictus sit intus et exterius.
I n
Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus sit in cerebro.
i n
Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in fronte, in auri-
culis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in naribus,
in dentibus, mordacibus, sive molaribus, in labiis, in guttere,
in humeris, in harnis, in brachiis, in manubus, in digitis, in
pectore, in corde, et in omnibus interioribus stomacho tenus,
in renibus, in inguinibus, in femore, in genitalibus, in coxis,
in genubus, in crurib-.is, in pedibus, et in inguibus.
Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice
capitis, usque ad plantam pedis — non sit in eo sanitas.
Maledicat ilium Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suae ma-
jestatis impcrio.
CHAP. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 157
"May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things
remaining therein, damn him," (Obadiah) "or her," (or,
who ever else had a hand in tying these knots).
"May he (Obadiah) be damned wherever he be —
whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the iield,
or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the
water, or in the church. — May he be cursed in living, in
dying." [Here my uncle Toby, taking the advantage of a
minim in the second bar of his tune, kept whistling one con-
tinued n( te to the end of the sentence. — Dr. Slop, with his
division of curses moving under him, like a running bass
all the way.] "May he be cursed in eating and drinking,
in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in
slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying,
in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-
letting!"
"May he" (Obadiah) "be cursed in all the faculties of
his body!
"May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly! May
he be cursed in the hair of his head! — May he be cursed
in his brains, and in his vertex," (that is a sad curse, quoth
my father) "in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in
his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils,
in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his
shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his
fingers!
"May he be damned in his mouth, in his breast, in his
heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach!
"May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin," (God
in heaven forbid! quoth my uncle Toby) "in his thighs, in
his genitals," (my father shook his head) "and in his hips,
and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-nails!
158 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
— et insurgat adversus ilium coelum cum omnibus
virtutibus quae in eo moventur ad damnandu?n eum, nisi
penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Fiat, fiat.
Amen.
CHAi>. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 159
"May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of
his members, from the top of his head to the sole of his
foot! May there be no soundness in him!
"May the Son of the living God, with all the glory of
his Majesty" — [Here my uncle Toby, throwing back his
head, gave a monstrous, long, loud Whew — w — w — some-
thing betwixt the interjectional whistle of Heyday! and the
word itself. —
— By the golden beard of Jupiter — and of Juno (if her
majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest of your
heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number,
since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods
aerial and aquatic — to say nothing of the beards of town-
gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your
wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and con-
cubines (that is in case they wore 'em) — all which beards,
as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered
up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective
beards upon the pagan establishment; — every beard of which
claimed the rights and privileges of being stroken and sworn
by — by all these beards together then — I vow and protest,
that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I
would have given the better of them, as freely as ever Cid
Hamlet offered his — to have stood by, and heard my uncle
Toby's accompaniment.
— "Curse him!" continued Dr. Slop, — "and may heaven,
with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him,
curse and damn him" (Obadiah) "unless he repent and
make satisfaction! Amen. So be it, — so be it. Amen."
I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let
me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness. — He is
the father of curses, replied Dr. Slop. — So am not I, replied
mv uncle. — But he is cursed and damned already, to ali
eternity, replied Dr. Slop.
I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby.
i6o TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was just beginning to
return my uncle Toby the compliment of his Whu — u — u
— or interjectional whistle — when the door hastily opening
in the next chapter but one — put an end to the affair.
Chapter 12
Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend
that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of
ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear
them, — imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.
I'll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the
world, except to a connoisseur: — though I declare I object
only to a connoisseur in swearing, — as I would do to a con-
noisseur in painting, etc., etc., the whole set of 'em are so
hung round and befetished with the bobs and trinkets of
criticism, — or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a
pity, — for I have fetched it as far as from the coast of
Guiney; — their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and
compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them
upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to
the devil at once, than stand to be pricked and tortured to
death by 'em.
— And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night? —
Oh, against all rule, my Lord, — most ungrammatically!
betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree
together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus,
— stopping, as if the point wanted settling; — and betwixt
the nominative case, which your lordship knows should gov-
ern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen
times three seconds and three fifths by a stop-watch, my
Lord, each time. — Admirable grammarian! — but in sus-
pending his voice — was the sense suspended likewise? Did
no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm?
— Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look? — I looked
only at the stop-watch, my Lord. — Excellent observer!
CHAP. 12 TRISTRAM SHANDY i6i
And what of this new book the whole world makes such
a rout about: — Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my Lord, — quite
an irregular thing! — not one of the angles at the four
corners was a right angle. — I had my rule and compasses,
etc., my Lord, in my pocket. — Excellent critic!
— And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at —
upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and
trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's — 'tis out,
my Lord, in every one of its dimensions. — Admirable con-
noisseur !
— And did you step in, to take a look at the grand pic-
ture in your way back? — 'Tis a melancholy daub! my Lord;
not one principle of the pyramid in any one group! — and
what a price! — for there is nothing of the colouring of
Titian — the expression of Rubens — the grace of Raphael —
the purity of Dominichino — the corregiescity of Corregio —
the learning of Poussin — the airs of Guido — the taste of the
Carrachis — or the grand contour of Angelo. — Grant mc
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 imagination 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 mc
— I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a
single spark of thy own fire along with it — and send Mer-
cury, 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 imprecations which we have been puffing off
upon the world for these two hundred and fifty years last
past as originals — except St. Paul's thumb — God's flesh and
i62 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
God's fish, which were oaths monarchical, and, considering
who made them, not much amiss; and as king's 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
thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely
short of the force and spirit 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 invention — possessed more of the ex-
cellencies of a swearer — had such a thorough knowledge of
the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knit-
tings of the joints, and articulations, — that when Ernulphus
cursed — no part escaped 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 of gusto!
My father, who generally looked upon every thing in a
light very different from all mankind, would, after all,
never allow this to be an original. — He considered 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 together all the
laws of it; — for the same reason that Justinian, in the de-
cline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian 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 great and tremendous oath of
William the Conqueror (By the splendour of God) down
CHAP. 13 TRISTRAM SHANDY 163
to the lowest oath of a scavenger (Damn your eyes) which
was not to be found in Ernulphus. — In short, he would add
— I 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.
Chapter 12
— 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 the child is where it was,
continued Susannah, — and the midwife has fallen back-
wards 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 Susannah, — you had better look
at my mistress — 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 professions.
The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop's
head — He had not digested 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, 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-horsical reflection; though full as
hobby-horsical himself) — do I know, Captain Shandy, what
might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the
mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at present, but
for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to ****** —
the application of which. Sir, under this accident of mine,
comes in so a frofos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb
i64 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
might have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the
Shandy family had a name.
Chapter 14
Let us go back to the ****** — in the last chapter. It is a
singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when elo-
quence 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 fettOy ready
to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe,
a sword, a pinked 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
Philippic — it must certainly have beshit the orator's mantle.
— And then again, if too old, — it must have been unwieldy
and incommodious 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 so critically, that no soul could
say, it came in by head and shoulders — Oh Sirs! it has done
wonders — It has opened the sluices, and turned the brains,
and shook the principles, and unhinged the politics 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, superfine, marketable cloth
in them — with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a
great style 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,
CHAP. i6 TRISTRAM SHANDY 165
and the disuse of trunk-hose. — We can conceal nothing
under ours, Madam, worth shewing.
Chapter 75
Dr. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all
this argumentation: for happening to have his green baize
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-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
ravelin, — Dr. Slop would never have given them up; — and
my uncle Toby would as soon have 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 seldom 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 the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him. —
This threw the advantage 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?"
Chapter 1 6
— Upon my honour. Sir, you have tore every bit of skin
quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried
my uncle Toby — and you have crushed all my knuckles into
the bargain with them to a jelly. 'Tis your own fault, said
Dr. Slop — you should have clinched your two fists together
i66 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
into the form of a child's head as 1 told you, and sat firm. —
I did so, answered my uncle Toby. — Then the points of my
forceps have not been sufficiently armed, or the rivet wants
closing — or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little
awkward — or possibly — 'Tis well, quoth my father, inter-
rupting the detail of possibilities — that the experiment was
not first made upon my child's head-piece. — It would not
have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered Dr. Slop. — I
maintain it, said my uncle Toby, it would have broke the
cerebellum (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 sutures 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.
Chaffer 1 7
— 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 posi-
tive as these old ladies generally are — 'tis a point very diffi-
cult 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 *****
^ y^ "^ "yf. yf^ y^ yf. vf. y^
— What the possibility was. Dr. Slop whispered very low
to my father, and then to my uncle Toby. — There is no
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 ofir the head too.
— It is morally impossible the reader should understand
this — 'tis enough Dr. Slop understood it; — so taking the
green baize bag in his hand, with the help of Obadiah's
CHAP. 1 8 TRISTRAM SHAM)^- 167
pumps, he tripped 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 midwife, to my mother's apartment.
Chapter 18
It is two hours, and ten minutes — and no more — cried my
father, looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and 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
attention to this chapter.
Though my father said, "he knew not how it happened,*"
— \ ct he knew very well how it happened; — and at the in-
stant 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 its simple
modes, in order to show my uncle Toby by what mechanism
and mensurations 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 extent. — "I know not how it happens
— cried my father, — but it seems an age."
— 'Tis owing entirely, quoth mv uncle Toby, to the suc-
cession of our ideas.
My father, who had an itch, in common with all philos-
ophers, of reasoning upon every thing which happened, and
accounting for it too — proposed infinite pleasure to himself
in this, of the succession of ideas, and had not the least
apprehension of having it snatched 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,
i68 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
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 picked 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 dis-
putes about Infinity, Prescience, Liberty, Necessity, and so
forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theories so
many fine heads have been turned and cracked — never did
my uncle Toby's the least injury at all ; my father knew it —
and was no less surprised than he was disappointed, with
my uncle's fortuitous 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 knowledge. — But I'll tell thee. —
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 satisfac-
tory account how we came by it. — What is that to any body?
quoth my uncle Toby. ^ For if you will turn your eyes
inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe
attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and
I are talking together, and thinking, and smoking 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
1 Vide Locke.
CHAP. 19 TRISTRAM SHANDY 169
else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our
minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing
co-existing with our thinking — and so according to that pre-
conceived — \'ou puzzle me to death, cried my uncle Toby.
— 'Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our com-
putations of time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks,
and months — and of clocks (I wish there was not a clock in
the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to us.
and to those who belong to us — that 'twill be well, if in time
to come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service
to us at all.
Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father,
in every sound man's head, there is a regular succession of
ideas of one sort or other, which follow each other in train
just like — A train of artillery? said my uncle Tob) — a train
of a fiddle-stick! — quoth my father — which follow and suc-
ceed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like
the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the
heat of a candle. — I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, mine
are more like a smoke-jack. — Then, brother Toby, I have
nothing more to say to you upon the subject, said my father.
Chapter ig
— What a conjuncture was here lost! — My father in one
of his best explanatory moods — in eager pursuit of a meta-
physical point into the very regions, where clouds and thick
darkness would soon have encompassed it about; — my uncle
Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world;
his head like a smoke-jack; — the funnel unswept, and the
ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated
and darkened over with fuliginous matter! — By the tomb-
stone of Lucian — if it is in being — if not, why then by his
ashes! by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer Cer-
vantes! — my father and my uncle Toby's discourse upon
Time and Eternity — was a discourse devoutly to be wished
I70 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
for! and the petulancy of my father's humour, in putting
a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the Ontologic Treas-
ury of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and
great men are ever likely to restore to it again.
Chapter 20
Tho' my father persisted in not going on with the discourse
■ — yet he could not get mv uncle Toby's smoke-jack out of
his head — piqued as he was at first with it; — there was
something in the comparison at the bottom, which hit his
fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon the table,
and reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of
his hand — but looking first stedfastly in the fire — he began
to commune with himself, and philosophize about it: but
his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of investigating
new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon
that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the
discourse — the idea of the smoke-jack soon turned all his
ideas upside down — so that he fell asleep almost before he.
knew what he was about.
As for my uncle Toby, his smoke-jack had not made a
dozen revolutions, before he fell asleep also. — Peace be with
them both! — Dr. Slop is engaged with the midwife and my
mother above stairs. — Trim is busy in turning an old pair
of jack-boots into a couple of mortars, to be employed in
the siege of Messina next summer — and is this instant boring
the touch-holes with the point of a hot poker. — All my
heroes are off my hands; — 'tis the first time I have had a
moment to spare — and I'll make use of it, and write my
preface.
The Author's Preface
No, I'll not say a word about it — here it is; — in publishing
it — I have appealed to the world — and to the world I leave
it; — it must speak for itself.
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDY 171
All I know of the matter is — when I sat down, my intent
was to write a good book; and as far as the tenuity of my
understanding would hold out — a wise, aye, and a discreet
— taking care only, as I went along, to put into it all the
wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great
Author and Bestower of them had thought fit originally to
give me — so that, as your worships see — 'tis just as God
pleases.
Now, Agelastes (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth. That
there may be some wit in it, for aught he knows — but no
judgment at all. And Triptolemus and Phutatorius agree-
ing thereto, ask, How is it possible there should? for that
wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch
as they are two operations differing from each other as wide
as cast from west — So, says Locke — so are farting and hic-
cuping, say I. But in answer to this, Didius the great church
lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis, doth
maintain and make fully appear, That an illustration is no
argument — nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass
clean to be a syllogism; — but you all, may it please your
worships, see the better for it — so that the main good these
things do is only to clarify the understanding, previous to
the application of the argument itself, in order to free it
from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which,
if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and
spoil all.
Now, mv dear Anti-Shandcans, and thrice able critics,
and fellow-labourers (for to you I write this Preface) —
and to you, most subtle statesmen and discreet doctors (do
— pull off your beards) renowned for gravity and wisdom;
— Monopolus, my politician — Didius, my counsel; Kysar-
cius, my friend; — Phutatorius, my guide; — Gastripheres,
the preserver of my life; Somnolcntius, the balm and re-
pose of it — not forgetting all others, as well sleeping as
waking, ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of
172 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
no resentment to you, I lump all together. — Believe me,
right worthy.
My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf,
and in my own too, in case the thing is not done already for
us — is, that the great gifts and endowments both of wit and
judgment, with every thing which usually goes along with
them — such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick
parts, and what not, may this precious moment, without stint
or measure, let or hindrance, be poured down warm as each
of us could bear it — scum and sediment and all (for I
would not have a drop lost) into the several receptacles, cells,
cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places
of our brains — in such sort, that they might continue to be
injected and tunned into, according to the true intent and
meaning of my wish, until every vessel of them, both great
and small, be so replenished, saturated, and filled up there-
with, that no more, would it save a man's life, could possibly
be got either in or out.
Bless us! — what noble work we should make! — how
should I tickle it off! — and what spirits should I find myself
in, to be writing away for such readers! — and you — ^just
heaven! — with what raptures would you sit and read — but
oh! — 'tis too much — I am sick — I faint away deliciously
at the thoughts of it — 'tis more than nature can bear! — lay
hold of me — I am giddy — I am stone blind — I'm dying —
I am gone. — Help! Help! Help! — But hold — I grow some-
thing better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when
this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great
wits — we should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to
an end: — there would be so much satire and sarcasm —
scofl!ing and flouting, with rallying and reparteeing of it —
thrusting and parrying in one corner or another — there
would be nothing but mischief among us — Chaste stars!
what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter
we should make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDY 173
knuckles, and hitting of sore places — there would be no
such thing as living for us.
But then again, as we should all of us be men of great
judgment, we should make up matters as fast as ever they
went wrong; and though we should abominate each other
ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we should
nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness,
milk and honey — 'twould be a second land of promise — a
paradise upon earth, if there was such a thing to be had —
so that upon the whole we should have done well enough.
All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my
invention at present, is how to bring the point itself to bear;
for as your worships well know, that of these heavenly
emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so bounti-
fully wished both for your worships and myself — there is
but a certain quantum stored up for us all for the use and
behoof of the whole race of mankind; and such small modi-
cums of 'em are only sent forth into this wide world, circu-
lating here and there in one bye corner or another — and in
such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from
each other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could
be sufficient for the wants and emergencies of so many great
estates, and populous empires.
Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova
Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary
tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the arctia
and antarctic circles, where the whole province of man's
concernments lies for near nine months together within tiie
narrow compass of his cave — where the spirits are com-
pressed almost to nothing — and where the passions of a man,
with every thing which belongs to them, are as frigid as
the zone itself — there the least quantity of judgment im-
aginable does the business — and of wit — there is a total and
an absolute saving — for as not one spark is wanted — so nof
one spark is given. Angels and ministers of grace defend
174 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
us! what a dismal thing would it have been to have governed
a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or
run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a
provincial chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and
judgment about us! For mercy's sake, let us think no more
about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into
Norway — crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through
the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of
Bothnia; coasting along it through east and west Bothnia,
down to Carelia, and so on, through all those states and
provinces which border upon the far side of the Gulf of
Finland, and the north-east of the Baltic, up to Petersbourg,
and just stepping into Ingria; — then stretching over directly
from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire
— leaving Siberia a little upon the left hand, till we got
into the very heart of Russian and Asiatic Tartary.
Now throughout this long tour which I have led you, you
observe the good people are better off by far, than in the
polar countries which we have just left: — for if you hold
your hand over your eyes, and look very attentively, you
may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit,
with a comfortable provision of good plain household judg-
ment, which, taking the quality and quantity of it together,
they make a very good shift with — and had they more of
either the one or the other, it would destroy the proper
balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they
would want occasions to put them to use.
Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer
and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the springtide
of our blood and humours runs high — where we have more
ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whore-
son passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason
— the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment,
you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth
of our necessities — and accordingly we have them sent down
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDY 175
.imongst us in such a flowing kind of descent and creditable
plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.
It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our
air blows hot and cold — wet and dry, ten times in a day, wc
have them in no regular and settled way; — so that sometimes
for near half a century together, there shall be very little
wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us: —
the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up — then
all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of
running again like fury — you would think they would never
stop: — and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and
twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before
us.
It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by
analogy in that kind of argumentative process, which Suidas
calls dialectic induction — that I draw and set up this posi-
tion as most true and veritable;
That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations
are suflFered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he,
whose infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact
weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on
our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your rever-
ences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer
in my power to conceal it from you. That the fervent wish
in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the
first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling
his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into
silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as
easily procured, as the exordium wished it — I tremble to
think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers
(in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and
blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives —
running their heads against posts, and knocking out their
brains without ever getting to their journies' end; — some
falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks — other
176 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of
a learned profession tilting full butt against the other half
of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in
the dirt like hogs. — Here the brethren of another profession,
who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on
contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way.
— What confusion! — what mistakes! — fiddlers and painters
judging by their eyes and ears — admirable! — trusting to
the passions excited — in an air sung, or a story painted to
the heart — instead of measuring them by a quadrant.
In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning
the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round —
against the stream of corruption — by Heaven! — instead of
with it.
In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a
book against predestination; perhaps worse — feeling his
patient's pulse, instead of his apothecary's — a brother of the
faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in tears — drawing
the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness; —
offering a fee — instead of taking one.
In that spacious Hall, a coalition of the gown, from all
the bars of it, driving a damned, dirty, vexatious cause before
them, with all their might and main, the wrong way! —
kicking it out of the great doors, instead of, in — and with
such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in
their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally
made for the peace and preservation of mankind: — perhaps
a more enormous mistake committed by them still — a liti-
gated point fairly hung up; — for instance, Whether John
o'Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o'Stiles his face, with-
out a trespass, or not — rashly determined by them in five-
and-twcnty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and cons
required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as
many months — and if carried on upon a military plan, as
your honours know an Action should be, with all the strata-
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDV 177
gems practicable therein, — such as feints, — forced marches,
— surprises — ambuscades — mask-batteries, and a thousand
other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all
advantages on both sides — might reasonably have lasted them
as many years, finding food and raiment all that term for a
centumvirate of the profession.
As for the clergy — No — if I say a word against them,
I'll be shot. — I have no desire; — and besides, if I had — I
durst not for my soul touch upon the subject — with such
weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at
present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject
and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account
— and therefore 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and
hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal
point I have undertaken to clear up — and that is. How it
comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be
men of most judgment. — But mark — I say, reported to be —
for it is no more, my dear sirs, than a report, and which,
like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain
to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.
This by the help of the observation already premised, and
I hop>e already weighed and perpended by your reverences
and worships, I shall forthwith make appear.
I hate set dissertations — and above all things in the world,
'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your
hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opaque words, one
before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your
reader's conception — when in all likelihood, if vou had
looked about, you might have seen something standing, or
hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once —
"for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire
of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot,
a fool, a stool, a winter-mitten, a truckle for a pully, the
lid of a gold-smith's crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper,
or a cane chairr" — I am this moment sitting upon one.
lyS TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and
judgment, by the two knobs, on the top of the back of it? — •
they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly
into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in
so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and mean-
ing of my whole preface, as* plainly as if every point and
particle of it was made up of sun-beams.
I now enter directly upon the point,
' — Here stands Wit — and there stands Judgment, close
beside it, just like the two knobs I'm speaking of, upon the
bacK of this self-same chair on which I am sitting.
— You see they are the highest and most ornamental
parts of its frame — as wit and judgment are of ours — and
like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go to-
gether, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated
embellishments — to answer one another.
\ow for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer
illustrating this matter — let us for a moment take off one
of these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the
point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on — nay, don't
laugh at it, — but did you ever see, in the whole course of
your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?
— Why, 'tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and
there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in
the other: — do — pray, get off" your seats only to take a view
of it. — Now would any man who valued his character a
straw, have turned a piece of v/ork out of his hand in such a
condition? — nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and
answer this plain question. Whether this one single knob,
which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve
any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want
of the other? — and let me further ask, in case the chair was
)our own, if you would not in your conscience think, rather
than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any
knob at all.
CHAP. 20 TRISTRAM SHANDY 179
Now these two knobs — or top ornaments of the mind of
man, which crown the whole entablature — being, as I said,
wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it,
are the most needful — the most prized — the* most calami-
tous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at
— for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal
among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding —
or so ignorant of what will do him good therein — who does
not wish. and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to
be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and in-
deed of both of them, if the thing- seems anyway feasible,
or likely to be brought to pass.
Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of
chance in aiming at the one — unless they laid hold of the
other, — pray what do you think would become of them? —
Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e'en have
been contented to have gone with their insides naked — this
was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be
supposed in the case- we are upon — so that no one could well
have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what
little they could have snatched up and secreted under their
cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and
cr)' at the same time against the lawful owners.
I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so
much cunning and artifice — that the great Locke, who was
seldom outwitted by false sounds — was nevertheless bubbled
here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and
what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other
implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against
the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was
deceived by it — it was his glory to free the world from the
lumber of a thousand vulgar errors; — but this was not of
the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such
a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter
of fact before he philosophized upon it — on the contrary' he
i8o TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
too]^ the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and
halooid it as boisterously as the rest.
Thi: has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever
ftince — but your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained
in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat: —
which by the bye is one of the many and vile impositions
which gravity and grave, folks have to answer for here-
after.
As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have
spoken my mind too freely — I beg leave to qualify whatever
has been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by
one general declaration — That I have no abhorrence what-
ever, nor do I detest and abjure ether great wigs or long
beards, any farther thaii when I see they are bespoke and let
grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture — for
any purpose — peace be with them! — '^^ mark only — I
write not for them.
Chapter 21
Every day for at least ten years together did my father re-
solve to ha^'c it mended — 'tis not mended yet; — no family
but ours would have borne with it an hour — and what is
most astonishing, there was not a subject in the world upon
which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-
hinges. — And yet at the same time, he was certainly one of
the greatest bubbles to them, I think, that history can pro-
duce: his rhetoric and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuifs.
— Never did the parlour-door open — but his philosophy or
his principles fell a victim to it; — three drops of oil with a
feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his
honour for ever.
— Inconsistent soul that man is! — languishing under
wounds, which he has the power to heal! — his whole life a
contradiction to his knowledge! — his reason, that precious
gift of God to him — (instead of pouring in oil) serving but
CHAP. 22 TRISTRAM SHANDY i8i
to sharpen his sensibilities — to multiply his pains, and render
him more melancholy and uneasy under them! — Poor un-
happy creature, that he should do so! — Are not the neces-
sary causes of misery in this life enow, but he must add
voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow; — -struggle against
evils which cannot be avoided, and submit to others, which
a tenth part of the trouble they create him would remove
from his heart for ever?
By all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops
of oil to be got, and a hammer to be found withiii ten miles
of Shandy Hall — the parlour door hinge shall be mended
this reign.
Chapter 2 2
When Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear,
he was delighted with his handy-work beyond measure; and
knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see
them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying
them directly into his parlour.
Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mention-
ing the affair of hinges, I had a speculative consideration
arising out of it, and it is this.
Had the parlour door opened and turned upon its hinges,
as a door should do —
Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been
turning upon its hinges — (that is, in case things have all
along gone well with your worship, — otherwise I give up
my simile) — in this case, I say, there had been no danger
cither to master or man, in Corporal Trim's peeping in: the
moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast
asleep — the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would
have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their
arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but
the thing was. morally speaking, so very impracticable, that
for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be
i82 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father
submitted to upon its account — this was one; that he never
folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts
of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who
should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagina-
tion, and so incessantly stepped in betwixt him and the first
balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often de-
clared, of the whole sweets of it.
"When things move upon bad hinges, an' please your
lordships, how can it be otherwise?"
Pray what's the matter? Who is there? cried my father,
waking, the moment the door began to creak. — I wish the
smith would give a peep at that confounded hinge. — 'Tis
nothing, an' please your honour, said Trim, but two mortars
I am bringing in. — They shan't make a clatter with them
here, cried my father hastily. — If Dr. Slop has any drugs
to pound, let him do it in the kitchen. — May it please your
honour, cried Trim, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege
next summer, which I have been making out of a pair of
jack-boots, which Obadiah told me your honour had left oft"
wearing. — By Heaven! cried my father, springing out of
his chair, as he swore — I have not one appointment belong-
ing to me, which I set so much store by as I do by these
jack-boots — they were our great grandfather's, brother Toby
— they were hereditary. Then I fear, quoth my uncle
Toby, Trim has cut oflF the entail. — I have only cut ofiF the
tops, an' please your honour, cried Trim — I hate perpetuities
as much as any man alive, cried my father — but these jack-
boots, continued he (smiling, though very angry at the same
time) have been in the family, brother, ever since the civil
wars; — Sir Roger Shandy wore them at the battle of
Marston-Moor. — I declare I would not have taken ten
pounds for them. — I'll pay you the money, brother Shandy,
quoth my uncle Toby, looking at the two mortars with
infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his breeches
CHAP. 23 TRISTRAM SHANDY 183
pocket as he viewed them — I'll pay V<>ii the ten pounds this
moment with all my heart and soul. —
Brother Toh\ , replied my father, altering his tone, you
care not what money you dissipate and throw away, provided,
continued he, 'tis hut upon a siege. — Have I not one hundred
and twenty pounds a year, besides my half pay? cried my
uncle Toby. — What is that — replied my father hastily — to
ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots? — twelve guineas for
your pontoons? — half as much for your Dutch draw-
bridge? — to say nothing of the train of little brass artillery
you bespoke last week, with twenty other preparations for
the siege of Messina: believe me, dear brother Toby, con-
tinued my father, taking him kindly by the hand — these
military operations of yours are above your strength; — you
mean well, brother — but they carry you into greater expenses
than you were first aware of; — and take my word, dear
Toby, they will in the end quite ruin your fortune, and
make a beggar of you. — What signifies it if they do, brother,
replied my uncle Toby, so long as we know 'tis for the good
of the nation? —
My father could not help smiling for his soul — his anger
at the worst was never more than a spark; — and the zeal
and simplicity of Trim — and the generous (though hobby-
horsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby, brought him into
perfect good luimour with them in an instant.
Generous souls! — God prosper you both, and your mor-
tar-pieces too! quoth my father to himself.
Chapter 25
All is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs
— I hear not one foot stirring. — Prithee, Trim, who's in
the kitchen? There is no one soul in the kitchen, answered
Trim, making a low bow as he spoke, except Dr. Slop. —
Confusion! cried my father (getting up upon his legs a
second time) — not one single thing has gone right this day!
1 84 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
had I faith in astrology, brother (which, by the bye, my
father had) I would have sworn some retrograde planet was
hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, — and turning
every individual thing in it out of its place. — Why, I
thought Dr. Slop had been above stairs with my wife, and
so said you. — What can the fellow be puzzling about in
the kitchen! — He is busy, an' please your honour, replied
Trim, in making a bridge. — 'Tis very obliging in him, quoth
my uncle Toby: — pray, give my humble service to Dr. Slop,
Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.
You must know, my uncle Toby mistook the bridge — as
widely as my father mistook the mortars; — but to under-
stand how my uncle Toby could mistake the bridge — I fear
I must give you an exact account of the road which led to it;
— or to drop my metaphor (for there is nothing more dis-
honest in an historian than the use of one) — in order to
conceive the probability of this error in my uncle Toby
aright, I must give you some account of an adventure of
Trim's, though much against my will, I say much against
my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out
of its place here; for by right it should come in, either
amongst the anecdotes of my uncle Toby's amours with
widow Wadman, in which Corporal Trim was no mean
actor — or else in the middle of his and my uncle Toby's
campaigns on the bowling-green — for it will do very well
in cither place; — but then if I reserve it for either of those
parts of my story — I ruin the story I'm upon; — and if I
tell it here — I anticipate matters, and ruin it there.
— What would your worships have me do in this case?
— Tell it, Mr. Shandy, by all means. — You are a fool,
Tristram, if you do.
O ye Powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too) —
which enable mortal man to tell a story worth the hearing
— that kindly shew him, where he is to begin it — and where
he is to end it — what he is to put into it — and what he is to
CHAP. 24 TRISTRAM SHANDY 185
leave out — how much of it he is to cast into a shade — and
whereabouts he is to throw his light! — "^'e, who preside over
this vast empire of biographical freebooters, and see how
manv scrapes and plunges your subjects hourly fall into; —
will vou do one thing?
I beg and beseech you \^m case you will do nothing better
for us) that wherever in any part of your dominions it so
falls out, that three several roads meet in one point, as they
have done just there — that at least you set up a guide-post
in the centre of them, in mere charity, to direct an uncertain
devil which of the three he is to take.
Chapter 24
Tho' the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the
demolition of Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman,
had fixed him in a resolution never more to think of the sex
— or of aught which belonged to it; — yet Corporal Trim
had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed in mv
uncle Toby's case there was a strange and unaccountable
concurrence of circumstances, which insensiblv drew him
in, to lay siege to that fair and strong citadel. — In Trim's
case there was a concurrence of nothing in the world, but
of him and Bridget 'u\ the kitchen; — though in truth, the
love and veneration he bore his master was such, and so
fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had my
uncle Toby employed his time and genius in tagging of
p>oints — I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid
down his arms, and followed his example with pleasure.
W'hen therefore my uncle Toby sat down before the mistress
— Corporal Trim incontinently took ground before the maid.
Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much
cause to esteem and honour — (whv, or wherefore, 'tis no
matter) — can it escape your penetration — I defy it — that
so many playwrights, and opiHccrs of chit-chat have ever
since been working upon Trim's and my uncle Toby's pat-
i86 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
tern. — I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, or
Ricaboni say — (though I never read one of them) — there
is not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and
madam Pompadour's vis-a-vis; than betwixt a single amour,
and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four,
prancing throughout a grand drama — Sir, a simple, single,
silly affair of that kind — is quite lost in five acts; — but that
is neither here nor there.
After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine
months on my uncle Toby's quarter, a most minute account
of every particular of which shall be given in its proper
place, my uncle Toby, ht)ncst man! found it necessary to
draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat indignantly.
Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either
with himself — or with any one else — the fidelity however
of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his
master had forsaken with disgust — he contented himself
with turning his part of the siege into a blockade; — that is,
he kept others off; — for. though he never after went to the
house, yet he never met Bridget in the village, but he would
either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her — or (as
circumstances directed ) he would shake her bv the hand — or
ask her lovingly how she did — or would give her a ribbon —
and now-and-then, though never but when it could be done
with decorum, would give Bridget a —
Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five
years; that is, from the demolition of Dunkirk in the year
13, to the latter end of my uncle Toby's campaign in the
year 1 8, which was about six or seven weeks before the time
I'm speaking of. — When Trim, as his custom was, after he
had put my uncle Toby to bed, going down one moonshiny
night to see that every thing was right at his fortifications —
in the lane separated from the bowling-green with flowering
shrubs and holly — he espied his Bridget.
As the Corporal thought there was nothing in the world
CHAP. 24 TRISTRAM SHANDY 187
so well worth shewing as the glorious works which he and
my uncle Toby had made, Trim courteously and gallantly
took her by the hand, and led her in: this was not done so
privately, but that the foul-mouthed trumpet of Fame car-
ried it from ear to ear, till at length it reached my father's,
with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my
uncle Toby's curious drawbridge, constructed and painted
after the Dutch fashion, and which went quite across the
ditch — was broke down, and somehow or other crushed all
to pieces that very night.
My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for
my uncle Tobv's hobby-horse, he thought it the most ridicu-
lous horse that ever gentleman mounted; and indeed unless
my uncle Toby vexed him about it, could never think of it
once, without smiling at it — so that it could never get lame
or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father's imagina-
tion beyond measure; for this being an accident much more
to his humour than any one which had yet befallen it, it
proved an inexhaustible fund of entertainment to him. —
Well — but dear Toby! my father would say, do tell me
seriously how this affair of the bridge happened. — How can
you tease me so much about it: my uncle Toby would reply
— I have told it you twenty times, word for word as Trim
told it me. — Prithee, hcnv was it then. Corporal? my father
would cry, turning to Trim. — It was a mere misfortune, an'
please your honour; — I was shewing Mrs. Bridget our forti-
fications, and in going too near the edge of the fosse, I
unfortunately slipped in — Very well. Trim! my father
would cry — (smiling m\stcriously, and giving a nod — but
without interrupting him) — and being linked fast, an' please
your honour, arm in arm with Mrs. liridgct, I dragged her
after me, by means of which she fell backwards soss against
the bridge — and Trim's foot (my uncle Toby would cry,
taking the story out of his mouth) getting into the curvette,
he tumbled full aeainst the bridtrc too. — It was a thousand
i88 TRISTRAM SHANDY book m
to one, my uncle Toby would add, that the poor fellow did
not break his leg. — Ay truly, my father would say — a limb
is soon broke, brother Toby, in such encounters. — And so,
an' please your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows
was a very slight one, was broke down betwixt us, and
splintered all to pieces.
At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was
so unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or
petards — my father would exhaust all the stores of his elo-
quence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon
the battering rams of the ancients — the vinea which Alex-
ander made use of at the siege of Troy. — He would tell my
uncle Toby of the catapultae of the Syrians, which threw
such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the
strongest bulwarks from their very foundation: — he would
go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the ballista
which Marcellinus makes so much rout about! — the terrible
effects of the pyroboli, which cast fire; — the danger of the
terebra and scorpio, which cast javelins. — But what are these,
would he say, to the destructive machinery of Corporal
Trim? — Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge, or bastion, or
sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold
out against such artillery.
My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against
the force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehe-
mence of smoking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so
dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father,
who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent
coughing: my uncle Toby leaped up without feeling the
^y\n upon his groin — and, with infinite pity, stood beside
his brother's chair, tapping his back with one hand, and
holding his head with the other, and from time to time
wiping his eyes with a clean cambric handkerchief, which
he pulled out of his pocket. — The afl-"ectionate and endear-
ing manner in which my uncle Toby did these little offices
CHAP. 25 I'RIS'I'RAM SHANDY 189
cut my father thro' his reins, for the pain he had just been
giving him. — May my brains be knocked out with a bat-
tering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father
to himself — if ever I insult this worthy soul more!
Chapter 25
The draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered
directly to set about another — but not upon the same model:
for cardinal Alberoni's intrigues at that time being discov-
ered, and my uncle Toby rightly foreseeing that a flame
would inevitably break out betwixt Spain and the Empire,
and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all
likelihood be either in Naples or Sicily — he determined upon
an Italian bridge — (my uncle Toby, by the bye, was not far
out of his conjectures) — but my father, who was infinitely
the better politician, and took the lead as far of my uncle
Toby in the cabinet, as my uncle Toby took it of him in the
field — convinced him, that if the king of Spain and the
Emperor went together by the ears, England and France
and Holland must, by force of their pre-engagements, all
enter the lists too; — and if so, he would say, the combatants,
brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it again,
pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of Flanders; —
then what will you do with your Italian bridge?
— We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried
my uncle Toby.
When Corporal Trim had about half finished it in that
style — mv uncle Toby found out a capital defect in it,
which he had never thoroughly considered before. It turned,
it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the
middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse,
and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this,
that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal
portions, it empowered my uncle Toby to raise it up or let
it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which
190 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare
— but the disadvantages of such a construction were in-
surmountable; — for by this means, he would say, I leave
one half of my bridge in my enemy's possession — and pray
of what use is the other?
The natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his
bridge fast only at one end with hinges, so that the whole
might be lifted up together, and stand bolt upright — but
that was rejected for the reason given above.
For a whole week after he was determined in his mind
to have one of that particular construction which is made to
draw back horizontally, to hinder a passage; and to thrust
forwards again to gain a passage — of which sorts your wor-
ship might have seen three famous ones at Spires before its
destruction — and one now at Brisac, if I mistake not; —
but my father advising my uncle Toby, with great earnest-
ness, to have nothing more to do with thrusting bridges —
and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it would but per-
petuate the memory of the Corporal's misfortune — he
changed his mind for that of the marquis d'Hopital's in-
vention, which the younger Bernouilli has so well and
learnedly described, as your worships may see — Act. Enid.
Lips. an. 1695 — to these a lead weight is an eternal balance,
and keeps watch as well as a couple of sentinels, inasmuch as
the construction of them was a curve line approximating to
a cycloid — if not a cycloid itself.
My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as
well as any man in England — but was not quite such a mas-
ter of the cycloid; — he talked however about it every day —
the bridge went not forwards. — We'll ask somebody about
it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim.
Chapter 26
When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was
in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge — my uncle Toby
CHAP.28 I'RISTRAM SHANDY 191
— the affair of the jack-hoots having just then raised a train
of military ideas in his hrain — took it instantly for granted
that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d'Hopital's
bridge. — 'Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby;
— pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell
him I thank him heartily.
Had mv uncle Toby's head been a Savoyard's box, and
my father peeping in all the time at one end of it — it could
not have given him a more distinct conception of the opera-
tioas of my uncle Toby's imagination, than what he had;
so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his
bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to
triumph —
When Trim's answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from
his brows, and twisted it to pieces.
Chafter 2 J
— This unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father
— God bless your honour, cried Trim, 'tis a bridge for mas-
ter's nose. — In bringing him into the world with his vile
instruments, he has crushed his nose, Susannah says, as flat
as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge
with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of
Susannah's stays, to raise it up.
— Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room
this instant.
Chapter 28
From this first moment I sat down to write my life for the
amusement of the world, and my opinions for its instruction,
has a cloud insensibly been gathering over my father. — A
tide of little evils and distresses has been setting in against
him. — Not one thing, as he observed himself, h.-is gone right:
and now is the storm thickened and going to break, and p>our
down full upon his head.
192 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive
and melancholy frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast
was touched with, — My nerves relax as I tell it. — Every line
I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my pulse,
and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my
life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should
not — And this moment that I last dipped my pen into my
ink, I could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad
composure and solemnity there appeared in my manner of
doing it. — Lord! how different from the rash jerks and
hair-brained squirts thou art wont, Tristram, to transact it
with in other humours — dropping thy pen — spurting thy
ink about thy table and thy books — as if thy pen and thy
ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing.
Chaffer 29
I won't go about to argue the point with you — 'tis so — and
I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, "That
both man and woman bear pain or sorrow (and, for aught I
know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position."
The moment my father got up into his chamber, he tjirew
himself prostrate across his bed in the wildest disorder im-
aginable, but at the same time in the most lamentable attitude
of a man borne down with sorrows, that ever the eye of pity
dropped a tear for. — The palm of his right hand, as he fell
upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and covering the great-
est part of both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head
(his elbow giving way backwards) till his nose touched the
quilt; — his left arm hung insensible over the side of the bed,
his knuckles reclining upon the handle of the chamber-pot,
which peeped out beyond the valance — his right leg (his left
being drawn up towards his body) — hung half over the side
of the bed, the edge of it pressing upon his shin-bone — He
felt it not. A fixed, inflexible sorrow took possession of
CHAP. 30 TRISTRAM SHANDY 193
ever}' line of his face. — He sighed once — heaved his breast
often — but uttered not a word.
An old sct-stitched chair, valanced and fringed around
with party-coloured worsted bobs, stood at the bed's head,
opposite to the side where my father's head reclined. — My
uncle Toby sat him down in it.
Before an affliction is digested — consolation ever comes
too soon; — and after it is digested — it comes too late: so
that you see, madam, there is but a mark between these two,
as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at: my
uncle Toby w.as always either on this side, or on that of it,
and would often say, he believed in his heart he could as
soon hit the longitude; for this reason, when he sat down
in the chair, he drew the curtain a little forwards, and
having a tear at every one's service — he pulled out a cam-
bric handkerchief — gave a low sigh — but held his peace.
Chaffer 50
— "All is not gain that is got into the purse." — So that not-
withstanding my father had the happiness of reading thf
oddest books in the universe, and had moreover, in himself,
the oddest way of thinking that ever man in it was blessed
with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all — that it
laid him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical
distresses; of which this particular one, which he sunk
under at present, is as strong an example as can be given.
No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child's
nose, by the edge of a pair of forceps — however scientifically
applied — would vex any man in the world, who was at so
much pains in begetting a child, as my father was — yet it
will not account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor
will it justify the unchristian manner he abandoned and
surrendered himself up to.
To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half
194 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
an hour — and mv uncle Toby in his old fringed chair sitting
beside him.
Chapter 5/
— I THINK it a ver\' unreasonable demand — cried my great-
grandfather, twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the
table. — By this account, madam, you have but two thousand
pounds fortune, and not a shilling more — and you insist
upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it. —
— "Because," replied my great-grandmother, "you have
little or no nose, Sir." —
Now before I venture to make use of the word Nose a
second time— to avoid all confusion in what will be said
upon it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be
amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all pos-
sible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be
understood to mean hv the term: being of opinion, that 'tis
owing to the negligence and perverseness of writers in de-
spising this precaution, and to nothing else — that all the
polemical writings in divinitv are not as clear and demon-
strative as those upon a Will o' the Wisp, or any other sound
part of philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which,
what have you to do, before you set out, unless you intend
to go puzzling on to the day of judgment — but to give the
world a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word
\\.)\i have most occasion for — changing it. Sir, as you would
a guinea, into small coin: — which done — let the father of
confusion puzzle you, if he can; or put a different idea
either into your head, or your reader's head, if he knows
how.
In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as
this I am engaged in — the neglect is inexcusable; and
Heaven is witness, how the world has revenged itself upon
me for leaving so many openings to equivocal strictures —
CHAP. 32 TRISTRAM SHANDY 195
and for depending so much as I have done, all along, uf>on
the cleanliness of my readers' imaginations.
— Here are two senses, cried Eugcnius, as we walked
along, pointing with the fore finger of his right hand to the
word Crevice, in the one hundred and seventy-eighth page
of the first volume of this book of books; — here are two
senses — quoth he — And here are two roads, replied I, turn-
ing short upon him— a dirty and a clean one — which shall
we take.? — The clean, b)- all means, replied Eugenius.
Eugenius, said I, stepping before him, and laying my hand
upon his breast — to define — is to distrust. — Thus I tri-
umphed over Eugenius; but I triumphed over him as I
always do, like a fool. — 'Tis my comfort, however, I am
not an obstinate one: therefore
I define a nose as follows — intreating only beforehand,
and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what
age, comple.xion, and condition soever, for the love of God
and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and
suggestions of the devil, and sufFer him by no art or wile
to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put
into my definition — For by the word Nose, throughout all
this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my
work, where the word Nose occurs — I declare, by that word
I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.
Chapter 52
— "Because," quoth my great-grandmother, repeating the
words again — "you have little or no nose. Sir." —
S'death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand
upon his nose, — 'tis not so small as that comes to; — 'tis a full
inch longer than my father's. — Now, my great-grand-
father's nose was for all the world like unto the noses of all
the men, women, and children, whom Pantagruel found
dwelling upon the island of Ennasin. — By the way, if you
would know the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so
196 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
flat-nosed a people — you must read the books; — find it out
yourself, you never can. —
— 'Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.
— 'Twas a full inch, continued my grandfather, pressing
up the ridge of his nose with his finger and thumb; and
repeating his assertion — 'tis a full inch longer, madam, than
my father's — You must mean your uncle's, replied my great-
grandmother.
— My great-grandfather was convinced. — He untwisted
the paper, and signed the article.
Chapter 55
— What an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay
out of this small estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to
my grandfather.
My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose,
my dear, saving the mark, than there is upon the back of
my hand.
— Now, you must know, that my great-grandmother out-
lived my grandfather twelve years; so that my father had
the jointure to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half-yearly
— (on Michaelmas and Lady-day,) — during all that time.
No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better
grace than my father. — And as far as a hundred pounds
went, he would fling it upon the table, guinea by guinea,
with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome, which gener-
ous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down
money: but as soon as ever he entered upon the odd fifty —
he generally gave a loud Hem! rubbed the side of his nose
leisurely with the flat part of his fore finger — inserted his
hand cautiously betwixt his head and the caul of his wig —
looked at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it —
and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without
pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.
CHAP. 33 TRISTRAM SHANDY 197
Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting
spirits who make no allowances for these workijigs within
us. — Never — O never may I lay down in their tents, who
cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of edu-
cation, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from
ancestors!
For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long
noses had gradually been taking root in our family. — Tra-
dition was all along on its side, and Interest was every half-
year stepping in to strengthen it; so that the whimsicality of
my father's brain was far from having the whole honour of
this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions. — For in
a great measure he might be said to have sucked this in with
his mother's milk. He did his part however. — If education
planted the mistake (in case it was one) my father watered
it, and ripened it to perfection.
He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon
the subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family
in England could stand it out against an uninterrupted suc-
cession of six or seven short noses. — And for the contrary
reason, he would generally add. That it must be one of the
greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of
long and jolly noses, following one another in a direct line,
did not raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the
kingdom. — He would often boast that the Shandy family
ranked very high in King Harry the Vlllth's time, but owed
its rise to no state engine — he would say — but to that only;
— but that, like other families, he would add — it had felt
the turn of the wheel, and had never recovered the blow of
my great-grandfather's nose. — It was an ace of clubs indeed,
he would cry, shaking his head — and as vile a one for an
unfortunate familv as ever turned up trumps.
— Fair and softly, gentle reader! — where is thy fancy
carrying thee? — If there is truth in man, by my great-grand-
198 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
father's nose, I mean the external organ of smelling, or that
part of man which stands prominent in his face — and which
painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces,
should comprehend a full third — that is, measured down-
wards from the setting on of the hair. —
— What a life of it has an author, at this pass!
Chapter ^4
It is a singular blessing, that nature has formed the mind of
man with the same happy backwardness and renitency against
conviction, which is observed in old dogs — "of not learning
new tricks."
What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philos-
opher that ever existed be whisked into at once, did he read
such books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts,
as would eternally be making him change sides!
Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all
this — He picked up an opinion. Sir, as a man in a state of
nature picks up an apple. — It becomes his own — and if he
is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give
it up.
I am aware that Didius, the great civilian, will contest
this point; and cry out against me. Whence comes this man's
right to this apple? ex confessoy he will say — things were in
a state of nature — The apple, as much Frank's apple, as
John's. Pray, Mr. Shandy, what patent has he to shew
for it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he set
his heart upon it? or when he gathered it? or when he
chewed it? or when he roasted it? or when he peeled, or
when he brought it home? or when he digested? — or when
he — ? — for 'tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the
apple, made it not his — that no subsequent act could.
Brother Didius, Tribonius will answer — (now Tribonius
the civilian and church lawyer's beard being three inches and
a half and three eighths longer than Didius his beard — I'm
CHAP. 34 TRISTRAM SHANDY 199
glad he takes up the cudgels for nie, so I give myself no
farther trouble about the answer). — Brother Didius, Tribo-
nius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the
fragments of Gregorius and Hermogenes's codes, and in all
the codes from Justinian's down to the codes of Louis and
Des Eaux — That the sweat of a man's brows, and the ex-
sudations of a man's brains, are as much a man's own
property as the breeches upon his backside; — which said
cxsudations, etc., being dropped upon the said apple by the
labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover
indissolubly wasted, and as indissolublv annexed, by the
picker up, to the thing picked up, carried home, roasted,
peeled, eaten, digested, and so on; — 'tis evident that the
gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mixed up something
which was his own, with the apple which was not his own,
by which means he has acquired a property; — or, in other
words, the apple is John's apple.
By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood
up for all his opinions; he had spared no pains in picking
them up, and the more they lay out of the common way, the
better still was his title. — No mortal claimed them; they
had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digest-
ing as in the case above, so that they might well and truly
be said to be of his own goods and chattels. — Accordingly
he held fast by 'cm, both by teeth and claws — would fly to
whatever he could lav his hands on — and, in a word, would
intrench and fortify them round with as many circumvalla-
tions and breast-works, as my uncle Toby would a citadel.
There was one plaguy rub in the way of this — the scarcity
of materials to make any thing of a defence with, in case
of a smart attack, inasmuch as few men of great genius had
exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of
great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is
incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I
200 TRISTRAM SHANDY book ui
am considering what a treasure of precious time and talents
together has been wasted upon worse subjects — and how
many millions of books in all languages, and in all pos-
sible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points
not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of
the world. What was to be had, however, he set the
greater store by; and though my father would of times sport
with my uncle Toby's library — which, by the bye, was
ridiculous enough — yet at the very same time he did it, he
collected every book and treatise which had been systemati-
cally wrote upon noses, with as much care as my honest
uncle Toby had done those upon military architecture. —
Tis true, a much less table would have held them — but that
was not thy transgression, my dear uncle. —
Here — but why here — rather than in any other part of
my story — I am not able to tell: — but here it is — my heart
stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle Toby, once for all,
the tribute I owe thy goodness. — Here let me thrust my
chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am
pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and
veneration for the excellency of thy character, that ever
virtue and nature kindled in a nephew's bosom. — Peace and
comfort rest for evermore upon thy head! — Thou enviedst
no man's comforts — insultedst no man's opinions — Thou
blackenedst no man's character — devouredst no man's bread:
gently, with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble
round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature
in thy way: — for each one's sorrows, thou hadst a tear, — •
for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling.
Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder — thy path from
thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown up. —
Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the Shandy
family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall never
1»; demolished.
CHAP. 35 TRISTRAM SHANDY 201
Chapter 35
Mv father's collection was not great, but to make amends,
it was curious; and consequently he was some time in mak-
ing it; he had the great good fortune however, to set off
well, in getting Bruscambille's prologue upon long noses,
almost for nothing — for he gave no more for Bruscambille
than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy
which the stall-man saw my father had fur the book the
moment he laid his hands upon it. — There are not three
Bruscambillcs in Christendom — said the stall-man, except
what are chained up in the libraries of the curious. My
father flung down the monev as quick as lightning — took
Bruscambille into his bosom — hied home from Piccadilly to
Coleman Street with it, as he would have hied home with a
treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille
all the way.
To those who do not yet know of which gender Brus-
cambille is — inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might
easily be done by either — 'twill be no objection against the
simile — to say. That when my father got home, he solaced
himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, 'tis
ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first
mistress — that is, from morning even unto night: which,
by the bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the in-
amorato — is of little or no entertainment at all to by-
standers. — Take notice, I go no farther with the simile —
my father's eye was greater than his appetite — his zeal
greater than his knowledge — he cooled — his affections be-
came divided — he got hold of Prignitz — purchased Scrj-
derus, Andrea Paraeus, Bouchet's Evening Conferences,
and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius;
of which, as I shall have much to say by and bye — I will
say nothing now.
202 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
Chapter 56
Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and
study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one
wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than
in the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Codes,
written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Eras-
mus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of
long noses. — Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this
chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground
to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways
help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip cox — let me beg of
you, like an unbacked filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump
it, to rear it, to bound it — and to kick it, with long kicks
and short kicks, till, like Tickletoby's mare, you break a
strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt. —
You need not kill him. —
— And pray who was Tickletoby's mare? — 'tis just as
discreditable and unscholarlike a question. Sir, as to have
asked what year {ab urb. con.) the second Punic war broke
out. — Who was Tickletoby's mare? — Read, read, read,
read, my unlearned reader! read — or by the knowledge of
the great saint Paraleipomenon — I tell you before-hand, you
had better throw down the book at once; for without much
reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much
knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral
of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!)
than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel
the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie
mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
Chapter 57
"Nihil rue paenitet hujus nasi," quoth Pamphagus; — that is
— "My nose has been the making of me." — "Nee est cur
parniteat" replies Codes; that is, "How the deuce should
such a nose fail?"
^ii'^
V
<
CHAP. 37 TRISTRAM SHANDY 203
The doctrine, you sec, w.is laid dt<\\ n bv Erasmus, as my
father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's
disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able
a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that specula-
tive subtlety or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it,
which Heaven had bestowed upon man on purpose to in-
vestigate truth, and fight for her on all sides. — My father
pished and pughed at first most terribly — 'tis worth some-
thing to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Eras-
mus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and
over again with great application, studying every word and
every syllable of it thro' and thro' in its most strict and
literal interpretation — he ccnild still make nothing of it,
that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it,
quoth my father. — Learned men, brother Toby, don't write
dialogues upon long noses for nothing. — I'll study the mystic
and the allegoric sense — here is some room to turn a man's
self in, brother.
My father read tm. —
Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and
worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses
enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long
nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that
in a case of distress — and for want of a pair of bellows, it
will do excellently well, a,/ rxc'ttandum jocuni (to stir up
the fire).
Nature had been prodigal \\\ her gifts to my father be-
yond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as
deep within him as she had done the seeds of all other knowl-
edge — so that he got out his penknife, and was trying ex-
periments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch
some better sense into it. — I've got within a single letter,
brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic mean-
ing. — "V'ou are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, \v
all conscience. — Pshaw! cried my father, scratchincr on — I
204 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
might as well be seven miles off. — I've done it — said my
father, snapping his fingers — See, my dear brother Toby,
how I have mended the sense. — But you have marred a
word, replied my uncle Toby. — My father put on his
spectacles — bit his lip — and tore out the leaf in a passion.
Chapter ^8
O Slawkenbergius! thou faithful analyzer of my Dis-
grazias — thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and
short turns which in one stage or other of my life have come
slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other
cause that I am conscious of. — Tell me, Slawkenbergius!
what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice?
whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears? — art thou
sure thou heard'st it? — which first cried out to thee — go —
go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life —
neglect thy pastimes — call forth all the powers and faculties
of thy nature — macerate thyself in the service of mankind,
and write a grand Folio for them, upon the subject of their
noses.
How the communication was conveyed into Slawken-
bergius's sensorium — so that Slawkenbergius should know
whose finger touched the key — and whose hand it was that
blew the bellows — as Ha fen Slawkenbergius has been dead
and laid in his grave about fourscore and ten years — we
can only raise conjectures.
Slawkenbergius was played upon, for aught I know, like
one of Whitefield's disciples — that is, with such a distinct
intelligence, Sir, of which of the two masters it was that
had been practising upon his instrument — as to make all
reasoning upon it needless.
— For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives
the world of his motives and occasions for writing, and
spending so many years of his life upon this one work —
towards the end of his prolegomena, which by the bye should
CHAP. 38 TRISTRAM SHANDY 205
have come first — but the hookbincicr has most injudiciously
placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book, and
the book itself — he informs his reader, that ever since he
had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit
down coolly, and consider within himself the true state and
condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design
of his being; — or — to shorten my translation, for Slawken-
bergius's book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this
passage — ever since I understood, quoth Slawkcnbergius,
any thing — or rather what was what — and could perceive
that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by
all who had gone before; — have I, Slawkcnbergius, felt a
strong impulse, with a mighty and unrcsistible call within
me, to gird up myself to this undertaking.
And to do justice to Slawkcnbergius, he has entered the
list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in
it than any one man who had ever entered it before him —
and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be en-niched as a
prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to
model their books by — for he h.as taken in. Sir, the whole
subject — examined every part of it dialectically — then
brought it into full day; dilucidating it with all the light
which either the collision of his own natural parts could
strike — or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had
impowered him to cast upon it — collating, collecting, and
compiling — begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went
along, all that had been wrote or wrangled thereupon in
the schools and porticos of the learned: so that Slawkcn-
bergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a
model — but as a thorough-stitched digest and reijular in-
stitute of noses, comprehending in it all that is or can be
needful to be known about them.
For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many
(otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father's col-
lecting, wrote cither, plump upon noses — or collaterally
2o6 TRISTRAM SHANDY book in
touching them; — such for instance as Prignitz, now lying
upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and
from the most candid and scliolar-likc examination of above
four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-
houses in Silesia, which he had rummaged — has informed
us, that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or
bony parts of human noses, in any given tract of country,
except Crim Tartary, where they are all crushed down bv
the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them —
are much nearer alike, than the world imagines; — the dif-
ference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not
worth taking notice of; — but that the size and jollity of
every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above
another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilag-
inous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses
the blood and animal spirits being impelled and driven by
the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a
step from it (bating the case of idiots, whom Prignitz, who
had lived many years in Turky, supposes under the more
immediate tutelage of Heaven) — it so happens, and ever
must, says Prignitz, that the excellency of the nose is in a
direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wear-
er's fancy.
It is for the same reason, that is, because 'tis all compre-
hended in Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of
Scroderus (Andrea) who, all the world knows, set himself
to oppugn Prignitz with great violence — proving it in his
own way, first logically, and then by a series of stubborn
facts, "That so far was Prignitz from the truth, in affirming
that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary — the
nose begat the fancy."
— The learned suspected Scroderus of an indecent
sophism in this — and Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute,
that Scroderus had shifted the idea upon him — but Scro-
derus went on, maintaining his thesis.
CHAP. 38 TRISTRAM SHANDY 207
My father was just balancing within himself, which of
the two sides he should take in this affair; when Ambrose
Paracus decided it in a moment, and by overthrowing the
systems, both of Prignitz and Scroderus, drove my father
out of both sides of the controversy at once.
Be witness —
I don't acquaint the learned reader — in saying it, I men-
tion it only to shew the learned, I know the fact myself —
That this Ambrose Paraeus was chief surgeon and nose-
mender to Francis the Ninth of France, and in high credit
with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings ( I
know not which) — and that, except in the slip he made in
his story of Taliacotius's noses, and his manner of setting
them on — he was esteemed by the whole college of physi-
cians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses,
than any one who had ever taken them in hand.
Now Ambrose Paraeus convinced my father, that the
true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the
attention of the world, and upon which Prignitz and
Scroderus had wasted so much learning and fine parts — was
neither this nor that — but that the length and goodness of
the nose was owing simply to the softness and flacciditv in
the nurse's breast — as the flatness and shortness of puisne
noses was to the firmness and clastic repulsion of the same
organ of nutrition in the hale and lively — which, tho' happy
for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as
his nose was so snubbled, so rebuffed, so rebated, and so
refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive ad menmrarn suam
legitimam ; — but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of
the nurse or mother's breast — by sinking into it, quoth
Paraeus, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted,
nourished, plumped up, refreshed, refocillated, and set a
growing for ever.
I have but two things to observe of Paraeus; first. That
he proves and explains all this with the utmost chastity and
2o8 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
decorum of expression: — for which may his soul for ever
rest in peace!
And, secondly, that besides the s}Stems of Prignitz and
Scroderus, which Ambrose Paraeus his hypothesis effectually
overthrew — it overthrew at the same time the system of
peace and liarmony of our family; and for three days to-
gether, not only embroiled matters between my father and
my mother, but turned likewise the whole house and every
thing in it, except my uncle Toby, quite upside down.
Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his
wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through
the key-hole of a street-door.
My mother, you must know — but I have fifty things
more necessary to let you know first — I have a hundred
difficulties which I have promised to clear up, and a thou-
sand distresses and domestic misadventures crowding in upon
me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another. A
cow broke in (to-morrow morning) to my uncle Toby's
fortifications, and cat up two rations and a half of dried
grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced his horn-
work and covered-way. — Trim insists upon being tried by a
court-martial — the cow to be shot — Slop to be crucifixed —
myself to be tristramed and at my very baptism made a
martyr of; — poor unhappy devils that wc all are! — I want
swaddling — but there is no time to be lost in exclamations —
I have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle
Toby in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and
promised 1 would go back to them in half an hour; and
five-and-thirty minutes are lapsed already. — Of all the
perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in — this cer-
tainly is the greatest, for I have Hafen Slawkenbergius's
folio. Sir, to finish — a dialogue between my father and my
uncle Toby, upon the solution of Prignitz, Scroderus, Am-
brose Paraeus, Ponocrates, and Grangousier to relate — a
CHAP. 39 TRISTRAM SHANDY 209
tale out of Slawkcnbcrgius to translate, and all this in five
minutes less than no time at all; — such a head! — would to
Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it!
Chapter 59
There was not any one scene more entertaining in our
family — and to do it justice in this point; — and I here put
otf my cap and lay it upon the tabic close beside ni) ink-horn,
on purpose to make my declaration to the world concerning
this one article the more solemn — that I believe in my soul
(unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds
me) the hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of
all things never made or put a family together (in that period
at least of it which I have sat down to write the story of) —
where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so
dramatic a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the
capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers
of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were
lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in
the Shandy Family.
Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this
whimsical theatre of ours — than what frequently arose out
of this self-same chapter of long noses — especially when my
father's imagination was heated with the enquiry, and noth-
ing would serve him but to heat my uncle Toby's too.
My uncle Toby would give my father all possible fair
play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit
smoking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father
was practising '.inon his head, and trying every accessible
avenue to drive Prignitz and Scroderus's solutions into it.
Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason — or
contrar)' to it — or that his brain was like damp timber, and
no spark could possibly take hold — or that it was so full
of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifica-
tions to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc-
210 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
trines— I say not — let schoolmen — scullions, anatomists,
and engineers, fight for it among themselves —
'Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair,
that my father had every word of it to translate for the
benefit of my uncle Toby, and render out of Slawken-
bergius's Latin, of which, as he was no great master, his
translation was not always of the purest — and generally
least so where 'twas most wanted. — This naturally opened
a door to a second misfortune;- — that in the warmer
paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle Toby's eyes — my
father's ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as
the translation outmoved my uncle Toby's — neither the one
nor the other added much to the perspicuity of my father's
lecture.
Chapter ^o
The gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms — I mean
in man — for in superior classes of beings, such as angels
and spirits — 'tis all done, may it please your worships, as
they tell me, by Intuition; — and beings inferior, as your
worships all know — syllogize by their noses: tliough there
is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at
its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me
not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same
fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too: — but that's
neither here nor there —
The gift of doing it as it should bo, amongst us, or — the
great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians
tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of
two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third
(called the med'tus terminus) ; just as a man, as Locke well
observes, by a yard, finds two men's ninepin-alleys to be of
the same length, which could not be brought together, to
measure their equality, by juxtaposition.
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father
CHAP. 41 TRISTRAM SHANDY 211
illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle
Tobv's deportment — what great attention he gave to every
word — and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with
what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of
it — surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger
and his thumb — then fore-right — then this way, and then
that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings — he
would have concluded my uncle Toby had got hold of the
medius terminus, and was syllogizing and measuring with
it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as
mv father laid them before him. This, by the bye, was
more than mv father wanted — his aim in all the pains he
was at in these philosophic lectures — was to enable my uncle
Tobv not to discuss — but comprehend — to hold the grains
and scruples of learning — not to weigh them. — My uncle
Toby, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither
the one or the other.
Chapter ^i
'Tis a pitv, cried mv father one winter's night, after a three
hours' painful translation of Slawkenbergius — 'tis a pity,
cried my father, putting my mother's thread-paper into the
book for a mark, as he spoke — that truth, brother Toby,
should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and
be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes upon
the closest siege. —
Now it happened then, as indeed it liad often done be-
fore, that my uncle Toby's fancy, during the time of my
father's explanation of Prignitz to him — having nothing
to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-
green; — his body might as well have taken a turn there
too — so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man
intent upon the medius terminus — my uncle Toby was in
fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and
cons, as if my father had been translating Hafen Slawken-
212 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
bergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokee. But the
word "siege," like a talismanic power, in my father's meta-
phor, wafting back my uncle Toby's fancy, quick as a note
could follow the touch — he opened his ears — and my father
observing that he took his pipe out of liis mouth, and
shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit
— my father with great pleasure began his sentence again
— changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the
siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father ap-
prehended from it.
'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on
one side, brother Toby — considering what ingenuity these
learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses. —
Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle Toby.
— My father thrust back his chair — rose up — put on his
hat — took four long strides to the door — jerked it open —
thrust his head half way out — shut the door again — took
no notice of the bad hinge — returned to the table — plucked
my mother's thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius's book —
went hastily to his bureau — walked slowly back — twisted
my mother's thread-paper about his thumb — unbuttoned
his waistcoat — threw my mother's thread-paper into the fire
— bit her satin pincushion in two, filled his mouth with
bran — confounded it; — but mark! — the oath of confusion
was levelled at my uncle Toby's brain — which was e'en
confused enough already — the curse came charged only
with the bran — the bran, may it please )our honours, was
no more than powder to the ball.
'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long; for so
long as they did last, they led him a busy life on't; and it is
one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met
with in my observations of human nature, that nothing
should prove my father's mettle so much, or make his pas-
sions go ofF so like gunpowder, as the unexpected strokes his
science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle
CHAP. 41 TRISTRAM SHANDY 21
.■>
Toby's questions. — Had ten dozen hornets stung him lie-
hind in so many different places all at one time — he could
not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer sec-
onds — or started half so much, as with one single quaere
of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in
his hobby-horsical career.
'Twas all one to my uncle Toby — he smoked his pipe on
with unvaried composure — his heart never intended offence
to his brother — and as his head could seldom find out where
the sting of it lay — he always gave my father the credit
of cooling by himself. — He was five minutes and thirty-
five seconds about it in the present case.
By all that's good! said my father, swearing, as he came
to himself, and taking the oath out of Ernulphus's digest of
curses — (though to do my father justice it was a fault
(as he told Dr. Slop in the affair of Ernulphus) which he
as seldom committed as any man upon earth) — By all that's
good and great! brother Toby, said my father, if it was not
for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as
they do — you would put a man beside all temper. — Why,
by the solutions of noses, of which I was telling yon, I meant,
as you might have known, had you favoured me with one
grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men
of different kinds of knowledge have given the world of
the causes of the short and long noses. — There is no cause
but one, replied my uncle Toby — why one man's nose if
longer than another's, but because that God pleases to have
it so. — That is Grangousier's solution, said my father. — 'Tis
he, continued my uncle Toby, looking up, and not regarding
my father's interruption, who makes us all, and frames and
puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for
such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom. — 'Tis a
pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical — there
is more religion in it than sound science. 'Twas no incon-
sistent part of my uncle Toby's character — that he feared
214 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iii
God, and reverenced religion. — Su the moment my father
finished his remark — my uncle Toby fell a whistling Lilla-
bullero with more zeal (though more out of tune) than
usual. —
What is become of my wife's thread-paper?
Chaffer ^2
No matter — as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-
paper might be of some consequence to my mother — of
none to my father, as a mark in Slawkenbergius, Slawken-
bergius in every page of him was a rich treasure of inex-
haustible knowledge to my father — he could not open him
amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all
the arts and sciences in the world, with the books which
treated of them, were lost — should the wisdom and policies
of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever happen
to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote or caused
to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts
and kingdoms, should they be forgot also — and Slawken-
bergius only left — there would be enough in him in all
conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again. A
treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was
necesary to be known of noses, and every thing else — at
matin, noon, and vespers was Hafen Slawkenbergius his
recreation and delight: 'twas for ever in his hands — you
would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon's prayer-book —
so worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited was it with
fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even
unto the other.
I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius as my father; —
there is a fund in him, no doubt: but in my opinion, the best,
I don't say the most profitable, but the most amusing part
of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his tales — and, considering he
was a German, many of them told not without fancy: —
these take up his second book, containing nearly one half
CHAP. 42 TRISTRAM SHANDY 215
of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad
containing ten tales — Philosophy is not built upon tales;
and therefore 'twas certainly wrong in Slawkcnbcrgius to
send them into the world by that name! — there are a few
of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own
seem rather playful and sportive, than speculative — but in
general they are to be looked upon by the learned as a detail
of so many independent facts, all of them turning round
somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and
collected by him with great fidelity, and added to his work
as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.
As we have leisure enough upon our hands — if you give
me leave, madam, I'll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth
decad.
BOOK IV
SLAWKENBERGII FABELLA ^
VESPERA qiiddnm frigidula^ fosteriori in farte mensis
Augusti, feregrlnnSy 7nulo fusco colore insidens, manttca a
tergOy fmic'is indusiis, h'tnis cnlceis, braccisque sericis coc-
cineis refletOy Argentoratum ingrrssus est.
Mlliti eum fercontantt, quum fortas intraret dixit, se afud
Nasorum ffotnontoritan ftiisse, Francofurtuni froficisci, et
Argentorattiniy transitu ad fines Sarmatiae fnensis intervallo,
reversuriim.
Miles feregrini in jaciem susfextt — Dl bant, nova forma
nasil
At rnultwn mihi frofuit, inquit feregrinus, carfum
amento extrahens, e quo fefendit acinaces: Loculo manum
inseruit, et magna cum urbanitate, ftlei farte anteriore tacta
manu sinistra, ut extendit dextram, miltti fiorinum dedit et
frocessit.
Dolet m,ihi, ait miles, tymfanistam nanum et vulgam alio-
quens, virum adeo tirbanum vaginam ferdidisse: itinerari
hand foterit nudd acinaci; neque vaginam toto Argentorato,
habileni inveniet. — NullaTn unquarn habui, resfondit fere-
grinus resficiens — seque comiter inclinans — hoc more gesto,
1 As Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis is extremely scarce, it may not
be unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few
pages of his original; I will make no reflection upon it, but that
his story-telling Latin is much more concise than his philosophic —
and, I think, has more of Latinity in it.
216
BOOK IV
SLAWKENBERGIUS'S TALE
It was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very
sultry day, in the latter end of the month of August, when
a stranger, mounted upon a dark mule, with a small cloak-
bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of shoes, and
a crimson-satin pair of breeches, entered the town of Stras-
burg.
He told the sentinel, who questioned him as he entered the
gates, that he had been at the Promontory of Noses — was
going on to Frankfort — and should be back again at Stras-
burg that day month, in his way to the borders of Grim
Tartary.
The sentinel looked up into the stranger's face — he never
saw such a Nose in his life!
— I have made a very good venture of it, quoth the
stranger — so slipping his wrist out of the loop of a black
ribbon, to which a short scimetar was hung, he put his hand
into his pocket, and with great courtesy touching the fore
part of his cap with his left hand, as he extended his right —
he put a florin into the sentinel's hand, and passed on.
It grieves me, said the sentinel, speaking to a little dwarf-
ish bandy-legged drummer, that so courteous a soul should
have lost his scabbard — he cannot travel without one to his
scimetar, and will not be able to get a scabbard to fit it in all
Strasburg. — I never had one, replied the stranger, looking
back to the sentinel, and putting his hand up to his cap as
he spoke — I carry it, continued he, thus — holding up his
naked scimetar, his mule moving on slowly all the time —
on purpose to defend mv nose.
217
2i8 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
nudam ac'tnacem elevanSy niulo lento frogredientCy ut nasutn
tuert fossim.
Non immeritOy benigne feregriney resfondit miles.
Nih'tli aestimOy ait ille tymfanistay e fergamena factitius
est.
Prout christianus suniy inquit ?nileSy nasus ille, ni sextles
major sity meo esset conjorm,is.
Crcfitare audivi ait tymfanista.
Mehercule! sanguinem e?nisit, resfondit miles.
Miseret tney inquit tym-fanistay qui 7ion ambo tctigimusl
Eodem, temforis functOy quo haec res argumentata fuit
inter militem et tymfanistaniy disceptabatur ibidem tubicinc
et uxore sua qui tunc acccsserunty et feregrino fraetereuntCy
restiterunt.
Quantus nasus! acquc longus csty ait tubicinay ac tuba.
Et ex eodem vietalloy ait tubiceriy velut sternutamento
au
dias.
FantuTn abesty resfondit illay quod fistulam dulcedine
vincit.
Aeneus esty ait iubicen.
Nequaqua7fiy resfondit uxor.
Rursum afimOy ait tubiceny quod aeneus est.
Rem fenitus exflorabo ; friuSy enim digito tanganiy alt
uxor, quam dormivero.
Mulus feregrini gradu lento frogressus est, ut unum-
quodque verbum controversiaey non tantum inter militem et
tymfanistaniy verum etiam inter tubicinem et uxorem ejus,
audiret.
Nequaquamy ait illey in muli coIIutu fraena demittenSy et
manibus ambabus in fectus fositisy {mulo lente frogrediente)
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SH ANin' 219
It is well w(irth it, gentle stranger, replied the sentinel.
— 'Tis not worth a single stiver, said the handy-legged
drummer — 'tis a nose of parchment.
As I am a true catholic — except that it is six times as big
— 'tis a nose, said the sentinel, like my own.
— I heard it crackle, said the drummer.
By dunder, said the sentinel, I saw it bleed.
What a pity, cried the bandv-legged drummer, we did
not both touch it!
At the very time tliat this dispute was maintaining by the
sentinel and the drummer — was the same point debating be-
twixt a trumpeter and a trumpeter's wife, who were just
then coming up, and had stopped to see the stranger pass by.
Benedicity! — What a nose! 'tis as long, said the trum-
peter's wife, as a trumpet.
And of the same metal, said the trumpeter, as you hear
by its sneezing.
'Tis as soft as a flute, said she.
— 'Tis brass, said the trumpeter.
— 'Tis a pudding's end, said his wife.
I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, 'tis a brazen nose,
I'll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter's wife, for
I will touch it with my finger before I sleep.
The stranger's mule moved on at so slow a rate, that he
heard every word of the dispute, not only betwixt the sentinel
and the drummer, but betwixt the trumpeter and trumpeter's
wife.
No! said he, dropping his reins upon his mule's neck, and
laying both his hands upon his breast, the one over the other,
in a saint-like position (his mule going on easily all the
time) — No! said he, looking up — I am not such a debtor to
the world — slandered and disappointed as I have been — as
to give it that conviction — no! said he, my nose shall never
be touched whilst Heaven gives me strength — To do what?
said a burgomaster's wife.
220 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
nequaquattiy ait ille rcsficiens, non tiecesse est ut res isthaec
dilucidata joret. Minhnc gcntluml /nens nasus nunqtiam
tangetuVy dum sfiritus hos re get artus — Ad quid agendum'^
ait uxor bur gomagistri.
Peregrinus illi non resfondit. Votuni jaciehat tunc tem-
foris sancto Nicolao; quo facto ^ in sinum dextrum inserenSy
e qua negligenter fefendit acinaceSy lento gradu frocessit fer
flatearn Arge?itorati latum quae ad diversorium temflo ex
adversum ducit.
Peregrinus 7nulo descendens stabulo includiy et manticaw
tnferri jussit: qua apertd et coccineis sericis femoralibus
extractis cum argenteo laciniato llepi^CijpauTe, his sese in-
duity statimquey acinaci in manuy ad jorum deambulavit.
Quod ubi feregrinus esset ingressusy uxorem tubicinis
obviam euntem asficit; iliico cursum flectity ^netuens ne
nasus suus exfloraretury atque ad diversorium regressus est —
exuit se vestibus ; brace as coccineas s eric as manticae im-
fosuit muluTnque educi jussit.
Francofurtum proficiscory ait illey et Argentoratum qua-
tuor abhinc hebdomadis revertar.
Bene curasti hoc jumentum,? {^it) muli faciern manu
demulcens — mey manticamque mearUy flus sexcentis mille
fassibus fortavit.
Longa via est! resfondet hosfeSy nisi plurimum esset ne-
goti. — Eni?nverOy ait feregrinuSy a NasoruTn fromontorio
rediiy et nasum sfeciosissimumy egregiosissimumque quern un-
quam quisquani sortitus esty acquisivi.
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 221
The stranger took no notice of the burgomaster's wife —
he was making a vow to Saint Nicolas; which done, having
uncrossed his arms with the same solemnity with which he
crossed them, he took up the reins of his bridle with his left
hand, and putting his right hand into his bosom, with his
scimetar hanging loosely to the wrist of it, he rode on, as
slowly as one foot of the mule could follow another, through
the principal streets of Strasburg, till chance brought him to
the great inn in the market-place over-against the church.
The moment the stranger alighted, he ordered his mule to
be led into the stable, and his cloak-bag to be brought in;
then (opening, and taking out of it his crimson-satin breeches,
with a silver-fringed — (appendage to them, which I dare
not translate) — he put his breeches, with his fringed cod-
piece on, and forthwith, with his short scimetar in his hand,
walked out to the grand parade.
The stranger had just taken three turns upon the parade,
when he perceived the trumpeter's wife at the opposite side
of it — so turning short, in pain lest his nose should be at-
tempted, he instantly went back to his inn — undressed him-
self, packed up his crimson-satin breeches, etc., in his cloak-
bag, and called for his mule.
I am going forwards, said the stranger, for Frankfort —
and shall be back at Strasburg this day month.
I hope, continued the stranger, stroking down the face of
his mule with his left hand as he was going to mount it, that
vou have been kind to this faithful slave of mine — it has
carried me and mv cloak-bag, continued he, tapping the
mule's back, above six hundred leagues.
— 'Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the master of the inn
— unless a man has great business. — Tut! tut! said the
stranger, I have been at the Promontory of Noses; and have
got me one of the goodliest, thank Heaven, that ever fell
to a single man's lot.
Whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of him-
222 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
DufK feregrinus hanc miram rationem de self so reddity
hosfes et uxor ejus, oculis intentisy feregrini nasum conteni-
flantur — Per sanctos sanctasque onuies, ah hosfttis uxor,
nasls duodec'im maxhnis in toto Argentorato major est! —
pstnCy ait ilia mariti in aurem insusurrans, nonne est nasus
fraegrandis?
Dolus inest, anitne nil, ait hosfes — nasus est falsus.
Verus est, respondit uxor —
Ex abiete f actus est, ait ille, terebinthinwn olet —
C arbunculus inest, ait uxor.
Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes.
Vivus est ait ilia, — et si ipsa vivam tangam.
V otuni feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum 7neum
intactum fore usque ad — Quodnam tenipus? illico respondit
ilia.
Minimo tangetur, inquit die (manibiis in pectus coni-
positis) usque ad illam horani — Quatn horam? ait ilia —
Nullayn, respondit peregrinus, donee pervenio ad — Quern
locum, — obsecro? ait ilia — Peregrinus nil respondens mulo
conscenso discessit.
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 223
self, the master of the inn and his wife kept both their eyes
fixed full upon the stranger's nose — By saint Radagunda,
said the inn-keeper's wife to herself, there is more of it than
in any dozen of the largest noses put together in all Stras-
burg! is it not, said she, whispering her husband in his ear,
is it not a noble nose?
'Tis an imposture, mv dear, said the master of the inn —
'tis a false nose.
'Tis a true nose, said his wife.
'Tis made of fir-tree, said he, I smell the turpentine. —
There's a pimple on it, said she.
'Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper.
'Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself, said the inn-
keeper's wife, I will touch it.
I have made a vow to Saint Nicolas this day, said the
stranger, that my nose shall not be touched till — Here the
stranger, suspending his voice, looked up. — Till when: said
she hastily.
It never shall be touched, said he, clasping his hands and
bringing them close to his breast, till that hour — What
hour? cried the inn-keeper's wife. — Never! — never! said
the stranger, never till I am got — For Heaven's sake, into
what place? said she — The stranger rode away without say-
ing a word.
The stranger had not got half a league on his wav
towards Frankfort before all the city of Strasburg was in
an uproar about his nose. The Compline bells were just
ringing to call the Strasburgcrs to their devotions, and shut
up the duties of the day in prayer: — no soul in all Strasburg
heard 'em — the city was like a swarm of bees — men, women,
and children (the Compline bells tinkling all the time) fly-
ing here and there — in at one door, out at another — this
way and that way — long ways and cross ways — up one
street, down another street — in at this alley, out of that —
did you see it? did you see it? did vou sec it? O! did you
224 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
see it? — who saw it? who did see it? for mercy's sake, who
saw it?
Alack o'day! I was at vespers! — I was washing, I was
starching, I was scouring, I was quilting — God help me!
I never saw it — I never touched it! — would I had been a
sentinel, a bandy-legged drummer, a trumpeter, a trum-
peter's wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every
street and corner of Strasburg.
Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed through-
out the great city of Strasburg, was the courteous stranger
going on as gently upon his mule in his way to Frankfort,
as if he had no concern at all in the affair — talking all
the way he rode in broken sentences sometimes to his mule
— sometimes to himself — sometimes to his Julia.
O Julia, my lovely Julia! — nay I cannot stop to let thee
bite that thistle — that ever the suspected tongue of a rival
should have robbed me of enjoyment when I was upon the
point of tasting it. —
— Pugh — 'tis nothing but a thistle — never mind it — thou
shalt have a better supper at night.
— Banished from my country — my friends — from
thee. —
Poor devil, thou'rt sadly tired with thy journey! — come
— get on a little faster — there's nothing in my cloak-bag
but two shirts — a crimson-satin pair of breeches, and a
fringed — Dear Julia!
— But why to Frankfort? — is it that there is a hand un-
felt, which secretly is conducting me through these me-
anders and unsuspected tracts?
— Stumbling! by Saint Nicolas! every step — why, at this
rate we shall be all night in getting in —
— To happiness — or am I to be the sport of fortune and
slander — destined to be driven forth unconvicted — unheard
— untouched — if so, why did I not stay at Strasburg, where
justice — but I had sworn! Come, thou shalt drink — to
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SH AN J)Y 225
Saint Nicolas — O Julia! — What dost tliDU prick up thy
cars at? — 'tis nothing hut a man, etc.
The stranger rode on communing in this manner with his
mule and Julia — till he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as
he arrived, he alighted — saw his mule, as he had promised
it, taken good care of — took off his cloak-bag, with his
crimson-satin breeches, etc., in it — called for an omelet to
his supper, went to his bed about twelve o'clock and in
five minutes fell fast asleep.
It was about the same hour when the tumult in Strasburg
being abated for that night, — the Strasburgers had all got
quietly into their beds — but not like the stranger, for the
rest either of their minds or bodies; Queen Mab, like an elf
as she was, had taken the stranger's nose, and without re-
duction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slit-
ting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts
and fashions, as there "were heads in Strasburg to hold them.
The abbess of Quedlinburg, who with the four great digni-
taries of her chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-
chantress, and senior canoness, had that week come to Stras-
burg to consult th? university upon a case of conscience
relating to their placket-holes — was ill all the night.
The courteous stranger's nose had got perched upon the
top of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing
work in the fancies of the four great dignitaries of her
chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night
thro' for it — there was no keeping a limb still amongst them
— in short, they got up like so many ghosts.
The penitentiaries of the third order of Saint Francis —
the nuns of mount Calvary — the Praemonstratenses — the
Clunienses * — the Carthusians, and all the severer orders
of nuns who lay that night in blankets or hair-cloth, were
still in a worse condition than the abbess of Quedlinburg —
' Hafen Slawkenbergius means the Benedictine nuns ot Climy,
founded in the year 940. by Odo, abbe de Cluny.
226 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling from
one side of their beds to the other the whole night long —
the several sisterhoods had scratched and mauled themselves
all to death — they got out of their beds almost flayed alive
— every body thought Saint Antony had visited them for
probation vv^ith his fire — they had never once, in short, shut
their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins.
The nuns of Saint Ursula acted the wisest — they never
attempted to go to bed at all.
The dean of Strasburg, the prebendaries, the capitulars
and domiciliars (capitularly assembled in the morning to
consider the case of buttered buns) all wished they had fol-
lowed the nuns of Saint Ursula's example. —
In the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the
night before, the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven —
there were no buttered buns to be had for breakfast in all
Strasburg — the whole close of the cathedral was in one
eternal commotion — such a cause of restlessness and dis-
quietude, and such a zealous enquiry into the cause of that
restlessness, had never happened in Strasburg, since Martin
Luther, with his doctrines, had turned the city upside down.
If the stranger's nose took this liberty of thrusting him-
self thus into the dishes" of religious orders, etc., what a
carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the laity! —
'tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power
to describe; tho' I acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius, with
more gaiety of thought than I could have expected from
him) that there is many a good simile now subsisting in the
world which might give my countrymen some idea of it;
but at the close of such a folio as tliis, wrote for their sakes,
and in which I have spent the greatest part of my life — tho'
I own to them the simile is in being, yet would it not be un-
- Mr. Shandy's compliments to orators — is very sensible that
Slawkenberpius has here changed his metaphor — which he is very
guilty of: — that as a translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done
what he could to make him stick to it — but that here 'twas impossible.
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 227
rcasnnnhlc in them to expect I should have cither time or
inclination to search for it: Let it suffice to say, that the
riot and disorder it occasioned in the Strasburgers' fantasies
was so general — such an overpowering mastership had it
got of all the faculties of the Strasburgers' minds — so many
strange things, with equal confidence on all sides, and with
t-qual eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to
concerning it, that turned the whole stream of all discourse
and wonder towards it — every soul, good and bad — rich and
poor — learned and unlearned — doctor and student — mistress
and maid — gentle and simple — nun's flesh and woman's
flesh, in Strasburg spent their time in hearing tidings about
it — every eye in Strasburg languished to see it — every finger
— every thumb in Strasburg burned to touch it.
Now what might add, if any thing may be thought neces-
sary to add, to so vehement a desire — was this, that the
sentinel, the bandy-legged drummer, the trumpeter, the
trumpeter's wife, the burgomaster's widow, the master of
the inn, and the master of the inn's wife, how widely soever
they all differed every one from another in their testimonies
and description of the stranger's nose — they all agreed to-
gether in two points — namely, that he was gone to Frank-
fort, and would not return to Strasburg till that day month;
and secondly, whether his nose was true or false, that the
stranger himself was one of the most perfect paragons of
beauty — the finest-made man — the most genteel! — the
most generous of his purse — the most courteous in his car-
riage, that had ever entered the gates of Strasburg — that as
he rode, with scimetar slung loosely to his wrist, thro' the
streets — and walked with his crimson-satin breeches across
the parade — 'twas with so sweet an air of careless modesty,
and so manly withal — as would have put the heart in
jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin
who had cast her eyes upon him.
I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the
228 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
throbs and yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the
abbess of Quedlinburg, the prioress, the deauess, and sub-
chantress, for sending at noon-day for the trumpeter's wife:
she went through the streets of Strasburg with her hus-
band's trumpet in her hand, — the best apparatus the strait-
ness of the time would allow her, for the illustration of her
theory — she staid no longer than three days.
The sentinel and bandy-legged drummer! — nothing on
this side of old Athens could equal them! they read their
lectures under the city-gates to comers and goers, with all
the pomp of a Chrysippus and a Grantor in their porticos.
The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand,
read his also in the same style — under the portico or gateway
of his stable-yard — his wife, hers more privately in a back
room: all flocked to their lectures; not promiscuously — but
to this or that, as is ever the way, as faith and credulity mar-
shalled them — in a word, each Strasburger came crowding
for intelligence — and every Strasburger had the intelli-
gence he wanted.
'Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators
in natural philosophy, etc., that as soon as the trumpeter's
wife had finished the abbess of Quedlinburg's private lec-
ture, and had begun to read in public, which she did upon
a stool in the middle of the great parade, — she incommoded
the other demonstrators mainly, by gaining incontinently
the most fashionable part of the city of Strasburg for her
auditory — But when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries
Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an apparatus, pray what
rival in science can pretend to be heard besides him?
Whilst the unlearned, thro' these conduits of intelli-
gence, were all busied in getting down to the bottom of the
well, where Truth keeps her little court — were the learned
in their way as busy in pumping her up thro' the conduits of
dialect induction — they concerned themselves not with facts
— they reasoned —
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 229
Not one profession had thrown more light upon this sub-
ject than the Faculty — had not all their disputes about it
run into the affair of Wens and oedematous swellings, they
could not keep clear of them for their bloods and souls —
the stranger's n^se had nothing to do either with wens or
oedematous swellings.
It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that
such a ponderous mass of heterogeneous matter could not be
congested and conglomerated to the nose, whilst the infant
was in Uteroy without destroying the statical balance of the
foetus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months
before the time, —
— The opponents granted the theory — they denied the
consequences.
And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, etc., said
thev, was not laid in, for the due nourishment of such a nose,
in the very first stamina and rudiments of its formation,
before it came into the world (bating the case of Wens) it
could not regularly grow and be sustained afterwards.
This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment,
and the effect which nutriment had in extending the vessels,
and in the increase and prolongation of the muscular parts
to the greatest growth and expansion imaginable — In the
triumph of which theory, they went so far as to affirm, that
there was no cause in nature, whv a nose might not grow
to the size of the man himself.
The respondents satisfied the world this event could never
happen to them so long as a man had but one stomach and
one pair of lungs — For the stomach, said they, being the only
organ destined for the reception of food, and turning it
into chyle — and the lungs the only engine of sanguification
— it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite
brought it: or admitting the possibility of a man's overload-
ing his stomach, nature had set bounds however to his lung*
— the engine was of a determined size and strength, and
230 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
could elaborate but a certain quantity in a given time — that
is, it could produce just as much blood as was sufficient for
one single man, and no more; so that, if there was as much
nose as man — they proved a mortification must necessarily
ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a support for
both, that the nose must either fall off from the man, or
the man inevitably fall off from his nose.
Nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried
the opponents — else what do you say to the case of a whole
stomach — a whole pair of lungs, and but half a man, when
both his legs have been unfortunately shot off?
He dies of a plethora, said they — or must spit blood, and
in a fortnight or three weeks go off in a consumption. —
— It happens otherwise — replied the opponents. —
It ought not, said they.
The more curious and intimate enquirers after Nature and
her doings, though they went hand in hand a good way to-
gether, yet they all divided about the nose at last, almost
as much as the Faculty itself.
They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and
geometrical arrangement and proportion of the several parts
of the human frame to its several destinations, offices, and
functions, which could not be transgressed but within certain
limits — that nature, though she sported — she sported within
a certain circle; — and they could not agree about the di-
ameter of it.
The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them
than any of the classes of the literati; — they began and
ended with the word Nose; and had it not been for a
fetitio p-t7ictfiiy which one of the ablest of them ran his
head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole
controversy had been settled at once.
A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood
— and not only blofid — but blood circulating in it to supply
the phenomenon with a succession of drops — (a stream being
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 231
but a quicker succession of drops, that is included, said he).
— Now death, continued the logician, being nothing but
the stagnation of the blood —
I deny the definition — Death is the separation of the
soul from the body, said his antagonist — Then we don't
agree about our weapons, said the logician — Then there is
an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist.
The civilians were still more concise: what they offered
being more in the nature of a decree — than a dispute.
Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose,
could not possibly have been suffered in civil society — and
if false — to impose upon society with such false signs and
tokens, was a still greater violation of its rights, and musf
have had still less mercy shown it.
The only objection to this was, that if it proved any
thing, it proved the stranger's nose was neither true nor
false.
This left room for the controversy to go on. It was
maintained by the advocates of the ecclesiastic court, that
there was nothing to inhibit a decree, since the stranger
ex mero inotu had confessed he had been at the Promontory
of Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, etc. etc. — To
this it was answered, it was impossible there should be such
a place as the Promontory of Noses, and the learned be
ignorant where it lay. The commissary of the bishop of
Strasburg undertook the advocates, explained this matter
in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, showing them, that
the Promontory of Noses was a mere allegoric expression,
importing no more than that nature had given him a long
nose: in proof of which, with great learning, he cited the
underwritten authorities,^ which had decided the point in-
^ Nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi fonnula utun. Quinitno
& Logistae & Canonistae — Vid. Parce Bame Jas in d. L. Provincial.
Constitut. de conjee, vid. Vol. Lib. 4. Titul. i. n. 7. qua etiam in re
conspir. Om de Promontorio Nas. Tichmak. ff. d. tit. ,3. fol. i8q.
passim. Vid. Glos. de contrahcnd. empt. &c. necnon J. Scrudr. in
232 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
contestably, had it not appeared that a dispute about some
franchises of dean and chapter-lands had been determined
by it nineteen years before.
It happened — I must not say unluckily for Truth, be-
cause they were giving her a lift another way in so doing;
that the two universities of Strasburg — the Lutheran,
founded in the year 1538 by Jacobus Surmis, counsellor of
the senate, — and the Popish, founded by Leopold, arch-
duke of Austria, were, during all this time, employing the
whole depth of their knowledge (except just what the affair
of the abbess of Quedlinburg's placket-holes required) — in
determining the point of Martin Luther's damnation.
The Popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate a
prioriy that from the necessary influence of the planets on
the twenty-second day of October 1483 — when the moon
was in the twelfth house, Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in the
third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury, all got together in
the fourth — that he must in course, and unavoidably, be a
damned man — and that his doctrines, by a direct corollary,
must be damned doctrines too.
By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were
in coition all at once with Scorpio ^ (in reading this my
cap. § refut. per totum. Cum his cons. Rever. J. Tubal, Sentent. &
Prov. cap. 9. ff. II, 12. obiter. V. & Librum, cui Tit. de Terris &
Phras. Belg. ad finem, cum comment. N. Bardy Belg. Vid. Scrip.
Argentotarens. de Antiq. Ecc. in Episc. Archiv. fid. coll. per Von
Jacobum Koinshoven Folio Argent. 1583. praecip. ad finem. Quibus
add. Rebuff in L. obvenire de Signif. Nom. ff. fol. & de jure Gent. &
Civil, de protib. aliena feud, per federa, test. Joha. Luxius in pro-
legom. quem velim videas, de Analy. Cap. i, 2, 3. Vid. Idea.
1 Haec mira, satisque horrenda Planetarum coitio sub Scorpio
Asterismo in nona coeli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant,
efficit Martinum Lutherum sacrilegum hercticum, Christianae re-
ligionis hostem acerrimum atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione
ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, ejus Anima scelestissiraa ad
infernos navigavit — ab Alecto, Tisiphone & Megara flagellis igneis
cruciata perenniter.
— Lucas Gauricus in Tractatu astrologico de praeteritis multorum
hominum accidcntibus per genituras examinatis.
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 233
father would always shake his head) in the ninth house,
which the Arabians allotted to religion — it appeared that
Martin Luther did not care one stiver about the matter —
and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of
Mars — they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and
blaspheming — with the blast of which his soul (being steeped
in guilt) sailed before the wind, in the lake of hell-fire.
The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this,
was, that it must certainly be the soul of another man, born
Oct. 22, 83, which was forced to sail down before the
wind in that manner — inasmuch as it appeared from the
register of Eisleben in the county of Mansfclt, that Luther
was not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the
22nd day of October, but on the loth of November, the
eve of Martinmas dav, from whence he had the name of
Martin.
[ — I must break off my translation for a moment; for
if I did not, I know I should no more be able to shut my
eyes in bed, than the abbess of Quedlinburg — It is to tell
the reader, that my father never read this passage of Slawk-
enbergius to my uncle Toby, but with triumph — not over
my uncle Toby, for he never opposed him in it — but over
the whole world.
— Now you see, brother Toby, he would say, looking up,
"that christian names are not such indifferent things;" —
had Luther here been called bv any other name but Martin,
he would have been damned to all eternity — Not that I
look upon .Martin, he would add, as a good name — far
from it — 'tis something better than a neutral, and but a
little — yet little as it is, you see it was of some service to
him.
.My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hy-
pothesis, as well as the best logician could shew him — yet so
strange is the weakness of man at the same time, as it fell
in his way, he could not for his life but make use of it:
234 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
and it was certainly for this reason, that though there
are many stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decads full as
entertaining as this I am translating, yet there is not one
amongst them which my father read over with half the
delight — it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses to-
gether — his Names and his Noses. — I will be bold to say,
he might have read all the books in the Alexandrian Library,
had not fate taken other care of them, and not have met
with a book or passage in one, which hit two such nails as
these upon the head at one stroke.]
The two universities of Strasburg were hard tugging at
this affair of Luther's navigation. The Protestant doctors
had demonstrated, that he had not sailed right before the
wind, as the Popish doctors had pretended; and as every
one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it — they
were going to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points
he was off; whether Martin had doubled the cape, or had
fallen upon a lee-shore; and no doubt, as it was an enquiry
of much edification, at least to those who understood this
sort of Navigation, they had gone on with it in spite of the
size of the stranger's nose, had not the size of the stranger's
nose drawn off the attention of the world from what they
were about — it was their business to follow.
The abbess of Quedlinburg and her four dignitaries was
no stop; for the enormity of the stranger's nose running full
as much in their fancies as their case of conscience — the
affair of their placket-holes kept cold — in a word, the print-
ers were ordered to distribute their types — all controversies
dropped.
'Twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of
it — to a nut-shell — to have guessed on which side of the nose
the two universities would split.
'Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.
'Tis below reason, cried the others.
'Tis faith, one cried.
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 235
'Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.
'Tis possible, cried the one.
'Tis impossible, said the other.
God's power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do any
thing.
He can do nothing, replied the Antinosarians, which im-
plies contradictions.
He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.
As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's
car, replied the Antinosarians.
He cannot make two and two five, replied the Popish doc-
tors. — 'Tis false, said their other opponents. —
Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who
maintained the reality of the nose. — It extends only to al!
possible things, replied the Lutherans.
By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make
a nose, if he thinks fit, as big as the steeple of Strasburg.
Now the steeple of Strasburg being the biggest and the
tallest church-steeple to be seen in the whole world, the Anti-
nosarians denied that a nose of 575 geometrical feet in
length could be worn, at least by a middle-sized man — The
Popish doctors swore it could — The Lutheran doctors said
No; — it could not.
This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a
great way, upon the extent and limitation of the moral and
natural attributes of God — That controversy led them nat-
urally into Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Aquinas to the
devil.
The stranger's nose was no more heard of in the dispute —
it just served as a frigate to launch them into the gulf of
school-divinity — and then they all sailed before the wind.
Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.
The controversy about the attributes, etc., instead of cool-
ing, on the contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers' imagina-
tions to a most inordinate deirree — The less thev understood
236 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
jf the matter, the greater was their wonder about it — they
were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied — saw their
doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brassarians, the Turpen-
tarians, on one side — the Popish doctors on the other, like
Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the
bottle, all embarked out of sight.
— The poor Strasburgers left upon the beach!
— What was to be done? — No delay — the uproar in-
creased — every one in disorder — the city gates set open. —
Unfortunate Strasburgers! was there in the store-house of
nature — was there in the lumber-rooms of learning — was
there in the great arsenal of chance, one single- engine left
undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your
desires, which was not pointed by the hand of Fate to play
upon your hearts? — I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse
the surrender of yourselves — 'tis to write your panegyric.
Shew me a city so macerated with expectation — who neither
eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls
either of religion or nature for seven-and-twenty days to-
gether, who could have held out one day longer.
On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised
^o return to Strasburg.
Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly
have made some mistake in his numeral characters); 7000
coaches — 15,000 single-horse chairs — 20,000 waggons,
crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, coun-
sellors, syndics — beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons,
concubines, all in their coaches — The abbess of Quedlinburg,
with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the
procession in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the
four great dignitaries of his chapter, on her left-hand — the
rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on
horseback — some on foot — some led — some driven — some
down the Rhine — some this way — some that — all set out at
sunrise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.
BOOK IV TRISTRAM SHANDY 237
Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale — I say
Catastrophe (cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with
parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth {gaudrt) in the
Catastrophe and Peripetia of a Drama, but rejoiceth more-
over in all the essential and integrant parts of it — it has its
Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripetia
growing one out of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first
planted them — without which a tale had better never been
told at all, says Slnwkenbergius, but be kejx to a man's self.
In all my ten tales, in all my ten decads, have I Slawken-
bergius tied down ever)- tale of them as tightly to this rule,
as I have done this of the stranger and his nose.
— From his first parley with the sentinel, to his leaving the
cit}- of Strasburg, after pulling ofiF his crimson-satin pair of
breeches, is the Protasis or first entrance — where the charac-
ters of the Personae Dramatis are just touched in, and the
subjects slightly begun.
The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered
up>on and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called
the Catastasis, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act,
is included within that busy f>eriod of my tale, betwixt the
first night's uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the
trump>eter's wife's lectures uf)on it in the middle of the grand
parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in the
dispute — to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the
Strasburgers up>on the beach in distress, is the Catastasis or the
ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth
in the fifth act.
This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers
in the Frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the laby-
rinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (a*
Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and quietness.
This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the Catas-
trophe or Peripetia of my tale — and that is the part of it I
am going to relate.
238 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep — he enters
now upon the stage.
— What dost thou prick up thy ears at? — 'tis nothing but
a man upon a horse — was the last word the stranger uttered
to his mule. It was not proper then to tell the reader, that
the mule took his master's word for it; and without any more
ifs or andsy let the traveller and his horse pass by.
The traveller was hastenins; with all dilig-ence to o;et to
Strasburg that night. What a fool am I, said the traveller
to himself, when he had rode about a league farther, to
think of getting into Strasburg this night. — Strasburg! — the
great Strasburg! — Strasburg, the capital of all Alsatia!
Strasburg, an imperial city! Strasburg, a sovereign state!
Strasburg, garrisoned with five thousand of the best troops
in all the world! — Alas! if I was at the gates of Strasburg
this moment, I could not gain admittance into it for a ducat
— nay a ducat and half — 'tis too much — better go back to the
last inn I have passed — than lie I know not where — or give
I know not what. The traveller, as he made these reflec-
tions in his mind, turned his horse's head about, and three
minutes after the stranger had been conducted into his cham-
ber, he arrived at the same inn.
— We have bacon in the house, said the host, and bread
— and till eleven o'clock this night had three eggs in it —
but a stranger, who arrived an hour ago, has had them dressed
into an omelet, and we have nothing. —
Alas! said the traveller, harassed as I am, I want nothing
but a bed. — I have one as soft as is in Alsatia, said the host.
— The stranger, continued he, should have slept in it, for
'tis my best bed, but upon the score of his nose. — He has got
a defluxion, said the traveller. — Not that I know, cried the
host. — But 'tis a camp-bed, and Jacinta, said he, looking
towards the maid, imagined there was not room in it to turn
his nose in. — Why so? cried the traveller, starting back. —
It is so long a nose, replied the host. — The traveller fixed his
fcooKiv TRISTRAM SHANDY 239
eyes upon Jacinta, then upon the ground — kneeled upon his
right knee — had just got his hand laid upon his breast —
Trifle not with my anxiety, said he, rising up again. — 'Tis
no trifle, said Jacinta, 'tis the most glorious nose! — ^The
traveller fell upon his knee again — laid his hand upon his
breast — then, said he, looking up to heaven, thou hast con-
ducted me to the end of my pilgrimage — 'Tis Diego.
The traveller was the brother of the Julia, so often in-
voked that night by the stranger as he rode from Strasburg
upon his mule; and was come, on her part, in quest of him.
He had accompanied his sister from Valladolid across the
Pyrenean mountains through France, and had many an en-
tangled skein to wind off in pursuit of him through the many
meanders and abrupt turnings of a lover's thorny tracks.
— Julia had sunk under it — and had not been able to go
a step farther than to Lyons, where, with the many dis-
quietudes of a tender heart, which all talk of — but few feel
— she sickened, but had just strength to write a letter to
Diego; and having conjured her brother never to see her
face till he had found him out, and put the letter into his
hands, Julia took to her bed.
Fernandez (for that was her brother's name) — tho' the
camp-bed was as soft as any one in Alsace, yet he could not
shut his eyes in it. — As soon as it was day he rose, and hearing
Diego was risen too, he entered his chamber, and discharged
his sister's commission.
The letter was as follows:
"Seig. Diego,
"Whether my suspicions of your nose were justly excited
or not — 'tis not now to enquire — it is enough I have not had
firmness to put them to farther trial.
"How could I know so little of myself, when I sent my
Duenna to forbid your coming more under my lattice? or
how could I know so little of you, Diego, as to imagine you
240 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
would not have stayed one day in Valladolid to have given
ease to my doubts? — Was I to be abandoned, Diego, because
I was deceived? or was it kind to take me at my word,
whether my suspicions were just or no, and leave me, as you
did, a prey to much uncertainty and sorrow?
"In what manner Julia has resented this — my brother,
when he puts this letter into your hands, will tell you; He
will tell you in how few moments she repented of the rash
message she had sent you — in what frantic haste she flew to
her lattice, and how many days and nights together she leaned
immoveably upon her elbow, looking through it towards the
way which Diego was wont to come.
"He will tell you, when she heard of your departure —
how her spirits deserted her — how her heart sickened — how
piteously she mourned — how low she hung her head. O
Diego! how many weary steps has my brother's pity led mc
by the hand languishing to trace out yours; how far has de-
sire carried me beyond strength — and how oft have I fainted
by the way, and sunk into his arms, with only power to cry
out — O my Diego!
"If the gentleness of your carriage has not belied your
heart, you will fly to me, almost as fast as you fled from me
— haste as you will — you will arrive but to see me expire. —
'Tis a bitter draught, Diego, but oh! 'tis embittered still
more by dying un — "
She could proceed no farther.
Slawkenbergius supposes the word intended was "uncon-
vinced," but her strength would not enable her to finish her
letter. The heart of the courteous Diego overflowed as he
read the letter — he ordered his mule forthwith and Fer-
nandez's horse to be saddled; and as no vent in prose is equal
to that of poetry in such conflicts — chance, which as often
directs us to remedies as to diseases, having thrown a piece of
charcoal into the window — Diego availed himself of it, and
BOOK IV TRIS'IRAM SHANDY 241
whilst the hostkr was getting icad\ his imilc, he cased his
mind against the wall as follows.
Ode.
Harsh and untuncful are the notes of love,
Unless my Julia strikes the key,
Her hand alone can touch the part,
Whose dulcet move-
ment charms the heart,
And governs all the man with sympathetic sway.
2d.
O Julia!
The lines were very natural — for they were nothing at all
to the purpose, says Slawkenbergius, and 'tis a pity there were
no more of them; but whether it was that Seig. Diego was
slow in composing verses — or the hostler quick in saddling
mules — is not averred ; certain it was, that Diego's mule and
Fernandez's horse were ready at the door of the inn, before
Diego was ready for his second stanza; so without staving
to finish his ode, they both mounted, sallied forth, passed
the Rhine, traversed Alsace, shaped their course towards
Lyons, and before the Strasburgers and the abbess of Qued-
linburg had set out on their cavalcade, had Fernandez, Diego,
and his Julia, crossed the Pvrenean mountains, and got safe
to V'alladolid.
'Tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when
Diego was in Spain, it was not possible to meet the courteous
stranger in the Frankfort road; it is enough to say, that of
all restless desires, curiosity being the strongest — the Stras-
burgers felt the full force of it; and that for three davs and
nights they were tossed to and fro in the Frankfort road, with
the tempestuous fury of this passion, before they could sub-
mit to return home. — When alas! an event was prepared foi
242 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
them, of all other, the most grievous that could befall a free
people.
As this revolution of the Strasburgcrs' affairs is often
spoken of, and little understood, I will, in ten words, says
Slawkenbergius, give the world an explanation of it, and
with it put an end to my tale.
Everybody knows of the grand system of Universal Mon-
archy, wrote by order of Mons. Colbert, and put in manu-
script into the hands of Lewis the fourteenth, in the year
1664.
'Tis as well known, that one branch out of many.of that
system, was the getting possession of Strasburg, to favour an
entrance at all times into Suabia, in order to disturb the quiet
of Germany — and that in consequence of this plan, Strasburg
unhappily fell at length into their hands.
It is the lot of a few to trace out the true springs of this
and such like revolutions — The vulgar look too high for
them — Statesmen look too low — Truth (for once) lies in the
middle.
What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries
one historian — The Strasburgers deemed it a diminution of
their freedom to receive an imperial garrison — so fell a prey
to a French one.
The fate, says another, of the Strasburgers, may be a
warning to all free people to save their money. — They antici-
pated their revenues — brought themselves under taxes, ex-
hausted their^ strength, and in the end became so weak a
people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so
the French pushed them open.
Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, 'twas not the French, —
'twas curiosity pushed them open — The French indeed, who
are ever upon the catch, when they saw the Strasburgers,
men, women, and children, all marched out to follow the
stranger's nose — each man followed his own, and marched
in.
CHAP. I TRISTRAM SHANDY 245
Trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually
grown down ever since — but not from any cause which com"
mcrcial heads have assigned; for it is owing to this only,
that noses have ever so run in their heads, that the Stras-
burgers could not follow their business.
Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbcrgius, making an exclamation
— it is not the first — and I fear will not be the last fortresn
that has been cither won — or lost by noses.
The End of Slazvkenbergius's Tale.
Chapter i
With all this learning upon noses running perpetually in
my father's fancy — with so many family prejudices — and
ten decads of such tales running on for ever along with them
— how was it possible with such exquisite — was it a true nose?
— That a man with such exquisite feelings as my father had,
could bear the shock at all below stairs — or indeed abovr
stairs, in any other posture, but the very posture I have de-
scribed?
— Throw vourself down upon the bed, a dozen times —
taking* care only to place a looking-glass first in a chair on
one side of it, before you do it — But was the stranger's nose
a true nose, or was it a false one?
To tell that before-hand, madam, would be to do injury
to one of the best tales in the Christian-world; and that if
the tenth of the tenth decad, which immediately follows this.
This tale, cried Slawkenbcrgius, somewhat exultingly, has
been reserved by me for the concluding tale of my whole
work; knowing right well, that when I shall have told it, and
my reader shall have read it thro' — 'twould be even high
time for both of us to shut up the book; inasmuch, continues
Slawkenbergius, as I know of no tale which could possibly
ever go down after it.
— 'Tis a tale indeed!
244 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
This sets out with the first interview in the inn at Lyons,
when Fernandc:^ left the courteous stranger and his sister
Julia alone in her chamber, and is over-written.
The Intricacies of Diego and Julia.
Heavens! thou art a strange creature, Slawkenbergius!
what a whimsical view of the involutions of the heart of
woman hast thou opened ! how this can ever be translated, and
\ct if this specimen of Slawkenbcrgius's tales, and the ex-
quisitiveness of his moral, should please the world — trans-
lated shall a couple of volumes be. — Else, how this can
ever be translated into good English, I have no sort of con-
ception — There seems in some passages to want a sixth sense
to do it rightly. — What can he mean by the lambent pupila-
bility of slow, low, dry chat, five notes below the natural tone
— which you know, madam, is little more than a whisper?
The moment I pronounced the words, I could perceive an
attempt towards a vibration in the strings, about the region
of the heart. — The brain made no acknowledgment. —
There's often no good understanding betwixt 'em — I felt as
if I understood it. — I had no ideas. — The movement could
not be without cause. — I'm lost. I can make nothing of it —
unless, may it please your worships, the voice, in that case
being little more than a whisper, unavoidably forces the eyes
to approach not only within six inches of each other — but to
look into the pupils — is not that dangerous? — But it can't
be avoided — for to look up to the ceiling, in that case the two
chins unavoidably meet — and to look down into each other's
lap, the foreheads come to immediate contact, which at once
puts an end to the conference — I mean to the sentimental
part of it. — What is left, madam, is not worth stooping for.
Chaftrr 2
My father lay stretched across the bed as still as if the hand
of death had pushed him down, for a full hour and a half
CHAP. 3 TRISTRAM SHANDY 245
before he began to play upon the floor with the toe of that
foot which hung over the bed-side; my uncle Toby's heart
was a pound lighter for it. — In a few moments, his left-
hand, the knuckles of which had all the time reclined upon
the handle of the chamber-pot, came to its feeling — he thrust
it a little more within the valance — drew up his hand, when
he had done, into his bosom — gave a hem ! My good uncle
Toby, with infinite pleasure, answered it; and full gladly
would have ingrafted a sentence of consolation upon the
opening it afforded: but having no talents, as I said, that way,
and fearing moreover that he might set out with something
which might make a bad matter worse, he contented himself
with resting his chin placidly upon the cross of his crutch.
Now whether the compression shortened my uncle Toby's
face into a more pleasurable oval — or that the philanthropy
of his heart, in seeing his brother beginning to emerge out
of the sea of his afl'lictions, had braced up his muscles — so
that the compression upon his chin only doubled the benignity
which was there before, is not hard to decide. — My father,
in turning his eyes, was struck with such a gleam of sunshine
in his face, as melted down the sullenness of his grief in a
mf)ment.
He broke silence as follows.
Chaffer 5
Did ever man, brother Toby, cried my father, raising him-
self upon his elbow, and turning himself round to the oppo-
site side of the bed, where my uncle Toby was sitting in hi-
old fringed chair, with his chin resting upon his crutch — did
ever a poor unfortunate man, brother Toby, cried my father,
receive so many lashes? — The most I ever saw given, quoth
my uncle Toby (ringing the bell at the bed's head for Trim)
was to a grenadier, I think in Mackay's regiment.
— Had my uncle Toby shot a bullet through my father's
246 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
heart, he could not have fallen down with his nose upon the
quilt more suddenly.
Bless me ! said my uncle Toby.
Chapter ^
Was it Mackay's regiment, quoth my uncle Toby, where the
poor grenadier was so unmercifully whipped at Bruges about
the ducats? — O Christ! he was innocent! cried Trim, with
a deep sigh. — And he was whipped, may it please your hon-
our, almost to death's door. — They had better have shot him
outright, as he begged, and he had gone directly to heaven,
for he was as innocent as your honour. — I thank thee, Trim,
quoth my uncle Toby. — I never think of his, continued
Trim, and my poor brother Tom's misfortunes, for we were
all three school-fellows, but I cry like a coward. — Tears
are no proof of cowardice. Trim. — I drop them ofttimes
myself, cried my uncle Toby. — I know your honour does,
replied Trim, and so am not ashamed of it myself. — But to
think, may it please your honour, continued Trim, a tear
stealing into the corner of his eye as he spoke — to think of
two virtuous lads with hearts as warm in their bodies, and
as honest as God could make them — the children of honest
people, going forth with gallant spirits to seek their fortunes
in the world — and fall into such evils! — poor Tom! to be
tortured upon a rack for nothing — but marrying a Jew's
widow who sold sausages — honest Dick Johnson's soul to be
scourged out of his body, for the ducats another man put
into his knapsack! — O! — these are misfortunes, cried Trim,
• — pulling out his handkerchief — these are misfortunes, may
it please your honour, worth lying down and crying over.
— My father could not help blushing.
'Twould be a pity, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, thou
•^houldst ever feel sorrow of thy own — thou f eelest it so ten-
derly for others. — Alack-o-day, replied the Corporal, bright-
ening up his face — your honour knows I have neither wife
CHAP. 6 TRISTRAM SHANDY 247
or child — I can have no sorrows in this world. — My father
could not help smiling.— As few as any man, Trim, replied
my uncle Toby; nor can I see how a fellow of thy light heart
can suffer, but from the distress of poverty in thy old age —
when thou art passed all services. Trim — and hast outlived
thy friends. — An' please your honour, never fear, replied
Trim, cheerily. — But I would have thee never fear, Trim,
replied my uncle Toby, and therefore, continued my uncle
Toby, throwing down his crutch, and getting up upon his
legs as he uttered the word "therefore" — in recompense,
Trim, of thy long fidelity to me, and that goodness of thy
heart I have had such proofs of — whilst thy master is worth
a shilling — thou shalt never ask elsewhere, Trim, for a
penny. Trim attempted to thank my uncle Toby — but had
not power — tears trickled down his cheeks faster than he
could wipe them off — He laid his hands upon his breast —
made a bow to the ground, and shut the door.
— I have left Trim mv bowling-green, cried my uncle
Toby. — My father smiled. — I have left him moreover a
pension, continued my uncle Toby. — My father looked
grave.
Chapter 5
Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pen-
sions and Grenadiers?
Chapter 6
When my uncle Toby first mentioned the grenadier, my
father, I said, fell down with his nose flat to the quilt, and
as suddenly as if my uncle Toby had shot him; but it was
not added that every other limb and member of my father
instantly relapsed with his nose into the same precise atti-
tude in which he lay first described; so that when Corporal
Trim left the room, and my father found himself disposed
to rise off the bed — he had all the little preparatory move-
248 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
ments to run over again, before he could do it. Attitudes
are nothing, madam — 'tis the transition from one attitude to
another — like the preparation and resolution of the discord
into harmony, which is all in all.
For which reason my father played the same jig over again
with his toe upon the floor — pushed the chamber-pot still
a little further within the valance — gave a hem — raised him-
self up upon his elbow — and was just beginning to address
himself to my uncle Toby — when recollecting the unsuccess-
fulness of his first efiFort in that attitude — he got upon his
legs, and in making the third turn across the room, he stopped
short before my uncle Toby; and laying the three first fingers
of his right-hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a
little, he addressed himself to my uncle Toby as follows:
Chafter 7
When I reflect, brother Toby, upon Man; and take a view
of that dark side of him which represents his life as open to
so many causes of trouble — when I consider, brother Toby,
how oft we eat the bread of affliction, and that we are born
to it, as to the portion of our inheritance — I was born to
nothing, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting my father — but
my commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle
leave you a hundred and twenty pounds a year? — What
could I have done without it? replied my uncle Toby —
That's another concern, said my father testily — But I say,
Toby, when one runs over the catalogue of all the cross-
reckonings and sorrowful Items with which the heart of man
is overcharged, 'tis wonderful by what hidden resources the
mind is enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does,
against the impositions laid upon our nature. — 'Tis by the
assistance of Almighty God, cried my uncle Toby, looking
up, and pressing the palms of his hands close together — 'tis
not from our own strength, brother Shandy — a sentinel in
a wooden sentry-box might as well pretend to stand it out
CHAP. 8 TRISTRAM SHANDY 249
against a detachment of fifty men. — We are upheld by the
frrace and the assistance of the best of Beintrs.
— That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of un-
tying it. — But give me leave to lead you, brother Toby, a
little deeper into the mystery.
With all my heart, replied my uncle Toby.
My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for
that in which Socrates is so finely painted by Raflrael in his
school of Athens; which your connoisseurship knows is so ex-
quisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the
reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it — for he holds the
fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the
thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying tt) the liber-
tine he is reclaiming — ""\'ou grant me this — and this: and
this, and this, I don't ask of you — they follow of themselves
in course."
So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt
his finger and his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle Toby
as he sat in his old fringed chair, valanced around with party-
coloured worsted bobs — O Garrick! — what a rich scene of
this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly would
I write such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and
secure my own behind it.
Chapter 8
Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said
my father, yet at the same time 'tis of so slight a frame, and
so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard
jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey,
would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a dav — •
was it not, brother Toby, that there is a secret spring within
us. — Which spring, said my uncle Toby, I take to be Re-
ligion. — Will that set my child's nose on? cried my father,
letting go his finger, and striking one hand against the other,
^t makes every thing straight for us, answered my uncle
250 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
Toby. — Figuratively speaking, dear Toby, it may, for aught
I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is
that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing
evil, which, like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine,
though it can't prevent the shock — at least it imposes upon our
sense of it.
Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-
finger, as he was coming closer to the point — had my child
arrived safe into the world, unmartyred in that precious part
of him — fanciful and extravagant as I may appear to the
world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic
bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our
characters and conducts — Heaven is witness! that in the
warmest transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my
child, I never once wished to crown his head with more glory
and honour than what George or Edward would have spread
around it.
But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has be-
fallen him — I must counteract and imdo it with the greatest
good.
He shall be christened Trismegistus, brother.
I wish it mav answer — replied m\' uncle Toby, rising up.
Chafte}- g
What a chapter of cliances, said my father, turning himself
about upon the first landing, as he and my uncle Toby were
going downstairs — what a long chapter of chances do the
events of this world lay open to us! Take pen and ink in
hand, brother Toby, and calculate it fairly — I know no more
of calculation than this balluster, said niv imcle Toby (strik-
ing short of it with his crutch, and hitting my father a des-
perate blow souse upon his shin-bone) — 'Twas a hundred to
one — cried my uncle Toby — I thought, quoth my father,
(rubbing his shin) you had known nothing of calculations,
CHAP, lo TRISTRAM SHANDY 251
brother Toby. 'Tis a mere chance, saiil my uncle Toby. —
Then it adds one to the chapter — replied my father.
The double success of my father's repartees tickled off the
pain of his shin at once — it was well it so fell out — (chance!
again) — or the world to this day had never known the sub-
ject of my father's calculation — to guess it — there was no
chance — What a lucky chapter of chances has this turned
out! for it has saved me the trouble of writing one express,
and in truth I have enough alreadv upon my hands without
it. — Have not I promised the world a chapter of knots? two
chapters upon the right and the wrong end of a woman? a
chapter upon whiskers? a chapter upon wishes? — a chapter
i)f noses? — No, I have done that — a chapter upon my uncle
Toby's modesty? to say nothing of a chapter upon chapters,
which I will finish before I slee}-) — by my great-grandfather's
whiskers, I shall never get half of 'em through this year.
Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother
Toby, said my father, and it will turn out a million to one,
that of all the parts of the body, the edge of the forceps
should have the ill luck just to fall upon and break down that
one part, which should break down the fortunes of our house
with it.
It might have been worse, replied my uncle Toby. — I
don't comprehend, said my father. — Suppose the hip had
presented, replied my uncle Toby, as Dr. Slop foreboded.
My father reflected half a minute — looked down —
touched the middle of his forehead slightly with his finger —
— True, said he.
Chaptir I o
Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in
going down one pair of stairs? for we arc got no farther yet
than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps
down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father
and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour, there may be as
252 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
many chapters as steps: — let that be as it will, Sir, I can no
more help it than my destiny: — A sudden impulse comes
across me — drop the curtain. Shandy — I drop it — Strike a
line here across the paper, Tristram — I strike it — and hey
for a new chapter.
The deuce of any other rule have I to govern myself by
in this affair — and if I had one — as I do all things out of
all rule — I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it
into the fire v/hen I had done — Am I warm? I am, and the
cause demands it — a pretty story! is a man to follow rules
— or rules to follow him?
Now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chap-
ters, which I promised to write before I went to sleep, I
thought it meet to ease my conscience entirely before I laid
down, by telling the world all I knew about the matter at
once: Is not this ten times better than to set out dogmatically
with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world a
story of a roasted horse — that chapters relieve the mind —
that they assist — or impose upon the imagination — and that
in a work of this dramatic cast they are as necessary as the
shifting of scenes — with fifty other cold conceits, enough to
extinguish the fire which roasted him? — O! but to under-
stand this, which is a puff at the fire of Diana's temple — you
must read Longinus — read away — if you are not a jot the
wiser by reading him the first time over — never fear — read
him again — Avicenna and Licetus read Aristotle's meta-
physics forty times through a-piece, and never understood a
single word. — But mark the consequence — Avicenna turned
out a desperate writer at all kinds of writing — for he wrote
books ^^ omni scribli i and for Licetus (Fortunio) though all
the world knows he was born a foetus,^ of no more than five
1 Ce Foetus n'etoit pas plus grand que la paume de la main ; mais
son pere I'ayant examine en qualite de Medecin, & ayant
trouve que c'ctoit quelque chose de plus qu'un Embryon, le fit
transporter tout vivant a Raqallo, ou il le fit voir a Jerome Bardi &
a d'autres Medecins du lieu. On trouva qu'il ne lui manquoit rien
CHAP. II TRISTRAM SHANDY 253
and a half inches in length, yet he grew to that astonishing
height in literature, as to write a book with a title as long
as himself — the learned know I mean his Gonopsychanthro-
pologia, upon the origin of the human soul.
So much for my chapter upon chapters, which I hold to
be the best chapter in my whole work; and take my word,
whoever reads it, is full as well employed, as in picking
straws.
Chapter 1 1
We shall bring all things to rights, said my father, setting
his foot upon the first step from the landing. — This Tris-
mcgistus, continued my father, drawing his leg back and
turning to my uncle Toby — was the greatest (Toby) of all
earthly beings — he was the greatest king — the greatest law-
giver — the greatest philosopher — and the greatest priest —
and engineer — said my uncle Toby.
— In course, said my father.
d'csscntiel a la vie ; & son pere pour fairc voir un essai de son experi-
ence, entreprit d'achever I'ouvrage de la Nature, & dc travailler a la
formation de I'Enfant avec le meme artifice que celui dont on se sert
pour faire ecdorre les Poulets en Egypte. II instruisit une Nourisse
de tout ce qu'elle avoit a faire, & ayant fait mcttre son tils dans un
pour proprement accommode, il reussit a I'elever & a lui faire prendre
ses accroisscmcns necessaires, par runiformite d'une chaleur etrangerc
mesuree exactement sur les degres d'un Thermometre, ou d'un autre
instrument equivalent. (Vide Mich. Giustinian ne gli Scritt. Liguri a
Cart. 2:3. 4S8.)
On auroit toujours ete tres satisfait dc I'industrie d'un pere si
experimente dans I'Art de la Generation, quand il n'auroit pu pro-
longer la vie a sons fils que pour quelques mois. ou pour peu
d'annees.
Mais quand on se represente que I'Enfant a vecu pres de quatre-
vingts ans, & qu'il a compose quatre-vingts Ouvrages differents tous
fruits d'une longue lecture — il faut convcnir que tout ce qui est
incroyable n'est pas toujours faux, & que la Vraisemblancc n'est pa*
toujours du cote de la Verite.
II n'avoit que dix neuf ans lorsqu'il composa Gonopsychanthropo-
loeia de Origine Animae humanae.
(Les Enfans celebres, revO & corriges par M. de la Monnoye de
r.\cademie Franqoise.)
254 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
Chapter 12
— ^iA.ND how does your mistress? cried my father, taking the
same step over again from the landing, and calling to Su-
sannah, whom he saw passing by the foot of the stairs with
a huge pincushion in her hand — how does your mistress?
As well, said Susannah, tripping by, but without looking up,
as can be expected. — What a fool am I! said my father,
drawing his leg back again — let things be as they will,
brother Toby, 'tis ever the precise answer — And how is the
child, pray? — No answer. And where is Dr. Slop? added
my father, raising his voice aloud, and looking over the bal-
lusters — Susannah was out of hearing.
Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father, cross-
ing the landing in order to set his back against the wall, whilst
he propounded it to my uncle Toby — of all the puzzling rid-
dles, said he, in a marriage state, — of which you may trust
mc, brother Toby, there are more asses' loads than all Job's
stock of asses could have carried — there is not one that has
more intricacies in it than this — that from the very moment
the mistress of the house is brought to bed, every female in
it, from my lady's gentlewoman down to the cinder-wench,
becomes an inch taller for it; and give themselves more airs
upon that single inch, than all the other inches put together.
I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that 'tis we who
sink an inch lower. — If I meet but a woman with child — I
do it. — 'Tis a heavy tax upon that half of our fellow-crea-
tures, brother Shandy, said my uncle Tob)- — 'Tis a piteous
burden upon 'em, continued he, shaking his head — Yes, yes,
'tis a painful thing — said my father, shaking his head too —
but certainly since shaking of heads came into fashion, never
did two heads shake together, in concert, from two such dif-
ferent springs.
God bless I 'em all — said my uncle Toby and my
Deuce take [ father, each to himself.
CHAi'. 13 J'RIS Ik AM SHANDY 255
Chapter 75
Holla! — you, chairman! — here's sixpence — do step into
that bookseller's shop, and call me a day-tall critic. I am
very willing to give any one of 'em a crown to help me with
his tackling, to get my father and my uncle Toby off the
stairs, and to put them to bed.
— 'Tis even high time; for except a short nap, which thev
both got whilst Trim was boring the jack-boots — and which,
by the bye, did my father no sort of good, upon the score of
the bad hinge — they have not else shut their eyes, since nine
hours before the time that Dr. Slop was led into the back
parlour in that dirty pickle by Obadiah.
Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this —
and to take up — Truce.
I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observa-
tion upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and
myself, just as things stand at present — an observation never
applicable before to any one biographical writer since the
creation of the world, but to myself — and I believe, will
never hold good to any other, until its final destruction —
and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must he
worth your worships attending to.
I am this month one whole year older than I was this time
twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into
the middle of my fourth volume * — and no farther than to
my first day's life — 'tis demonstrative that I have three hun-
dred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than
when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a com-
mon writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it
— on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back
— was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this — And
why not? — and the transactions and opinions of it to take up
as much description — And for what reason should they be
[^i.e. in the oripinal edition!
256 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
cut short? as at this rate I should just live 364 times faster
than I should write — It must follow, an' please your wor-
ships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write
— and consequently, the more your worships will have to
read.
Will this be good for your worships' eyes?
It will do well for mine; and, was it not that my Opinions
will be the death of me, I perceive I shall lead a fine life of
it out of this self -same life of mine; or, in other words, shall
lead a couple of fine lives together.
As for the proposal of twelve volumes a year, or a volume
a month, it no way alters my prospect — write as I will, and
rush as I may into the middle of things, as Horace advises
— I shall never overtake myself whipped and driven to the
last pinch; at the worst I shall have one day the start of my
pen — and one day is enough for two volumes — and two vol-
umes will be enough for one year. —
Heaven prosper the manufacturers of paper under this
propitious reign, which is now opened to us — as I trust its
providence will prosper every thing else in it that is taken in
hand. —
As for the propagation of Geese — I give myself no con-
cern — Nature is all bountiful — I shall never want tools to
work with.
— So then, friend! you have got my father and my uncle
Toby off the stairs, and seen them to bed? — And how did
you manage it? — You dropped a curtain at the stair-foot — I
thought you had no other way for it — Here's a crown for
your trouble.
Chapter 14
— Then reach me my breeches ofir the chair, said my father
to Susannah. — There is not a moment's time to dress you,
Sir, cried Susannah — the child is as black in the face as my
— as your what? said my father, for like all orators, he was
CHAP. 14 TRISTRAM SHANDY 257
a dear searcher into comparisons. — Bless mc, Sir, said Su-
sannah, the child's in a fit. — And whore's Mr. Yorick? —
Never where he should be, said Susannah, but his curate's in
the dressing-room, with the child upon his arm, waiting for
the name — and my mistress bid me run as fast as I could to
know, as Captain Shandy is the godfather, whether it should
not be called after him.
Were one sure, said m^• father to himself, scratching his
eye-brow, that the child was expiring, one might as well com-
pliment my brother Toby as not — and it would be a pity, in
such a case, to throw away so great a name as Trismegistus
upon him — but he may recover.
No, no, — said my father to Susannah, I'll get up —
There is no time, cried Susannah, the child's as black as my
shoe. Trismegistus, said my father — But stay — thou art a
leaky vessel, Susannah, added my father; canst thou carry
Trismegistus in thy head, the length of the gallery without
scattering: — Can I? cried Susannah, shutting the door in
a huff. — If she can, I'll be shot, said my father, bouncing
out of bed in the dark, and groping for his breeches.
Susannah ran with all speed along the gallery.
My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.
Susannah got the start, and kept it — 'Tis Tris — some-
thing, cried Susannah — There is no christian-name in the
world, said the curate, beginning with Tris — but Tristram.
Then 'tis Tristram-gistus, quoth Susannah.
— There is no gistus to it, noddle! — 'tis my own name, re-
plied the curate, dipping his hand, as he spoke, into the bason
— Tristram! said he, etc. etc. etc. etc., so Tristram was I
called, and Tristram shall I be to the day of my death.
My father followed Susannah, with his night-gown
across his arm, with nothing more than his breeches on,
fastened through haste with but a single button, and that but-
ton through haste thrust only half into the button-hole.
— She has not forgot the name? cried mv father, half
258 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
opening the door. — No, no, said the curate, with a tone of
intelligence, — And the child is better, cried Susannah. — And
how does your mistress? As well, said Susannah, as can be
expected. — Pish! said my father, the button of his breeches
slipping out of the button-hole — So that whether the inter-
jection was levelled at Susannah, or the button-hole —
whether Pish was an interjection of contempt or an inter-
jection of modesty, is a doubt, and must be a doubt till I
shall have time to write the three following favourite chap-
ters, that is, my chapter of chamber-maids, my chapter of
pishes, and my chapter of button-holes.
All the light I am able to give the reader at present is
this, that the moment my father cried Pish! he whisked him-
self about — and with his breeches held up by one hand, and
his night-gown thrown across the arm of the other, he
turned along the gallery to bed, something slower than he
came.
Chapter- 75
I WISH I could write a chapter upon sleep.
A fitter occasion could never have presented itself, than
what this moment offers, when all the curtains of the familv
are drawn — the candles put out — and no creature's eyes are
open but a single one, for the other has been shut these
twenty years, of my mother's nurse.
It is a fine subject!
And yet, as fine as it is, I would undertake to write a dozen
chapters upon button-holes, both quicker and with more
fame, than a single chapter upon this.
Button-holes! there is something lively in the very idea
of 'em — and trust me, when I get amongst 'em — You gentry
with great beards — look as grave as you will — I'll make
merry work with my button-holes — I shall have 'em all to
myself — 'tis a maiden subject — I shall run foul of no man's
wisdom or fine sayings in it.
CHAP. 15 TRISTRAM SHAM)^- 259
But for sleep — I know I shall make nothing of it before
I begin — I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place
— and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face upon
a bad matter, and tell the world — 'tis the refuge of the un-
fortunate — the enfranchisement of the prisoner — the downy
lap of the hopeless, the weary, and the broken-hearted; nor
could I set out with a lie in my mouth, by aflfirming, that of
all tiie soft and delicious functions of our nature, by which
the great Author of it, in his bounty, has been pleased to
recompense the sufferings wherewith his justice and his good
pleasure has wearied us — that this is the chief est (I know-
pleasures worth ten of it) ; or what a happiness it is to man,
when the anxieties and passions of the day are over, and he
lies down upon his back, that his soul shall be so seated within
him, that whichever way she turns her eyes, the heavens
shall look calm and sweet above her — no desire — or fear —
or doubt that troubles the air, nor any difficulty past, present,
or to come, that the imagination may not pass over without
offence, in that sweet secession.
"God's blessing," said Sancho Pani^a, "be upon the man
who first invented this self-same thing called sleep — it covers
a man all over like a cloak." Now there is more to me in
this, and it speaks warmer to my heart and affections, than
all the dissertations squeezed out of the heads of the learned
together upon the subject.
— Not that I altogether disapprove of what Montaigne
advances upon it — 'tis admirable in its way — (I quote by
memory).
The world enjoys other pleasures, says he, as they do that
of sleep, without tasting or feeling it as it slips and passes
by. — We should study and ruminate upon it, in order to ren-
der proper thanks to him who grants it to us. — For this end
I cause myself to be disturbed in my sleep, that I may the
better and more sensibly relish it. — And yet I see few, says
he again, who live with less sleep, when need requires; mv
26o TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
body is capable of a firm, but not of a violent and sudden
agitation — I evade of late all violent exercises — I am never
weary with walking — but from my youth I never liked to
ride upon pavements. I love to lie hard and alone, and even
without my wife — This last word may stagger the faith of
the world— but remember, "La Vraisemblancc (as Bayle
says in the aifair of Liceti) n'est pas toujours du Cote de la
Verite." And so much for sleep.
Chafter 1 6
If my wife will but venture him — brother Toby, Tris-
niegistus shall be dressed and brought down to us, whilst you
and I are getting our breakfasts together —
— Go, tell Susannah, Obadiah, to step here.
She is run up stairs, answered Obadiah, this very instant,
sobbing and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart
would break.
We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning
his head from Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle
Toby's face for some time — we shall have a devilish month
of it, brother Toby, said my father, setting his arms a-kimbo,
and shaking his head; fire, water, women, wind — brother
Toby! — 'Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby. —
That it is, cried my father — to have so many jarring ele-
ments breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of
a gentleman's house — Little boots it to the peace of a family,
brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves, and sit here
silent and unmoved — whilst such a storm is whistling over
our heads. —
And what's the matter, Susannah? They have called the
child Tristram — and my mistress is just got out of an hysteric
fit about it — No! — 'tis not my fault, said Susannah — I told
him it was Tristram-gistus.
— Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, said my father,
taking down his hat — but how different from the sallies and
CHAP. 17 TRISTRAM SHANDY 261
agitations of voice and members which a common reader
would imagine!
— For he spake in the sweetest modulations — and took
down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs, that
ever affliction harmonized and attuned together.
— Go to the bowling-green for Corporal Trim, said my
uncle Toby, speaking to Obadiah, as soon as my father left
the room.
Chapter ly
When the misfortune of my nose fell so heavily upon my
father's head; — the reader remembers that he walked in-
stantly up stairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; and
from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature,
he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and
descending movements from him, upon this misfortune of
my name; — no.
The different weight, dear Sir — nay even the different
package of two vexations of the same weight — makes a very
wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting
through with them. — It is not half an hour ago, when (in
the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil's writing for
daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished,
and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the
foul one.
Instantly I snatched off my wig, and threw it perpendicu-
larly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the room
— indeed I caught it as it fell — but there was an end of the
matter; nor do I think any thing else in Nature would have
given such immediate ease: She, dear Goddess, by an instan-
taneous impulse, in all provoking cases, determines us to a
sally of this or that member — or else she thrusts us into this
or that place, or posture of body, we know not why — But
mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries — the
most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides,
262 TRISTRAM SHANDY book iv
which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the
clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find our-
selves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's
works: so that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for
us in a way, which tho' we cannot reason upon it — yet we
find the good of it, may it please your reverences and your
worships — and that's enough for us.
Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for
his life — nor could he carry it up stairs like the other — he
walked composedly out 
