The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
replied he,—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.
Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, _Obadiah?_——quoth my
father;——my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves 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 my father, and do you go directly
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 very 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 misfortune 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, peradventure, have begot out of
her hereafter.
Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle _Toby_, my sister does it to save the
expence:—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 to let a man come so near her ****. I 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 at the
period’s end—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of
my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that
ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the
_Aposiopesis._——Just Heaven! how does the _Poco piu_ 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 cætera_,—give the true swell, which gives the true
pleasure!—O my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of your language; 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 _Cover’d 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 critically, happened through accident
or anger, will be seen in due time.
C H A P. XXXII
THO’ my father was a good natural philosopher,—yet he was something of
a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe
snapp’d short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have
taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the 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 manner 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 astonishment.—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 any thing 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 something that is to come, he looketh up towards
the heavens.”
My uncle _Toby_, I suppose, thought of neither, for he look’d
horizontally.—Right end! quoth my uncle _Toby_, 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 chimney-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 to think, continued my uncle
_Toby_ (keeping his eyes 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 confusion and distresses of our
domestick misadventures, which are 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.
C H A P. XXXIII
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 the emergency too, both to go and
come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce
had time to get on his boots.
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to
take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt 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 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 hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes 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 very 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,——by
acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore 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.
C H A P. XXXIV
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 out-lines 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 vertebræ of a little diminutive 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 off, posting in a narrow lane
directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,—splashing and plunging
like a devil thro’ thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a
phænomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it,
round its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr.
_Slop_ in his situation, than the _worst_ of _Whiston_’s comets?—To say
nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of _Obadiah_ and the coach-horse.—In
my idea, the vortex alone of ’em 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
sudden 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 nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a
rencounter,—so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as
Dr. _Slop_ was.
What could Dr. _Slop_ do?——he crossed himself +—Pugh!—but the doctor,