The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
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 employments 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, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an
asthma I got in scating against the wind in _Flanders;_—I have been 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.
C H A P. VI
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.
—You 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 me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning
betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in
fault, will terminate in friendship.—_O diem praeclarum!_—then nothing
which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious
in its telling. Therefore, 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 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.
C H A P. VII
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 word _world_,
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, inasmuch 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 having 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 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 herself, the
gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and having 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 join’d
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 practise, as his wife had given by institution,—he cheerfully 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 office, together with all its _rights, members, and
appurtenances 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
kind of instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty
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, 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?
C H A P. VIII
—_De gustibus non est disputandum;_—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 journies
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 opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed
this very night—’tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse
mounted by one half before tomorrow 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 that 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 my love to
my country has prescribed to him, and my zeal for his glory
wishes,—then, my Lord, I cease to be a philosopher, and in the first
transport of an honest impatience, I wish the HOBBY-HORSE, with all his
fraternity, at the Devil.
“My 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 humility, 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_,
TRISTRAM SHANDY.”
C H A P. IX
I SOLEMNLY declare to all mankind, that the above dedication was made
for no one Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate,—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, Viscount, 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 degree, 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 transparent,—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