The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

present, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to ******——the application of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so _à propos_, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the _Shandy_ family, as long as the _Shandy_ family had a name. C H A P. VII LET us go back to the ******——in the last chapter. It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at _Athens_ and _Rome_, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you _in petto_, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot—but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long as _Tully_’s second _Philippick_—it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.—And then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldly 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 it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders—Oh Sirs! it has done wonders—It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles——and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, 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, and the disuse of _trunk-hose._—We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. C H A P. VIII 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, when 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?_” C H A P. IX —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 crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. _Slop_——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm.—I did so, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward—or possibly—’Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that the 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 turn’d 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_. C H A P. X ——AND pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?——’Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. _Slop_ (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ——What the possibility was, Dr. _Slop_ whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle _Toby_.——There is no such danger, continued he, with the head.—No, in truth quoth my father—but when your possibility has taken place at the hip—you may as well take off the head too. ——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis enough Dr. _Slop_ understood it;——so taking the green baize bag in his hand, with the help of _Obadiah_’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door——and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments. C H A P. XI 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 happen’d_,”—yet he knew very well how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind to give my uncle _Toby_ a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of _duration and its simple modes_, in order to shew 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 my uncle _Toby_, to the succession of our ideas. My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, 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 snatch’d out of his hands by my uncle _Toby_, who (honest man!) generally took every thing as it happened;——and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking;—the ideas of time and space—or how we came by those ideas—or of what stuff they were made——or whether they were born with us—or we 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 disputes 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 surprized 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 satisfactory account how we came by it.——What is that to any body? quoth my uncle _Toby_.[7] _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 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 preconceived_——You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle _Toby_. ——’Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations 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 _Toby_——A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my father—which follow and succeed 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 that subject, said my father. [7] Vide Locke. C H A P. XII ——WHAT a conjuncture was here lost!——My father in one of his best explanatory moods—in eager pursuit of a metaphysical 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 _Cervantes!_——my father and my uncle _Toby_’s discourse upon TIME and ETERNITY——was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my father’s humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the _Ontologic Treasury_ of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to restore to it again. C H A P. XIII THO’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse—yet he could not get my 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