The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
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 damn’d, 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been originally made for the peace and preservation of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
litigated point fairly hung up;——for instance, Whether _John o’Nokes_
his nose could stand in _Tom o’Stiles_ his face, without a trespass, or
not—rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty 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 stratagems
practicable therein,——such as feints,—forced
marches,—surprizes—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 hope
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, opake words, one before another, in a right
line, betwixt your own and your reader’s conception—when in all
likelihood, if you 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-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s
crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”—I am this
moment sitting upon one. 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 meaning of my whole
preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of
sun-beams.
I enter now 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 together, in order, as we say in
all such cases of duplicated embellishments——_to answer one another._
Now 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
work 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 farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you
would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it
would be ten times better without any knob at all?
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 priz’d—the
most calamitous 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 indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way
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 _cry_ 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 philosophised upon it—on
the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the
cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the rest.
This has been made the _Magna Charta_ of stupidity ever since——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
hereafter.
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 whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great
wigs or long beards, any farther than 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.
C H A P. XIV
EVERY day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have
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 produce: his
rhetorick and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.—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 to sharpen his sensibilities—to multiply
his pains, and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them!—Poor
unhappy creature, that he should do so!——Are not the necessary 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 within ten miles of _Shandy Hall_——the
parlour door hinge shall be mended this reign.
C H A P. XV
WHEN Corporal _Trim_ had brought his two mortars to bear, he was
delighted with his handy-work above 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 mentioning the affair of
_hinges_, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it
is this.
Had the parlour door opened and turn’d 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 either 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 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 imagination, and so incessantly
stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to
rob him, as he often declared, 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