The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
_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 _Bruscambille_
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 inamorato—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 cool’d—his affections
became divided——he got hold of _Prignitz_—purchased _Scroderus, 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.
C H A P. XXIX
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 _Cocles_, written by the chaste pen of the great and
venerable _Erasmus_, 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 on—let me beg of you, like an unback’d 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
unscholar-like 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.
Marble image
Marble image
C H A P. XXX
“_NIHIL me paenitet hujus nasi_,” quoth _Pamphagus_;——that is—“My nose
has been the making of me.”——“_Nec est cur poeniteat_,” replies
_Cocles_; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”
The doctrine, you see, was laid down by _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 speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of
argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow’d upon man on purpose to
investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.——My father pish’d
and pugh’d at first most terribly——’tis worth something to have a good
name. As the dialogue was of _Erasmus_, 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 could 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 mystick and the allegorick
sense——here is some room to turn a man’s self in, brother.
My father read on.——
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, _ad ixcitandum focum_ (to
stir up the fire.)
Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and
had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had
done the seeds of all other knowledge——so that he had got out his
penknife, and was trying experiments 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
meaning.—You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all
conscience.——Pshaw! cried my father, scratching on——I 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
marr’d a word, replied my uncle _Toby_.—My father put on his
spectacles——bit his lip——and tore out the leaf in a passion.
C H A P. XXXI
O _SLAWKENBERGIUS!_ thou faithful analyzer of my _Disgrazias_—thou sad
foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on 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 _Slawkenbergius_’s
sensorium——so that _Slawkenbergius_ should know whose finger touch’d
the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as _Hafen
Slawkenbergius_ has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and
ten years——we can only raise conjectures.
_Slawkenbergius_ was play’d 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 have come first——but the bookbinder 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 cooly, 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 _Slawkenbergius_’s book is in _Latin_, and not a
little prolix in this passage—ever since I understood, quoth
_Slawkenbergius_, 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 _Slawkenbergius_, felt a strong
impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up
myself to this undertaking.
And to do justice to _Slawkenbergius_, 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-nich’d_ as a prototype for all writers, of
voluminous works at least, to model their books by——for he has 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
_Slawkenbergius_ his book may properly be considered, not only as a
model—but as a thorough-stitched DIGEST and regular institute 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 collecting, wrote either,
plump upon noses——or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as
_Prignitz_, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite
learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like 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 crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment can
be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;—the
difference 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 cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts
and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d 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
wearer’s fancy.
It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended 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 _Scroderus_ went on, maintaining his thesis.
My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he
should take in this affair; when _Ambrose Paræus_ 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 mention it only to
shew the learned, I know the fact myself——
That this _Ambrose Paræus_ 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
physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any
one who had ever taken them in hand.
Now _Ambrose Paræus_ 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