The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse’s breast——as the flatness and shortness of _puisne_ noses was to the firmness and elastic repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively—which, tho’ happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive _ad mensuram suam legitimam_;——but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother’s breast—by sinking into it, quoth _Paraeus_, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up, refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever. I have but two things to observe of _Paraeus_; first, That he proves and explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression:—for which may his soul for ever rest in peace! And, secondly, that besides the systems of _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_, which _Ambrose Paræus_ his hypothesis effectually overthrew—it overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and every thing in it, except my uncle _Toby_, quite upside down. Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-door. My mother, you must know———but I have fifty things more necessary to let you know first—I have a hundred difficulties which I have promised to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domestick misadventures crowding in upon me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another. A cow broke in (tomorrow morning) to my uncle _Toby_’s fortifications, and eat up two rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced his horn-work and covered way.——_Trim_ insists upon being tried by a court-martial—the cow to be shot—_Slop_ to be _crucifix’d_—myself to be _tristram’d_ and at my very baptism made a martyr of;——poor unhappy devils that we all are!——I want swaddling——but there is no time to be lost in exclamations——I have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle _Toby_ in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d already.——Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in—this certainly is the greatest, for I have _Hafen Slawkenbergius_’s folio, Sir, to finish——a dialogue between my father and my uncle _Toby_, upon the solution of _Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Panocrates_, and _Grangousier_ to relate—a tale out of _Slawkenbergius_ to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all;——such a head!—would to Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it! C H A P. XXXII THERE was not any one scene more entertaining in our family—and to do it justice in this point;——and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the world concerning this one article the more solemn——that I believe in my soul (unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of all things never made or put a family together (in that period at least of it which I have sat down to write the story of)——where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the SHANDY FAMILY. Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours——than what frequently arose out of this self-same chapter of long noses——especially when my father’s imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle _Toby_’s too. My uncle _Toby_ would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_’s solutions into it. Whether they were above my uncle _Toby_’s reason——or contrary to it——or that his brain was like _damp_ timber, and no spark could possibly take hold——or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_’s doctrines——I say not—let schoolmen—scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it among themselves—— ’Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle _Toby_, and render out of _Slawkenbergius_’s _Latin_, of which, as he was no great master, his translation was not always of the purest——and generally least so where ’twas most wanted.—This naturally open’d a door to a second misfortune;——that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle _Toby_’s eyes——my father’s ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle _Toby_’s——neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of my father’s lecture. C H A P. XXXIII THE gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms——I mean in man—for in superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits——’tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by INTUITION;—and beings inferior, as your worships all know——syllogize by their noses: though there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too:——but that’s neither here nor there—— The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or—the great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the _medius terminus_); just as a man, as _Locke_ well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by _juxta-position._ Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle _Toby_’s deportment—what great attention he gave to every word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it——surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb——then fore-right——then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and fore-shortenings——he would have concluded my uncle _Toby_ had got hold of the _medius terminus_, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. This, by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted——his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures—was to enable my uncle _Toby_ not to _discuss_——but _comprehend_—to _hold_ the grains and scruples of learning——not to _weigh_ them.——My uncle _Toby_, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other. C H A P. XXXIV ’TIS a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours painful translation of _Slawkenbergius_——’tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spoke——that truth, brother _Toby_, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.—— Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle _Toby_’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of _Prignitz_ to him——having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;——his body might as well have taken a turn there too—so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the _medius terminus_——my uncle _Toby_ was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ from the _Latin_ tongue into the _Cherokee._ But the word _siege_, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle _Toby_’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch—he open’d his ears——and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit—my father with great pleasure began his sentence again——changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it. ’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother _Toby_——considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.——Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle _Toby_. ——My father thrust back his chair——rose up—put on his hat——took four long strides to the door——jerked it open——thrust his head half way out——shut the door again——took no notice of the bad hinge—returned to the table—pluck’d my mother’s thread-paper out of _Slawkenbergius_’s book——went hastily to his bureau—walked slowly back—twisted my mother’s thread-paper about his thumb—unbutton’d his waistcoat—threw my mother’s thread-paper into the fire——bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill’d his mouth with bran—confounded it;—but mark!—the oath of confusion was levell’d at my uncle _Toby_’s brain—which was e’en confused enough already——the curse came charged only with the bran—the bran, may it please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball. ’Twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on’t; and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my father’s mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle _Toby_’s questions.——Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many different places all at one time—he could not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds——or started half so much, as with one single _quære_ of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career. ’Twas all one to my uncle _Toby_——he smoked his pipe on with unvaried composure——his heart never intended offence to his brother—and as his head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay——he always gave my father the credit of cooling by himself.——He was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present case. By all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and taking the oath out of _Ernulphus_’s digest of curses——(though to do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. _Slop_ in the affair of _Ernulphus_) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth)——By all that’s good and great! brother _Toby_, said my father, if it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do—you would put a man beside all temper.——Why, by the _solutions_ of noses, of which I was telling you, I meant, as you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different kinds of knowledge have given the world of the causes of short and long noses.——There is no cause but one, replied my uncle _Toby_——why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, but because that God pleases to have it so.——That is _Grangousier_’s