The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

man, _Trim_, replied my uncle _Toby_; nor can I see how a fellow of thy light heart can suffer, but from the distress of poverty in thy old age—when thou art passed all services, _Trim_—and hast outlived thy friends.——An’ please your honour, never fear, replied _Trim_, chearily.——But I would have thee never fear, _Trim_, replied my uncle _Toby_, and therefore, continued my uncle _Toby_, throwing down his crutch, and getting up upon his legs as he uttered the word _therefore_—in recompence, _Trim_, of thy long fidelity to me, and that goodness of thy heart I have had such proofs of—whilst thy master is worth a shilling——thou shalt never ask elsewhere, _Trim_, for a penny. _Trim_ attempted to thank my uncle _Toby_—but had not power——tears trickled down his cheeks faster than he could wipe them off—He laid his hands upon his breast——made a bow to the ground, and shut the door. ——I have left _Trim_ my bowling-green, cried my uncle _Toby_——My father smiled.——I have left him moreover a pension, continued my uncle _Toby_.——My father looked grave. C H A P. XL IS this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of PENSIONS and GRENADIERS? C H A P. XLI WHEN my uncle _Toby_ first mentioned the grenadier, my father, I said, fell down with his nose flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my uncle _Toby_ had shot him; but it was not added that every other limb and member of my father instantly relapsed with his nose into the same precise attitude in which he lay first described; so that when corporal _Trim_ left the room, and my father found himself disposed to rise off the bed—he had all the little preparatory movements to run over again, before he could do it. Attitudes are nothing, madam——’tis the transition from one attitude to another——like the preparation and resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in all. For which reason my father played the same jig over again with his toe upon the floor——pushed the chamber-pot still a little farther within the valance—gave a hem—raised himself up upon his elbow—and was just beginning to address himself to my uncle _Toby_—when recollecting the unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that attitude——he got upon his legs, and in making the third turn across the room, he stopped short before my uncle _Toby_; and laying the three first fingers of his right-hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a little, he addressed himself to my uncle _Toby_ as follows: C H A P. XLII WHEN I reflect, brother _Toby_, upon MAN; and take a view of that dark side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of trouble—when I consider, brother _Toby_, how oft we eat the bread of affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our inheritance——I was born to nothing, quoth my uncle _Toby_, interrupting my father—but my commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle leave you a hundred and twenty pounds a year?——What could I have done without it? replied my uncle _Toby_——That’s another concern, said my father testily—But I say _Toby_, when one runs over the catalogue of all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful _Items_ with which the heart of man is overcharged, ’tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the impositions laid upon our nature.——’Tis by the assistance of Almighty God, cried my uncle _Toby_, looking up, and pressing the palms of his hands close together——’tis not from our own strength, brother _Shandy_——a centinel in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to stand it out against a detachment of fifty men.——We are upheld by the grace and the assistance of the best of Beings. ——That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,——But give me leave to lead you, brother _Toby_, a little deeper into the mystery. With all my heart, replied my uncle _Toby_. My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which _Socrates_ is so finely painted by _Raffael_ in his school of _Athens_; which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the reasoning of _Socrates_ is expressed by it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is reclaiming——“_You grant me_ this——and this: and this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in course.” So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle _Toby_ as he sat in his old fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs——O _Garrick!_——what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly would I write such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and secure my own behind it. C H A P. XLIII THOUGH man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time ’tis of so slight a frame, and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day——was it not, brother _Toby_, that there is a secret spring within us.—Which spring, said my uncle _Toby_, I take to be Religion.—Will that set my child’s nose on? cried my father, letting go his finger, and striking one hand against the other.——It makes every thing straight for us, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Figuratively speaking, dear _Toby_, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which, like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can’t prevent the shock——at least it imposes upon our sense of it. Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, as he was coming closer to the point——had my child arrived safe into the world, unmartyr’d in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant as I may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, I never once wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than what GEORGE or EDWARD would have spread around it. But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him——I must counteract and undo it with the greatest good. He shall be christened _Trismegistus_, brother. I wish it may answer——replied my uncle _Toby_, rising up. C H A P. XLIV WHAT a chapter of chances, said my father, turning himself about upon the first landing, as he and my uncle _Toby_ were going down stairs, what a long chapter of chances do the events of this world lay open to us! Take pen and ink in hand, brother _Toby_, and calculate it fairly——I know no more of calculation than this balluster, said my uncle _Toby_ (striking short of it with his crutch, and hitting my father a desperate blow souse upon his shin-bone)——’Twas a hundred to one—cried my uncle _Toby_—I thought, quoth my father, (rubbing his shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother _Toby_. a mere chance, said my uncle _Toby_.——Then it adds one to the chapter——replied my father. The double success of my father’s repartees tickled off the pain of his shin at once—it was well it so fell out—(chance! again)—or the world to this day had never known the subject of my father’s calculation——to guess it—there was no chance——What a lucky chapter of chances has this turned out! for it has saved me the trouble of writing one express, and in truth I have enough already upon my hands without it.—Have not I promised the world a chapter of knots? two chapters upon the right and the wrong end of a woman? a chapter upon whiskers? a chapter upon wishes?——a chapter of noses?—No, I have done that—a chapter upon my uncle _Toby_’s modesty? to say nothing of a chapter upon chapters, which I will finish before I sleep—by my great grandfather’s whiskers, I shall never get half of ’em through this year. Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother _Toby_, said my father, and it will turn out a million to one, that of all the parts of the body, the edge of the forceps should have the ill luck just to fall upon and break down that one part, which should break down the fortunes of our house with it. It might have been worse, replied my uncle _Toby_.——I don’t comprehend, said my father.——Suppose the hip had presented, replied my uncle _Toby_, as Dr. _Slop_ foreboded. My father reflected half a minute—looked down——touched the middle of his forehead slightly with his finger—— —True, said he. C H A P. XLV IS it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father and my uncle _Toby_ are in a talking humour, there may be as many chapters as steps:——let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny:—A sudden impulse comes across me——drop the curtain, _Shandy_——I drop it—Strike a line here across the paper, _Tristram_—I strike it—and hey for a new chapter. The deuce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this affair—and if I had one—as I do all things out of all rule—I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when I had done—Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands it——a pretty story! is a man to follow rules——or rules to follow him? Now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chapters, which I promised to write before I went to sleep, I thought it meet to ease my conscience entirely before I laid down, by telling the world all I knew about the matter at once: Is not this ten times better than to set out dogmatically with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world a story of a roasted horse——that chapters relieve the mind—that they assist—or impose upon the imagination—and that in a work of this dramatic cast they are as necessary as the shifting of scenes——with fifty other cold conceits, enough to extinguish the fire which roasted him?—O! but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of _Diana_’s temple—you must read _Longinus_—read away—if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time over—never fear—read him again—_Avicenna_ and _Licetus_ read _Aristotle_’s metaphysicks forty times through a-piece, and never understood a single word.—But mark the consequence—_Avicenna_ turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of writing—for he wrote books _de omni scribili_; and for _Licetus (Fortunio)_ though all the world knows he was born a fœtus,[13] of no more than five inches and a half in length, yet he grew to that astonishing height in literature, as to write a book with a title as long as himself——the learned know I mean his _Gonopsychanthropologia_, upon the origin of the human soul. So much for my chapter upon chapters, which I hold to be the best chapter in my whole work; and take my word, whoever reads it, is full as well employed, as in picking straws. [13] _Ce Fœtus_ n’étoit pas plus grand que la paume de la main; mais son pere l’ayant éxaminé en qualité de Médecin, & ayant trouvé que c’etoit quelque chose de plus qu’un Embryon, le fit transporter tout vivant à Rapallo, ou il le fit voir à Jerôme Bardi & à d’autres Médecins du lieu. On trouva qu’il ne lui manquoit rien d’essentiel à la vie; & son pere pour faire voir un essai de son experience, entreprit d’achever l’ouvrage de la Nature, & de travailler à la formation de l’Enfant avec le même artifice que celui dont on se sert