The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

brother _Toby_, said my father, changing his tone——but the damp of the coach-lining about my loins, may give me the sciatica again, as it did _December, January_, and _February_ last winter—so if you please you shall ride my wife’s pad——and as you are to preach, _Yorick_, you had better make the best of your way before——and leave me to take care of my brother _Toby_, and to follow at our own rates. Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description of this cavalcade, in which Corporal _Trim_ and _Obadiah_, upon two coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow as a patrole——whilst my uncle _Toby_, in his laced regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep roads and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning and arms, as each could get the start. —But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so much above the stile and manner of any thing else I have been able to paint in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without depreciating every other scene; and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, (whether of good or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from whence the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results. For my own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little about it—but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it. —This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well——(as _Yorick_ told my uncle _Toby_ one night) by siege.——My uncle _Toby_ looked brisk at the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it. I’m to preach at court next Sunday, said _Homenas_——run over my notes——so I humm’d over doctor _Homenas_’s notes—the modulation’s very well—’twill do, _Homenas_, if it holds on at this rate——so on I humm’d——and a tolerable tune I thought it was; and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how spiritless and jejune it was, but that all of a sudden, up started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heavenly,—it carried my soul up with it into the other world; now had I (as _Montaigne_ complained in a parallel accident)—had I found the declivity easy, or the ascent accessible——certes I had been outwitted.——Your notes, _Homenas_, I should have said, are good notes;——but it was so perpendicular a precipice——so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first note I humm’d I found myself flying into the other world, and from thence discovered the vale from whence I came, so deep, so low, and dismal, that I shall never have the heart to descend into it again. =>A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size—take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.—And so much for tearing out of chapters. C H A P. LXI ——SEE if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to light their pipes!——’Tis abominable, answered _Didius;_ it should not go unnoticed, said doctor _Kysarcius_—— => he was of the _Kysarcii_ of the Low Countries. Methinks, said _Didius_, half rising from his chair, in order to remove a bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him and _Yorick_——you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit upon a more proper place, Mr. _Yorick_—or at least upon a more proper occasion to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about: If the sermon is of no better worth than to light pipes with——’twas certainly, Sir, not good enough to be preached before so learned a body; and if ’twas good enough to be preached before so learned a body——’twas certainly Sir, too good to light their pipes with afterwards. ——I have got him fast hung up, quoth _Didius_ to himself, upon one of the two horns of my dilemma——let him get off as he can. I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this sermon, quoth _Yorick_, upon this occasion——that I declare, _Didius_, I would suffer martyrdom—and if it was possible my horse with me, a thousand times over, before I would sit down and make such another: I was delivered of it at the wrong end of me——it came from my head instead of my heart——and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the writing and preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it, in this manner—To preach, to shew the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit—to parade in the eyes of the vulgar with the beggarly accounts of a little learning, tinsel’d over with a few words which glitter, but convey little light and less warmth——is a dishonest use of the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our hands—’Tis not preaching the gospel—but ourselves——For my own part, continued _Yorick_, I had rather direct five words point-blank to the heart.— As _Yorick_ pronounced the word _point-blank_, my uncle _Toby_ rose up to say something upon projectiles——when a single word and no more uttered from the opposite side of the table drew every one’s ears towards it—a word of all others in the dictionary the last in that place to be expected—a word I am ashamed to write—yet must be written——must be read—illegal—uncanonical—guess ten thousand guesses, multiplied into themselves—rack—torture your invention for ever, you’re where you was——In short, I’ll tell it in the next chapter. C H A P. LXII ZOUNDS!————————————————————————Z——ds! cried _Phutatorius_, partly to himself——and yet high enough to be heard—and what seemed odd, ’twas uttered in a construction of look, and in a tone of voice, somewhat between that of a man in amazement and one in bodily pain. One or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the expression and mixture of the two tones as plainly as a _third_ or a _fifth_, or any other chord in musick—were the most puzzled and perplexed with it—the concord was good in itself—but then ’twas quite out of the key, and no way applicable to the subject started;——so that with all their knowledge, they could not tell what in the world to make of it. Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their ears to the plain import of the _word_, imagined that _Phutatorius_, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of _Didius_’s hands, in order to bemaul _Yorick_ to some purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable Z——ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle _Toby_’s good-nature felt a pang for what _Yorick_ was about to undergo. But seeing _Phutatorius_ stop short, without any attempt or desire to go on—a third party began to suppose, that it was no more than an involuntary respiration, casually forming itself into the shape of a twelve-penny oath—without the sin or substance of one. Others, and especially one or two who sat next him, looked upon it on the contrary as a real and substantial oath, propensly formed against _Yorick_, to whom he was known to bear no good liking—which said oath, as my father philosophized upon it, actually lay fretting and fuming at that very time in the upper regions of _Phutatorius_’s purtenance; and so was naturally, and according to the due course of things, first squeezed out by the sudden influx of blood which was driven into the right ventricle of _Phutatorius_’s heart, by the stroke of surprize which so strange a theory of preaching had excited. How finely we argue upon mistaken facts! There was not a soul busied in all these various reasonings upon the monosyllable which _Phutatorius_ uttered—who did not take this for granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely, that _Phutatorius_’s mind was intent upon the subject of debate which was arising between _Didius_ and _Yorick;_ and indeed as he looked first towards the one and then towards the other, with the air of a man listening to what was going forwards—who would not have thought the same? But the truth was, that _Phutatorius_ knew not one word or one syllable of what was passing—but his whole thoughts and attention were taken up with a transaction which was going forwards at that very instant within the precincts of his own _Galligaskins_, and in a part of them, where of all others he stood most interested to watch accidents: So that notwithstanding he looked with all the attention in the world, and had gradually skrewed up every nerve and muscle in his face, to the utmost pitch the instrument would bear, in order, as it was thought, to give a sharp reply to _Yorick_, who sat over-against him——yet, I say, was _Yorick_ never once in any one domicile of _Phutatorius_’s brain——but the true cause of his exclamation lay at least a yard below. This I will endeavour to explain to you with all imaginable decency. You must be informed then, that _Gastripheres_, who had taken a turn into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how things went on—observing a wicker-basket of fine chesnuts standing upon the dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of them might be roasted and sent in, as soon as dinner was over— _Gastripheres_ inforcing his orders about them, that _Didius_, but _Phutatorius_ especially, were particularly fond of ’em. About two minutes before the time that my uncle _Toby_ interrupted _Yorick_’s harangue—_Gastripheres_’s chesnuts were brought in—and as _Phutatorius_’s fondness for ’em was uppermost in the waiter’s head, he laid them directly before _Phutatorius_, wrapt up hot in a clean damask napkin. Now whether it was physically impossible, with half a dozen hands all thrust into the napkin at a time—but that some one chesnut, of more life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in motion—it so fell out, however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table; and as _Phutatorius_ sat straddling under——it fell perpendicularly into that particular aperture of _Phutatorius_’s breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all _Johnson_’s dictionary——let it suffice to say——it was that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of decorum do strictly require, like the temple of _Janus_ (in peace at least) to be universally shut up. The neglect of this punctilio in _Phutatorius_ (which by-the-bye should be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to this accident.—— Accident I call it, in compliance to a received mode of speaking——but in no opposition to the opinion either of _Acrites_ or _Mythogeras_ in this matter; I know they were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of it—and are so to this hour, That there was nothing of accident in the whole event——but that the chesnut’s taking that particular course, and in a manner of its own accord—and then falling with all its heat directly into that one particular place, and no other——was a real judgment upon _Phutatorius_ for that filthy and obscene treatise _de Concubinis retinendis_, which _Phutatorius_ had published about twenty years ago——and was that identical week going to give the world a second edition of. It is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy——much undoubtedly may be wrote on both sides of the question—all that concerns me as an historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to the reader, that the hiatus in _Phutatorius_’s breeches was sufficiently wide to receive the chesnut;——and that the chesnut, somehow or other, did fall perpendicularly, and piping hot into it, without _Phutatorius_’s perceiving it, or any one else at that time. The genial warmth which the chesnut imparted, was not undelectable for