The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the siege of _Limerick_ was raised, upon the very account you mention.——Now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother _Toby?_ cried my father, mentally.——By Heaven! continued he, communing still with himself, it would puzzle an _Œdipus_ to bring it in point.—— I believe, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and cinnamon with which I plyed your honour off;—And the geneva, _Trim_, added my uncle _Toby_, which did us more good than all——I verily believe, continued the corporal, we had both, an’ please your honour, left our lives in the trenches, and been buried in them too.——The noblest grave, corporal! cried my uncle _Toby_, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier could wish to lie down in.——But a pitiful death for him! an’ please your honour, replied the corporal. All this was as much _Arabick_ to my father, as the rites of the _Colchi_ and _Troglodites_ had been before to my uncle _Toby;_ my father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile. My uncle _Toby_, turning to _Yorick_, resumed the case at _Limerick_, more intelligibly than he had begun it,—and so settled the point for my father at once. C H A P. XXXVIII IT was undoubtedly, said my uncle _Toby_, a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux was upon us in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture, must, as I conceive it, inevitably have got the better.——My father drew in his lungs top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth again, as slowly as he possibly could.—— ——It was Heaven’s mercy to us, continued my uncle _Toby_, which put it into the corporal’s head to maintain that due contention betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was.——Upon my honour, added my uncle _Toby_, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother _Shandy_, twenty toises.—If there was no firing, said _Yorick._ Well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word——Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy—————————————_Yorick_, foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father’s breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.——Prithee, _Trim_, said _Yorick_, without staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture? With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the corporal, making a bow to my uncle _Toby_—Speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle _Toby._—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my slave,—added my uncle _Toby_, turning to my father.—— The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus. C H A P. XXXIX JUST as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled Dr. _Slop._—’Tis not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.—— Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and what has this whelp of mine to say to the matter? Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system which Dr. _Slop_ had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—He sat down. Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, in a manner which could not go unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’Twill end in a _phimosis_, replied Dr. _Slop._ I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle _Toby_—returning his pipe into his mouth.——Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical lecture.—The corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr. _Slop_, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words. C H A P. XL THE city of _Limerick_, the siege of which was begun under his majesty king _William_ himself, the year after I went into the army—lies, an’ please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.—’Tis quite surrounded, said my uncle _Toby_, with the _Shannon_, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified places in _Ireland._—— I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. _Slop_, of beginning a medical lecture.—’Tis all true, answered _Trim._—Then I wish the faculty would follow the cut of it, said _Yorick._—’Tis all cut through, an’ please your reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a puddle,—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water;—nor was that enough, for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.—— And what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal _Trim_, cried my father, from all these premises? I infer, an’ please your worship, replied _Trim_, that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but ditch-water—and that the radical heat, of those who can go to the expence of it, is burnt brandy,—the radical heat and moisture of a private man, an’ please your honour, is nothing but ditch-water—and a dram of geneva——and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the vapours—we know not what it is to fear death. I am at a loss, Captain _Shandy_, quoth Doctor _Slop_, to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology or divinity.—_Slop_ had not forgot _Trim_’s comment upon the sermon.— It is but an hour ago, replied _Yorick_, since the corporal was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour.—— The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor _Slop_, turning to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being—as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally in my opinion by _consubstantials, impriments_, and _occludents._——Now this poor fellow, continued Dr. _Slop_, pointing to the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this nice point.——That he has,—said my father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—I’m sure of it—quoth _Yorick._—— C H A P. XLI DOCTOR _Slop_ being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the _Tristra-pædia._——Come! cheer up, my lads; I’ll shew you land——for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelve-month.—Huzza!— C H A P. XLII ——FIVE years with a bib under his chin; Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to _Malachi;_ A year and a half in learning to write his own name; Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at Greek and Latin; Four years at his _probations_ and his _negations_—the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great _Julius Scaliger_ within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and _Peter Damianus_, lord bishop of _Ostia_, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And _Baldus_ himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when _Eudamidas_, the son of _Archidamas_, heard _Xenocrates_ at seventy-five disputing about _wisdom_, that he asked gravely,—_If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time will he have to make use of it?_ _Yorick_ listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost atoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when you imitate him. I am convinced, _Yorick_, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a North-west passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.——But, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, _Yorick_, has not a parent to point it out. ——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the _auxiliary verbs_, Mr. _Yorick._ Had _Yorick_ trod upon _Virgil_ ’s snake, he could not have looked more surprised.—I am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and I reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befel the republic of letters, That those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas, in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done——So that, except _Raymond Lullius_, and the elder _Pelegrini_, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, _pro_ and _con_, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him.—I should be glad, said _Yorick_, interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father. The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and not the better;——but be that as it may,—when the mind has done that with it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at rest,—until a second idea enters;—and so on. Now the use of the _Auxiliaries_ is, at once to set the soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions. You excite my curiosity greatly, said _Yorick._ For my own part, quoth my uncle _Toby_, I have given it up.——The _Danes_, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the left at the siege of _Limerick_, were all auxiliaries.——And very good ones, said my uncle _Toby._—But the auxiliaries, _Trim_, my brother is talking about,—I conceive to be different things.——