The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

chronicle down the time, the place, and the occasion of its being preached: to this, he was ever wont to add some short comment or stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its credit:—For instance, _This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation—I don’t like it at all;—Though I own there is a world of_ WATER-LANDISH _knowledge in it;—but ’tis all tritical, and most tritically put together.—This is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my head when I made it?_ ——N.B. _The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any sermon,—and of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.——_ ——_For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest part of it. Doctor_ Paidagunes _found me out. => Set a thief to catch a thief.——_ On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and upon a couple _Moderato;_ by which, as far as one may gather from _Altieri’s Italian_ dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of _Yorick_’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked _Moderato_, and the half dozen of _So, so_, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing. There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is this, that the _moderato_’s are five times better than the _so, so_’s;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which reason, whene’er _Yorick’s dramatic_ sermons are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the _so, so_’s, I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two _moderato_’s without any sort of scruple. What _Yorick_ could mean by the words _lentamente,—tenutè,—grave_,—and sometimes _adagio_,—as applied to _theological_ compositions, and with which he has characterised some of these sermons, I dare not venture to guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding _a l’octava alta!_ upon one;——_Con strepito_ upon the back of another;——_Scicilliana_ upon a third;——_Alla capella_ upon a fourth;——_Con l’arco_ upon this;——_Senza l’arco_ upon that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt, but that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters upon his fancy,—whatever they may do upon that of others. Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor _Le Fever_, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——Whether these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote—— Bravo! ——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small _Italian_ hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not,—so that from the _manner of it_, it stands half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing,—’tis more like a _ritratto_ of the shadow of vanity, than of VANITY herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer; than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world. With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do no service to _Yorick_’s character as a modest man;—but all men have their failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is this; that the word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner, BRAVO——as if he had retracted, or was ashamed of the opinion he had once entertained of it. These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text;—but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in,—he took a large circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the pulpit allowed.—These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue;—tell me then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be printed together? C H A P. lV When my uncle _Toby_ had turned every thing into money, and settled all accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and _Le Fever_, and betwixt _Le Fever_ and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle _Toby_’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my uncle _Toby_ found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration. The coat my uncle _Toby_ gave the corporal;——Wear it, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor lieutenant——And this,——said my uncle _Toby_, taking up the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke——and this, _Le Fever_, I’ll save for thee,—’tis all the fortune, continued my uncle _Toby_, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear _Le Fever_, which God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—’tis enough for us. As soon as my uncle _Toby_ had laid a foundation, and taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where, excepting _Whitsontide_ and _Christmas_, at which times the corporal was punctually dispatched for him,—he remained to the spring of the year, seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his army into _Hungary_ against the _Turks_, kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his _Greek_ and _Latin_ without leave, and throwing himself upon his knees before my uncle _Toby_, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle _Toby_’s leave along with it, to go and try his fortune under _Eugene._—Twice did my uncle _Toby_ forget his wound and cry out, _Le Fever!_ I will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside me——And twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung down his head in sorrow and disconsolation.—— My uncle _Toby_ took down the sword from the crook, where it had hung untouched ever since the lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the corporal to brighten up;——and having detained _Le Fever_ a single fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to _Leghorn_,—he put the sword into his hand.——If thou art brave, _Le Fever_, said my uncle _Toby_, this will not fail thee,——but Fortune, said he (musing a little),——Fortune may——And if she does,—added my uncle _Toby_, embracing him, come back again to me, _Le Fever_, and we will shape thee another course. The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of _Le Fever_ more than my uncle _Toby_’s paternal kindness;——he parted from my uncle _Toby_, as the best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped tears——and as my uncle _Toby_ gave him his last kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up in an old purse of his father’s, in which was his mother’s ring, into his hand,—and bid God bless him. C H A P. LVI LE FEVER got up to the Imperial army just time enough to try what metal his sword was made of, at the defeat of the _Turks_ before _Belgrade;_ but a series of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment, and trod close upon his heels for four years together after; he had withstood these buffetings to the last, till sickness overtook him at _Marseilles_, from whence he wrote my uncle _Toby_ word, he had lost his time, his services, his health, and, in short, every thing but his sword;——and was waiting for the first ship to return back to him. As this letter came to hand about six weeks before _Susannah_’s accident, _Le Fever_ was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle _Toby_’s mind all the time my father was giving him and _Yorick_ a description of what kind of a person he would chuse for a preceptor to me: but as my uncle _Toby_ thought my father at first somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning _Le Fever_’s name,——till the character, by _Yorick_’s inter-position, ending unexpectedly, in one, who should be gentle-tempered, and generous, and good, it impressed the image of _Le Fever_, and his interest, upon my uncle _Toby_ so forcibly, he rose instantly off his chair; and laying down his pipe, in order to take hold of both my father’s hands——I beg, brother _Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_, I may recommend poor _Le Fever_’s son to you—I beseech you do, added _Yorick_——He has a good heart, said my uncle _Toby_——And a brave one too, an’ please your honour, said the corporal. ——The best hearts, _Trim_, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle _Toby._——And the greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our regiment, were the greatest rascals in it.—There was serjeant _Kumber_, and ensign—— ——We’ll talk of them, said my father, another time. C H A P. LVII WHAT a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies! Doctor _Slop_, like a son of a w——, as my father called him for it,—to exalt himself,—debased me to death,—and made ten thousand times more of _Susannah_’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s time, or less, it was in every body’s mouth, _That poor Master Shandy_ * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely.—And FAME, who loves to double every thing,—in three days more, had sworn, positively she saw it,—and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence——“That the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ;—but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ’s also.” Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE,—my father had brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul of individuals about it——as every soul who had mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable;——’twas like flying in the very face of his best friends:——And yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence—was to acknowledge it openly,—at least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it,—was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.—— ——Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my father. I would shew him publickly, said my uncle _Toby_, at the market cross. ——’Twill have no effect, said my father. C H A P. LVIII