The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
said, he knew not what it was,—whether a tibula,—a stud,—a button,—a
loop,—a buckle,—or clasps and keepers.——
——My father lost the horse, but not the saddle——They are _hooks and
eyes_, said my father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches
to be made.
C H A P. LXIII
WE are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.——
——Leave we then the breeches in the taylor’s hands, with my father
standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a
lecture upon the _latus clavus_, and pointing to the precise part of
the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.——
Leave we my mother—(truest of all the _Poco-curante_’s of her
sex!)—careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which
concerned her;—that is,—indifferent whether it was done this way or
that,——provided it was but done at all.——
Leave we _Slop_ likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.——
Leave we poor _Le Fever_ to recover, and get home from _Marseilles_ as
he can.——And last of all,—because the hardest of all——
Let us leave, if possible, _myself:_——But ’tis impossible,—I must go
along with you to the end of the work.
C H A P. LXIV
IF the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of
ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle _Toby_’s kitchen-garden, and
which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is not
in me,—but in his imagination;—for I am sure I gave him so minute a
description, I was almost ashamed of it.
When FATE was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great
transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this
little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been
destined,—she gave a nod to NATURE,—’twas enough—Nature threw half a
spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so _much_ clay
in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so _little_
of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much
glory, nasty in foul weather.
My uncle _Toby_ came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans
along with him, of almost every fortified town in _Italy_ and
_Flanders;_ so let the duke of _Marlborough_, or the allies, have set
down before what town they pleased, my uncle _Toby_ was prepared for
them.
His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as
ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design was known) to take
the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a
scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of
which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small
piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he
transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the
place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the
ditches,—the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several
banquets, parapets, &c.—he set the corporal to work——and sweetly went
it on:——The nature of the soil,—the nature of the work itself,—and
above all, the good-nature of my uncle _Toby_ sitting by from morning
to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past- done
deeds,—left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name.
When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper
posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle _Toby_ and the
corporal began to run their first parallel.—I beg I may not be
interrupted in my story, by being told, _That the first parallel should
be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the
place,—and that I have not left a single inch for it;_——for my uncle
_Toby_ took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the
sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason
generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his
cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of
which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle _Toby_’s
and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a
sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages
(but there is no guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up as
many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a
weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to
rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work——surely
they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take
the following sketch of them in the mean time.
C H A P. LXV
WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle _Toby_ and the
corporal began to run their first parallel——not at random, or any
how——but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run
theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my
uncle _Toby_ received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the
whole siege, step by step with the allies.
When the duke of _Marlborough_ made a lodgment,——my uncle _Toby_ made a
lodgment too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a
defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so
on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one
after another, till the town fell into their hands.
To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not
have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a
practicable breach had been made by the duke of _Marlborough_, in the
main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and
observed the spirit with which my uncle _Toby_, with _Trim_ behind him,
sallied forth;——the one with the _Gazette_ in his hand,—the other with
a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest
triumph in my uncle _Toby_’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts!
What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the
corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at
work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too
wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow.——But when the _chamade_ was beat,
and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours
in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—Heaven! Earth! Sea!——but
what avails apostrophes?——with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never
compounded so intoxicating a draught.
In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to
it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a
week or ten days together, which detained the _Flanders_ mail, and kept
them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In
this track, I say, did my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ move for many years,
every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of
either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk
of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs
of delight in carrying them on.
The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the
plain and simple method I’ve related.
In the second year, in which my uncle _Toby_ took _Liege_ and
_Ruremond_, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome
draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the
former part of my work.
At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with
port-cullises:——These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as
the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle
_Toby_, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at
_Christmas_, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at
the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of
the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and
the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.
——The sentry-box was in case of rain.
All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which
enabled my uncle _Toby_ to take the field with great splendour.
My father would often say to _Yorick_, that if any mortal in the whole
universe had done such a thing except his brother _Toby_, it would have
been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon
the parade and prancing manner in which _Lewis_ XIV. from the beginning
of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field——But
’tis not my brother _Toby_’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to
insult any one.
——But let us go on.
C H A P. LXVI
I MUST observe, that although in the first year’s campaign, the word
town is often mentioned,—yet there was no town at that time within the
polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the
spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the
third year of my uncle _Toby_’s campaigns,—when upon his taking
_Amberg, Bonn_, and _Rhinberg_, and _Huy_ and _Limbourg_, one after
another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to talk of
taking so many towns, _without one_ TOWN _to shew for it_,—was a very
nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle _Toby_,
that they should have a little model of a town built for them,—to be
run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the
interior polygon to serve for all.
My uncle _Toby_ felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly
agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of
which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of
the project itself.
The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of
which it was most likely to be the representative:——with grated
windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c.
&c.—as those in _Ghent_ and _Bruges_, and the rest of the towns in
_Brabant_ and _Flanders._
The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal
proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so
as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put
directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation
was exchanged between my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal, as the
carpenter did the work.
——It answered prodigiously the next summer——the town was a perfect
_Proteus_——It was _Landen_, and _Trerebach_, and _Santvliet_, and
_Drusen_, and _Hagenau_,—and then it was _Ostend_ and _Menin_, and
_Aeth_ and _Dendermond._
——Surely never did any TOWN act so many parts, since _Sodom_ and
_Gomorrah_, as my uncle _Toby_’s town did.
In the fourth year, my uncle _Toby_ thinking a town looked foolishly
without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.——_Trim_ was for
having bells in it;——my uncle _Toby_ said, the metal had better be cast
into cannon.
This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field-pieces,
to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle _Toby_’s
sentry-box; and in a short time, these led the way for a train of
somewhat larger,—and so on—(as must always be the case in
hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came
at last to my father’s jack boots.
The next year, which was that in which _Lisle_ was besieged, and at the
close of which both _Ghent_ and _Bruges_ fell into our hands,—my uncle
_Toby_ was sadly put to it for _proper_ ammunition;——I say proper
ammunition——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and
’twas well for the _Shandy_ family they would not——For so full were the
papers, from the beginning to the end of the siege, of the incessant
firings kept up by the besiegers,——and so heated was my uncle _Toby_’s
imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away
all his estate.
SOMETHING therefore was wanting as a _succedaneum_, especially in one
or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something