The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman

will be so these fifty years to come—so your worships and reverences may all measure them at your leisures——but he who measures thee, _Janatone_, must do it now—thou carriest the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are passed and gone, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes——or thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty—nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy—and lose thyself.—I would not answer for my aunt _Dinah_, was she alive——’faith, scarce for her picture——were it but painted by _Reynolds_— But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of _Apollo_, I’ll be shot—— So you must e’en be content with the original; which, if the evening is fine in passing thro’ _Montreuil_, you will see at your chaise-door, as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have—you had better stop:—She has a little of the _devote:_ but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour—— —L— help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil. C H A P. XCIII ALL which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much nearer me than I imagined——I wish I was at _Abbeville_, quoth I, were it only to see how they card and spin——so off we set. [33]_de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi de Nampont_ a Bernay - - - - - - poste de Bernay a Nouvion - - - - - poste de Nouvion a ABBEVILLE poste ——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed. [33] Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762. C H A P. XCIV WHAT a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter. C H A P. XCV WAS I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster——I should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house——but rather in some decent inn——at home, I know it,——the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention——but mark. This inn should not be the inn at _Abbeville_——if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning——Yes, by four, Sir,——or by _Genevieve!_ I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead. C H A P. XCVI “MAKE _them like unto a wheel_,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the _grand tour_, and that restless spirit for making it, which _David_ prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop _Hall_, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which _David_ ever utter’d against the enemies of the Lord—and, as if he had said, “I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.”—So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven. Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy——and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil—— Hollo! Ho!——the whole world’s asleep!——bring out the horses——grease the wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail into that moulding——I’ll not lose a moment—— Now the wheel we are talking of, and _whereinto_ (but not _whereonto_, for that would make an Ixion’s wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop’s habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in _Palestine_ at that time or not——and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country. I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear _Jenny_) for their “Χωξισμον απο τκ Εωμαιος, εις το καλως φιλοσοφειν”——[their] “getting out of the body, in order to think well.” No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre——REASON is, half of it, SENSE; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appetites and concoctions.—— ——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong? You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early. C H A P. XCVII ——But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my beard till I got to _Paris;_——yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which _Lessius (lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.)_ hath made his estimate, wherein he setteth forth, That one _Dutch_ mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great a number of souls (counting from the fall of _Adam_) as can possibly be damn’d to the end of the world. From what he has made this second estimate——unless from the parental goodness of God—I don’t know—I am much more at a loss what could be in _Franciscus Ribbera_’s head, who pretends that no less a space than one of two hundred _Italian_ miles multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to hold the like number——he certainly must have gone upon some of the old _Roman_ souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a gradual and most tabid decline, in the course of eighteen hundred years, they must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have come, when he wrote, almost to nothing. In _Lessius_’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can be imagined—— ——We find them less _now_—— And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on from little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not one moment to affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall have no souls at all; which being the period beyond which I doubt likewise of the existence of the Christian faith, ’twill be one advantage that both of ’em will be exactly worn out together. Blessed _Jupiter!_ and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for now ye will all come into play again, and with _Priapus_ at your tails——what jovial times!——but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing? I——I who must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste no more of ’em than what I borrow from my imagination——peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on. C H A P. XCVIII ——“So hating, I say, to make mysteries of _nothing_”——I intrusted it with the post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones; he gave a crack with his whip to balance the compliment; and with the thill-horse trotting, and a sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it along to _Ailly au clochers_, famed in days of yore for the finest chimes in the world; but we danced through it without music—the chimes being greatly out of order—(as in truth they were through all _France_). And so making all possible speed, from _Ailly au clochers_, I got to _Hixcourt_, from _Hixcourt_ I got to _Pequignay_, and from _Pequignay_, I got to AMIENS, concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have informed you once before——and that was—that _Janatone_ went there to school. C H A P. XCIX IN the whole catalogue of those whiffling vexations which come puffing across a man’s canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and tormenting nature, than this particular one which I am going to describe——and for which (unless you travel with an avance-courier, which numbers do in order to prevent it)——there is no help: and it is this. That be you in never so kindly a propensity to sleep——though you are passing perhaps through the finest country—upon the best roads, and in the easiest carriage for doing it in the world——nay, was you sure you could sleep fifty miles straight forwards, without once opening your eyes—nay, what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be of any truth in _Euclid_, that you should upon all accounts be full as well asleep as awake——nay, perhaps better——Yet the incessant returns of paying for the horses at every stage,——with the necessity thereupon of putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence three livres fifteen sous (sous by sous), puts an end to so much of the project, that you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a post and a half, that is but nine)——were it to save your soul from destruction. —I’ll be even with ’em, quoth I, for I’ll put the precise sum into a piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way: “Now I shall have nothing to do,” said I (composing myself to rest), “but to drop this gently into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a word.”——Then there wants two sous more to drink——or there is a twelve sous piece of _Louis_ XIV. which will not pass—or a livre and some odd liards to be brought over from the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot; which altercations (as a man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him: still is sweet sleep retrievable; and still might the flesh weigh down the spirit, and recover itself of these blows—but then, by heaven! you have paid but for a single post—whereas ’tis a post and a half; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you will or no: Then Monsieur _le Curé_ offers you a pinch of snuff——or a poor soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling his box——or the priestesse of the cistern will water your wheels——they do not want it——but she swears by her _priesthood_ (throwing it back) that they do:——then you have all these points to argue, or consider over in your mind; in doing of which, the rational powers get so thoroughly awakened——you may get ’em to sleep again as you can. It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had pass’d clean by the stables of _Chantilly_—— ——But the postillion first affirming, and then persisting in it to my face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, I open’d my eyes to be convinced—and seeing the mark upon it as plain as my nose—I leap’d out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at _Chantilly_ in spite.——I tried it but for three posts and a half, but believe ’tis the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; for as few objects look very inviting in that mood—you have little or nothing to stop you; by which means it was that I passed through St. _Dennis_, without turning my head so much as on one side towards the Abby—— ——Richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense!——bating their jewels, which are all false, I would not give three sous for any one thing in it, but _Jaidas’s lantern_——nor for that either, only as it grows dark, it might be of use. C H A P. C CRACK, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack—so this is _Paris!_ quoth I