The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

  But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that if we would come to the specifick characters of them, we must go some other way to work.

  Many, in good truth, are the ways which human wit has been forced to take to do this thing with exactness.

  Some, for instance, draw all their characters with wind instruments.— Virgil takes notice of that way in the affair of Dido and Æneas;8—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;— and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the Italians 9 pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano 10 of a certain wind instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;--’tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making a drawing by it;---this is ænigmatical, and intended to be so, at least, ad populum: 11---And therefore I beg, Madam, when you come here, that you read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about it.

  There are others again, who will draw a man’s character from no other helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;— but this often gives a very incorrect out-line,---unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one good figure out of them both.

  I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render’d still more operose, by forcing you to have an eye to the rest of his Non-Naturals.12——Why the most natural actions of a man’s life should be call’d his Non-Naturals,---is another question.

  There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices which the Pentagraphic13 Brethren* of the brush have shewn in taking copies.—These, you must know, are your great historians.

  One of these you will see drawing a full-length character against the light;—that’s illiberal,----dishonest,----and hard upon the character of the man who sits.

  Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the Camera;14---that is most unfair of all,---because, there you are sure to be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes.

  To avoid all and every one of these errors, in giving you my uncle Toby’s character, I am determin’d to draw it by no mechanical help whatever;——nor shall my pencil15 be guided by any one wind instrument which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the Alps;—nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges,—or touch upon his Non-Naturals;---but, in a word, I will draw my uncle Toby’s character from his HOBBY-HORSEM.16

  CHAP. XXIV.

  IF I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience for my uncle Toby’s character,——I would here previously have convinced him, that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as that which I have pitch’d upon.

  A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies,--and that by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE.—By long journies and much friction, it so happens that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold;----so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.

  Now the HOBBY-HORSE which my uncle Toby always rode upon, was, in my opinion, an HOBBY-HORSE well worth giving a description of, if it was only upon the score of his great singularity; for you might have travelled from York to Dover,——from Dover to Penzance in Cornwall, and from Penzance to York back again, and not have seen such another upon the road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever haste you had been in, you must infallibly have stopp’d to have taken a view of him. Indeed, the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, that it was now and then made a matter of dispute,——whether he was really a HOBBY-HORSE or no: But as the Philosopher would use no other argument to the sceptic, who disputed with him against the reality of motion,1save that of rising up upon his legs, and walking a-cross the room;—so would my uncle Toby use no other argument to prove his HOBBY-HORSE was a HOBBY-HORSE indeed, but by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world after that to determine the point as it thought fit.

  In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so much pleasure, and he carried my uncle Toby so well,——that he troubled his head very little with what the world either said or thought about it.

  It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of him:—But to go on regularly, I only beg you will give me leave to acquaint you first, how my uncle Toby came by him.

  CHAP. XXV.

  THE wound in my uncle Toby’s groin, which he received at the siege of Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

  He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room; and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffer’d unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the oss pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the oss illeum,1—— both which bones were dismally crush’d, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the parapet,— as by its size,—(though it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle Toby’s groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone itself, than to the projectile force of it,—which he would often tell him was a great happiness.

  My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had taken a house;—and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle Toby could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house,——he assign’d him the very best apartment in it.—And what was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by his bed side.

  The history of a soldier’s wound2 beguiles the pain of it;— my uncle’s visiters at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject,—and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself.

  These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby received great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe they would have laid him in his grave.

  What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were,——’tis impossible for you to guess;—if you could,—I should blush; not as a relation,—not as a man,—nor even as a woman,—but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,—I would tear it out of my book.

  END of the FIRST VOLUME.

  THE

  LIFE

  and

  OPINIONS

  OF


  TRISTRAM SHANDY,

  GENTLEMEAN

  Tαρασσει T8`ς ’AνGρώΠ8ς 8` Tά Πράγμαlα,αλλα Tά περι Πραγμαlων, Δογμαlα

  VOL. II

  1760.

  (Height of original type-page 123 mm.)

  THE

  LIFE and OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

  CHAP I.

  I Have begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege of Namur,1 where he received his wound.

  I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of King William’s wars,—but if he has not,––I then inform him, that one of the most memorable attacks in that siege, was that which was made by the English and Dutch upon the point of the advanced counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas, which inclosed the great sluice or water-stop, where the English were terribly exposed to the shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St. Roch: The issue of which hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the Dutch lodged themselves upon the counter-guard,––-and that the English made themselves masters of the covered way before St. Nicolas’s gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the French officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis sword in hand.

  As this was the principal attack of which my uncle Toby was an eye-witness at Namur,——the army of the besiegers being cut off, by the confluence of the Maes and Sambre, from seeing much of each other’s operations,—my uncle Toby was generally more eloquent and particular in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,——the glacis and covered way,—— the half-moon and ravelin,——as to make his company fully comprehend where and what he was about.

  Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms;—— so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle Toby did oft times puzzle his visiters; and sometimes himself too.

  To speak the truth, unless the company my father led upstairs were tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle Toby was in one of his best explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep the discourse free from obscurity.

  What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle Toby, was this,—that in the attack of the counterscarp before the gate of St. Nicolas, extending itself from the bank of the Maes, quite up to the great water-stop;—the ground was cut and cross-cut with such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all sides,—and he would get so sadly bewilder’d and set fast amongst them, that frequently he could neither get backwards or forwards to save his life; and was oft times obliged to give up the attack upon that very account only.

  These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle Toby Shandy more perturbations than you would imagine; and as my father’s kindness to him was continually dragging up fresh friends and fresh inquirers,—he had but a very uneasy task of it.

  No doubt my uncle Toby had great command of himself,— and could guard appearances, I believe, as well as most men;— yet any one may imagine, that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into the half-moon, or get out of the covered way without falling down the counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into the ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:—He did so;—and these little and hourly vexations, which may seem trifling and of no account to the man who has not read Hippocrates,2 yet, whoever has read Hippocrates, or Dr. James Mackenzie,3 and has considered well the effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the digestion,4—(Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?)——may easily conceive what sharp paroxisms and exacerbations of his wound my uncle Toby must have undergone upon that score only.

  —My uncle Toby could not philosophize upon it;—’twas enough he felt it was so,—and having sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three months together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate himself.

  He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lye in no other position, when a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the fortifications of the town and citadel of Namur, with its environs, it might be a means of giving him ease.—I take notice of his desire to have the environs along with the town and citadel, for this reason,—because my uncle Toby’s wound was got in one of the traverses, about thirty toises from the returning angle of the trench, opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of St. Roch;——so that he was pretty confident he could stick a pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing in when the stone struck him.

  All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him from a world of sad explanations, but, in the end, it prov’d the happy means, as you will read, of procuring my uncle Toby his HOBBY-HORSE.

  CHAP. II.

  THERE is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there any thing so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such thing as a critick (by occupation) at table.

  ———I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have left half a dozen places purposely open for them;—and, in the next place, I pay them all court,—Gentlemen, I kiss your hands,—I protest no company could give me half the pleasure,—by my soul I am glad to see you,——I beg only you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any ceremony, and fall on heartily.

  I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for them,—and in this very spot I stand on;—but being told by a critick, (tho’ not by occupation,––-but by nature) that I had acquitted myself well enough, I shall fill it up directly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be able to make a great deal of more room next year.

  ———How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle Toby, who, it seems, was a military man, and whom you have represented as no fool, ––––be at the same time such a confused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed fellow, as––-Go look.

  So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn it.———’Tis language unurbane,––––and only befitting the man who cannot give clear and satisfactory accounts of things, or dive deep enough into the first causes of human ignorance and confusion. It is moreover the reply valiant,––––and therefore I reject it; for tho’ it might have suited my uncle Toby’s character as a soldier excellently well,––-and had he not accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the Lillabullero,––––as he wanted no courage, ’tis the very answer he would have given; yet it would by no means have done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I write as a man of erudition;––-that even my similies, my allusions, my illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,––––and that I must sustain my character properly, and contrast it properly too,––-else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I should be undone; ––––at this very moment that I am going here to fill up one place against a critick, I should have made an opening for a couple.

  ——Therefore I answer thus:

  Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever read such a book as Locke’s Essay upon the Human Understanding?1——Don’t answer me rashly,––because many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it,––-and many have read it who understand it not:––-If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three words what the book is.—It is a
history.—A history! of who? what? where? when? Don’t hurry yourself.——It is a history-book, Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man’s own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysic circle.

  But this by the way.

  Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of man, is threefold.

  Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by objects when the said organs are not dull. And, thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received. ––––Call down Dolly your chambermaid, and I will give you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that Dolly herself shall understand it as well as Malbranch.2——When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right side;—take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which Dolly’s hand is in search of.—Your organs are not so dull that I should inform you––-’tis an inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.

  When this is melted and dropp’d upon the letter,—if Dolly fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over harden’d, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very well: If Dolly’s wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,—tho’ it may receive,––-it will not hold the impression, how hard soever Dolly thrusts against it; and last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;——in any one of these three cases, the print, left by the thimble, will be as unlike the prototype as a brass-jack.3