Let us go back to the ****** in the last chapter.
It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, if orators wore mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the actual thing about you, ready to produce, pop, in the place you wanted it. An axe, a sword, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot – but above all, a tender infant royally clothed – though if it was too young, and the oration too long, it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle. – And then again, if it was too old, it must have been unwieldy and inconvenient for his purpose.
Otherwise, when an orator has hit the precise time – hid his Bambino in his mantle so cunningly that no-one could smell it – and produced it skilfully – Oh Sirs! it has done wonders. It has turned the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politics of half a nation.
These feats could only be done, however, where orators wore mantles – and pretty large ones too, with some five-and-twenty yards of good superfine cloth, large flowing folds and a great style of design. All which plainly shows that the decay of eloquence is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats. We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth showing.
CHAPTER 15
Dr. Slop happening to have his green baize bag upon his knees, ’twas as good as a mantle to him: so that when he foresaw his sentence would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to flourish at the ****** which you noticed.
However, he fumbled so vilely in pulling them out that it ruined the effect, and what was ten times worse, in pulling out his forceps, he unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.
When a proposition can be taken in two ways, the respondent may reply to whichever he finds most convenient. – This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.
‘Good God!’ he cried, ‘are children brought into the world with a squirt?’
CHAPTER 16
‘Upon my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin off the back of my hands with your forceps,’ cried my uncle Toby, ‘and you have crushed my knuckles to a jelly into the bargain.’
‘’Tis your own fault,’ said Dr. Slop; ‘you should have clinched your two fists together in the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm.’
‘I did so,’ answered my uncle Toby.
‘Then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently armed, or the rivet wants closing – or else the cut in my thumb made me a little awkward – or possibly–’
‘’Tis well,’ quoth my father, interrupting, ‘that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head.’
‘It would not have been a cherry-stone the worse,’ answered Dr. Slop.
‘I maintain,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘it would have broke the cerebellum (unless the skull had been as hard as granite).’
‘Pshaw!’ replied Dr. Slop, ‘a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple; the sutures give way – and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.’
‘Not you,’ said the midwife.
‘I rather wish you would begin that way,’ quoth my father.
CHAPTER 17
– ‘And pray, good woman, would you not say it is as likely to be the child’s hip, as the child’s head?’
‘’Tis most certainly the head,’ replied the midwife.
‘Because,’ continued Dr. Slop (turning to my father), ‘as positive as these old ladies generally are, ’tis a point very difficult to know – and yet of the greatest importance; because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head – there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * * * *.’
What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle. ‘There is no such danger,’ continued he, ‘with the head.’
‘No, in truth,’ quoth my father, ‘but when your possibility has taken place at the hip – you may as well take off the head too.’
It is morally impossible the reader should understand this – ’tis enough Dr. Slop understood it; so taking the green baize bag in his hand, he tripped pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door, and was shown the way by the midwife to my mother’s apartments.
CHAPTER 18
‘It is two hours, and ten minutes,’ cried my father, looking at his watch, ‘since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived – and I know not how it happens, brother Toby, but to my imagination it seems an age.’
– Here – pray, Sir, take my cap, and my bell, and my slippers. I freely make you a present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention in this chapter.
Though my father said, ‘he knew not how it happened,’ yet he knew very well how it happened; – and at the instant he spoke it, decided to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the duration of time and its modes, in order to show my uncle by what mechanism in the brain it happened that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discussion from one thing to another, had lengthened out so short a period to so great an extent.
– ‘I know not how it happens,’ cried my father, ‘but it seems an age.’
‘’Tis owing entirely,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘to the succession of our ideas.’
My father had proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this argument of the succession of ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having it snatched out of his hands by my uncle Toby, who (honest man!) generally never troubled his brain with abstruse ideas of time and space. Theories about Infinity, Prescience, Liberty, Necessity, and so forth, which have cracked so many fine heads, never did my uncle Toby’s head the least injury. My father knew it, and was no less surprised than he was disappointed with my uncle’s answer.
‘Do you understand the theory of that?’ he asked.
‘Not I,’ quoth my uncle.
‘But you have some idea of what you talk about?’
‘No more than my horse,’ replied my uncle Toby.
‘Gracious heaven!’ cried my father, ‘there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby – ’twere almost a pity to exchange it for knowledge. – But I’ll tell thee. To understand what time is, without which we never can comprehend infinity, – we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea we have of duration, and how we came by it.’
‘Why?’
‘If you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind,’ continued my father, ‘you will perceive, brother, that whilst we are talking, and thinking, and smoking our pipes, we know that we exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or anything else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co-existing with our thinking – and so according to that preconceived–’
‘You puzzle me to death,’ cried my uncle Toby.
‘In every man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas which follow each other in train just like–’
‘A train of artillery?’ said my uncle Toby.
‘A train of a fiddle-stick!’ quoth my father. ‘– which follow and succeed one another in our minds like the images in the inside of a lantern turned round by the heat of a candle.’
‘I declare,’ quoth my uncle, ‘mine are more like a smoke-jack that turns a spit in a chimney.’
‘Then, brother Toby, I have nothing more to say to you upon the subject,’ said my father.
CHAPTER 19
– What a conjecture was here lost! My father in one of his best explanatory moods – in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into thick darkness; my uncle Toby with his head like a smoke-jack; – the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round in it, all darkened with soot! By the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes! – my father and my uncle’s discourse upon Time and Eternity was devoutly to be wished for! and m
y father’s petulance in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of such a philosophical jewel, as is never likely to occur again.
CHAPTER 20
Though my father persisted in not going on with the discourse, yet he could not get my uncle Toby’s smoke-jack out of his head. There was something in the comparison which hit his fancy; so, resting his elbow upon the table, and reclining his head upon his palm, he began to meditate on it: but his spirits being worn out with the fatigues of investigating so many different subjects – the idea of the smoke-jack soon turned his thoughts upside down, so that he fell asleep before he knew it.
As for my uncle Toby, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen revolutions, before he fell asleep also. Peace be with them both!
Dr. Slop is engaged with the midwife and my mother above stairs. Trim is busy turning an old pair of jackboots into a couple of mortars, to be employed in the siege of Messina next summer – and is this instant boring the touch-holes with a hot poker.
All my heroes are off my hands. ’Tis the first time I have had a moment to spare – and I’ll make use of it, and write my preface.
THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE
No, I’ll not say a word about it – here it is. To the world I leave it; – it must speak for itself.
All I know is – when I sat down, I meant to write a good book; and a wise, aye, and a discreet one – taking care, as I went along, to put into it all the wit and judgment which the great Author had thought fit to give me – so that, as your worships see, ’tis just as God pleases.
Now, Agelastes sayeth, That there may be some wit in it, for aught he knows – but no judgment at all. And Triptolemus and Phutatorius agree, asking, How could there be? for wit and judgment in this world never go together; they differ as much as east from west – so says Locke – so do farting and hiccuping, say I. But in answer to this, Didius the great church lawyer, in De Fartendi et Illustrandi Fallaciis, maintains that an illustration is no argument – nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a syllogism, but you all see the better for it – so that the main good these things do is to clarify the understanding before the argument itself, in order to free it from any little specks of dust which might hinder an idea and spoil all.
Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice able critics, and fellow-labourers (for to you I write this Preface) – and to you, most subtle statesmen and discreet doctors: Monopolus, my politician; Didius, my counsel; Kysarcius, my friend; Phutatorius, my guide; Gastripheres, the preserver of my life; Somnolentius, the balm and repose of it – not forgetting all others, whom for brevity, but out of no resentment to you, I lump all together.
My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own too, is, that the great gifts of wit and judgment, with everything which usually goes along with them – such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, and what not, may this moment, without stint or measure, be poured down as warm as we could bear – scum and sediment and all – into the cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains – until every part of them be so filled up that no more could possibly be got in.
Bless us! what noble work we should make! – what spirits should I find myself in, to be writing for such readers! – and you – with what raptures would you read!
Oh! ’tis too much – I faint away deliciously at the thoughts of it – ’tis more than nature can bear! I am giddy – I’m dying – I am gone. Help! Help! Help!
But hold – I am coming round again, for I foresee that as we shall all of us be great wits, we should never agree amongst ourselves; there would be so much satire and sarcasm – scoffing and flouting – thrusting and parrying – there would be nothing but mischief among us. What biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what breaking of heads and rapping of knuckles!
But then again, being men of great judgment, we would make up matters as fast as they went wrong; and though we should hate each other, we should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, milk and honey. ’Twould be a paradise upon earth – so that upon the whole we should have done well enough.
All I fret at, is how to bring the point itself about; for as your worships know, these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so bountifully wished for us, have only a certain quantity stored up for the use of all mankind; and such small amounts are sent forth into this wide world, in such narrow streams, that one wonders how it could be enough for the needs of so many populous empires.
Indeed, in Nova Zembla in the far north, Lapland, and all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe which lie under the arctic and antarctic circles – where the spirits are compressed almost to nothing, and where a man’s passions are as frigid as the zone itself – there not one spark of wit is given. Angels defend us! what a dismal thing would it be to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or wrote a book, or got a child, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment!
For mercy’s sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into Norway – crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothnia; down to Carelia, and so on along the border of the Baltic, up to Petersburg, then through the north parts of the Russian empire – leaving Siberia upon the left hand, till we are in the very heart of Asiatic Tartary.
Now throughout this long tour, you observe the good people are better off by far than in the polar countries; for if you look attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings of wit, with a comfortable provision of good plain judgment; with which they do very well.
Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood runs high – where we have more ambition, pride, envy, lechery, and other whoreson passions to govern – the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to our need – and we have them amongst us in such plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.
It must however be confessed, that, as our air blows hot and cold, wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way. Sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment to be seen or heard of amongst us: the channels of them shall seem quite dried up – then all of a sudden the sluices break out, and run like fury – and then, in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before us.
It is by these observations, and a reasoning by analogy which Suidas calls dialectic induction, that I draw this position as most true;
That just so much wit and judgment shines down on us as is allowed by God, whose infinite wisdom dispenses everything in exact measure, and who knows how much will light us on our way in this night of our obscurity.
So I can no longer conceal from you, that the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d’ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence.
For alas! If only this light could be so easily procured – I tremble to think how many thousands of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have blundered on in the dark, running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains; some falling with their noses into sinks – others with their tails into kennels. Here is one half of a learned profession tilting against the other half, and tumbling over one other in the dirt like hogs.
– Here are the brethren of another profession, who should have opposed each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all the same way. – What confusion! what mistakes! Here are fiddlers and painters judging tunes and pictures by their eyes and ears instead of measuring by a quadrant.
Here is a statesman turning the political wheel the wrong way, against the stream of corruption – by Heaven! – instead of with it.
Over there is a surgeon feeling his patient’s pulse, instead of his a
pothecary’s – or upon his knees in tears, begging the forgiveness of a mangled victim, – offering a fee instead of taking one.
In that spacious Hall, a coalition of lawyers, driving a damned, dirty, vexatious cause before them, the wrong way! kicking it out of the great doors, instead of in, almost as if the laws had been made for the peace of mankind; and moreover, settling a paltry dispute in five-and-twenty minutes, which might have taken up as many months – or have even lasted years, providing food all that time for a hundred lawyers.
As for the Clergy – No, if I say a word against them, I’ll be shot. I dare not for my soul touch upon the subject. In the nervous condition I am in, ’tis safer to draw a curtain across the melancholy account, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to my main point – and that is, how it happens that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment. But mark – I say, reported; for it is no more than a report, and a vile and a malicious one into the bargain.
This I shall forthwith make appear.
I hate set dissertations – and ’tis one of the silliest things in ’em, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opaque words betwixt your own and your reader’s idea – when in all likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something which would have cleared the point at once.
“For what harm doth the desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?” – I am this moment sitting upon one. Will you let me illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the back of it? They are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck into two holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see the meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if it was made of sun-beams.
I enter now directly upon the point.
Here stands wit and there stands judgment beside it, just like the two knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this same chair.
You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame – as wit and judgment are of ours; and are made to go together, in order – as we say in such cases of embellishment – to ‘answer one another’.
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