The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics)

by Laurence Sterne

  “May St. John the præ-cursor, and St. John the Baptist,4 and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ’s apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching converted the universal world,—and may the holy and wonderful company of martyrs and confessors, who by their holy works are found pleasing to God Almighty, curse him (Obadiah.)

  os

  Maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, quæ mundi vana causa honoris Christi respuenda contempserunt. Maledicant

  os

  illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo dilecti inveniuntur.

  os

  Maledicant illum cœli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis manentia.

  n n

  Maledictus sit ubicunque fuerit, sive in domo, sive in agro, sive in viâ, sive in semitâ, sive in silvâ, sive in aquâ, sive in ecclesiâ.

  Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo, —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, flebotomando.

  i n

  Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis.

  Maledictus sit intus et exterius.

  Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus sit in cerebro. Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in fronte, in auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus sive molaribus, in labiis, in gutture, in humeris, in harmis, in brachiis, in manibus, in digitis, in pectore, in corde, et in omnibus interioribus stomacho tenus, in renibus, in inguinibus, in femore, in genitalibus, in coxis, in genubus, in cruribus, in pedibus, et in unguibus.

  “May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ have despised the things of the world, damn him.— May all the saints who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of God, damn him.— May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him,” (Obadiah) “or her,” (or whoever else had a hand in tying these knots.)

  “May he (Obadiah) be damn’d where-ever he be,—whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church.—May he be cursed in living, in dying.” [Here my uncle Toby taking the advantage of a minim 5 in the second barr of his tune, kept whistling one continual note to the end of the sentence——Dr. Slop with his division of curses moving under him, like a running bass all the way.] “May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting.”

  “May he (Obadiah) be cursed in all the faculties of his body.

  “May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly.—May he be cursed in the hair of his head.—May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex,” (that is a sad curse, quoth my father) “in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his foreteeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers.

  Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque ad plantam pedis——non sit in eo sanitas.

  Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suæ majestatis imperio

  ——et insurgat adversus illum cœlum cum omnibus virtutibus

  “May he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach.

  “May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,” (God in heaven forbid, quoth my uncle Toby) —“in his thighs, in his genitals,” (my father shook his head) “and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-nails.

  “May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of his members, from the top of his head to the soal of his foot, may there be no soundness in him.

  “May the Son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty”—–[Here my uncle Toby throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud Whew—w—w——something betwixt the interjectional whistle of Hey day! and the word itself.——

  —By the golden beard of Jupiter —and of Juno, (if her majesty wore one), and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatick,—to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines, (that is in case they wore ’em)——all which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the pagan establishment;6——every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being stroked and sworn by,—by all these beards together then,——I vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I would have given the better of them, as freely as ever Cid Hamet7 offered his, ——only to have stood by, and heard my uncle Toby’s accompanyment.]

  ——“Curse him,”——continued Dr. Slop,——“and may quæ in eo moventur ad damnandum eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Fiat, fiat. Amen.

  heaven with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him (Obadiah) unless he repent and make satisfaction. Amen. So be it,—so be it. Amen.”

  I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.——He is the father of curses, replied Dr. Slop.——So am not I, replied my uncle.——But he is cursed, and damn’d already, to all eternity,8——replied Dr. Slop.

  I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby.

  Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was just beginning to return my uncle Toby the compliment of his Whu—u—u——or interjectional whistle,——when the door hastily opening in the next chapter but one——put an end to the affair.

  CHAP. XII.

  NOW don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them,——imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.

  I’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a connoisseur;——though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in swearing,—as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the whole set of ’em are so hung round and befetish’d1 with the bobs and trinkets of criticism, ——or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity,—— for I have fetch’d it as far as from the coast of Guinea;——their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em.

  ——And how did Garrick2 speak the soliloquy last night?— Oh, against all rule, my Lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case and gender, he made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;——and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and three fifths by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time.——— Admirable grammarian!———But in suspending his voice—— was the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm?—Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look?—I look’d only at the stop-watch, my Lord. ——Excellent observer!

  And what of this new book3 the whole world makes such a rout about?—Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my Lord,——quite an irregular thing!—not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle.——I had my rule and compasses, &c. my Lord, in my pocket.———
Excellent critic!

  —And for the epick poem, your lordship bid me look at;— upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu’s,4—’tis out, my Lord, in every one of its dimensions.———Admirable connoisseur!

  —And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture, in your way back?——’Tis a melancholy daub!5 my Lord; not one principle of the pyramid in any one group!6——and what a price!——for there is nothing of the colouring of Titian,—— the expression of Rubens,—the grace of Raphael,——the purity of Dominichino,—the corregiescity of Corregio,—the learning of Poussin,—the airs of Guido,—the taste of the Carrachi’s,—or the grand contour of Angelo.7———Grant me patience, just heaven!——Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,——though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst,—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

  I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands, ——be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.8

  Great Apollo!9 if thou art in a giving humour,——give me, ——I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it,——and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to——no matter.

  Now to any one else, I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and imprecations, which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past, as originals,——except St. Paul’s thumb,——God’s flesh and God’s fish,10 which were oaths monarchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;——else, I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of Ernulphus, a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!——It is thought to be no bad oath,——and by itself passes very well——“G---d damn you.”——Set it beside Ernulphus’s——“God Almighty the Father damn you,—God the Son damn you,—God the Holy Ghost damn you,”——you see ’tis nothing.——There is anorientality11 in his, we cannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention,——possess’d more of the excellencies of a swearer,——had such a thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and articulations,—that when Ernulphus cursed,—no part escaped him.—’Tis true, there is something of a hardness in his manner,—and, as in Michael Angelo, a want of grace,——but then there is such a greatness of gusto!—

  My father, who generally look’d upon every thing in a light very different from all mankind,——would, after all, never allow this to be an original.——He consider’d rather Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;—— for the same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest,12—lest through the rust of time,—and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever.

  For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath, from the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror, (By the splendour of God) 13 down to the lowest oath of a scavenger, (Damn your eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus.——In short, he would add,—I defy a man to swear out of it.

  The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious too;——nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own.

  CHAP. XIII.

  —–BLESS my soul!——my poor mistress is ready to faint,——and her pains are gone,——and the drops are done,——and the bottle of julap1 is broke,——and the nurse has cut her arm,——(and I, my thumb, cried Dr. Slop) and the child is where it was, continued Susannah,——and the midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat.——I’ll look at it, quoth Dr. Slop.——There is no need of that, replied Susannah,——you had better look at my mistress,——but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment.

  Human nature is the same in all professions.

  The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop’s head.— He had not digested it.—No, replied Dr. Slop, ’twould be full as proper, if the midwife came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby,—and but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.2———Nor, replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby’s hobby-horsical reflection, though full as hobby-horsically himself)—do I know, Captain Shandy, what might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to ****** ——the application of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so a propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a name.

  CHAP. XIV.

  LET us go back to the ****** ——in the last chapter.

  It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you, in petto,1 ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d-doublet, arusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot,——but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long as Tully’s second Philippick,2——it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.——And then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldy and incommodious to his action,—so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.—Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute,—hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it,—and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders,3——Oh, Sirs! it has done wonders.——It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation.

  These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles,—and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five and twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them,—— with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great stile of design.———All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within, and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.4———We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.

  CHAP. XV.

  DR. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle Toby,—— ’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, where your reverences took so much notice of the ******, which had he managed,—my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of araveline,—Dr. Slop would never have given them up;——and my uncle Toby would as soon thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this lif
e) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.

  When a proposition can be taken in two senses,——’tis a law in disputation That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.——“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”

  CHAP. XVI.

  ——UPON my honour Sir you have tore every bit of the Skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby,—and you have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them, to a jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. Slop,——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into 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 arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward,——or possibly——’Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities,——that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head piece.——It would not have been a cherry stone the worse, answered Dr. Slop. I maintain it, said my uncle Toby, it would have broke the cerebellum, (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turned it all into a perfect posset. 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 she.—I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.