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

by Laurence Sterne

  Now what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to add to so vehement a desire—was this, that the centinel, the bandy-legg’d drummer, the trumpeter, the trumpeter’s wife, the burgo-master’s widow, the master of the inn, and the master of the inn’s wife, how widely soever they all differed every one from another in their testimonies and descriptions of the stranger’s nose—they all agreed together in two points—namely, that he was gone to Frankfort, and would not return to Strasburg till that day month; and secondly, whether his nose was true or false, that the stranger himself was one of the most perfect paragons of beauty—the finest made man!—the most gen-teel!—the most generous of his purse—the most courteous in his carriage that had ever entered the gates of Strasburg —that as he rode, with his scymetar slung loosely to his wrist, thro’ the streets—and walked with his crimson-sattin breeches across the parade—’twas with so sweet an air of careless modesty, and so manly withal—as would have put the heart in jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin who had cast her eyes upon him.

  I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of Quedlingberg, the prioress, the deaness and subchantress for sending at noon-day for the trumpeter’s wife: she went through the streets of Strasburg with her husband’s trumpet in her hand;—the best apparatus the straitness of the time would allow her, for the illustration of her theory—she staid no longer than three days.

  The centinel and the bandy-legg’d drummer!—nothing on this side of old Athens could equal them! they read their lectures under the city gates to comers and goers, with all the pomp of a Chrysippus and a Crantor26 in their porticos.

  The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand, read his also in the same stile,—under the portico or gateway of his stable-yard—his wife, hers more privately in a back room: all flocked to their lectures; not promiscuously—but to this or that, as is ever the way, as faith and credulity marshal’d them—in a word, each Strasburger came crouding for intelligence—and every Strasburger had the intelligence he wanted.

  ’Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators in natural philosophy, &c. that as soon as the trumpeter’s wife had finished the abbess of Quedlinberg’s private lecture, and had begun to read in public, which she did upon a stool in the middle of the great parade—she incommoded the other demonstrators mainly, by gaining incontinently the most fashionable part of the city of Strasburg for her auditory—But when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an apparatus, pray what rival in science can pretend to be heard besides him?

  Whilst the unlearned, thro’ these conduits of intelligence, were all busied in getting down to the bottom of the well,27 where Truth keeps her little court—were the learned in their way as busy in pumping her up thro’ the conduits of dialect induction—they concerned themselves not with facts—they reasoned—

  Not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than the faculty28—had not all their disputes about it run into the affair of Wens and œdematous swellings, they could not keep clear of them for their bloods and souls—the stranger’s nose had nothing to do either with wens or œdematous swellings.

  It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous mass of heterogenious matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the nose, whilst the infant was in Utero, without destroying the statical balance of the fœtus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months before the time.29——

  —The opponents granted the theory—they denied the consequences.

  And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said they, was not laid in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in the very first stamina30 and rudiments of its formation before it came into the world (bating the case of Wens) it could not regularly grow and be sustained afterwards.

  This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the effect which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the increase and prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest growth and expansion imaginable—In the triumph of which theory, they went so far as to affirm, that there was no cause in nature, why a nose might not grow to the size of the man himself.

  The respondents satisfied the world this event could never happen to them so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs—For the stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception of food, and turning it into chyle,— and the lungs the only engine of sanguification—it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite brought it: or admitting the possibility of a man’s overloading his stomach, nature had set bounds however to his lungs—the engine was of a determined size and strength, and could elaborate but a certain quantity in a given time—that is, it could produce just as much blood as was sufficient for one single man, and no more; so that, if there was as much nose as man—they proved a mortification must necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a support for both, that the nose must either fall off from the man, or the man inevitably fall off from his nose.

  Nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried the opponents—else what do you say to the case of a whole stomach—a whole pair of lungs, and but half a man, when both his legs have been unfortunately shot off?—

  He dies of a plethora, said they—or must spit blood, and in a fortnight or three weeks go off in a consumption—

  —It happens otherways—replied the opponents.——

  It ought not, said they.

  The more curious and intimate inquirers after nature and her doings, though they went hand in hand a good way together, yet they all divided about the nose at last, almost as much as the faculty itself.

  They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and geometrical arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the human frame to its several destinations, offices, and functions, which could not be transgressed but within certain limits— that nature, though she sported—she sported within a certain circle;—and they could not agree about the diameter of it.

  The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than any of the classes of the literati;—they began and ended with the word nose; and had it not been for a petitio principii,31which one of the ablest of them ran his head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole controversy had been settled at once.

  A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood— and not only blood—but blood circulating in it to supply the phænomenon with a succession of drops—(a stream being but a quicker succession of drops, that is included, said he)—Now death, continued the logician, being nothing but the stagnation of the blood32—

  I deny the definition—Death is the separation of the soul from the body, said his antagonist—Then we don’t agree about our weapon, said the logician—Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist.

  The civilians33 were still more concise; what they offered being more in the nature of a decree—than a dispute.

  —Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could not possibly have been suffered in civil society—and if false—to impose upon society with such false signs and tokens, was a still greater violation of its rights, and must have had still less mercy shewn it.

  The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved the stranger’s nose was neither true nor false.

  This left room for the controversy to go on. It was maintained by the advocates of the ecclesiastic court, that there was nothing to inhibit a decree, since the stranger ex mero motu34 had confessed he had been at the Promontory of Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. &c. —To this it was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place as the Promontory of Noses, and the learned beignorant where it lay. The commissary of the bishop of Strasburg undertook the advocates, explained this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, shewing them, that the Promontory of Noses was a mere allegoric expression, importing no
more than that nature had given him a long nose: in proof of which, with great learning, he cited the underwritten authorities*, which had decided the point incontestably, had it not appeared that a dispute about some franchises of dean and chapter-lands had been determined by it nineteen years before.

  It happened—I must not say unluckily for Truth, because they were giving her a lift another way in so doing; that the two universities36 of Strasburg—the Lutheran, founded in the year 1538 by Jacobus Sturmius, counsellor of the senate,—and the Popish, founded by Leopold, arch-duke of Austria, were, during all this time, employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except just what the affair of the abbess of Quedlinburg’s placket-holes required)—in determining the point of Martin Luther’s damnation.37

  The Popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate a priori; that from the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of October 1483——when the moon was in the twelfth house—Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in the third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury all got together in the fourth— that he must in course, and unavoidably be a damn’d man— and that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damn’d doctrines too.

  By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all at once with scorpio* (in reading this my father would always shake his head) in the ninth house which the Arabians allotted to religion—it appeared that Martin Luther did not care one stiver about the matter—and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of Mars —they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming—with the blast of which his soul (being steep’d in guilt) sailed before the wind, into the lake of hell fire.

  The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this, was, that it must certainly be the soul of another man, born Oct. 22, 1483, which was forced to sail down before the wind in that manner—inasmuch as it appeared from the register of Islaben in the county of Mansfelt, that Luther was not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the 22d day of October, but on the 10th of November, the eve of Martinmas-day, from whence he had the name of Martin.

  [—I must break off my translation for a moment; for if I did not, I know I should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the abbess of Quedlinburg —It is to tell the reader, that my father never read this passage of Slawkenbergius to my uncle Toby but with triumph—not over my uncle Toby, for he never opposed him in it—but over the whole world.

  —Now you see, brother Toby, he would say, looking up, “that christian names are not such indifferent things;”—had Luther here been called by any other name but Martin, he would have been damned to all eternity—Not that I look upon Martin, he would add, as a good name—far from it—’t is something better than a neutral, and but a little—yet little as it is, you see it was of some service to him.

  My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the best logician could shew him—yet so strange is the weakness of man at the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius’s Decads full as entertaining as this I am translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over with half the delight—it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses together—his Names and his Noses—I will be bold to say, he might have read all the books in the Alexandrian library,38 had not fate taken other care of them, and not have met with a book or a passage in one, which hit two such nails as these upon the head at one stroke.]

  The two universities of Strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of Luther’s navigation. The Protestant doctors had demonstrated, that he had not sailed right before the wind, as the Popish doctors had pretended; and as every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it,—they were going to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points he was off; whether Martin had doubled the cape,39 or had fallen upon a lee-shore; and no doubt, as it was an enquiry of much edification, at least to those who understood this sort of navigation, they had gone on with it in spite of the size of the stranger’s nose, had not the size of the stranger’s nose drawn off the attention of the world from what they were about—it was their business to follow.——

  The abbess of Quedlinburg and her four dignitaries was no stop; for the enormity of the stranger’s nose running full as much in their fancies as their case of conscience—The affair of their placket-holes kept cold—In a word, the printers were ordered to distribute their types40—all controversies dropp’d.

  ’Twas a square cap41 with a silk tassel upon the crown of it— to a nut shell—to have guessed on which side of the nose the two universities would split.

  ’Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.

  ’Tis below reason, cried the others.

  ’Tis faith, cried the one.

  ’Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.

  ’Tis possible, cried the one.

  ’Tis impossible, said the other.

  God’s power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do any thing.

  He can do nothing, replied the Antinosarians, which implies contradictions.42

  He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.

  As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow’s ear, replied the Antinosarians.

  He can make two and two five,43 replied the Popish doctors.—’Tis false, said their opponents.—

  Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the reality of the nose.——It extends only to all possible things, replied the Lutherans.

  By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he thinks fit, as big as the steeple of Strasburg.44

  Now the steeple of Strasburg being the biggest and the tallest church-steeple to be seen in the whole world, the Antinosarians denied that a nose of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least by amiddle-siz’d man—The Popish doctors swore it could—The Lutheran doctors said No;—it could not.

  This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way upon the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of God—That controversy led them naturally into Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Aquinas to the devil.

  The stranger’s nose was no more heard of in the dispute— it just served as a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity,—and then they all sailed before the wind.

  Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.

  The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate degree—The less they understood of the matter, the greater was their wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied—saw their doctors, the Parchmentarians,45 the Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side—the Popish doctors on the other, like Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle, all embarked and out of sight.46

  ——The poor Strasburgers left upon the beach!

  —What was to be done?—Nodelay—theuproarincreased— every one in disorder—the city gates set open.—

  Unfortunate Strasburgers! was there in the store-house of nature—was there in the lumber-rooms of learning—was there in the great arsenal of chance, one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of fate to play upon your hearts?— I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of your-selves—’tis to write your panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated with expectation—who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature for seven and twenty days together, who could have held out one day longer.

  On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to Strasburg.

  Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly have made some mistake in his numerical characters) 7000 coaches— 15000 single horse chairs——20000 waggons, crouded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, synd
icks— beguines,47 widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their coaches—The abbess of Quedlinburg, with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the four great dignitaries of his chapter on her left-hand—the rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback——some on foot— some led—some driven—some down the Rhine —some this way—some that—all set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.

  Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale—I say Catastrophe (cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a Drama, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it—it has its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing one out of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them48— without which a tale had better never be told at all, says Slawken-bergius, but be kept to a man’s self.

  In all my ten tales, in all my ten decads, have I, Slawken-bergius, tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the stranger and his nose.

  —From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the Protasis or first entrance——where the characters of the Personæ Dramatis are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.

  The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the Catastasis, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the first night’s uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter’s wife’s lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade; and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute— to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the Stras-burgers upon the beach in distress, is the Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act.