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

by Laurence Sterne

  Well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word——Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

  —— Yorick foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father’s breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.——Prithee, Trim, said Yorick, without staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture?

  With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the corporal, making a bow to my uncle Toby—Speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle Toby.—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my slave,—added my uncle Toby, turning to my father.——

  The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus.

  CHAP. XXXIX.

  JUST as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled Dr.Slop.—’Tis not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.——

  Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and what has this whelp of mine to say to the matter?——

  Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system which Dr.Slop had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—He sat down.

  Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, in a manner which could not go unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’Twill end in a phimosis,1 replied Dr.Slop.

  I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle Toby,—returning his pipe into his mouth.——Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical lecture.—The corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr.Slop, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words.

  CHAP. XL.

  THE city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun under his majesty king William himself, the year after I went into the army—lies, an’ please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country. —’Tis quite surrounded, said my uncle Toby, with the Shannon, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland.——

  I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr.Slop, of beginning a medical lecture. —’Tis all true, answered Trim.—Then I wish the faculty would follow the cut of it, said Yorick. —’Tis all cut through, an’ please your reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a puddle,—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water;—nor was that enough, for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.———

  And what conclusion dost thou draw, Corporal Trim, cried my father, from all these premises?

  I infer, an’ please your worship, replied Trim, that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but ditch-water—and that the radical heat, of those who can go to the expence of it, is burnt brandy—the radical heat and moisture of a private man, an’ please your honours, is nothing but ditch-water—and a dram of geneva——and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the vapours—we know not what it is to fear death.1

  I am at a loss, Captain Shandy, quoth Doctor Slop, to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology, ordivinity.—Slop had not forgot2 Trim’s comment upon the sermon.—

  It is but an hour ago, replied Yorick, since the corporal was examined in the latter, and pass’d muster with great honour.——

  The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor Slop, turning to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being,—as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally in my opinion by consubstantials, impriments, and occludents.3——Now this poor fellow, continued Dr.Slop, pointing to the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial emperic discourse4 upon this nice point.——That he has,—said my father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—I’m sure of it—quoth Yorick.——

  CHAP. XLI.

  DOCTOR Slop being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the Tristra-pœdia.——Come! chear up, my lads; I’ll shew you land1———for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelvemonth.—Huzza!—

  CHAP. XLII.

  —FIVE years with a bib under his chin;

  Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to Malachi;1

  A year and a half in learning to write his own name;

  Seven long years and more τυπω-ing it, at Greek and Latin;2

  Four years at his probations and his negations—the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block,3—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great Julius Scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?———Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and Peter Damianus, lord bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And Baldus4 himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when Eudamidas, the son of Archidamas, heard Xenocrates at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,—If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom—what time will he have to make use of it?5

  Yorick listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost attoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when you imitate him.

  I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a North west passage6 to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.——But alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, Yorick! has not a parent to point it out.

  ——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the auxiliary verbs,7 Mr.Yorick.

  Had Yorick trod upon Virgil’s snake,8 he could not have looked more surprised.—I am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and I reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befell the republick of letters, That those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas, in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done——So that, except Raymond Lullius, and the elder Pelegrini,9 the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write all that could
be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him—I should be glad, said Yorick, interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father.

  The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and not the better;——but be that as it may,—when the mind has done that with it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at rest,—until a second idea enters;——and so on.

  Now the use of the Auxiliaries is, at once to set the soul a going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability10 of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracks of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions.

  You excite my curiosity greatly, said Yorick.

  For my own part, quoth my uncle Toby, I have given it up.——The Danes, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the left at the siege of Limerick, were all auxiliaries.——And very good ones, said my uncle Toby.—And your honour roul’d with them, captains with captains.—Very well, said the corporal.11—But the auxiliaries, my brother is talking about, answered my uncle Toby,—I conceive to be different things.——

  ——You do? said my father, rising up.

  CHAP. XLIII.

  MY father took a single turn across the room, then sat down and finished the chapter.

  The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are, am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont.—And these varied with tenses, present, past, future, and conjugated with the verb see,—or with these questions added to them;— Is it? Was it? Will it be? Would it be? May it be? Might it be? And these again put negatively, Is it not? Was it not? Ought it not?—Or affirmatively,—It is; It was; It ought to be. Or chronologically,—Has it been always? Lately? How long ago?—Or hypothetically,—If it was; If it was not? What would follow?——If the French should beat the English? If the Sun go out of the Zodiac?

  Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter his brain how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from it.——Did’st thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair:— No, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.——But thou could’st discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one?——’Tis the fact I want; replied my father,—and the possibility of it, is as follows.

  A WHITE BEAR! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?

  Would I had seen a white bear? (for how can I imagine it?)

  If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a white bear, what then?

  If I never have, can, must or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted?—described? Have I never dreamed of one?

  Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth?

  —Is the white bear worth seeing?—

  —Is there no sin in it?—

  Is it better than a BLACK ONE?

  END of the FIFTH VOLUME.

  THE

  LIFE

  AND

  OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY,

  GENTLEMAN.

  Dixero fi quid fortèjocofius, hoc mihi juris Cum venia dabis

  HOR.

  ——Si quis calumnietur levius effe quam decet theologum, aut mordacius quam deceat Chriftianum——non Ego, fed Democritus dixit.——

  ERASMUS

  VOL. VI

  LONDON:

  Printed for T. Becket and P. A. DEHONDT,

  in the Strand. M DCCLXII.

  (Height of original type-page 123.5 mm.)

  THE

  LIFE and OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

  CHAP. I.

  ——WE’LL not stop two moments, my dear Sir,—only as we have got thro’ these five volumes,(do, Sir, sit down upon a set——they are better than nothing) let us just look back upon the country we have pass’d through.———

  ——What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it.

  Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number of Jack Asses?1 ——How they view’d and review’d us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley! ——and when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of sight—good God! what a braying did they all set up together!

  ——Prithee, shepherd! who keeps all those Jack Asses? * * *

  ——Heaven be their comforter——What! are they never curried?——Are they never taken in in winter?——Bray bray—bray. Bray on,—the world is deeply your debtor;—— louder still—that’s nothing;—in good sooth, you are ill-used: ——Was I a Jack Asse, I solemnly declare, I would bray in G-sol-re-ut2 from morning, even unto night.

  CHAP. II.

  WHEN my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an’ all,—and in a kind of triumph redelivered it into Trim’s hand, with a nod to lay it upon the’scrutoire where he found it.——Tristram, said he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same way;——every word, Yorick, by this means, you see, is converted into a thesis or an hypothesis;—every thesis and hypothesis have an offspring of propositions;—and each proposition has its own consequences and conclusions; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings.——The force of this engine, added my father, is incredible, in opening a child’s head.——’Tis enough, brother Shandy, cried my uncle Toby, to burst it into a thousand splinters.———

  I presume, said Yorick, smiling,—it must be owing to this, ——(for let logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted for sufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)1—— That the famous Vincent Quirino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of which the Cardinal Bembo has given the world so exact a story,—should be able to paste up in the publick schools at Rome, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand, five hundred, and sixty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most abstruse theology;—and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents.——What is that, cried my father, to what is told us of Alphonsus Tostatus,2 who, almost in his nurse’s arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?——What shall we say of the great Piereskius?3 —That’s the very man, cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Schevling, and from Schevling back again, merely to see Stevinus’s flying chariot.——He was a very great man! added my uncle Toby; (meaning Stevinus)—He was so; brother Toby,said my father, (meaning Piereskius)——and had multiplied his ideas so fast, and increased his knowlege4 to such a prodigious stock, that, if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning him, which we cannot with-hold here, without shaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever—at seven years of age, his father committed entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of five years old,—with the sole management of all his concerns.—Was the father as wise as the son? quoth my uncle Toby:—I should think not, said Yorick:—But what are these, continued my father—(breaking out in a kind of enthusiasm)—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood in Grotius, Scioppius, Heinsius, Politia
n, Pascal, Joseph Scal-iger, Ferdinand de Cordouè,5 and others—some of which left off their substantial forms6 at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning without them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote tragedies at eight;— Ferdinand de Cordouè was so wise at nine,—’twas thought the Devil was in him;——and at Venice gave such proofs of his knowlege and goodness, that the monks imagined he was Antichrist, or nothing.——Others were masters of fourteen languages at ten,— finished the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics at eleven,—put forth their commentaries upon Servius and Martianus Capella7 at twelve,—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity:——But you forget the great Lipsius,8 quoth Yorick, who composed a work* the day he was born;——They should have wiped it up, said my uncle Toby, and said no more about it.

  CHAP. III.

  WHEN the cataplasm1 was ready, a scruple of decorum had unseasonably rose up in Susannah’s conscience, about holding the candle, whilst Slop tied it on; Slop had not treated Susannah’s distemper with anodines,—and so a quarrel had ensued betwixt them.

  ——Oh! oh!——said Slop, casting a glance of undue freedom in Susannah’s face, as she declined the office;——then, I think I know you, madam——You know me, Sir! cried Susannah fastidiously, and with a toss of her head, levelled evidently, not at his profession, but at the doctor himself,—— you know me! cried Susannah again.——Doctor Slop clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his nostrils;—— Susannah’s spleen was ready to burst at it;——’Tis false, said Susannah.—Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said Slop, not a little elated with the success of his last thrust,——if you won’t hold the candle, and look—you may hold it and shut your eyes:— That’s one of your popish shifts, cried Susannah:— ’Tis better, said Slop, with a nod, than no shift at all, young woman;——I defy you, Sir, cried Susannah, pulling her shift sleeve below her elbow.