The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

  He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of good natural parts, do consist;—that next to this and his Christian-name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;—that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Causa sine qua non,19 and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,––was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that part foremost.

  ——This requires explanation.

  My father, who dipp’d into all kinds of books, upon looking into Litbopcedus Senonesis de Partu difficili*, 20 published by Adnanus Smelvogt, had found out, That the lax and pliable state of a child’s head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,—that by force of the woman’s efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to a weight of 470 pounds21 averdupoise acting perpendicularly upon it;—it so happened that, in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough,22 such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.—— Good God! cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!—Or if there is such a juice as Bom pretends,—is it not enough to make the clearest liquor in the world both feculent and mothery?23

  But how great was his apprehension, when he further understood, that this force, acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself or cerebrum,——but that it necessarily squeez’d and propell’d the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding. —Angels and Ministers of grace defend us!24 cried my father,—can any soul withstand this shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter’d as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,––-all perplexity,—all confusion within side.

  But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turn’d topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;25—that instead of the cerebrum being propell’d towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propell’d simply towards the cerebrum where it could do no manner of hurt:—By heavens! cried he, the world is in a conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us,—and the professors of the obstetrick art are listed into the same conspiracy.—What is it to me which end of my son comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?

  It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimulates every thing to itself as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.

  When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;—it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.––Poor Devil, he would say, ––he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.––It unriddled the observation of drivellers and monstrous heads,— shewing, a priori, it could not be otherwise,—unless **** I don’t know what. It wonderfully explain’d and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatick genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c. —which, for aught he knew, might as well rarify and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,—as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;—but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;—shew’d that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;––-their pleasures more;—the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;—nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced,—so that the soul might just act as she liked.

  When my father had got so far,—what a blaze of light did the accounts of the Cæsarian section,26 and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;—no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the oss pubis on this side, or the oss coxcygis 27on that;—and, pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Cæsar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a name;—your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the sixth,——who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:——These, and many more, who figur’d high in the annals of fame,—all came side-way, Sir, into the world.

  This incision of the abdomen and uterus, ran for six weeks together in my father’s head;—he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the matrix, were not mortal;—so that the belly of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the child.—He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my mother,—merely as a matter of fact;—but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his hopes,—he thought it as well to say no more of it,—contenting himself with admiring—what he thought was to no purpose to propose.

  This was my father Mr. Shandy’s hypothesis; concerning which I have only to add, that my brother Bobby did as great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke of:—For happening not only to be christen’d, as I told you, but to be born too, when my father was at Epsom,––being moreover my mother’s first child,––coming into the world with his head foremost,—and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,—my father spelt all these together into his opinion; and as he had failed at one end,—he was determined to try the other.

  This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not easily to be put out of their way,—and was therefore one of my father’s great reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could better deal with.

  Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for my father’s purpose;—for tho’ his new-invented forceps was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained, to be the safest instrument of deliverance,—yet, it seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very thing which ran in my father’s fancy;—tho’ not with a view to the soul’s good in extracting by the feet, as was my father’s system,—but for reasons merely obstetrical.

  This will account for the coallition betwixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle Toby.——In what manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up against two such allies in science,—is hard to conceive.——You may conjecture upon it, if you please,—and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my uncle Toby got his modesty by the wound he received upon his groin.—You may raise a system to account for the loss of my nose by marriage articles,——and shew the world how it could happen, that I should have the misfortune to be called TRISTRAM, in opposition to my father’s hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, God-fathers and God-mothers not excepted.—These, with fifty other points left yet unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;—but I tell you before-hand it will be in vain,—for not the sage Alquife, the magician in Don Belianis of Greece, nor the no less famous Urganda, the
sorceress his wife, (were they alive) could pretend to come within a league of the truth.28

  The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of these matters till the next year,—when a series of things will be laid open which he little expects.

  END of the SECOND VOLUME.

  THE

  LIFE

  AND

  OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY,

  GENTLEMEAN.

  Multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia; meis tamen, rogo, parcant opufculis—in quibus fuit propofiti femper, a jocis ad feria, a feriis viciffim ad jocos transfire.

  Joan. Saresberiensis,

  Epifcopus Lugdun.

  VOL. III.

  LONDON:

  Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pain-Mall.

  M.DCC.LXI.

  (Height of original type-page 119mm.)

  THE

  LIFE and OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

  CHAP. I.

  ——“I Wish, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished it at first*)——“I wish, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby, “you had seen what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.”

  My uncle Toby’s wish did Dr. Slop a disservice which his heart never intended any man,——Sir, it confounded him—and thereby putting his ideas first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them again for the soul of him.

  In all disputes,—–male or female,—–whether for honour, for profit or for love,—it makes no difference in the case;— nothing is more dangerous, madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is, for the party wished at, instantly to get up upon his legs—and wish the wisher something in return, of pretty near the same value,—–so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it.

  This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.1——

  Dr. Slop did not understand the nature of this defence;—— he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four minutes and a half;——five had been fatal to it:—my father saw the danger——the dispute was one of the most interesting disputes in the world, “Whether the child of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a head or with one:”——he waited to the last moment to allow Dr. Slop, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare with,——first in my uncle Toby’s face——then in his——then up——then down——then east——east and by east, and so on,——coasting it along by the plinth of the wainscot till he had got to the opposite point of the compass,—and that he had actually begun to count the brass nails upon the arm of his chair——my father thought there was no time to be lost with my uncle Toby, so took up the discourse as follows.

  CHAP. II.

  “——WHAT prodigious armies you had in Flanders!”——

  Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped India handkerchief1 from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as he argued the point with my uncle Toby.———

  —–Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you my reasons for it.

  Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “Whether my father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his left,”—–have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.—But need I tell you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape;——and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens.

  As my father’s India handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on the contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, call’d out for his handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken it out;—which he might have done without any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his whole body.

  In this case, (unless indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand— or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow joint, or arm-pit)—his whole attitude had been easy—natural— unforced: Reynolds2 himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.

  Now, as my father managed this matter,——consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself.

  —In the latter end of Queen Anne’s reign, and in the beginning of the reign of King George the first—“Coat pockets were cut very low down in the skirt.”——I need say no more——the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my father’s situation.

  CHAP. III.

  IT was not an easy matter in any king’s reign, (unless you were as lean a subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat-pocket.—In the year, one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby discovered the transverse zig-zaggery1 of my father’s approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicholas;—–the idea of which drew off his attention so entirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up Trim, to go and fetch his map of Namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,— but particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin.

  My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face——my uncle Toby dismounted immediately.

  —I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o’horseback.

  ———

  CHAP. IV.

  A Man’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin’s lining;—rumple the one—you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of a gum-taffeta,1 and the body-lining to it, of a sarcenet or thin persian.

  Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dyonisius Heracleotes, Antipater, Panætius and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;— Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;— Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne 2 amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good honest, unthinking, Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can’t recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,——you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outsides of them all to pieces;—in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of ’em would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.

  I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:—for never poor jerkin has been tickled off, at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,3—— and yet I declare the lining to it,—–as far as I am a judge of the matter, it is not a three-penny piece the worse;—pell mell, helter skelter, ding dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long way, have they been trimming it for me:— had there been the least gummines
s in my lining,——by heaven! it had all of it long ago been fray’d and fretted to a thread.

  —You Messrs. the monthly Reviewers!4——how could you cut and slash my jerkin as you did?——how did you know, but you would cut my lining too?

  Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,—–so God bless you;—only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as some of you did last MAY, (in which I remember the weather was very hot)—don’t be exasperated, if I pass it by again with good temper,——being determined as long as I live or write (which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish, than my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz’d about his nose all dinner time,—— “Go,——go poor devil,” quoth he, “——get thee gone,—— why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.”

  CHAP. V.

  ANY man, madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion of blood in my father’s countenance,—by means of which, (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face, as I told you) he must have redden’d, pictorically and scientintically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:1——any man, madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father’s brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted, ——had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put into exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew’d up his, to the same pitch;—–and then the devil and all had broke loose—the whole piece, madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison’s Scarlatti2— con furia,—like mad.——Grant me patience!——What has con furia,—con strepito,——or any other hurlyburly word whatever to do with harmony?