The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

  ——Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as ten——to determine, with Ficinus, “How many parts of it—the one,—and how many the other;” —or whether it is all of it one great Devil, from head to tail, as Plato has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my opinion of Plato is this; that he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with doctor Baynyard,2 who being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of ’em on at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a herse and six—rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was nothing in the world, but one great bouncing Cantharidis. ———

  I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous liberty in arguing, but what Nazianzen cried out (that is polemically) to Philagrius——

  “Euγf!” O rare! ’tis fine reasoning, Sir, indeed!—“tőTι φiλoσoφεTςήυΠέθεσι” —and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize about it in your moods and passions.3

  Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to enquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself with Rhasis and Dioscorides, whether the seat of it is in the brain or liver;—because this would lead me on, to an examination of the two very opposite manners, in which patients have been treated ——the one, of Aætius, who always begun with a cooling glyster of hempseed and bruised cucumbers;—and followed on with thin potations of water lillies and purslane—to which he added a pinch of snuff, of the herb Hanea;— and where Aætius durst venture it,—his topaz-ring.

  ——The other, that of Gordomus, who (in his cap. 15. de Amore) directs they should be thrashed, “ad putorem usque,” ——till they stink again.4

  These are disquisitions, which my father, who had laid in a great stock of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with, in the progress of my uncle Toby’s affairs: I must anticipate thus much, That from his theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my uncle Toby’s mind, almost as much as his amours themselves)—he took a single step into practice;— and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was making my uncle Toby a new pair of breeches, he produced Gordomus’s effect upon my uncle Toby without the disgrace.

  What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: all that is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this,——That whatever effect it had upon my uncle Toby,——it had a vile effect upon the house;——and if my uncle Toby had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had a vile effect upon my father too.

  CHAP. XXXVII.

  ——’Twill come out of itself by and bye.——All I contend for is, that I am not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so long as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the word itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in common with the rest of the world, why should I differ from it a moment before the time?——When I can get on no further,—and find myself entangled on all sides of this mystick labyrinth,—my Opinion will then come in, in course,—and lead me out.

  At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the reader, my uncle Toby fell in love:

  —Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even over head and ears in it,—carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:—this is recurring again to Plato’s opinion, which, with all his divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and heretical;— and so much for that.

  Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle Toby fell into it.

  ——And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation— so wouldst thou: For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in this world, more concupiscible than widow Wadman.

  CHAP. XXXVIII.

  TO conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your hand.——Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind——as like your mistress as you can——as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis all one to me ——please but your own fancy in it.

  ———Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so exquisite!

  ——Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it?

  Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot misrepresent.

  CHAP. XXXIX.

  AS Susannah was informed by an express from Mrs. Bridget, of my uncle Toby’s falling in love with her mistress, fifteen days before it happened,—the contents of which express, Susannah communicated to my mother the next day,—it has just given me an opportunity of entering upon my uncle Toby’s amours a fortnight before their existence.

  I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother, which will surprise you greatly.———

  Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my mother broke silence.———

  “——My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman.”

  ——Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.

  It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked the meaning of a thing she did not understand.

  ——That she is not a woman of science, my father would say—is her misfortune—but she might ask a question.—

  My mother never did.——In short, she went out of the world at last without knowing whether it turned round, or stood still. ——My father had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was,—but she always forgot.

  For these reasons a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt them, than a proposition,—a reply, and a rejoinder; at the end of which, it generally took breath for a few minutes, (as in the affair of the breeches) and then went on again.

  If he marries, ’twill be the worse for us,—quoth my mother.

  Not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter away his means upon that, as any thing else.

  ——To be sure, said my mother: so here ended the proposition,—the reply,—and the rejoinder, I told you of.

  It will be some amusement to him, too,——said my father.

  A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.——

  ——Lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to himself—— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  CHAP. XL.

  I Am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegitable diet, with a few of the cold seeds,1 I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now,

  These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes.2——In the fifth volume I have been very good,——the precise line I have described in it being this:

  By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to Navarre,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,—I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse’s devils led me the round you see marked D.— for as for c c c c c they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,— or with my own transgressions at the letters A B D—they vanish into nothing.

  In this last volume I have done better still—for from the end of Le Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby’s campaigns,—I have scarce stepped a yard out of my way.

  If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the good leave of his grace of Benevento’s devils——but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of goin
g on even thus;

  ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

  which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master’s ruler, (borrowed for that purpose) turning neither to the right hand or to the left.

  This right line,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines——

  ——The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero3——

  ——The best line! say cabbage-planters4——is the shortest line,5 says Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.——

  I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart in your next birth-day suits!6

  ——What a journey!

  Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines——by what mistake——who told them so——or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of GRAVITATION.

  END Of the SIXTH VOLUME.

  THE

  LIFE

  AND

  OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY,

  GENTLEMAN.

  Non enim excurfus bic ejus, fed opus ipfum cft.

  PLIN. Lib. quintus Epiftola fexta.

  VOL. VII.

  LONDON:

  Printed for T. BECKET and P.A. DEHONT,

  in the Strand. M DCC LXV.

  (Height of original type-page 109.5 mm.)

  THE

  LIFE and OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

  CHAP. I.

  NO——I think, I said, I would write two volumes every year, provided the vile cough which then tormented me, and which to this hour I dread worse than the devil, would but give me leave——and in another place—(but where, I can’t recollect now) speaking of my book as a machine, and laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain the greater credit to it—I swore it should be kept a going at that rate these forty years if it pleased but the fountain of life1 to bless me so long with health and good spirits.

  Now as for my spirits, little have I to lay to their charge— nay so very little (unless the mounting me upon a long stick,2 and playing the fool with me nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, be accusations) that on the contrary, I have much—much to thank ’em for: cheerily have ye made me tread the path of life with all the burdens of it (except its cares) upon my back; in no one moment of my existence, that I remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my horizon with hope, and when DEATH himself knocked at my door—ye bad him come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he doubted of his commission——

  “—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he.

  Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story——and I was that moment telling Eugenius a most tawdry one3 in my way, of a nun who fancied herself a shell-fish, and of a monk damn’d for eating a muscle, and was she wing him the grounds and justice of the procedure——

  “—Did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a scrape?” quoth Death. Thou hast had a narrow escape, Tristram, said Eugenius, taking hold of my hand as I finish’d my story——

  But there is no living, Eugenius, replied I, at this rate; for as this son of a whore has found out my lodgings——

  —You call him rightly, said Eugenius,—for by sin, we are told, he enter’d the world4 ——I care not which way he enter’d, quoth I, provided he be not in such a hurry to take me out with him—for I have forty volumes to write, and forty thousand things to say and do, which no body in the world will say and do for me, except thyself; and as thou seest he has got me by the throat5 (for Eugenius could scarce hear me speak across the table) and that I am no match for him in the open field, had I not better, whilst these few scatter’d spirits remain, and these two spider legs of mine (holding one of them up to him) are able to support me—had I not better, Eugenius, fly for my life? ’tis my advice, my dear Tristram, said Eugenius——then by heaven! I will lead him a dance he little thinks of—for I will gallop, quoth I, without looking once behind me to the banks of the Garonne; and if I hear him clattering at my heels——I’ll scamper away to mount Vesuvius——from thence to Joppa,6 and from Joppa to the world’s end, where, if he follows me, I pray God he may break his neck——

  —He runs more risk there, said Eugenius, than thou.

  Eugenius’s wit and affection brought blood into the cheek from whence it had been some months banish’d—’twas a vile moment to bid adieu in; he led me to my chaise——Allons!7 said I; the post boy gave a crack with his whip——off I went like a cannon, and in half a dozen bounds got into Dover.

  CHAP. II.

  NOW hang it! quoth I, as I look’d towards the French coast—a man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad——and I never gave a peep into Rochester church, or took notice of the dock of Chatham, or visited St. Thomas at Canterbury,1 though they all three laid in my way——

  —But mine, indeed, is a particular case——

  So without arguing the matter further with Thomas o’Becket, or any one else—I skip’d into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail and scudded away like the wind.

  Pray captain, quoth I, as I was going down into the cabin, is a man never overtaken by Death in this passage?

  Why, there is not time for a man to be sick in it, replied he ——What a cursed lyar! for I am sick as a horse, quoth I, already——what a brain!——upside down!——hey dey! the cells are broke loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fix’d and volatile salts,2 are all jumbled into one mass——good g—! every thing turns round in it like a thousand whirlpools——I’d give a shilling to know if I shan’t write the clearer for it——

  Sick! sick! sick! sick!——

  —When shall we get to land? captain—they have hearts like stones——O I am deadly sick!——reach me that thing, boy ——’tis the most discomfiting sickness——I wish I was at the bottom—Madam! how is it with you? Undone! undone! un—— O! undone! sir—What the first time?——No, ’tis the second, third, sixth, tenth time, sir,—hey-day——what a trampling over head!—hollo! cabin boy! what’s the matter—

  The wind chopp’d about! s’Death!—then I shall meet him full in the face.

  What luck!—’tis chopp’d about again, master——O the devil chop it——

  Captain, quoth she, for heaven’s sake, let us get ashore.

  CHAP. III.

  IT is a great inconvenience to a man in a haste, that there are three distinct roads between Calais and Paris, in behalf of which there is so much to be said by the several deputies from the towns which lie along them, that half a day is easily lost in settling which you’ll take.

  First, the road by Lisle and Arras, which is the most about ——but most interesting, and instructing.

  The second that by Amiens, which you may go, if you would see Chantilly——

  And that by Beauvais, which you may go, if you will.

  For this reason a great many chuse to go by Beauvais.

  CHAP. IV.

  “NOW before I quit Calais,”a travel-writer would say, “it would not be amiss to give some account of it.”— Now I think it very much amiss—that a man cannot go quietly through a town, and let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely o’my conscience, for the sake of drawing it; because, if we may judge from what has been wrote of these things, by all who have wrote and gallop’d—or who have gallop’d and wrote, which is a different way still; or who for more expedition than the rest, have wrote-galloping, which is the way I do at present—�
��from the great Addison1 who did it with his satchel of school-books hanging at his a— and galling his beast’s crupper at every stroke—there is not a galloper of us all who might not have gone on ambling quietly in his own ground (in case he had any) and have wrote all he had to write, dry shod, as well as not.2

  For my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which I shall ever make my last appeal—I know no more of Calais, (except the little my barber told me of it, as he was whetting his razor) than I do this moment of Grand Cairo; for it was dusky in the evening when I landed, and dark as pitch in the morning when I set out, and yet by merely knowing what is what, and by drawing this from that in one part of the town, and by spelling and putting this and that together in another—I would lay any travelling odds, that I this moment write a chapter upon Calais as long as my arm; and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail of every item, which is worth a stranger’s curiosity in the town— that you would take me for the town clerk of Calais itself—and where, sir, would be the wonder? was not Democritus, who laughed ten times more than I—town-clerk of Abdera? and was not (I forget his name) who had more discretion than us both, town-clerk of Ephesus?3 ——it should be penn’d moreover, Sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, and truth, and precision——

  —Nay—if you don’t believe me, you may read the chapter for your pains.

  CHAP. V.

  CALAIS, Calatium, Calusium, Calesium.1 This town, if we may trust it’s archives, the authority of which I see no reason to call in question in this place—was once no more than a small village belonging to one of the first Counts de Guines; and as it boasts at present of no less than fourteen thousand inhabitants, exclusive of four hundred and twenty distinct families in the basse ville, or suburbs——it must have grown up by little and little, I suppose, to it’s present size.