The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 3

As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr. Manningham was not to be had, she had come to a final determination in her mind,-notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five s.h.i.+llings book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders of the sisterhood itself,-but had likewise super-added many curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the foetus in cross births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul's hand but this old woman's only.-Now this I like;-when we cannot get at the very thing we wish-never to take up with the next best in degree to it:-no; that's pitiful beyond description;-it is no more than a week from this very day, in which I am now writing this book for the edification of the world;-which is March 9, 1759,-that my dear, dear Jenny, observing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of five-and-twenty s.h.i.+llings a yard,-told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so much trouble;-and immediately went and bought herself a yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard.-'Tis the duplication of one and the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother's case, was, that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because the old midwife had really some little claim to be depended upon,-as much, at least, as success could give her; having, in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought every mother's son of them into the world without any one slip or accident which could fairly be laid to her account.

These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father's spirits in relation to this choice.-To say nothing of the natural workings of humanity and justice-or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in a case of this kind;-he felt himself concerned in a particular manner, that all should go right in the present case;-from the acc.u.mulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at Shandy-Hall.-He knew the world judged by events, and would add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him with the whole blame of it.-'Alas o'day;-had Mrs. Shandy, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just to lye-in and come down again;-which they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare knees,-and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr. Shandy got with her,-was no such mighty matter to have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this hour.'

This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;-and yet, it was not merely to shelter himself,-nor was it altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this point;-my father had extensive views of things,-and stood moreover, as he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to.

He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign down to his own time, that the current of men and money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,-set in so strong,-as to become dangerous to our civil rights,-though, by the bye,-a current was not the image he took most delight in,-a distemper was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the same in the body national as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits were driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways down;-a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both cases.

There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by French politicks or French invasions;-nor was he so much in pain of a consumption from the ma.s.s of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our const.i.tution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined;-but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;-and then he would say, The Lord have mercy upon us all.

My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,-without the remedy along with it.

'Was I an absolute prince,' he would say, pulling up his breeches with both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, 'I would appoint able judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of every fool's business who came there;-and if, upon a fair and candid hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer's sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from constable to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of their legal settlements. By this means I shall take care, that my metropolis totter'd not thro' its own weight;-that the head be no longer too big for the body;-that the extremes, now wasted and pinn'd in, be restored to their due share of nourishment, and regain with it their natural strength and beauty:-I would effectually provide, That the meadows and corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and sing;-that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;-and that such weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I perceive my n.o.bility are now taking from them.

'Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen's seats,' he would ask, with some emotion, as he walked across the room, 'throughout so many delicious provinces in France? Whence is it that the few remaining Chateaus amongst them are so dismantled,-so unfurnished, and in so ruinous and desolate a condition?-Because, Sir' (he would say) 'in that kingdom no man has any country-interest to support;-the little interest of any kind which any man has any where in it, is concentrated in the court, and the looks of the Grand Monarch: by the suns.h.i.+ne of whose countenance, or the clouds which pa.s.s across it, every French man lives or dies.'

Another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to guard against the least evil accident in my mother's lying-in in the country,-was, That any such instance would infallibly throw a balance of power, too great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in his own, or higher stations;-which, with the many other usurped rights which that part of the const.i.tution was hourly establis.h.i.+ng,-would, in the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick government established in the first creation of things by G.o.d.

In this point he was entirely of Sir Robert Filmer's opinion, That the plans and inst.i.tutions of the greatest monarchies in the eastern parts of the world, were, originally, all stolen from that admirable pattern and prototype of this houshold and paternal power;-which, for a century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into a mix'd government;-the form of which, however desirable in great combinations of the species,-was very troublesome in small ones,-and seldom produced any thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.

For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,-my father was for having the man-midwife by all means,-my mother, by no means. My father begg'd and intreated, she would for once recede from her prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;-my mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to choose for herself,-and have no mortal's help but the old woman's.-What could my father do? He was almost at his wit's end;-talked it over with her in all moods;-placed his arguments in all lights;-argued the matter with her like a christian,-like a heathen,-like a husband,-like a father,-like a patriot,-like a man:-My mother answered every thing only like a woman; which was a little hard upon her;-for as she could not a.s.sume and fight it out behind such a variety of characters,-'twas no fair match:-'twas seven to one.-What could my mother do?-She had the advantage (otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and enabled her to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an advantage,-that both sides sung Te Deum. In a word, my mother was to have the old woman,-and the operator was to have licence to drink a bottle of wine with my father and my uncle Toby Shandy in the back parlour,-for which he was to be paid five guineas.

I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in the breast of my fair reader;-and it is this,-Not to take it absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which I have dropp'd in it,-'That I am a married man.'-I own, the tender appellation of my dear, dear Jenny,-with some other strokes of conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a determination against me.-All I plead for, in this case, Madam, is strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to yourself,-as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at present can be produced against me.-Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam, as to desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear Jenny is my kept mistress;-no,-that would be flattering my character in the other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has no kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, for some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know how this matter really stands.-It is not impossible, but that my dear, dear Jenny! tender as the appellation is, may be my child.-Consider,-I was born in the year eighteen.-Nor is there any thing unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that my dear Jenny may be my friend.-Friend!-My friend.-Surely, Madam, a friends.h.i.+p between the two s.e.xes may subsist, and be supported without-Fy! Mr. Shandy:-Without any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in friends.h.i.+p, where there is a difference of s.e.x. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the best French Romances;-it will really, Madam, astonish you to see with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment, which I have the honour to speak of, is dress'd out.

Chapter 1.XIX.

I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father's great good sense,-knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious too in philosophy,-wise also in political reasoning,-and in polemical (as he will find) no way ignorant,-could be capable of entertaining a notion in his head, so out of the common track,-that I fear the reader, when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a cholerick temper, will immediately throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily at it;-and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant; and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of christian names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what superficial minds were capable of conceiving.

His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct.

The hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more seriousness,-nor had he more faith,-or more to say on the powers of necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,-or on Dulcinea's name, in shedding l.u.s.tre upon them, than my father had on those of Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the one hand-or of Nyky and Simkin on the other. How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of the names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many, he would add, are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing?

I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened) my father would say-that you do not heartily subscribe to this opinion of mine,-which, to those, he would add, who have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,-I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;-and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally a.s.sured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in the dispute,-but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this matter;-you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;-and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into you,-of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your son,-your dear son,-from whose sweet and open temper you have so much to expect.-Your Billy, Sir!-would you, for the world, have called him Judas?-Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,-and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires,-Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a G.o.dfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him?-O my G.o.d! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper right, Sir,-you are incapable of it;-you would have trampled upon the offer;-you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter's head with abhorrence.

Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with that generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole transaction, is really n.o.ble;-and what renders it more so, is the principle of it;-the workings of a parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, That was your son called Judas,-the forbid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example.

I never knew a man able to answer this argument.-But, indeed, to speak of my father as he was;-he was certainly irresistible;-both in his orations and disputations;-he was born an orator;-(Greek).-Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him,-and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and pa.s.sions of his respondent,-that Nature might have stood up and said,-'This man is eloquent.'-In short, whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the question, 'twas hazardous in either case to attack him.-And yet, 'tis strange, he had never read Cicero, nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, amongst the antients;-nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby, amongst the moderns;-and what is more astonis.h.i.+ng, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius or any Dutch logician or commentator;-he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad hominem consisted; so that I well remember, when he went up along with me to enter my name at Jesus College in...,-it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society,-that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able to work after that fas.h.i.+on with them.

To work with them in the best manner he could, was what my father was, however, perpetually forced upon;-for he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend-most of which notions, I verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss them till another day.

I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the progress and establishment of my father's many odd opinions,-but as a warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who, after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into our brains,-at length claim a kind of settlement there,-working sometimes like yeast;-but more generally after the manner of the gentle pa.s.sion, beginning in jest,-but ending in downright earnest.

Whether this was the case of the singularity of my father's notions-or that his judgment, at length, became the dupe of his wit;-or how far, in many of his notions, he might, though odd, be absolutely right;-the reader, as he comes at them, shall decide. All that I maintain here, is, that in this one, of the influence of christian names, however it gained footing, he was serious;-he was all uniformity;-he was systematical, and, like all systematic reasoners, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture every thing in nature to support his hypothesis. In a word I repeat it over again;-he was serious;-and, in consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have known better,-as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed upon their child,-or more so, than in the choice of Ponto or Cupid for their puppy-dog.

This, he would say, look'd ill;-and had, moreover, this particular aggravation in it, viz. That when once a vile name was wrongfully or injudiciously given, 'twas not like the case of a man's character, which, when wrong'd, might hereafter be cleared;-and, possibly, some time or other, if not in the man's life, at least after his death,-be, somehow or other, set to rights with the world: But the injury of this, he would say, could never be undone;-nay, he doubted even whether an act of parliament could reach it:-He knew as well as you, that the legislature a.s.sumed a power over surnames;-but for very strong reasons, which he could give, it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step farther.

It was observable, that tho' my father, in consequence of this opinion, had, as I have told you, the strongest likings and dislikings towards certain names;-that there were still numbers of names which hung so equally in the balance before him, that they were absolutely indifferent to him. Jack, d.i.c.k, and Tom were of this cla.s.s: These my father called neutral names;-affirming of them, without a satire, That there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and good men, since the world began, who had indifferently borne them;-so that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other's effects; for which reason, he would often declare, He would not give a cherry-stone to choose amongst them. Bob, which was my brother's name, was another of these neutral kinds of christian names, which operated very little either way; and as my father happen'd to be at Epsom, when it was given him,-he would oft-times thank Heaven it was no worse. Andrew was something like a negative quant.i.ty in Algebra with him;-'twas worse, he said, than nothing.-William stood pretty high:-Numps again was low with him:-and Nick, he said, was the Devil.

But of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion for Tristram;-he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,-thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was frequently involved,-he would sometimes break off in a sudden and spirited Epiphonema, or rather Erotesis, raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the discourse,-and demand it categorically of his antagonist, Whether he would take upon him to say, he had ever remembered,-whether he had ever read,-or even whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called Tristram, performing any thing great or worth recording?-No,-he would say,-Tristram!-The thing is impossible.

What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,-unless he gives them proper vent:-It was the identical thing which my father did:-for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express Dissertation simply upon the word Tristram,-shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.

When this story is compared with the t.i.tle-page,-Will not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul?-to see an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho' singular,-yet inoffensive in his notions,-so played upon in them by cross purposes;-to look down upon the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly been plann'd and pointed against him, merely to insult his speculations.-In a word, to behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day suffering sorrow;-ten times in a day calling the child of his prayers Tristram!-Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which, to his ears, was unison to Nincomp.o.o.p, and every name vituperative under heaven.-By his ashes! I swear it,-if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,-it must have been here;-and if it was not necessary I should be born before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account of it.

Chapter 1.XX.

-How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter? I told you in it, That my mother was not a papist.-Papist! You told me no such thing, Sir.-Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that I told you as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could tell you such a thing.-Then, Sir, I must have miss'd a page.-No, Madam, you have not miss'd a word.-Then I was asleep, Sir.-My pride, Madam, cannot allow you that refuge.-Then, I declare, I know nothing at all about the matter.-That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your charge; and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that you immediately turn back, that is as soon as you get to the next full stop, and read the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she returns back:-'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,-of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart with them-The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the younger affirm, 'That he never read a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.' The stories of Greece and Rome, run over without this turn and application,-do less service, I affirm it, than the history of Parismus and Parismenus, or of the Seven Champions of England, read with it.

-But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over again the chapter, Madam, as I desired you?-You have: And did you not observe the pa.s.sage, upon the second reading, which admits the inference?-Not a word like it! Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the chapter, where I take upon me to say, 'It was necessary I should be born before I was christen'd.' Had my mother, Madam, been a Papist, that consequence did not follow. (The Romish Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases of danger, before it is born;-but upon this proviso, That some part or other of the child's body be seen by the baptizer:-But the Doctors of the Sorbonne, by a deliberation held amongst them, April 10, 1733,-have enlarged the powers of the midwives, by determining, That though no part of the child's body should appear,-that baptism shall, nevertheless, be administered to it by injection,-par le moyen d'une pet.i.te canulle,-Anglice a squirt.-'Tis very strange that St. Thomas Aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying and untying the knots of school-divinity,-should, after so much pains bestowed upon this,-give up the point at last, as a second La chose impossible,-'Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St. Thomas!) baptizari possunt nullo modo.'-O Thomas! Thomas! If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism by injection, as presented to the Doctors of the Sorbonne, with their consultation thereupon, it is as follows.)

It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to the Republick of letters;-so that my own is quite swallowed up in the consideration of it,-that this self-same vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and humour,-and so wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our concupiscence that way,-that nothing but the gross and more carnal parts of a composition will go down:-The subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards,-the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the ink-horn.

I wish the male-reader has not pa.s.s'd by many a one, as quaint and curious as this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. I wish it may have its effects;-and that all good people, both male and female, from example, may be taught to think as well as read.

Memoire presente a Messieurs les Docteurs de Sorbonne

Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366.

Un Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente a Messieurs les Docteurs de Sorbonne, qu'il y a des cas, quoique tres rares, ou une mere ne scauroit accoucher, & meme ou l'enfant est tellement renferme dans le sein de sa mere, qu'il ne fait paroitre aucune partie de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas, suivant les Rituels, de lui conferer, du moins sous condition, le bapteme. Le Chirurgien, qui consulte, pretend, par le moyen d'une pet.i.te canulle, de pouvoir baptiser immediatement l'enfant, sans faire aucun tort a la mere.-Il demand si ce moyen, qu'il vient de proposer, est permis & legitime, & s'il peut s'en servir dans les cas qu'il vient d'exposer.

Reponse

Le Conseil estime, que la question proposee souffre de grandes difficultes. Les Theologiens posent d'un cote pour principe, que le bapteme, qui est une naissance spirituelle, suppose une premiere naissance; il faut etre ne dans le monde, pour renaitre en Jesus Christ, comme ils l'enseignent. S. Thomas, 3 part. quaest. 88 artic. II. suit cette doctrine comme une verite constante; l'on ne peut, dit ce S. Docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, & S. Thomas est fonde sur ce, que les enfans ne sont point nes, & ne peuvent etre comptes parmi les autres hommes; d'ou il conclud, qu'ils ne peuvent etre l'objet d'une action exterieure, pour recevoir par leur ministere, les sacremens necessaires au salut: Pueri in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut c.u.m aliis hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici actioni humanae, ut per eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem. Les rituels ordonnent dans la pratique ce que les theologiens ont etabli sur les memes matieres, & ils deffendent tous d'une maniere uniforme, de baptiser les enfans qui sont renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, s'ils ne sont paroitre quelque partie de leurs corps. Le concours des theologiens, & des rituels, qui sont les regles des dioceses, paroit former une autorite qui termine la question presente; cependant le conseil de conscience considerant d'un cote, que le raisonnement des theologiens est uniquement fonde sur une raison de convenance, & que la deffense des rituels suppose que l'on ne peut baptiser immediatement les enfans ainsi renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, ce qui est contre la supposition presente; & d'un autre cote, considerant que les memes theologiens enseignent, que l'on peut risquer les sacremens que Jesus Christ a etablis comme des moyens faciles, mais necessaires pour sanctifier les hommes; & d'ailleurs estimant, que les enfans renfermes dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient etre capables de salut, parcequ'ils sont capables de d.a.m.nation;-pour ces considerations, & en egard a l'expose, suivant lequel on a.s.sure avoir trouve un moyen certain de baptiser ces enfans ainsi renfermes, sans faire aucun tort a la mere, le Conseil estime que l'on pourroit se servir du moyen propose, dans la confiance qu'il a, que Dieu n'a point laisse ces sortes d'enfans sans aucuns secours, & supposant, comme il est expose, que le moyen dont il s'agit est propre a leur procurer le bapteme; cependant comme il s'agiroit, en autorisant la pratique proposee, de changer une regle universellement etablie, le Conseil croit que celui qui consulte doit s'addresser a son eveque, & a qui il appartient de juger de l'utilite, & du danger du moyen propose, & comme, sous le bon plaisir de l'eveque, le Conseil estime qu'il faudroit recourir au Pape, qui a le droit d'expliquer les regles de l'eglise, & d'y deroger dans le cas, ou la loi ne scauroit obliger, quelque sage & quelque utile que paroisse la maniere de baptiser dont il s'agit, le Conseil ne pourroit l'approver sans le concours de ces deux autorites. On conseile au moins a celui qui consulte, de s'addresser a son eveque, & de lui faire part de la presente decision, afin que, si le prelat entre dans les raisons sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignes s'appuyent, il puisse etre autorise dans le cas de necessite, ou il risqueroit trop d'attendre que la permission fut demandee & accordee d'employer le moyen qu'il propose si avantageux au salut de l'enfant. Au reste, le Conseil, en estimant que l'on pourroit s'en servir, croit cependant, que si les enfans dont il s'agit, venoient au monde, contre l'esperance de ceux qui se seroient servis du meme moyen, il seroit necessaire de les baptiser sous condition; & en cela le Conseil se conforme a tous les rituels, qui en autorisant le bapteme d'un enfant qui fait paroitre quelque partie de son corps, enjoignent neantmoins, & ordonnent de le baptiser sous condition, s'il vient heureus.e.m.e.nt au monde.

Delibere en Sorbonne, le 10 Avril, 1733.

A. Le Moyne.

L. De Romigny.

De Marcilly.

Mr. Tristram Shandy's compliments to Messrs. Le Moyne, De Romigny, and De Marcilly; hopes they all rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation.-He begs to know, whether after the ceremony of marriage, and before that of consummation, the baptizing all the Homunculi at once, slapdash, by injection, would not be a shorter and safer cut still; on condition, as above, That if the Homunculi do well, and come safe into the world after this, that each and every of them shall be baptized again (sous condition)-And provided, in the second place, That the thing can be done, which Mr. Shandy apprehends it may, par le moyen d'une pet.i.te canulle, and sans faire aucune tort au pere.

Chapter 1.XXI.

-I wonder what's all that noise, and running backwards and forwards for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing himself, after an hour and a half's silence, to my uncle Toby,-who, you must know, was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smoaking his social pipe all the time, in mute contemplation of a new pair of black plush-breeches which he had got on:-What can they be doing, brother?-quoth my father,-we can scarce hear ourselves talk.

I think, replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his mouth, and striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left thumb, as he began his sentence,-I think, says he:-But to enter rightly into my uncle Toby's sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to enter first a little into his character, the out-lines of which I shall just give you, and then the dialogue between him and my father will go on as well again.

Pray what was that man's name,-for I write in such a hurry, I have no time to recollect or look for it,-who first made the observation, 'That there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?' Whoever he was, 'twas a just and good observation in him.-But the corollary drawn from it, namely, 'That it is this which has furnished us with such a variety of odd and whimsical characters;'-that was not his;-it was found out by another man, at least a century and a half after him: Then again,-that this copious store-house of original materials, is the true and natural cause that our Comedies are so much better than those of France, or any others that either have, or can be wrote upon the Continent:-that discovery was not fully made till about the middle of King William's reign,-when the great Dryden, in writing one of his long prefaces, (if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed toward the latter end of queen Anne, the great Addison began to patronize the notion, and more fully explained it to the world in one or two of his Spectators;-but the discovery was not his.-Then, fourthly and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an irregularity in our characters,-doth thereby, in some sort, make us amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with when the weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,-that observation is my own;-and was struck out by me this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning.