The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 4

Thus-thus, my fellow-labourers and a.s.sociates in this great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, aenigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of 'em ending as these do, in ical) have for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards towards that Akme of their perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, we cannot possibly be far off.

When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of writings whatsoever;-the want of all kind of writing will put an end to all kind of reading;-and that in time, As war begets poverty; poverty peace,-must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,-and then-we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly where we started.

-Happy! Thrice happy times! I only wish that the aera of my begetting, as well as the mode and manner of it, had been a little alter'd,-or that it could have been put off, with any convenience to my father or mother, for some twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the literary world might have stood some chance.-

But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe.

His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there appeared too many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he derived the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind or water, or any modifications or combinations of them whatever: And I have, therefore, oft-times wondered, that my father, tho' I believe he had his reasons for it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my course, when I was a boy,-should never once endeavour to account for them in this way: for all the Shandy Family were of an original character throughout:-I mean the males,-the females had no character at all,-except, indeed, my great aunt Dinah, who, about sixty years ago, was married and got with child by the coachman, for which my father, according to his hypothesis of christian names, would often say, She might thank her G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers.

It will seem strange,-and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle in the reader's way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come to pa.s.s, that an event of this kind, so many years after it had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my father and my uncle Toby. One would have thought, that the whole force of the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the family at first,-as is generally the case.-But nothing ever wrought with our family after the ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this happened, it might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done the Shandy Family any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times and circ.u.mstances should give it an opportunity to discharge its office.-Observe, I determine nothing upon this.-My way is ever to point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the events I tell;-not with a pedantic Fescue,-or in the decisive manner or Tacitus, who outwits himself and his reader;-but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to the a.s.sistance merely of the inquisitive;-to them I write,-and by them I shall be read,-if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold out so long,-to the very end of the world.

Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to operate, is what I am able to explain with great exactness, and is as follows:

My uncle Toby Shandy, Madam, was a gentleman, who, with the virtues which usually const.i.tute the character of a man of honour and rect.i.tude,-possessed one in a very eminent degree, which is seldom or never put into the catalogue; and that was a most extreme and unparallel'd modesty of nature;-though I correct the word nature, for this reason, that I may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to a hearing, and that is, Whether this modesty of his was natural or acquir'd.-Whichever way my uncle Toby came by it, 'twas nevertheless modesty in the truest sense of it; and that is, Madam, not in regard to words, for he was so unhappy as to have very little choice in them,-but to things;-and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and it arose to such a height in him, as almost to equal, if such a thing could be, even the modesty of a woman: That female nicety, Madam, and inward cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your s.e.x, which makes you so much the awe of ours.

You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby had contracted all this from this very source;-that he had spent a great part of his time in converse with your s.e.x, and that from a thorough knowledge of you, and the force of imitation which such fair examples render irresistible, he had acquired this amiable turn of mind.

I wish I could say so,-for unless it was with his sister-in-law, my father's wife and my mother-my uncle Toby scarce exchanged three words with the s.e.x in as many years;-no, he got it, Madam, by a blow.-A blow!-Yes, Madam, it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke off by a ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of Namur, which struck full upon my uncle Toby's groin.-Which way could that effect it? The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;-but it would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.-'Tis for an episode hereafter; and every circ.u.mstance relating to it, in its proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you:-'Till then, it is not in my power to give farther light into this matter, or say more than what I have said already,-That my uncle Toby was a gentleman of unparallel'd modesty, which happening to be somewhat subtilized and rarified by the constant heat of a little family pride,-they both so wrought together within him, that he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt Dinah touch'd upon, but with the greatest emotion.-The least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into his face;-but when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed companies, which the ill.u.s.tration of his hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,-the unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the family, would set my uncle Toby's honour and modesty o'bleeding; and he would often take my father aside, in the greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give him any thing in the world, only to let the story rest.

My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle Toby, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir'd of another, to have made my uncle Toby's heart easy in this, or any other point. But this lay out of his power.

-My father, as I told you was a philosopher in grain,-speculative,-systematical;-and my aunt Dinah's affair was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the planets to Copernicus:-The backslidings of Venus in her orbit fortified the Copernican system, called so after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt Dinah in her orbit, did the same service in establis.h.i.+ng my father's system, which, I trust, will for ever hereafter be called the Shandean System, after his.

In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever;-and neither he, nor, I dare say, Copernicus, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth.-Amicus Plato, my father would say, construing the words to my uncle Toby, as he went along, Amicus Plato; that is, Dinah was my aunt;-sed magis amica veritas-but Truth is my sister.

This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace recorded,-and the other would scarce ever let a day pa.s.s to an end without some hint at it.

For G.o.d's sake, my uncle Toby would cry,-and for my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy,-do let this story of our aunt's and her ashes sleep in peace;-how can you,-how can you have so little feeling and compa.s.sion for the character of our family?-What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.-Nay, if you come to that-what is the life of a family?-The life of a family!-my uncle Toby would say, throwing himself back in his arm chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg-Yes, the life,-my father would say, maintaining his point. How many thousands of 'em are there every year that come cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)-and considered as nothing but common air, in compet.i.tion of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my uncle Toby would answer,-every such instance is downright Murder, let who will commit it.-There lies your mistake, my father would reply;-for, in Foro Scientiae there is no such thing as Murder,-'tis only Death, brother.

My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of Lillebullero.-You must know it was the usual channel thro' which his pa.s.sions got vent, when any thing shocked or surprized him:-but especially when any thing, which he deem'd very absurd, was offered.

As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name to this particular species of argument.-I here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. First, That, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every other species of argument-as the Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori, or any other argument whatsoever:-And, secondly, That it may be said by my children's children, when my head is laid to rest,-that their learn'd grandfather's head had been busied to as much purpose once, as other people's;-That he had invented a name, and generously thrown it into the Treasury of the Ars Logica, for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. And, if the end of disputation is more to silence than convince,-they may add, if they please, to one of the best arguments too.

I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it be known and distinguished by the name and t.i.tle of the Argumentum Fistulatorium, and no other;-and that it rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinum and the Argumentum ad Crumenam, and for ever hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman against the man;-and the Argumentum ad Rem, which, contrarywise, is made use of by the man only against the woman;-As these two are enough in conscience for one lecture;-and, moreover, as the one is the best answer to the other,-let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of in a place by themselves.

Chapter 1.XXII.

The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was Bishop of Exeter in King James the First's reign, tells us in one of Decads, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at London, in the year 1610, by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, 'That it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;'-and I really think it is so.

And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fas.h.i.+on, which thing is not likely to be found out;-I think it is full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head.

This is precisely my situation.

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been over-looked by my reader,-not for want of penetration in him,-but because 'tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;-and it is this: That tho' my digressions are all fair, as you observe,-and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my absence.

I was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of my uncle Toby's most whimsical character;-when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went on gently all the time;-not the great contours of it,-that was impossible,-but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there touch'd on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you was before.

By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,-and at the same time.

This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth's moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and const.i.tutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;-though I own it suggested the thought,-as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and discoveries have come from such trifling hints.

Digressions, incontestably, are the suns.h.i.+ne;-they are the life, the soul of reading!-take them out of this book, for instance,-you might as well take the book along with them;-one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;-he steps forth like a bridegroom,-bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appet.i.te to fail.

All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression,-from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock still;-and if he goes on with his main work,-then there is an end of his digression.

-This is vile work.-For which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the advent.i.tious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;-and, what's more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

Chapter 1.XXIII.

I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.-Accordingly I set off thus:

If the fixture of Momus's gla.s.s in the human breast, according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had taken place,-first, This foolish consequence would certainly have followed,-That the very wisest and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid window-money every day of our lives.

And, secondly, that had the said gla.s.s been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,-view'd the soul stark naked;-observed all her motions,-her machinations;-traced all her maggots from their first engendering to their crawling forth;-watched her loose in her frisks, her gambols, her capricios; and after some notice of her more solemn deportment, consequent upon such frisks, &c.-then taken your pen and ink and set down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn to:-But this is an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this planet;-in the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for him;-for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red-hot iron,-must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them for the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them both, all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom, may be nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the contrary, but one fine transparent body of clear gla.s.s (bating the umbilical knot)-so that, till the inhabitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the rays of light, in pa.s.sing through them, become so monstrously refracted,-or return reflected from their surfaces in such transverse lines to the eye, that a man cannot be seen through;-his soul might as well, unless for mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the umbilical point gave her,-might, upon all other accounts, I say, as well play the fool out o'doors as in her own house.

But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this earth;-our minds s.h.i.+ne not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to work.

Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to take, to do this thing with exactness.

Some, for instance, draw all their characters with wind-instruments.-Virgil takes notice of that way in the affair of Dido and Aeneas;-but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;-and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,-which they say is infallible.-I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;-'tis sufficient we have it amongst us,-but never think of making a drawing by it;-this is aenigmatical, and intended to be so, at least ad populum:-And therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come here, that you read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about it.

There are others again, who will draw a man's character from no other helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;-but this often gives a very incorrect outline,-unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one good figure out of them both.

I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must smell too strong of the lamp,-and be render'd still more operose, by forcing you to have an eye to the rest of his Non-naturals.-Why the most natural actions of a man's life should be called his Non-naturals,-is another question.

There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients;-not from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices which the Pentagraphic Brethren (Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures mechanically, and in any proportion.) of the brush have shewn in taking copies.-These, you must know, are your great historians.

One of these you will see drawing a full length character against the light;-that's illiberal,-dishonest,-and hard upon the character of the man who sits.

Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the Camera;-that is most unfair of all, because, there you are sure to be represented in some of your most ridiculous att.i.tudes.

To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle Toby's character, I am determined to draw it by no mechanical help whatever;-nor shall my pencil be guided by any one wind-instrument which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the Alps;-nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges,-or touch upon his Non-naturals; but, in a word, I will draw my uncle Toby's character from his Hobby-Horse.

Chapter 1.XXIV.

If I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience for my uncle Toby's character,-I would here previously have convinced him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as that which I have pitch'd upon.