The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 42

There was, The open shoe.

The close shoe.

The slip shoe.

The wooden shoe.

The soc.

The buskin.

And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which Juvenal takes notice of.

There were, The clogs.

The pattins.

The pantoufles.

The brogues.

The sandals, with latchets to them.

There was, The felt shoe.

The linen shoe.

The laced shoe.

The braided shoe.

The calceus incisus.

And The calceus rostratus.

Rubenius shewed my father how well they all fitted,-in what manner they laced on,-with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, jaggs, and ends.-

-But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father.

Albertus Rubenius informed my father that the Romans manufactured stuffs of various fabrics,-some plain,-some striped,-others diapered throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold-That linen did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of the empire, when the Egyptians coming to settle amongst them, brought it into vogue.

-That persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour (next to purple, which was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected, and wore on their birth-days and public rejoicings.-That it appeared from the best historians of those times, that they frequently sent their clothes to the fuller, to be clean'd and whitened:-but that the inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore brown clothes, and of a something coa.r.s.er texture,-till towards the beginning of Augustus's reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the Latus Clavus.

And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.

Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the learned:-That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budaeus, Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon, and Joseph Scaliger, all differed from each other,-and he from them: That some took it to be the b.u.t.ton,-some the coat itself,-others only the colour of it;-That the great Bayfuis in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12-honestly said, he knew not what it was,-whether a tibula,-a stud,-a b.u.t.ton,-a loop,-a buckle,-or clasps and keepers.-

-My father lost the horse, but not the saddle-They are hooks and eyes, said my father-and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made.

Chapter 3.LXIII.

We are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.-

-Leave we then the breeches in the taylor's hands, with my father standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a lecture upon the latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.-

Leave we my mother-(truest of all the Poco-curante's of her s.e.x!)-careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which concerned her;-that is,-indifferent whether it was done this way or that,-provided it was but done at all.-

Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.-

Leave we poor Le Fever to recover, and get home from Ma.r.s.eilles as he can.-And last of all,-because the hardest of all-

Let us leave, if possible, myself:-But 'tis impossible,-I must go along with you to the end of the work.

Chapter 3.LXIV.

If the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby's kitchen-garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,-the fault is not in me,-but in his imagination;-for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I was almost ashamed of it.

When Fate was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times,-and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,-she gave a nod to Nature,-'twas enough-Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,-and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather.

My uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy and Flanders; so let the duke of Marlborough, or the allies, have set down before what town they pleased, my uncle Toby was prepared for them.

His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as ever a town was invested-(but sooner when the design was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches,-the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets, &c.-he set the corporal to work-and sweetly went it on:-The nature of the soil,-the nature of the work itself,-and above all, the good-nature of my uncle Toby sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past-done deeds,-left Labour little else but the ceremony of the name.

When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence,-it was invested,-and my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel.-I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by being told, That the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the place,-and that I have not left a single inch for it;-for my uncle Toby took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle Toby's and the corporal's campaigns, of which, this I'm now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no guessing)-The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work-surely they had better be printed apart,-we'll consider the affair-so take the following sketch of them in the mean time.

Chapter 3.LXV.

When the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel-not at random, or any how-but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle Toby received from the daily papers,-they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies.

When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,-my uncle Toby made a lodgment too.-And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined,-the corporal took his mattock and did as much,-and so on;-gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands.

To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,-there could not have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the duke of Marlborough, in the main body of the place,-to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied forth;-the one with the Gazette in his hand,-the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.-What an honest triumph in my uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts! What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide,-or leave it an inch too narrow.-But when the chamade was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts-Heaven! Earth! Sea!-but what avails apostrophes?-with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.

In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,-but still 'twas the torture of the happy-In this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.

The first year's campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I've related.

In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work.

At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port-cullises:-These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.

-The sentry-box was in case of rain.

All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.

My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which Lewis XIV. from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field-But 'tis not my brother Toby's nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.

-But let us go on.