My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries to the end of Trim’s story; and from thence to the end of my uncle Toby’s panegyrick upon arms, in the chapter following it; when seeing, that instead of marching up to Mrs. Wadman’s door, they both faced about and march’d down the avenue diametrically opposite to his expectation—he broke out at once with that little subacid soreness of humour which, in certain situations, distinguished his character from that of all other men.
CHAPTER XI
——“Now what can their two noddles be about?” cried my father - - &c. - - - -
I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications——
———Not on Mrs. Wadman’s premises! cried my father, stepping back——
I suppose not: quoth my mother.
I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts———
——They are foolish things——said my mother.
Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your reverences would imitate—and that was, never to refuse her assent and consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for 452 her—but no more; and so would go on using a hard word twenty years together—and replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any trouble to enquire about it.
This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, at the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than could have done the most petulant contradiction——the few which survived were the better for the cuvetts——
—“They are foolish things;” said my mother.
——Particularly the cuvetts; replied my father.
’Tis enough—he tasted the sweet of triumph—and went on.
—Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. Wadman’s premises, said my father, partly correcting himself—because she is but tenant for life——
——That makes a great difference—said my mother——
—In a fool’s head, replied my father——
Unless she should happen to have a child—said my mother—
——But she must persuade my brother Toby first to get her one—
——To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother.
——Though if it comes to persuasion—said my father—Lord have mercy upon them.
Amen: said my mother, piano.
Amen: cried my father, fortissimè.
Amen: said my mother again——but with such a sighing cadence of personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father—he instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, Yorick’s congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to one half of his business with it—and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day—left him as little in doubt, as to the other part—He put his almanack into his pocket.
The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of ways and means, could not have returned home with a more embarrassed look.
CHAPTER XII
Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the three following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together 453 a single year: nor is it a poor creeping digression (which but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on in the king’s highway) which will do the business——no; if it is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but by rebound.
The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the service: Fancy is capricious—Wit must not be searched for—and Pleasantry (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her feet.
——The best way for a man is to say his prayers——
Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well ghostly as bodily—for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he has said them than before—for other purposes, better.
For my own part, there is not a way either moral or mechanical under heaven that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and arguing the point over and over again with her upon the extent of her own faculties——
——I never could make them an inch the wider——
Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity: These are good, quoth I, in themselves—they are good, absolutely;—they are good, relatively;—they are good for health—they are good for happiness in this world—they are good for happiness in the next——
In short, they were good for everything but the thing wanted; and there they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made it: as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it courage; but then that snivelling virtue of Meekness (as my father would always call it) takes it quite away again, so you are exactly where you started.
Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have found to answer so well as this——
——Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, and that I am not blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me, merely upon this symptom of it, that I do not know what envy is: for never do I hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of good writing, but I instantly make it public; willing that all mankind should write as well as myself.
——Which they certainly will, when they think as little. 454
CHAPTER XIII
Now in ordinary cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts rise heavily and pass gummous through my pen——
Or that I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done——
——I never stand conferring with pen and ink one moment; for if a pinch of snuff, or a stride or two across the room will not do the business for me—I take a razor at once; and having tried the edge of it upon the palm of my hand, without further ceremony, except that of first lathering my beard, I shave it off; taking care only if I do leave a hair, that it be not a grey one: this done, I change my shirt—put on a better coat—send for my last wig—put my topaz ring upon my finger; and in a word, dress myself from one end to the other of me, after my best fashion.
Now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do: for consider, Sir, as every man chuses to be present at the shaving of his own beard (though there is no rule without an exception), and unavoidably sits over-against himself the whole time it is doing, in case he has a hand in it—the Situation, like all others, has notions of her own to put into the brain.——