Here——but why here——rather than in any other part of my story——I am not able to telclass="underline" ———but here it is———my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.——Here let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and veneration for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew’s bosom.——Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head!—Thou enviedst no man’s comforts——insultedst no man’s opinions——Thou blackenedst no man’s character—devouredst no man’s bread: gently, with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way:—for each one’s sorrow thou hadst a tear,—for each man’s need, thou hadst a shilling.
Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder—thy path from thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown up.——Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall never be demolish’d.
CHAPTER XXXV
My father’s collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good fortune however, to set off well, in getting Bruscambille’s prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing—for he gave no more for Bruscambille than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.——There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom—said the stall-man, except what are chain’d up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as lightning——took Bruscambille into his bosom——hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way. 163
To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille is———inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either———’twill be no objection against the simile—to say, That when my father got home, he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, ’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress———that is, from morning even unto night: which, by the bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the inamorato—is of little or no entertainment at all to by-standers.——Take notice, I go no farther with the simile—my father’s eye was greater than his appetite—his zeal greater than his knowledge—he cool’d—his affections became divided——he got hold of Prignitz—purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paræus, Bouchet’s Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much to say by and by—I will say nothing now.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.———Now don’t let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on—let me beg of you, like an unback’d filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it—and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till, like Tickletoby’s mare, you break a strap or a crupper and throw his worship into the dirt.—You need not kill him.—
—And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare?—’tis just as discreditable and unscholarlike a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.—Who was Tickletoby’s mare?——Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read—or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon—I tell you before-hand, you had better throw 164 down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
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CHAPTER XXXVII
“Nihil me pœnitet hujus nasi,” quoth Pamphagus;——that is—“My nose has been the making of me.”—————“Nec est cur pœniteat,” replies Cocles; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”
The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father’s disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow’d upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.——My father pish’d and pugh’d at first most terribly———’tis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro’ and thro’ in its most strict and literal interpretation—he could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.——Learned men, brother Toby, don’t write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.———I’ll study the mystick and the allegorick sense——here is some room to turn a man’s self in, brother.
My father read on.———Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniencies also; for that in a case of distress—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire).
Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge———so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.——I’ve got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.—You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.———Pshaw! cried my father, scratching on——I might as well be seven miles off.—I’ve done it—said my father, snapping his fingers—See, my dear brother Toby, how I have mended the sense.——But you have marr’d a word, replied my uncle Toby.——My father put on his spectacles——bit his lip———and tore out the leaf in a passion. 167