——For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest part of it. Doctor Paidagunes found me out. Set a thief to catch a thief.———
On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and upon a couple Moderato; by which, as far as one may gather from Altieri’s Italian dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of Yorick’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked Moderato, and the half dozen of So, so, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing.
There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is this, that the moderato’s are five times better than the so, so’s;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which reason, whene’er Yorick’s dramatic sermons are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the so, so’s, I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two moderato’s without any sort of scruple.
What Yorick could mean by the words lentamente,—tenutè,—grave,—and sometimes adagio,—as applied to theological compositions, and with which he has characterised some of these sermons, I dare not venture to guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding a l’octava alta! upon one;——Con strepito upon the back of another;——Siciliana upon a third;——Alla capella upon a fourth;——Con l’arco upon this;——Senza l’arco upon that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt, but that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas 315 of their several characters upon his fancy,—whatever they may do upon that of others.
Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor Le Fever, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is upon mortality; and is tied lengthways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——Whether these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote——
Bravo!
——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small Italian hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not,—so that from the manner of it, it stands half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing,—’tis more like a ritratto of the shadow of vanity, than of Vanity herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer; than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world.
With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do no service to Yorick’s character as a modest man;—but all men have their failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is this; that the word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner,
These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text;—but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and sometimes, 316 perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in,—he took a large circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the pulpit allowed.—These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue;—tell me then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be printed together?
CHAPTER XII
When my uncle Toby had turned everything into money, and settled all accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and Le Fever, and betwixt Le Fever and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle Toby’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my uncle Toby found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration. The coat my uncle Toby gave the corporal;——Wear it, Trim, said my uncle Toby, as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor lieutenant——And this,——said my uncle Toby, taking up the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke——and this, Le Fever, I’ll save for thee,—’tis all the fortune, continued my uncle Toby, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear Le Fever, which God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—’tis enough for us.
As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a foundation, and taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where, excepting Whitsontide and Christmas, at which times the corporal was punctually dispatched for him,—he remained to the spring of the year, seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his army into Hungary against the Turks, kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his Greek and Latin without leave, and throwing himself upon his knees before my uncle Toby, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle Toby’s leave along with it, to go and try his fortune under Eugene.—Twice did my uncle Toby forget his wound and cry out, Le Fever! I will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside me——And twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung down his head in sorrow and disconsolation.——
My uncle Toby took down the sword from the crook, where 317 it had hung untouched ever since the lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the corporal to brighten up;——and having detained Le Fever a single fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to Leghorn,—he put the sword into his hand.——If thou art brave, Le Fever, said my uncle Toby, this will not fail thee,——but Fortune, said he (musing a little),——Fortune may——And if she does,—added my uncle Toby, embracing him, come back again to me, Le Fever, and we will shape thee another course.