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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 34 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 3.LXXV.

My Uncle Toby's Apologetical Oration.

I am not insensible, brother Shandy, that when a man whose profession is
arms, wishes, as I have done, for war,--it has an ill aspect to the world;-
-and that, how just and right soever his motives the intentions may be,--he
stands in an uneasy posture in vindicating himself from private views in
doing it.

For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be without
being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter his wish in the
hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy will not believe him.--
He will be cautious of doing it even to a friend,--lest he may suffer in
his esteem:--But if his heart is overcharged, and a secret sigh for arms
must have its vent, he will reserve it for the ear of a brother, who knows
his character to the bottom, and what his true notions, dispositions, and
principles of honour are:  What, I hope, I have been in all these, brother
Shandy, would be unbecoming in me to say:--much worse, I know, have I been
than I ought,--and something worse, perhaps, than I think:  But such as I
am, you, my dear brother Shandy, who have sucked the same breasts with me,-
-and with whom I have been brought up from my cradle,--and from whose
knowledge, from the first hours of our boyish pastimes, down to this, I
have concealed no one action of my life, and scarce a thought in it--Such
as I am, brother, you must by this time know me, with all my vices, and
with all my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my temper, my passions, or
my understanding.

Tell me then, my dear brother Shandy, upon which of them it is, that when I
condemned the peace of Utrecht, and grieved the war was not carried on with
vigour a little longer, you should think your brother did it upon unworthy
views; or that in wishing for war, he should be bad enough to wish more of
his fellow-creatures slain,--more slaves made, and more families driven
from their peaceful habitations, merely for his own pleasure:--Tell me,
brother Shandy, upon what one deed of mine do you ground it?  (The devil a
deed do I know of, dear Toby, but one for a hundred pounds, which I lent
thee to carry on these cursed sieges.)

If, when I was a school-boy, I could not hear a drum beat, but my heart
beat with it--was it my fault?--Did I plant the propensity there?--Did I
sound the alarm within, or Nature?

When Guy, Earl of Warwick, and Parismus and Parismenus, and Valentine and
Orson, and the Seven Champions of England, were handed around the school,--
were they not all purchased with my own pocket-money?  Was that selfish,
brother Shandy?  When we read over the siege of Troy, which lasted ten
years and eight months,--though with such a train of artillery as we had at
Namur, the town might have been carried in a week--was I not as much
concerned for the destruction of the Greeks and Trojans as any boy of the
whole school?  Had I not three strokes of a ferula given me, two on my
right hand, and one on my left, for calling Helena a bitch for it?  Did any
one of you shed more tears for Hector?  And when king Priam came to the
camp to beg his body, and returned weeping back to Troy without it,--you
know, brother, I could not eat my dinner.--

--Did that bespeak me cruel?  Or because, brother Shandy, my blood flew out
into the camp, and my heart panted for war,--was it a proof it could not
ache for the distresses of war too?

O brother! 'tis one thing for a soldier to gather laurels,--and 'tis
another to scatter cypress.--(Who told thee, my dear Toby, that cypress was
used by the antients on mournful occasions?)

--'Tis one thing, brother Shandy, for a soldier to hazard his own life--to
leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in pieces:--
'Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter the
breach the first man,--to stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on
with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his ears:--'Tis one
thing, I say, brother Shandy, to do this,--and 'tis another thing to
reflect on the miseries of war;--to view the desolations of whole
countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and hardships which the
soldier himself, the instrument who works them, is forced (for sixpence a
day, if he can get it) to undergo.

Need I be told, dear Yorick, as I was by you, in Le Fever's funeral sermon,
That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness,
as man is, was not shaped for this?--But why did you not add, Yorick,--if
not by Nature--that he is so by Necessity?--For what is war? what is it,
Yorick, when fought as ours has been, upon principles of liberty, and upon
principles of honour--what is it, but the getting together of quiet and
harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious
and the turbulent within bounds?  And heaven is my witness, brother Shandy,
that the pleasure I have taken in these things,--and that infinite delight,
in particular, which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose
within me, and I hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both
had, that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our
creation.



Chapter 3.LXXVI.

I told the Christian reader--I say Christian--hoping he is one--and if he
is not, I am sorry for it--and only beg he will consider the matter with
himself, and not lay the blame entirely upon this book--

I told him, Sir--for in good truth, when a man is telling a story in the
strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and
forwards to keep all tight together in the reader's fancy--which, for my
own part, if I did not take heed to do more than at first, there is so much
unfixed and equivocal matter starting up, with so many breaks and gaps in
it,--and so little service do the stars afford, which, nevertheless, I hang
up in some of the darkest passages, knowing that the world is apt to lose
its way, with all the lights the sun itself at noon-day can give it--and
now you see, I am lost myself!--

--But 'tis my father's fault; and whenever my brains come to be dissected,
you will perceive, without spectacles, that he has left a large uneven
thread, as you sometimes see in an unsaleable piece of cambrick, running
along the whole length of the web, and so untowardly, you cannot so much as
cut out a. . ., (here I hang up a couple of lights again)--or a fillet, or
a thumb-stall, but it is seen or felt.--

Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum, sayeth Cardan.  All
which being considered, and that you see 'tis morally impracticable for me
to wind this round to where I set out--

I begin the chapter over again.



Chapter 3.LXXVII.

I told the Christian reader in the beginning of the chapter which preceded
my uncle Toby's apologetical oration,--though in a different trope from
what I should make use of now, That the peace of Utrecht was within an ace
of creating the same shyness betwixt my uncle Toby and his hobby-horse, as
it did betwixt the queen and the rest of the confederating powers.

There is an indignant way in which a man sometimes dismounts his horse,
which, as good as says to him, 'I'll go afoot, Sir, all the days of my life
before I would ride a single mile upon your back again.'  Now my uncle Toby
could not be said to dismount his horse in this manner; for in strictness
of language, he could not be said to dismount his horse at all--his horse
rather flung him--and somewhat viciously, which made my uncle Toby take it
ten times more unkindly.  Let this matter be settled by state-jockies as
they like.--It created, I say, a sort of shyness betwixt my uncle Toby and
his hobby-horse.--He had no occasion for him from the month of March to
November, which was the summer after the articles were signed, except it
was now and then to take a short ride out, just to see that the
fortifications and harbour of Dunkirk were demolished, according to
stipulation.

The French were so backwards all that summer in setting about that affair,
and Monsieur Tugghe, the deputy from the magistrates of Dunkirk, presented
so many affecting petitions to the queen,--beseeching her majesty to cause
only her thunderbolts to fall upon the martial works, which might have
incurred her displeasure,--but to spare--to spare the mole, for the mole's
sake; which, in its naked situation, could be no more than an object of
pity--and the queen (who was but a woman) being of a pitiful disposition,--
and her ministers also, they not wishing in their hearts to have the town
dismantled, for these private reasons,. . .--. . .; so that the whole went
heavily on with my uncle Toby; insomuch, that it was not within three full
months, after he and the corporal had constructed the town, and put it in a
condition to be destroyed, that the several commandants, commissaries,
deputies, negociators, and intendants, would permit him to set about it.--
Fatal interval of inactivity!

The corporal was for beginning the demolition, by making a breach in the
ramparts, or main fortifications of the town--No,--that will never do,
corporal, said my uncle Toby, for in going that way to work with the town,
the English garrison will not be safe in it an hour; because if the French
are treacherous--They are as treacherous as devils, an' please your honour,
said the corporal--It gives me concern always when I hear it, Trim, said my
uncle Toby;--for they don't want personal bravery; and if a breach is made
in the ramparts, they may enter it, and make themselves masters of the
place when they please:--Let them enter it, said the corporal, lifting up
his pioneer's spade in both his hands, as if he was going to lay about him
with it,--let them enter, an' please your honour, if they dare.--In cases
like this, corporal, said my uncle Toby, slipping his right hand down to
the middle of his cane, and holding it afterwards truncheon-wise with his
fore-finger extended,--'tis no part of the consideration of a commandant,
what the enemy dare,--or what they dare not do; he must act with prudence.
We will begin with the outworks both towards the sea and the land, and
particularly with fort Louis, the most distant of them all, and demolish it
first,--and the rest, one by one, both on our right and left, as we retreat
towards the town;--then we'll demolish the mole,--next fill up the
harbour,--then retire into the citadel, and blow it up into the air:  and
having done that, corporal, we'll embark for England.--We are there, quoth
the corporal, recollecting himself--Very true, said my uncle Toby--looking
at the church.



Chapter 3.LXXVIII.

A delusive, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle
Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk,--for a moment rallied back
the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him:--still--
still all went on heavily--the magic left the mind the weaker--Stillness,
with Silence at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their
gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby's head;--and Listlessness, with her lax
fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm-chair.--No
longer Amberg and Rhinberg, and Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year,--
and the prospect of Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, the
next,--hurried on the blood:--No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds,
and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man's repose:--No
more could my uncle Toby, after passing the French lines, as he eat his egg
at supper, from thence break into the heart of France,--cross over the
Oyes, and with all Picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of
Paris, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory:--No more was he to
dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the Bastile, and
awake with it streaming in his head.

--Softer visions,--gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his slumbers;--
the trumpet of war fell out of his hands,--he took up the lute, sweet
instrument! of all others the most delicate! the most difficult!--how wilt
thou touch it, my dear uncle Toby?



Chapter 3.LXXIX.

Now, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking,
That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of
widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the
most complete systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love
and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world--are you to imagine
from thence, that I shall set out with a description of what love is?
whether part God and part Devil, as Plotinus will have it--

--Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as
ten--to determine with Ficinus, 'How many parts of it--the one,--and how
many the other;'--or whether it is all of it one great Devil, from head to
tail, as Plato has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of
his, I shall not offer my opinion:--but my opinion of Plato is this; that
he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same temper
and way of reasoning with doctor Baynyard, who being a great enemy to
blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of 'em at once, would draw a man
as surely to his grave, as a herse and six--rashly concluded, that the
Devil himself was nothing in the world, but one great bouncing
Cantharidis.--

I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous liberty
in arguing, but what Nazianzen cried out (that is, polemically) to
Philagrius--

'(Greek)!' O rare! 'tis fine reasoning, Sir indeed!--'(Greek)' and most
nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize about it in your moods and
passions.

Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to inquire,
whether love is a disease,--or embroil myself with Rhasis and Dioscorides,
whether the seat of it is in the brain or liver;--because this would lead
me on, to an examination of the two very opposite manners, in which
patients have been treated--the one, of Aoetius, who always begun with a
cooling clyster of hempseed and bruised cucumbers;--and followed on with
thin potations of water-lilies and purslane--to which he added a pinch of
snuff, of the herb Hanea;--and where Aoetius durst venture it,--his topaz-
ring.

--The other, that of Gordonius, who (in his cap. 15. de Amore) directs they
should be thrashed, 'ad putorem usque,'--till they stink again.

These are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great stock of
knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the progress of my uncle
Toby's affairs:  I must anticipate thus much, That from his theories of
love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my uncle Toby's
mind, almost as much as his amours themselves,)--he took a single step into
practice;--and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he found means to
impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was making my uncle Toby a
new pair of breeches, he produced Gordonius's effect upon my uncle Toby
without the disgrace.

What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place:  all that is
needful to be added to the anecdote, is this--That whatever effect it had
upon my uncle Toby,--it had a vile effect upon the house;--and if my uncle
Toby had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had a vile effect
upon my father too.



Chapter 3.LXXX.

--'Twill come out of itself by and bye.--All I contend for is, that I am
not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so long as I
can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the word itself,
without any other idea to it, than what I have in common with the rest of
the world, why should I differ from it a moment before the time?--When I
can get on no further,--and find myself entangled on all sides of this
mystic labyrinth,--my Opinion will then come in, in course,--and lead me
out.

At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the
reader, my uncle Toby fell in love:

--Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is fallen in
love,--or that he is deeply in love,--or up to the ears in love,--and
sometimes even over head and ears in it,--carries an idiomatical kind of
implication, that love is a thing below a man:--this is recurring again to
Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,--I hold to be damnable
and heretical:--and so much for that.

Let love therefore be what it will,--my uncle Toby fell into it.

--And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation--so wouldst thou:
For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in this
world, more concupiscible than widow Wadman.



Chapter 3.LXXXI.

To conceive this right,--call for pen and ink--here's paper ready to your
hand.--Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind--as like your mistress as
you can--as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you--'tis all one
to me--please but your own fancy in it.

(blank page)

--Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!--so exquisite!

--Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it?

Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers,
which Malice will not blacken, and which Ignorance cannot misrepresent.



Chapter 3.LXXXII.

As Susannah was informed by an express from Mrs. Bridget, of my uncle
Toby's falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it happened,--
the contents of which express, Susannah communicated to my mother the next
day,--it has just given me an opportunity of entering upon my uncle Toby's
amours a fortnight before their existence.

I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother, which
will surprise you greatly.--

Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was
musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my mother broke
silence.--

'--My brother Toby,' quoth she, 'is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman.'

--Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed
again as long as he lives.

It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked the
meaning of a thing she did not understand.

--That she is not a woman of science, my father would say--is her
misfortune--but she might ask a question.--

My mother never did.--In short, she went out of the world at last without
knowing whether it turned round, or stood still.--My father had officiously
told her above a thousand times which way it was,--but she always forgot.

For these reasons, a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt them,
than a proposition,--a reply, and a rejoinder; at the end of which, it
generally took breath for a few minutes (as in the affair of the breeches),
and then went on again.

If he marries, 'twill be the worse for us,--quoth my mother.

Not a cherry-stone, said my father,--he may as well batter away his means
upon that, as any thing else,

--To be sure, said my mother:  so here ended the proposition--the reply,--
and the rejoinder, I told you of.

It will be some amusement to him, too,--said my father.

A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.--

--Lord have mercy upon me,--said my father to himself--. . ..
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