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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Chapter 1.XXVIII.

When my uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind, he began immediately
to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the study of it; for
nothing being of more importance to him than his recovery, and his recovery
depending, as you have read, upon the passions and affections of his mind,
it behoved him to take the nicest care to make himself so far master of his
subject, as to be able to talk upon it without emotion.

In a fortnight's close and painful application, which, by the bye, did my
uncle Toby's wound, upon his groin, no good,--he was enabled, by the help
of some marginal documents at the feet of the elephant, together with
Gobesius's military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the
Flemish, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity; and before he was
two full months gone,--he was right eloquent upon it, and could make not
only the attack of the advanced counterscarp with great order;--but having,
by that time, gone much deeper into the art, than what his first motive
made necessary, my uncle Toby was able to cross the Maes and Sambre; make
diversions as far as Vauban's line, the abbey of Salsines, &c. and give his
visitors as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the
gate of St. Nicolas, where he had the honour to receive his wound.

But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the
acquisition of it.  The more my uncle Toby pored over his map, the more he
took a liking to it!--by the same process and electrical assimilation, as I
told you, through which I ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, by
long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all
be-virtu'd--be-pictured,--be-butterflied, and be-fiddled.

The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain of science, the greater
was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the first year of
his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in
Italy or Flanders, of which, by one means or other, he had not procured a
plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating therewith the
histories of their sieges, their demolitions, their improvements, and new
works, all which he would read with that intense application and delight,
that he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner.

In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli and Cataneo, translated
from the Italian;--likewise Stevinus, Moralis, the Chevalier de Ville,
Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter, the Count de Pagan, the Marshal Vauban, Mons.
Blondel, with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don
Quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded
his library.

Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in August, ninety-nine,
my uncle Toby found it necessary to understand a little of projectiles:--
and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he
began with N. Tartaglia, who it seems was the first man who detected the
imposition of a cannon-ball's doing all that mischief under the notion of a
right line--This N. Tartaglia proved to my uncle Toby to be an impossible
thing.

--Endless is the search of Truth.

No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the cannon-ball did not
go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to enquire and
find out which road the ball did go:  For which purpose he was obliged to
set off afresh with old Maltus, and studied him devoutly.--He proceeded
next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, by certain Geometrical rules,
infallibly laid down, he found the precise path to be a Parabola--or else
an Hyperbola,--and that the parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic
section of the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct
ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of incidence,
formed by the breech upon an horizontal plane;--and that the
semiparameter,--stop! my dear uncle Toby--stop!--go not one foot farther
into this thorny and bewildered track,--intricate are the steps! intricate
are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the
pursuit of this bewitching phantom Knowledge will bring upon thee.--O my
uncle;--fly--fly,--fly from it as from a serpent.--Is it fit--goodnatured
man! thou should'st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights
baking thy blood with hectic watchings?--Alas! 'twill exasperate thy
symptoms,--check thy perspirations--evaporate thy spirits--waste thy animal
strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of
body,--impair thy health,--and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.--
O my uncle! my uncle Toby.



Chapter 1.XXIX.

I would not give a groat for that man's knowledge in pen-craft, who does
not understand this,--That the best plain narrative in the world, tacked
very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle Toby--would have
felt both cold and vapid upon the reader's palate;--therefore I forthwith
put an end to the chapter, though I was in the middle of my story.

--Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters.  Where an
exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less evil;
deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty.
This is to be understood cum grano salis; but be it as it will,--as the
parallel is made more for the sake of letting the apostrophe cool, than any
thing else,--'tis not very material whether upon any other score the reader
approves of it or not.

In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby perceiving that the
parameter and semi-parameter of the conic section angered his wound, he
left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself
to the practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which, like a
spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled force.

It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily
regularity of a clean shirt,--to dismiss his barber unshaven,--and to allow
his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself
so little about it, as not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it
went on:  when, lo!--all of a sudden, for the change was quick as
lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his recovery,--complained to my
father, grew impatient with the surgeon:--and one morning, as he heard his
foot coming up stairs, he shut up his books, and thrust aside his
instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of the
cure, which, he told him, might surely have been accomplished at least by
that time:--He dwelt long upon the miseries he had undergone, and the
sorrows of his four years melancholy imprisonment;--adding, that had it not
been for the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of brothers,--
he had long since sunk under his misfortunes.--My father was by.  My uncle
Toby's eloquence brought tears into his eyes;--'twas unexpected:--My uncle
Toby, by nature was not eloquent;--it had the greater effect:--The surgeon
was confounded;--not that there wanted grounds for such, or greater marks
of impatience,--but 'twas unexpected too; in the four years he had attended
him, he had never seen any thing like it in my uncle Toby's carriage; he
had never once dropped one fretful or discontented word;--he had been all
patience,--all submission.

--We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it;--but we
often treble the force:--The surgeon was astonished; but much more so, when
he heard my uncle Toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his healing up
the wound directly,--or sending for Monsieur Ronjat, the king's serjeant-
surgeon, to do it for him.

The desire of life and health is implanted in man's nature;--the love of
liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it:  These my uncle Toby had
in common with his species--and either of them had been sufficient to
account for his earnest desire to get well and out of doors;--but I have
told you before, that nothing wrought with our family after the common
way;--and from the time and manner in which this eager desire shewed itself
in the present case, the penetrating reader will suspect there was some
other cause or crotchet for it in my uncle Toby's head:--There was so, and
'tis the subject of the next chapter to set forth what that cause and
crotchet was.  I own, when that's done, 'twill be time to return back to
the parlour fire-side, where we left my uncle Toby in the middle of his
sentence.



Chapter 1.XXX.

When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in
other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows headstrong,--farewell cool reason
and fair discretion!

My uncle Toby's wound was near well, and as soon as the surgeon recovered
his surprize, and could get leave to say as much--he told him, 'twas just
beginning to incarnate; and that if no fresh exfoliation happened, which
there was no sign of,--it would be dried up in five or six weeks.  The
sound of as many Olympiads, twelve hours before, would have conveyed an
idea of shorter duration to my uncle Toby's mind.--The succession of his
ideas was now rapid,--he broiled with impatience to put his design in
execution;--and so, without consulting farther with any soul living,--
which, by the bye, I think is right, when you are predetermined to take no
one soul's advice,--he privately ordered Trim, his man, to pack up a bundle
of lint and dressings, and hire a chariot-and-four to be at the door
exactly by twelve o'clock that day, when he knew my father would be upon
'Change.--So leaving a bank-note upon the table for the surgeon's care of
him, and a letter of tender thanks for his brother's--he packed up his
maps, his books of fortification, his instruments, &c. and by the help of a
crutch on one side, and Trim on the other,--my uncle Toby embarked for
Shandy-Hall.

The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as follows:

The table in my uncle Toby's room, and at which, the night before this
change happened, he was sitting with his maps, &c. about him--being
somewhat of the smallest, for that infinity of great and small instruments
of knowledge which usually lay crowded upon it--he had the accident, in
reaching over for his tobacco-box, to throw down his compasses, and in
stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he threw down his case
of instruments and snuffers;--and as the dice took a run against him, in
his endeavouring to catch the snuffers in falling,--he thrust Monsieur
Blondel off the table, and Count de Pagon o'top of him.

'Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle Toby was, to think of
redressing these evils by himself,--he rung his bell for his man Trim;--
Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, prithee see what confusion I have here been
making--I must have some better contrivance, Trim.--Can'st not thou take my
rule, and measure the length and breadth of this table, and then go and
bespeak me one as big again?--Yes, an' please your Honour, replied Trim,
making a bow; but I hope your Honour will be soon well enough to get down
to your country-seat, where,--as your Honour takes so much pleasure in
fortification, we could manage this matter to a T.

I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle Toby's, who went by
the name of Trim, had been a corporal in my uncle's own company,--his real
name was James Butler,--but having got the nick-name of Trim, in the
regiment, my uncle Toby, unless when he happened to be very angry with him,
would never call him by any other name.

The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his left
knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of Landen, which was two years
before the affair of Namur;--and as the fellow was well-beloved in the
regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle Toby took him for
his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my uncle Toby in the
camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom, barber, cook, sempster, and
nurse; and indeed, from first to last, waited upon him and served him with
great fidelity and affection.

My uncle Toby loved the man in return, and what attached him more to him
still, was the similitude of their knowledge.--For Corporal Trim, (for so,
for the future, I shall call him) by four years occasional attention to his
Master's discourse upon fortified towns, and the advantage of prying and
peeping continually into his Master's plans, &c. exclusive and besides what
he gained Hobby-Horsically, as a body-servant, Non Hobby Horsical per se;--
had become no mean proficient in the science; and was thought, by the cook
and chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature of strong-holds as my uncle
Toby himself.

I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal Trim's character,--
and it is the only dark line in it.--The fellow loved to advise,--or rather
to hear himself talk; his carriage, however, was so perfectly respectful,
'twas easy to keep him silent when you had him so; but set his tongue a-
going,--you had no hold of him--he was voluble;--the eternal interlardings
of your Honour, with the respectfulness of Corporal Trim's manner,
interceding so strong in behalf of his elocution,--that though you might
have been incommoded,--you could not well be angry.  My uncle Toby was
seldom either the one or the other with him,--or, at least, this fault, in
Trim, broke no squares with them.  My uncle Toby, as I said, loved the
man;--and besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful servant,--but as an
humble friend,--he could not bear to stop his mouth.--Such was Corporal
Trim.

If I durst presume, continued Trim, to give your Honour my advice, and
speak my opinion in this matter.--Thou art welcome, Trim, quoth my uncle
Toby--speak,--speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, without
fear.--Why then, replied Trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his
head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead,
and standing erect as before his division,--I think, quoth Trim, advancing
his left, which was his lame leg, a little forwards,--and pointing with his
right hand open towards a map of Dunkirk, which was pinned against the
hangings,--I think, quoth Corporal Trim, with humble submission to your
Honour's better judgment,--that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and
hornworks, make but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it
here upon paper, compared to what your Honour and I could make of it were
we in the country by ourselves, and had but a rood, or a rood and a half of
ground to do what we pleased with:  As summer is coming on, continued Trim,
your Honour might sit out of doors, and give me the nography--(Call it
ichnography, quoth my uncle,)--of the town or citadel, your Honour was
pleased to sit down before,--and I will be shot by your Honour upon the
glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to your Honour's mind.--I dare say
thou would'st, Trim, quoth my uncle.--For if your Honour, continued the
Corporal, could but mark me the polygon, with its exact lines and angles--
That I could do very well, quoth my uncle.--I would begin with the fosse,
and if your Honour could tell me the proper depth and breadth--I can to a
hair's breadth, Trim, replied my uncle.--I would throw out the earth upon
this hand towards the town for the scarp,--and on that hand towards the
campaign for the counterscarp.--Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby:--And
when I had sloped them to your mind,--an' please your Honour, I would face
the glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in Flanders, with sods,--
and as your Honour knows they should be,--and I would make the walls and
parapets with sods too.--The best engineers call them gazons, Trim, said my
uncle Toby.--Whether they are gazons or sods, is not much matter, replied
Trim; your Honour knows they are ten times beyond a facing either of brick
or stone.--I know they are, Trim in some respects,--quoth my uncle Toby,
nodding his head;--for a cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards,
without bringing any rubbish down with it, which might fill the fosse, (as
was the case at St. Nicolas's gate) and facilitate the passage over it.

Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal Trim, better than
any officer in his Majesty's service;--but would your Honour please to let
the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into the country, I
would work under your Honour's directions like a horse, and make
fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries,
saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world's
riding twenty miles to go and see it.

My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on;--but it was not a
blush of guilt,--of modesty,--or of anger,--it was a blush of joy;--he was
fired with Corporal Trim's project and description.--Trim! said my uncle
Toby, thou hast said enough.--We might begin the campaign, continued Trim,
on the very day that his Majesty and the Allies take the field, and
demolish them town by town as fast as--Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no
more.  Your Honour, continued Trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing
to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would--Say no more,
Trim, quoth my uncle Toby--Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure
and good pastime--but good air, and good exercise, and good health,--and
your Honour's wound would be well in a month.  Thou hast said enough,
Trim,--quoth my uncle Toby (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket)--I
like thy project mightily.--And if your Honour pleases, I'll this moment go
and buy a pioneer's spade to take down with us, and I'll bespeak a shovel
and a pick-axe, and a couple of--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,
leaping up upon one leg, quite overcome with rapture,--and thrusting a
guinea into Trim's hand,--Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more;--but go
down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.

Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper,--to no purpose:--Trim's
plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it.--
Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to bed.--'Twas all one.--Corporal Trim's
description had fired his imagination,--my uncle Toby could not shut his
eyes.--The more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to
him;--so that, two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final
determination and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim's
decampment.

My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village
where my father's estate lay at Shandy, which had been left him by an old
uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a-year.  Behind this
house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre,
and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge,
was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim
wished for;--so that as Trim uttered the words, 'A rood and a half of
ground to do what they would with,'--this identical bowling-green instantly
presented itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina
of my uncle Toby's fancy;--which was the physical cause of making him
change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate
degree I spoke of.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and
expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this self-same thing in
private;--I say in private;--for it was sheltered from the house, as I told
you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three sides, from
mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering shrubs:--so that the
idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute to the idea of pleasure
pre-conceived in my uncle Toby's mind.--Vain thought! however thick it was
planted about,--or private soever it might seem,--to think, dear uncle
Toby, of enjoying a thing which took up a whole rood and a half of ground,-
-and not have it known!

How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this matter,--with the history
of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,--may make no
uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama.--At
present the scene must drop,--and change for the parlour fire-side.



Chapter 1.XXXI.

--What can they be doing? brother, said my father.--I think, replied my
uncle Toby,--taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and striking
the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;--I think, replied he,--it
would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.

Pray, what's all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?--quoth my father;--my
brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow towards his left shoulder,--my Mistress
is taken very badly.--And where's Susannah running down the garden there,
as if they were going to ravish her?--Sir, she is running the shortest cut
into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old midwife.--Then saddle a
horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly for Dr. Slop, the man-
midwife, with all our services,--and let him know your mistress is fallen
into labour--and that I desire he will return with you with all speed.

It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby, as
Obadiah shut the door,--as there is so expert an operator as Dr. Slop so
near,--that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate
humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one
misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;--and not only the
life of my child, brother,--but her own life, and with it the lives of all
the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter.

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, my sister does it to save the
expence:--A pudding's end,--replied my father,--the Doctor must be paid the
same for inaction as action,--if not better,--to keep him in temper.

--Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby, in
the simplicity of his heart,--but Modesty.--My sister, I dare say, added
he, does not care to let a man come so near her. . ..  I will not say
whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;--'tis for his
advantage to suppose he had,--as, I think, he could have added no One Word
which would have improved it.

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at the period's
end--then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father's
tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in
oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis.--Just Heaven! how does
the Poco piu and the Poco meno of the Italian artists;--the insensible more
or less, determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as
in the statue!  How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the
pen, the fiddle-stick, et caetera,--give the true swell, which gives the
true pleasure!--O my countrymen:--be nice; be cautious of your language;
and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your
eloquence and your fame depend.

--'My sister, mayhap,' quoth my uncle Toby, 'does not choose to let a man
come so near her. . ..'  Make this dash,--'tis an Aposiopesis,--Take the
dash away, and write Backside,--'tis Bawdy.--Scratch Backside out, and put
Cover'd way in, 'tis a Metaphor;--and, I dare say, as fortification ran so
much in my uncle Toby's head, that if he had been left to have added one
word to the sentence,--that word was it.

But whether that was the case or not the case;--or whether the snapping of
my father's tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident or
anger, will be seen in due time.
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