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Section 8 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 1.XXXII.
Tho' my father was a good natural philosopher,--yet he was something of a
moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp'd
short in the middle,--he had nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold
of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.--He
did no such thing;--he threw them with all the violence in the world;--and,
to give the action still more emphasis,--he started upon both his legs to
do it.
This looked something like heat;--and the manner of his reply to what my
uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.
--'Not choose,' quoth my father, (repeating my uncle Toby's words) 'to let
a man come so near her!'--By Heaven, brother Toby! you would try the
patience of Job;--and I think I have the plagues of one already without
it.--Why?--Where?--Wherein?--Wherefore?--Upon what account? replied my
uncle Toby: in the utmost astonishment.--To think, said my father, of a man
living to your age, brother, and knowing so little about women!--I know
nothing at all about them,--replied my uncle Toby: And I think, continued
he, that the shock I received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in
my affair with widow Wadman;--which shock you know I should not have
received, but from my total ignorance of the sex,--has given me just cause
to say, That I neither know nor do pretend to know any thing about 'em or
their concerns either.--Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at
least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong.
It is said in Aristotle's Master Piece, 'That when a man doth think of any
thing which is past,--he looketh down upon the ground;--but that when he
thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards the heavens.'
My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of neither, for he look'd horizontally.--
Right end! quoth my uncle Toby, muttering the two words low to himself, and
fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice,
formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece--Right end of a woman!--I
declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is than the man in the
moon;--and if I was to think, continued my uncle Toby (keeping his eyes
still fixed upon the bad joint) this month together, I am sure I should not
be able to find it out.
Then, brother Toby, replied my father, I will tell you.
Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh pipe)--
every thing in this world, my dear brother Toby, has two handles.--Not
always, quoth my uncle Toby.--At least, replied my father, every one has
two hands,--which comes to the same thing.--Now, if a man was to sit down
coolly, and consider within himself the make, the shape, the construction,
come-at-ability, and convenience of all the parts which constitute the
whole of that animal, called Woman, and compare them analogically--I never
understood rightly the meaning of that word,--quoth my uncle Toby.--
Analogy, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which
different--Here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father's definition
(like his tobacco-pipe) in two,--and, at the same time, crushed the head of
as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the womb of
speculation;--it was some months before my father could get an opportunity
to be safely delivered of it:--And, at this hour, it is a thing full as
problematical as the subject of the dissertation itself,--(considering the
confusion and distresses of our domestick misadventures, which are now
coming thick one upon the back of another) whether I shall be able to find
a place for it in the third volume or not.
Chapter 1.XXXIII.
It is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading since my uncle Toby
rung the bell, when Obadiah was ordered to saddle a horse, and go for Dr.
Slop, the man-midwife;--so that no one can say, with reason, that I have
not allowed Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the
emergency too, both to go and come;--though, morally and truly speaking,
the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a
pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell,
and the rap at the door;--and, after finding it to be no more than two
minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,--should take upon him to
insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of
time;--I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple
modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas--and is the
true scholastic pendulum,--and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in
this matter,--abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other
pendulums whatever.
I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles
from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-midwife's house:--and that whilst
Obadiah has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle
Toby from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:--That I have had
him ill upon my hands near four years;--and have since travelled him and
Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles
down into Yorkshire.--all which put together, must have prepared the
reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,--as much,
at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.
If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen
seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,--when I have
said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me
dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very
moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book apocryphal:--If I am
thus pressed--I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy
about it all at once,--by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above
threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;--and
indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an
ace of giving a tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself;--but this had better begin a new chapter.
Chapter 1.XXXIV.
Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of
about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back,
and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant
in the horse-guards.
Such were the out-lines of Dr. Slop's figure, which--if you have read
Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;--you
must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by
three strokes as three hundred.
Imagine such a one,--for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's
figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro' the dirt upon the
vertebrae of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour--but of
strength,--alack!--scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a
fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.--They were not.--
Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-
horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the
adverse way.
Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.
Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly
towards him, at that monstrous rate,--splashing and plunging like a devil
thro' thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a phaenomenon, with
such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,--have
been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. Slop in his situation, than
the worst of Whiston's comets?--To say nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of
Obadiah and the coach-horse.--In my idea, the vortex alone of 'em was
enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the
doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do you think must the terror
and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have been, when you read (which you are just
going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall,
and had approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a
sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,--and in the
dirtiest part of a dirty lane,--when Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the
corner, rapid, furious,--pop,--full upon him!--Nothing, I think, in nature,
can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,--so imprompt! so ill
prepared to stand the shock of it as Dr. Slop was.
What could Dr. Slop do?--he crossed himself + --Pugh!--but the doctor, Sir,
was a Papist.--No matter; he had better have kept hold of the pummel.--He
had so;--nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all; for
in crossing himself he let go his whip,--and in attempting to save his whip
betwixt his knee and his saddle's skirt, as it slipped, he lost his
stirrup,--in losing which he lost his seat;--and in the multitude of all
these losses (which, by the bye, shews what little advantage there is in
crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that
without waiting for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to its destiny,
tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile and manner of a pack of
wool, and without any other consequence from the fall, save that of being
left (as it would have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about
twelve inches deep in the mire.
Obadiah pull'd off his cap twice to Dr. Slop;--once as he was falling,--and
then again when he saw him seated.--Ill-timed complaisance;--had not the
fellow better have stopped his horse, and got off and help'd him?--Sir, he
did all that his situation would allow;--but the Momentum of the coach-
horse was so great, that Obadiah could not do it all at once; he rode in a
circle three times round Dr. Slop, before he could fully accomplish it any
how;--and at the last, when he did stop his beast, 'twas done with such an
explosion of mud, that Obadiah had better have been a league off. In
short, never was a Dr. Slop so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since
that affair came into fashion.
Chapter 1.XXXV.
When Dr. Slop entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle Toby
were discoursing upon the nature of women,--it was hard to determine
whether Dr. Slop's figure, or Dr. Slop's presence, occasioned more surprize
to them; for as the accident happened so near the house, as not to make it
worth while for Obadiah to remount him,--Obadiah had led him in as he was,
unwiped, unappointed, unannealed, with all his stains and blotches on him.-
-He stood like Hamlet's ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full minute
and a half at the parlour-door (Obadiah still holding his hand) with all
the majesty of mud. His hinder parts, upon which he had received his fall,
totally besmeared,--and in every other part of him, blotched over in such a
manner with Obadiah's explosion, that you would have sworn (without mental
reservation) that every grain of it had taken effect.
Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle Toby to have triumphed over my
father in his turn;--for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. Slop in that pickle,
could have dissented from so much, at least, of my uncle Toby's opinion,
'That mayhap his sister might not care to let such a Dr. Slop come so near
her. . ..' But it was the Argumentum ad hominem; and if my uncle Toby was
not very expert at it, you may think, he might not care to use it.--No; the
reason was,--'twas not his nature to insult.
Dr. Slop's presence at that time, was no less problematical than the mode
of it; tho' it is certain, one moment's reflexion in my father might have
solved it; for he had apprized Dr. Slop but the week before, that my mother
was at her full reckoning; and as the doctor had heard nothing since, 'twas
natural and very political too in him, to have taken a ride to Shandy-Hall,
as he did, merely to see how matters went on.
But my father's mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in the investigation;
running, like the hypercritick's, altogether upon the ringing of the bell
and the rap upon the door,--measuring their distance, and keeping his mind
so intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of nothing else,--
common-place infirmity of the greatest mathematicians! working with might
and main at the demonstration, and so wasting all their strength upon it,
that they have none left in them to draw the corollary, to do good with.
The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, struck likewise strong
upon the sensorium of my uncle Toby,--but it excited a very different train
of thoughts;--the two irreconcileable pulsations instantly brought
Stevinus, the great engineer, along with them, into my uncle Toby's mind.
What business Stevinus had in this affair,--is the greatest problem of
all:--It shall be solved,--but not in the next chapter.
Chapter 1.XXXVI.
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but
a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about
in good company, would venture to talk all;--so no author, who understands
the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think
all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding,
is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in
his turn, as well as yourself.
For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do
all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own.
'Tis his turn now;--I have given an ample description of Dr. Slop's sad
overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the back-parlour;--his imagination
must now go on with it for a while.
Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. Slop has told his tale--and in what
words, and with what aggravations, his fancy chooses;--Let him suppose,
that Obadiah has told his tale also, and with such rueful looks of affected
concern, as he thinks best will contrast the two figures as they stand by
each other.--Let him imagine, that my father has stepped up stairs to see
my mother.--And, to conclude this work of imagination,--let him imagine the
doctor washed,--rubbed down, and condoled,--felicitated,--got into a pair
of Obadiah's pumps, stepping forwards towards the door, upon the very point
of entering upon action.
Truce!--truce, good Dr. Slop!--stay thy obstetrick hand;--return it safe
into thy bosom to keep it warm;--little dost thou know what obstacles,--
little dost thou think what hidden causes, retard its operation!--Hast
thou, Dr. Slop,--hast thou been entrusted with the secret articles of the
solemn treaty which has brought thee into this place?--Art thou aware that
at this instant, a daughter of Lucina is put obstetrically over thy head?
Alas!--'tis too true.--Besides, great son of Pilumnus! what canst thou do?-
-Thou hast come forth unarm'd;--thou hast left thy tire-tete,--thy new-
invented forceps,--thy crotchet,--thy squirt, and all thy instruments of
salvation and deliverance, behind thee,--By Heaven! at this moment they are
hanging up in a green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at the bed's
head!--Ring;--call;--send Obadiah back upon the coach-horse to bring them
with all speed.
--Make great haste, Obadiah, quoth my father, and I'll give thee a crown!
and quoth my uncle Toby, I'll give him another.
Chapter 1.XXXVII.
Your sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself
to Dr. Slop, (all three of them sitting down to the fire together, as my
uncle Toby began to speak)--instantly brought the great Stevinus into my
head, who, you must know, is a favourite author with me.--Then, added my
father, making use of the argument Ad Crumenam,--I will lay twenty guineas
to a single crown-piece (which will serve to give away to Obadiah when he
gets back) that this same Stevinus was some engineer or other--or has wrote
something or other, either directly or indirectly, upon the science of
fortification.
He has so,--replied my uncle Toby.--I knew it, said my father, though, for
the soul of me, I cannot see what kind of connection there can be betwixt
Dr. Slop's sudden coming, and a discourse upon fortification;--yet I fear'd
it.--Talk of what we will, brother,--or let the occasion be never so
foreign or unfit for the subject,--you are sure to bring it in. I would
not, brother Toby, continued my father,--I declare I would not have my head
so full of curtins and horn-works.--That I dare say you would not, quoth
Dr. Slop, interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun.
Dennis the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the insinuation of a
pun, more cordially than my father;--he would grow testy upon it at any
time;--but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad,
he would say, as a fillip upon the nose;--he saw no difference.
Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Dr. Slop,--the curtins my
brother Shandy mentions here, have nothing to do with beadsteads;--tho', I
know Du Cange says, 'That bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken
their name from them;'--nor have the horn-works he speaks of, any thing in
the world to do with the horn-works of cuckoldom: But the Curtin, Sir, is
the word we use in fortification, for that part of the wall or rampart
which lies between the two bastions and joins them--Besiegers seldom offer
to carry on their attacks directly against the curtin, for this reason,
because they are so well flanked. ('Tis the case of other curtains, quoth
Dr. Slop, laughing.) However, continued my uncle Toby, to make them sure,
we generally choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to
extend them beyond the fosse or ditch:--The common men, who know very
little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon together,--
tho' they are very different things;--not in their figure or construction,
for we make them exactly alike, in all points; for they always consist of
two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges, not straight, but in
form of a crescent;--Where then lies the difference? (quoth my father, a
little testily.)--In their situations, answered my uncle Toby:--For when a
ravelin, brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a
ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin;--it is
a half-moon;--a half-moon likewise is a half-moon, and no more, so long as
it stands before its bastion;--but was it to change place, and get before
the curtin,--'twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon, in that case,
is not a half-moon;--'tis no more than a ravelin.--I think, quoth my
father, that the noble science of defence has its weak sides--as well as
others.
As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh'd my father) which, continued my uncle
Toby, my brother was speaking of, they are a very considerable part of an
outwork;--they are called by the French engineers, Ouvrage a corne, and we
generally make them to cover such places as we suspect to be weaker than
the rest;--'tis formed by two epaulments or demi-bastions--they are very
pretty,--and if you will take a walk, I'll engage to shew you one well
worth your trouble.--I own, continued my uncle Toby, when we crown them,--
they are much stronger, but then they are very expensive, and take up a
great deal of ground, so that, in my opinion, they are most of use to cover
or defend the head of a camp; otherwise the double tenaille--By the mother
who bore us!--brother Toby, quoth my father, not able to hold out any
longer,--you would provoke a saint;--here have you got us, I know not how,
not only souse into the middle of the old subject again:--But so full is
your head of these confounded works, that though my wife is this moment in
the pains of labour, and you hear her cry out, yet nothing will serve you
but to carry off the man-midwife.--Accoucheur,--if you please, quoth Dr.
Slop.--With all my heart, replied my father, I don't care what they call
you,--but I wish the whole science of fortification, with all its
inventors, at the devil;--it has been the death of thousands,--and it will
be mine in the end.--I would not, I would not, brother Toby, have my brains
so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons,
and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur, and of all the towns in
Flanders with it.
My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries;--not from want of courage,--I
have told you in a former chapter, 'that he was a man of courage:'--And
will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth,--I
know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter;--nor did
this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts;-
-for he felt this insult of my father's as feelingly as a man could do;--
but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,--no jarring element in it,--all
was mixed up so kindly within him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart to
retaliate upon a fly.
--Go--says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed
about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,--and which after
infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;--I'll not hurt
thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room,
with the fly in his hand,--I'll not hurt a hair of thy head:--Go, says he,
lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;--
go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?--This world surely
is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that the
action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which
instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable
sensation;--or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards
it;--or in what degree, or by what secret magick,--a tone of voice and
harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart, I
know not;--this I know, that the lesson of universal good-will then taught
and imprinted by my uncle Toby, has never since been worn out of my mind:
And tho' I would not depreciate what the study of the Literae humaniores,
at the university, have done for me in that respect, or discredit the other
helps of an expensive education bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad
since;--yet I often think that I owe one half of my philanthropy to that
one accidental impression.
This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume upon
the subject.
I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle Toby's picture, by the
instrument with which I drew the other parts of it,--that taking in no more
than the mere Hobby-Horsical likeness:--this is a part of his moral
character. My father, in this patient endurance of wrongs, which I
mention, was very different, as the reader must long ago have noted; he had
a much more acute and quick sensibility of nature, attended with a little
soreness of temper; tho' this never transported him to any thing which
looked like malignancy:--yet in the little rubs and vexations of life,
'twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty kind of peevishness:--He
was, however, frank and generous in his nature;--at all times open to
conviction; and in the little ebullitions of this subacid humour towards
others, but particularly towards my uncle Toby, whom he truly loved:--he
would feel more pain, ten times told (except in the affair of my aunt
Dinah, or where an hypothesis was concerned) than what he ever gave.
The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them, reflected light
upon each other, and appeared with great advantage in this affair which
arose about Stevinus.
I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a Hobby-Horse,--that a man's Hobby-
Horse is as tender a part as he has about him; and that these unprovoked
strokes at my uncle Toby's could not be unfelt by him.--No:--as I said
above, my uncle Toby did feel them, and very sensibly too.
Pray, Sir, what said he?--How did he behave?--O, Sir!--it was great: For
as soon as my father had done insulting his Hobby-Horse,--he turned his
head without the least emotion, from Dr. Slop, to whom he was addressing
his discourse, and looking up into my father's face, with a countenance
spread over with so much good-nature;--so placid;--so fraternal;--so
inexpressibly tender towards him:--it penetrated my father to his heart:
He rose up hastily from his chair, and seizing hold of both my uncle Toby's
hands as he spoke:--Brother Toby, said he:--I beg thy pardon;--forgive, I
pray thee, this rash humour which my mother gave me.--My dear, dear
brother, answered my uncle Toby, rising up by my father's help, say no more
about it;--you are heartily welcome, had it been ten times as much,
brother. But 'tis ungenerous, replied my father, to hurt any man;--a
brother worse;--but to hurt a brother of such gentle manners,--so
unprovoking,--and so unresenting;--'tis base:--By Heaven, 'tis cowardly.--
You are heartily welcome, brother, quoth my uncle Toby,--had it been fifty
times as much.--Besides, what have I to do, my dear Toby, cried my father,
either with your amusements or your pleasures, unless it was in my power
(which it is not) to increase their measure?
--Brother Shandy, answered my uncle Toby, looking wistfully in his face,--
you are much mistaken in this point:--for you do increase my pleasure very
much, in begetting children for the Shandy family at your time of life.--
But, by that, Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy increases his own.--Not a
jot, quoth my father.
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