The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne (short novels to read .txt) 📖

have been free from the fault of parsimony; and albeit he died in debt, not deeply tainted with that of extravagance in money matters. For most of his later expenditure was on others, and he might justly calculate on his pen paying, and more than paying, his shot. Little love as there was lost between him and his wife, he always took the greatest care to provide for her wants in the rather costly severance of their establishments, and never even in his most indiscreet moments hints a grumble at her expenditure, a vice of which some people of much higher general reputation have been known to be guilty. Though he was certainly pleased at the attentions of “the great,” I do not know that there is any just cause for accusing him of truckling to, or fawning on them beyond the custom and courtesy of the time. For all his reckless humour, there was no ill-nature in him. His worst enemies have admitted that his affection for his daughter was very pretty and quite unaffected; and his letters to and of Mrs. James show that he could think of a woman nobly and wholesomely as a friend, for all his ignoble and unwholesome ways of thought in regard to the sex. If it had not been for the cruel indiscretion of his Lydia (which, however, has something of the old virtue of conveying the balm as well as the sting), he would probably have been much better thought of than he is. And considering the delightful books here once more presented, I think we may consent to forgive the faults which, after all, were mainly his own business, for the merits by which we so largely benefit and for which he reaped no over-bounteous guerdon.

George Saintsbury

Ταράσσει τοὺς Ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ Πράγματα,
Ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν Πραγμάτων Δόγματα.

To the Right Honourable Mr. Pitt

Sir,⁠—Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the kingdom, and in a retir’d thatch’d house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,⁠⸺⁠but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this Fragment of Life.

I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it⁠⸺(not under your Protection,⁠⸺⁠it must protect itself, but)⁠⸺⁠into the country with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain⁠⸺⁠I shall think myself as happy as a minister of state;⁠⸻perhaps much happier than anyone (one only excepted) that I have read or heard of.

I am, great sir,
(and what is more to your Honour)
I am, good sir,
Your Well-wisher, and
most humble Fellow-subject,

The Author.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Book I I

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;⁠—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;⁠—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;⁠⸺⁠Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,⁠⸺⁠I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me.⁠—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;⁠—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, etc., etc.⁠—and a great deal to that purpose:⁠—Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a halfpenny matter,⁠—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.

Pray, my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?⁠⸻Good G⁠⸺! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,⁠⸺⁠Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?⁠⸻Nothing.

II

⸻Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see, either good or bad.⁠⸺⁠Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very unseasonable question at least,⁠—because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the Homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception.

The Homunculus, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;⁠—to the eye of reason in scientifick research, he stands confess’d⁠—a Being guarded and circumscribed with rights.⁠⸺⁠The minutest philosophers, who, by the by, have the most enlarged understandings (their souls being inversely as their enquiries), show us incontestably, that the Homunculus is created by the same hand,⁠—engender’d in the same course of nature,⁠—endow’d with the same locomotive powers and faculties with us:⁠—That he consists as we