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

in which so great a man lived;⁠—whether, for instance, before or after the patriarchs, etc.⁠⸺⁠to vote, therefore, that he never lived at all, is a little cruel,⁠—’tis not doing as they would be done by,⁠—happen that as it may)⁠⸺⁠My father, I say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience,⁠—of wondering why he was begot,⁠—wishing himself dead;⁠—sometimes worse:⁠⸺⁠And when the provocation ran high, and grief touched his lips with more than ordinary powers⁠—Sir, you scarce could have distinguished him from Socrates himself.⁠⸺⁠Every word would breathe the sentiments of a soul disdaining life, and careless about all its issues; for which reason, though my mother was a woman of no deep reading, yet the abstract of Socrates’s oration, which my father was giving my uncle Toby, was not altogether new to her.⁠—She listened to it with composed intelligence, and would have done so to the end of the chapter, had not my father plunged (which he had no occasion to have done) into that part of the pleading where the great philosopher reckons up his connections, his alliances, and children; but renounces a security to be so won by working upon the passions of his judges.⁠—“I have friends⁠—I have relations,⁠—I have three desolate children,”⁠—says Socrates.⁠—

⸺⁠Then, cried my mother, opening the door,⁠⸺⁠you have one more, Mr. Shandy, than I know of.

By heaven! I have one less,⁠—said my father, getting up and walking out of the room.

XIV

⸺⁠They are Socrates’s children, said my uncle Toby. He has been dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother.

My uncle Toby was no chronologer⁠—so not caring to advance one step but upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe deliberately upon the table, and rising up, and taking my mother most kindly by the hand, without saying another word, either good or bad, to her, he led her out after my father, that he might finish the ecclaircissement himself.

XV

Had this volume been a farce, which, unless everyone’s life and opinions are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, I see no reason to suppose⁠—the last chapter, Sir, had finished the first act of it, and then this chapter must have set off thus.

Ptr..r..r..ing⁠—twing⁠—twang⁠—prut⁠—trut⁠⸺’tis a cursed bad fiddle.⁠—Do you know whether my fiddle’s in tune or no?⁠—trut..prut..⁠—They should be fifths.⁠⸺’Tis wickedly strung⁠—tr⁠ ⁠… a.e.i.o.u.-twang.⁠—The bridge is a mile too high, and the sound post absolutely down,⁠—else⁠—trut . . prut⁠—hark! ’tis not so bad a tone.⁠—Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, dum. There is nothing in playing before good judges,⁠—but there’s a man there⁠—no⁠—not him with the bundle under his arm⁠—the grave man in black.⁠—’Sdeath! not the gentleman with the sword on.⁠—Sir, I had rather play a Caprichio to Calliope herself, than draw my bow across my fiddle before that very man; and yet I’ll stake my Cremona to a Jew’s trump, which is the greatest musical odds that ever were laid, that I will this moment stop three hundred and fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, without punishing one single nerve that belongs to him⁠—Twaddle diddle, tweddle diddle,⁠—twiddle diddle,⁠⸺⁠twoddle diddle,⁠—twuddle diddle,⁠⸺⁠prut trut⁠—krish⁠—krash⁠—krush.⁠—I’ve undone you, Sir,⁠—but you see he’s no worse,⁠—and was Apollo to take his fiddle after me, he can make him no better.

Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle⁠—hum⁠—dum⁠—drum.

—Your worships and your reverences love music⁠—and God has made you all with good ears⁠—and some of you play delightfully yourselves⁠—trut-prut,⁠—prut-trut.

O! there is⁠—whom I could sit and hear whole days,⁠—whose talents lie in making what he fiddles to be felt,⁠—who inspires me with his joys and hopes, and puts the most hidden springs of my heart into motion.⁠—If you would borrow five guineas of me, Sir,⁠—which is generally ten guineas more than I have to spare⁠—or you Messrs. Apothecary and Taylor, want your bills paying,⁠—that’s your time.

XVI

The first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a little settled in the family, and Susannah had got possession of my mother’s green sattin nightgown,⁠—was to sit down coolly, after the example of Xenophon, and write a Tristra-pædia, or system of education for me; collecting first for that purpose his own scattered thoughts, counsels, and notions; and binding them together, so as to form an institute for the government of my childhood and adolescence. I was my father’s last stake⁠—he had lost my brother Bobby entirely,⁠—he had lost, by his own computation, full three-fourths of me⁠—that is, he had been unfortunate in his three first great casts for me⁠—my geniture, nose, and name,⁠—there was but this one left; and accordingly my father gave himself up to it with as much devotion as ever my uncle Toby had done to his doctrine of projectils.⁠—The difference between them was, that my uncle Toby drew his whole knowledge of projectils from Nicholas Tartaglia⁠—My father spun his, every thread of it, out of his own brain,⁠—or reeled and cross-twisted what all other spinners and spinsters had spun before him, that ’twas pretty near the same torture to him.

In about three years, or something more, my father had got advanced almost into the middle of his work.⁠—Like all other writers, he met with disappointments.⁠—He imagined he should be able to bring whatever he had to say, into so small a compass, that when it was finished and bound, it might be rolled up in my mother’s hussive.⁠—Matter grows under our hands.⁠—Let no man say,⁠—“Come⁠—I’ll write a duodecimo.”

My father gave himself up to it, however, with the most painful diligence, proceeding step by step in every line, with the same kind of caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite so religious a principle) as was used by John de la Casse, the lord archbishop of Benevento, in compassing his Galatea; in which his Grace of Benevento spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came out, it was not of above half the size or the thickness of a Rider’s Almanac.⁠—How the holy man managed the affair, unless he