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

sceptre to them,⁠—they should have where to secure it.⁠⸻

Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy, replied my mother.⁠⸻

⸺⁠But don’t you think it right? added my father, pressing the point home to her.

Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy.⁠⸻

⸺⁠There’s for you! cried my father, losing temper⁠⸺⁠Pleases me!⁠⸺⁠You never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.⁠⸺⁠This was on the Sunday night:⁠⸺⁠and further this chapter sayeth not.

XIX

After my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother,⁠—he consulted Albertus Rubenius upon it; and Albertus Rubenius used my father ten times worse in the consultation (if possible) than even my father had used my mother: For as Rubenius had wrote a quarto express, De re Vestiaria Veterum,⁠—it was Rubenius’s business to have given my father some lights.⁠—On the contrary, my father might as well have thought of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long beard,⁠—as of extracting a single word out of Rubenius upon the subject.

Upon every other article of ancient dress, Rubenius was very communicative to my father;⁠—gave him a full and satisfactory account of

The Toga, or loose gown.

The Chlamys.

The Ephod.

The Tunica, or Jacket.

The Synthesis.

The Pænula.

The Lacema, with its Cucullus.

The Paludamentum.

The Prætexta.

The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin.

The Trabea: of which, according to Suetonius, there were three kinds.⁠—

⸺⁠But what are all these to the breeches? said my father.

Rubenius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had been in fashion with the Romans.⁠⸻

There was,

The open shoe.

The close shoe.

The slip shoe.

The wooden shoe.

The soc.

The buskin.

And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which Juvenal takes notice of.

There were,

The clogs.

The pattins.

The pantoufles.

The brogues.

The sandals, with latchets to them.

There was,

The felt shoe.

The linen shoe.

The laced shoe.

The braided shoe.

The calceus incisus.

And The calceus rostratus.

Rubenius showed my father how well they all fitted,⁠—in what manner they laced on,⁠—with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, jaggs, and ends.⁠⸻

⸺⁠But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father.

Albertus Rubenius informed my father that the Romans manufactured stuffs of various fabrics,⁠⸺⁠some plain,⁠—some striped,⁠—others diapered throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold⁠⸺⁠That linen did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of the empire, when the Egyptians coming to settle amongst them, brought it into vogue.

⸺⁠That persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour (next to purple, which was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected, and wore on their birthdays and public rejoicings.⁠⸺⁠That it appeared from the best historians of those times, that they frequently sent their clothes to the fuller, to be clean’d and whitened:⁠⸺⁠but that the inferior people, to avoid that expense, generally wore brown clothes, and of a something coarser texture,⁠—till towards the beginning of Augustus’s reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the Latus Clavus.

And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.

Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the learned:⁠⸺⁠That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius, Budæus, Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon, and Joseph Scaliger, all differed from each other,⁠—and he from them: That some took it to be the button,⁠—some the coat itself,⁠—others only the colour of it:⁠—That the great Bayfius, in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12⁠—honestly said, he knew not what it was,⁠—whether a tibula,⁠—a stud,⁠—a button,⁠—a loop,⁠—a buckle,⁠—or clasps and keepers.⁠⸻

⸺⁠My father lost the horse, but not the saddle⁠⸺⁠They are hooks and eyes, said my father⁠⸺⁠and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made.

XX

We are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.⁠⸻

⸺⁠Leave we then the breeches in the tailor’s hands, with my father standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a lecture upon the latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.⁠⸺⁠

Leave we my mother⁠—(truest of all the Pococurantes of her sex!)⁠—careless about it, as about everything else in the world which concerned her;⁠—that is,⁠—indifferent whether it was done this way or that,⁠—provided it was but done at all.⁠⸺⁠

Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.⁠⸻

Leave we poor Le Fever to recover, and get home from Marseilles as he can.⁠⸺⁠And last of all,⁠—because the hardest of all⁠⸺⁠

Let us leave, if possible, myself:⁠⸺⁠But ’tis impossible,⁠—I must go along with you to the end of the work.

XXI

If the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby’s kitchen-garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,⁠—the fault is not in me,⁠—but in his imagination;⁠—for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I was almost ashamed of it.

When Fate was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times,⁠—and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,⁠⸺⁠she gave a nod to Nature,⁠—’twas enough⁠—Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,⁠—and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather.

My uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy and Flanders; so let the Duke of Marlborough, or the allies, have set down before what town they pleased, my uncle Toby was prepared for them.

His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as ever a town was invested⁠—(but sooner when the design was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his