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

the very next morning; which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the Lower Deule, to the right, and the gate St. Andrew,⁠—and on the left, between St. Magdalen’s and the river.

As this was the most memorable attack in the whole war,⁠—the most gallant and obstinate on both sides,⁠—and I must add the most bloody too, for it cost the allies themselves that morning above eleven hundred men,⁠—my uncle Toby prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity.

The eve which preceded, as my uncle Toby went to bed, he ordered his ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an old compaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;⁠—and the very first thing he did in his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle Toby, after he had turned the rough side outwards,⁠—put it on:⁠⸺⁠This done, he proceeded next to his breeches, and having buttoned the waistband, he forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his sword half way in,⁠—when he considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on,⁠—so took it off:⁠⸺⁠In assaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle Toby found the same objection in his wig,⁠—so that went off too:⁠—So that what with one thing and what with another, as always falls out when a man is in the most haste,⁠—’twas ten o’clock, which was half an hour later than his usual time, before my uncle Toby sallied out.

XXV

My uncle Toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the corporal had begun the attack without him.⁠⸻

Let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal’s apparatus; and of the corporal himself in the height of his attack, just as it struck my uncle Toby, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the corporal was at work,⁠⸺⁠for in nature there is not such another,⁠⸺⁠nor can any combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal.

The corporal⁠⸻

⸺⁠Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,⁠⸺⁠for he was your kinsman:

Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,⁠—for he was your brother.⁠—Oh corporal! had I thee, but now,⁠—now, that I am able to give thee a dinner and protection,⁠—how would I cherish thee! thou should’st wear thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week,⁠—and when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it:⁠⸺⁠But alas! alas! alas! now that I can do this in spite of their reverences⁠—the occasion is lost⁠—for thou art gone;⁠—thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it came;⁠—and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a clod of the valley!

⸺⁠But what⁠⸺⁠what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I look towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy master⁠—the first⁠—the foremost of created beings;⁠⸺⁠where, I shall see thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door, to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he directed thee;⁠⸺⁠where⁠—all my father’s systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he inspects the lackered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them⁠⸺⁠When I see him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my ears,⁠⸺⁠O Toby! in what corner of the world shall I seek thy fellow?

⸺⁠Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain⁠⸺⁠when I shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted hand.

XXVI

The corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,⁠—had no further idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle Toby’s six field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the time same, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects.

Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began to find out, that by means of his two Turkish tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their lower ends, to be tagg’d by the same number of tin-pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the Morocco tube,⁠—he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one.⁠⸻

⸺⁠Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my father’s first and second beds of justice, ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.⁠⸺⁠Heaven! thou knowest how I love them;⁠⸺⁠thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this moment give my shirt⁠⸺⁠Thou art a fool, Shandy, says Eugenius, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,⁠—and ’twill break thy set.⁠⸺⁠

No matter for that, Eugenius; I would give the shirt off my back to be burned into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how many sparks at