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

had foreboded, was put in execution all at once,⁠—with so little mercy on the side of the allies,⁠—and so little suspicion in Yorick, of what was carrying on against him,⁠—that when he thought, good easy man! full surely preferment was o’ ripening,⁠—they had smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him.

Yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some time; till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the calamities of the war,⁠—but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which it was carried on,⁠—he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his spirits in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought, quite brokenhearted.

What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion was as follows:

A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stepped in with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing Yorick’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick looking up in his face took hold of his hand,⁠—and after thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet hereafter,⁠—he would thank him again and again,⁠—he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip forever.⁠—I hope not, answered Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke.⁠—I hope not, Yorick, said he.⁠⸺⁠Yorick replied, with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius’s hand, and that was all,⁠—but it cut Eugenius to his heart,⁠—Come⁠—come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within him,⁠—my dear lad, be comforted,⁠—let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou most wants them;⁠⸺⁠who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee?⁠⸺⁠Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head;⁠—For my part, continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,⁠—I declare I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee, and would gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, chearing up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, and that I may live to see it.⁠⸺⁠I beseech thee, Eugenius, quoth Yorick, taking off his nightcap as well as he could with his left hand,⁠⸺⁠his right being still grasped close in that of Eugenius,⁠⸺⁠I beseech thee to take a view of my head.⁠—I see nothing that ails it, replied Eugenius. Then, alas! my friend, said Yorick, let me tell you, that ’tis so bruised and mis-shapened with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others have so unhandsomely given me, in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Pança, that should I recover, and “Mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit it.”⁠⸺⁠Yorick’s last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready to depart as he uttered this:⁠⸺⁠yet still it was uttered with something of a Cervantick tone;⁠⸺⁠and as he spoke it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;⁠⸺⁠faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakespeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar!

Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was broke: he squeezed his hand,⁠⸺⁠and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door,⁠—he then closed them,⁠—and never opened them more.

He lies buried in the corner of his churchyard, in the parish of ⸻, under a plain marble slab, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy.

Alas, poor Yorick!

Ten times a day has Yorick’s ghost the consolation to hear his monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him;⁠⸺⁠a foot-way crossing the churchyard close by the side of his grave,⁠—not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it,⁠—and sighing as he walks on,

Alas, poor Yorick!

XIII

It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him, merely to put him in mind that there is such a body still in the world, and whom, upon the best judgment I can form upon my own plan at present,⁠—I am going to introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall out betwixt the reader and myself, which may require immediate dispatch;⁠⸺’twas right to take care that the poor woman should not be lost in the meantime;⁠—because when she is wanted, we can no way do without her.

I think I told you that this good woman was a person of no small note and consequence throughout our whole village and township;⁠—that her fame had spread itself to the very out-edge and circumference of that circle of importance, of which kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his back or no,⁠⸺⁠has one surrounding him;⁠—which said circle, by the way, whenever ’tis said that such a one is of great weight and importance in the world,⁠⸺⁠I desire may be enlarged or contracted in your worship’s fancy, in a compound ratio of the station, profession, knowledge, abilities, height and depth (measuring both ways) of the personage brought before you.

In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four or five miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish, but extended itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets in the skirts of the next parish; which made a considerable thing of it. I must add, That she was, moreover, very well looked on at one