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THE LIFE AND OPINIONS

TRISTRAM SHANDY

GENTLEMAN

???????? ???? ????????? ?? ?? ????????, ???? ?? ???? ??? ????????? ???????.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

I am, GREAT SIR, I am, GOOD SIR, Your Well-wisher, and most humble Fellow-subject,

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF

TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENT.

BOOK I

Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone! --or that, through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, my little Gentleman had got to his journey's end miserably spent; --his muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread; --his own animal spirits ruffled beyond description, --and that in this sad disordered state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months together. --I tremble to think what a foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights.

I know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers at all, who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of everything which concerns you.

To such, however, as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better advice, than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, 'tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.

But this by the bye.

"MY LORD,

"I maintain this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its singularity in the three great essentials of matter, form, and place: I beg, therefore, you will accept it as such, and that you will permit me to lay it, with the most respectful humility, at your Lordship's feet, --when you are upon them, --which you can be when you please; --and that is, my Lord, whenever there is occasion for it, and I will add, to the best purposes too. I have the honour to be,

TRISTRAM SHANDY."

I labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any offence or objection which might arise against it from the manner in which I propose to make the most of it; --which is the putting it up fairly to public sale; which I now do.

The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise.

Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to give a probable guess at the grounds of this procedure.

But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this gentleman's life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will, --to run into the opposite extreme. --In the language of the county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling; and as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile country, --it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last, --as much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this, that his horse was either clapp'd, or spavin'd, or greaz'd; --or he was twitter-bon'd, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him, which would let him carry no flesh; --so that he had every nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of, --and a good horse to purchase in his stead.

For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it; --and these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any application whatever, --or else be content to ride the last poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and infirmities, to the very end of the chapter.

As he dreaded his own constancy in the first--he very chearfully betook himself to the second; and though he could very well have explained it, as I said, to his honour, --yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit above it; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story, which might seem a panegyrick upon himself.

What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life, --or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep.

About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made entirely easy upon that score, --it being just so long since he left his parish, --and the whole world at the same time behind him, --and stands accountable to a Judge of whom he will have no cause to complain.

With us, you see, the case is quite different: --we are all ups and downs in this matter; --you are a great genius; --or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead; --not that there is a total want of intermediate steps, --no, --we are not so irregular as that comes to; --but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

Alas, poor YORICK!

Accounts to reconcile:

Anecdotes to pick up:

Inscriptions to make out:

Stories to weave in:

Traditions to sift:

Personages to call upon:

Panegyricks to paste up at this door;

The article in my mother's marriage-settlement, which I told the reader I was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it, I think proper to lay before him, --is so much more fully express'd in the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer's hand: --It is as follows.

How this event came about, --and what a train of vexatious disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single member, --shall be laid before the reader all in due time.

My father was a gentleman of many virtues, --but he had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number. --'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, --and of obstinacy in a bad one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew 'twas to no purpose to make any remonstrance, --so she e'en resolved to sit down quietly, and make the most of it.

My father was never able to give the history of this distemper, --without the remedy along with it.

His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct.

Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with that generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole transaction, is really noble; --and what renders it more so, is the principle of it; --the workings of a parent's love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, That was your son called JUDAS, --the sordid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example.

I wish the male-reader has not pass'd by many a one, as quaint and curious as this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. I wish it may have its effects; --and that all good people, both male and female, from her example, may be taught to think as well as read.

MEMOIRE present? ? Messieurs les Docteurs de SORBONNE

REPONSE

A. LE MOYNE. L. DE ROMIGNY. DE MARCILLY.

Thus--thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, aenigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, have for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards towards that ???? of their perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, we cannot possibly be far off.

Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to operate, is what I am able to explain with great exactness, and is as follows:

And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out; --I think it is full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head.

This is precisely my situation.

This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth's moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy; --though I own it suggested the thought, --as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and discoveries have come from such trifling hints.

All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression, --from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock still; --and if he goes on with his main work, --then there is an end of his digression.

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