Read Ebook: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman by Sterne Laurence Saintsbury George Commentator

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Ebook has 464 lines and 176720 words, and 10 pages

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.

I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not baulk my fancy. --Accordingly I set off thus:

But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this earth; --our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to work.

Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to take, to do this thing with exactness.

There are others again, who will draw a man's character from no other helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations; --but this often gives a very incorrect outline, --unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one good figure out of them both.

There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients; --not from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices which the Pentagraphic Brethren of the brush have shewn in taking copies. --These, you must know, are your great historians.

The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it; --my uncle's visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject, --and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself.

BOOK II

There is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there anything so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such thing as a critick at table.

I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for them, --and in this very spot I stand on; but being told by a Critick that I had acquitted myself well enough, I shall fill it up directly, hoping, in the meantime, that I shall be able to make a great deal of more room next year.

But this by the way.

Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold.

What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of obscurity it is, --and ever will be, --and that is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted understandings.

It is ten to one whether you have ever read the literary histories of past ages; --if you have, what terrible battles, 'yclept logomachies, have they occasioned and perpetuated with so much gall and ink-shed, --that a good-natured man cannot read the accounts of them without tears in his eyes.

The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as follows:

But whether that was the case or not the case; --or whether the snapping of my father's tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due time.

Imagine to yourself; --but this had better begin a new chapter.

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own.

This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume upon the subject.

Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.

For that very reason, replied my father, "Because they cost nothing, and because they eat nothing," --the scheme is bad; --it is the consumption of our products, as well as the manufactures of them, which gives bread to the hungry, circulates trade, --brings in money, and supports the value of our lands: --and tho', I own, if I was a Prince, I would generously recompense the scientifick head which brought forth such contrivances; --yet I would as peremptorily suppress the use of them.

But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling, --look first into it, and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing chariot in it.

The company smiled.

He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent forwards just so far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the horizon; --which sound orators, to whom I address this, know very well to be the true persuasive angle of incidence; --in any other angle you may talk and preach; --'tis certain; --and it is done every day; --but with what effect, --I leave the world to judge!

The SERMON

HEBREWS xiii. 18

The SERMON

HEBREWS xiii. 18

"Trust! trust we have a good conscience! Surely if there is any thing in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very thing, --whether he has a good conscience or no."

"I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does accuse him that he is guilty; and unless in melancholy and hypocondriac cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always sufficient grounds for the accusation.

"Another is sordid, unmerciful," "a strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship or public spirit. Take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in their distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life without a sigh or a prayer."

"When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this black account, and state it over again with his conscience --CONSCIENCE looks into the STATUTES AT LARGE; --finds no express law broken by what he has done; --perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels incurred; --sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his gates upon him: --What is there to affright his conscience? --Conscience has got safely entrenched behind the Letter of the Law; sits there invulnerable, fortified with #Cases# and #Reports# so strongly on all sides; --that it is not preaching can dispossess it of its hold."

"Of this the common instances which I have drawn out of life, are too notorious to require much evidence. If any man doubts the reality of them, or thinks it impossible for a man to be such a bubble to himself, --I must refer him a moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to trust my appeal with his own heart.

"When there is some appearance that it is so, --tho' one is unwilling even to suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, yet were we to look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive.

"Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us but small dependence upon his actions in matters of great distress.

"I will illustrate this by an example.

"Now let me examine what is my reason for this great confidence. Why, in the first place, I believe there is no probability that either of them will employ the power I put into their hands to my disadvantage; --I consider that honesty serves the purposes of this life: --I know their success in the world depends upon the fairness of their characters. --In a word, I'm persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting themselves more.

"As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality without religion; --so, on the other hand, there is nothing better to be expected from religion without morality; nevertheless, 'tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion of himself in the light of a religious man.

"In how many kingdoms of the world" --

"In how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading sword of this misguided saint-errant, spared neither age nor merit, or sex, or condition? --and, as he fought under the banners of a religion which set him loose from justice and humanity, he shewed none; mercilessly trampled upon both, --heard neither the cries of the unfortunate, nor pitied their distresses."

"If the testimony of past centuries in this matter is not sufficient, --consider at this instant, how the votaries of that religion are every day thinking to do service and honour to God, by actions which are a dishonour and scandal to themselves.

"I will add no farther to the length of this sermon, than by two or three short and independent rules deducible from it.

"In a word, --trust that man in nothing, who has not a CONSCIENCE in everything.

This turn of thinking in my father, is what I had to remind you of: --The point you are to be informed of, and which I have reserved for this place, is as follows.

My father set out upon the strength of these two following axioms:

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body; and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains, --then certes the soul does not inhabit there. Q. E. D.

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.

This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.--

Now as my father managed this matter, --consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself.

A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining; --rumple the one, --you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet, or thin persian.

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