3 Books By Laurence Sterne. Laurence Sterne

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      --'My sister, mayhap,' quoth my uncle Toby, 'does not choose to let a man come so near her....' Make this dash,--'tis an Aposiopesis,--Take the dash away, and write Backside,--'tis Bawdy.--Scratch Backside out, and put Cover'd way in, 'tis a Metaphor;--and, I dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby's head, that if he had been left to have added one word to the sentence,--that word was it.

      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.

      Chapter 1.XXXII.

      Tho' my father was a good natural philosopher,--yet he was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp'd short in the middle,--he had nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.--He did no such thing;--he threw them with all the violence in the world;--and, to give the action still more emphasis,--he started upon both his legs to do it.

      This looked something like heat;--and the manner of his reply to what my uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.

      --'Not choose,' quoth my father, (repeating my uncle Toby's words) 'to let a man come so near her!'--By Heaven, brother Toby! you would try the patience of Job;--and I think I have the plagues of one already without it.--Why?--Where?--Wherein?--Wherefore?--Upon what account? replied my uncle Toby: in the utmost astonishment.--To think, said my father, of a man living to your age, brother, and knowing so little about women!--I know nothing at all about them,--replied my uncle Toby: And I think, continued he, that the shock I received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with widow Wadman;--which shock you know I should not have received, but from my total ignorance of the sex,--has given me just cause to say, That I neither know nor do pretend to know any thing about 'em or their concerns either.--Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong.

      It is said in Aristotle's Master Piece, 'That when a man doth think of any thing which is past,--he looketh down upon the ground;--but that when he thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards the heavens.'

      My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of neither, for he look'd horizontally.--Right end! quoth my uncle Toby, muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice, formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece--Right end of a woman!--I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is than the man in the moon;--and if I was to think, continued my uncle Toby (keeping his eyes still fixed upon the bad joint) this month together, I am sure I should not be able to find it out.

      Then, brother Toby, replied my father, I will tell you.

      Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh pipe)--every thing in this world, my dear brother Toby, has two handles.--Not always, quoth my uncle Toby.--At least, replied my father, every one has two hands,--which comes to the same thing.--Now, if a man was to sit down coolly, and consider within himself the make, the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience of all the parts which constitute the whole of that animal, called Woman, and compare them analogically--I never understood rightly the meaning of that word,--quoth my uncle Toby.--

      Analogy, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which different--Here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father's definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,--and, at the same time, crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the womb of speculation;--it was some months before my father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:--And, at this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the subject of the dissertation itself,--(considering the confusion and distresses of our domestick misadventures, which are now coming thick one upon the back of another) whether I shall be able to find a place for it in the third volume or not.

      Chapter 1.XXXIII.

      It is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading since my uncle Toby rung the bell, when Obadiah was ordered to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife;--so that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come;--though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.

      If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;--and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,--should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;--I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas--and is the true scholastic pendulum,--and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,--abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.

      I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-midwife's house:--and that whilst Obadiah has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle Toby from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:--That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;--and have since travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into Yorkshire.--all which put together, must have prepared the reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,--as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.

      If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,--when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book apocryphal:--If I am thus pressed--I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,--by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;--and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.

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

      Chapter 1.XXXIV.

      Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.

      Such were the out-lines of Dr. Slop's figure, which--if you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;--you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred.

      Imagine such a one,--for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour--but of strength,--alack!--scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.--They were not.--Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way.

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

      Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,--splashing and plunging like a devil thro' thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a phaenomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,--have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. Slop in his СКАЧАТЬ