The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 18

Chapter 2.XXVII.

It is a singular blessing, that nature has form'd the mind of man with the same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is observed in old dogs-'of not learning new tricks.'

What a shuttlec.o.c.k of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever existed be whisk'd into at once, did he read such books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change sides!

Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all this-He pick'd up an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.-It becomes his own-and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up.

I am aware that Didius, the great civilian, will contest this point; and cry out against me, Whence comes this man's right to this apple? ex confesso, he will say-things were in a state of nature-The apple, is as much Frank's apple as John's. Pray, Mr. Shandy, what patent has he to shew for it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he set his heart upon it? or when he gathered it? or when he chew'd it? or when he roasted it? or when he peel'd, or when he brought it home? or when he digested?-or when he-?-For 'tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made it not his-that no subsequent act could.

Brother Didius, Tribonius will answer-(now Tribonius the civilian and church lawyer's beard being three inches and a half and three eighths longer than Didius his beard-I'm glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so I give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)-Brother Didius, Tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the fragments of Gregorius and Hermogines's codes, and in all the codes from Justinian's down to the codes of Louis and Des Eaux-That the sweat of a man's brows, and the exsudations of a man's brains, are as much a man's own property as the breeches upon his backside;-which said exsudations, &c. being dropp'd upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex'd, by the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried home, roasted, peel'd, eaten, digested, and so on;-'tis evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix'd up something which was his own, with the apple which was not his own, by which means he has acquired a property;-or, in other words, the apple is John's apple.

By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they lay out of the common way, the better still was his t.i.tle.-No mortal claimed them; they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting as in the case above, so that they might well and truly be said to be of his own goods and chattels.-Accordingly he held fast by 'em, both by teeth and claws-would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on-and, in a word, would intrench and fortify them round with as many circ.u.mvallations and breast-works, as my uncle Toby would a citadel.

There was one plaguy rub in the way of this-the scarcity of materials to make any thing of a defence with, in case of a smart attack; inasmuch as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I am considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects-and how many millions of books in all languages and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world. What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by; and though my father would oft-times sport with my uncle Toby's library-which, by-the-bye, was ridiculous enough-yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much care as my honest uncle Toby had done those upon military architecture.-'Tis true, a much less table would have held them-but that was not thy transgression, my dear uncle.-

Here-but why here-rather than in any other part of my story-I am not able to tell:-but here it is-my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness.-Here let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and veneration for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew's bosom.-Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head!-Thou enviedst no man's comforts-insultedst no man's opinions-Thou blackenedst no man's character-devouredst no man's bread: gently, with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way:-for each one's sorrows, thou hadst a tear,-for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling.

Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder-thy path from thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown up.-Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall never be demolish'd.

Chapter 2.XXVIII.

My father's collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good fortune hewever, to set off well, in getting Bruscambille's prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing-for he gave no more for Bruscambille than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.-There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom-said the stall-man, except what are chain'd up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as lightning-took Bruscambille into his bosom-hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way.

To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille is-inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either-'twill be no objection against the simile-to say, That when my father got home, he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, 'tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress-that is, from morning even unto night: which, by-the-bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the inamorato-is of little or no entertainment at all to by-standers.-Take notice, I go no farther with the simile-my father's eye was greater than his appet.i.te-his zeal greater than his knowledge-he cool'd-his affections became divided-he got hold of Prignitz-purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paraeus, Bouchet's Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much to say by-and-bye-I will say nothing now.

Chapter 2.XXIX.

Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.-Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on-let me beg of you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it-and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till like Tickletoby's mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.-You need not kill him.-

-And pray who was Tickletoby's mare?-'tis just as discreditable and unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.-Who was Tickletoby's mare!-Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read-or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon-I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.

(two marble plates)

Chapter 2.x.x.x.

'Nihil me paenitet hujus nasi,' quoth Pamphagus;-that is-'My nose has been the making of me.'-'Nec est cur poeniteat,' replies Cocles; that is, 'How the duce should such a nose fail?'

The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow'd upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.-My father pish'd and pugh'd at first most terribly-'tis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro' and thro' in its most strict and literal interpretation-he could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.-Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.-I'll study the mystick and the allegorick sense-here is some room to turn a man's self in, brother.

My father read on.-

Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of distress-and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum foc.u.m (to stir up the fire.)

Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge-so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.-I've got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.-You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.-Pshaw! cried my father, scratching on-I might as well be seven miles off.-I've done it-said my father, snapping his fingers-See, my dear brother Toby, how I have mended the sense.-But you have marr'd a word, replied my uncle Toby.-My father put on his spectacles-bit his lip-and tore out the leaf in a pa.s.sion.

Chapter 2.x.x.xI.

O Slawkenbergius! thou faithful a.n.a.lyzer of my Disgrazias-thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of.-Tell me, Slawkenbergius! what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears?-art thou sure thou heard'st it?-which first cried out to thee-go-go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life-neglect thy pastimes-call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature-macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand Folio for them, upon the subject of their noses.

How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius's sensorium-so that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch'd the key-and whose hand it was that blew the bellows-as Hafen Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years-we can only raise conjectures.

Slawkenbergius was play'd upon, for aught I know, like one of Whitefield's disciples-that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his instrument-as to make all reasoning upon it needless.

-For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this one work-towards the end of his prolegomena, which by-the-bye should have come first-but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the a.n.a.lytical contents of the book, and the book itself-he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design of his being;-or-to shorten my translation, for Slawkenbergius's book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this pa.s.sage-ever since I understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing-or rather what was what-and could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone before;-have I Slawkenbergius, felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up myself to this undertaking.

And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man who had ever entered it before him-and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be en-nich'd as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to model their books by-for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject-examined every part of it dialectically-then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could strike-or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him to cast upon it-collating, collecting, and compiling-begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: so that Slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a model-but as a thorough-st.i.tched Digest and regular inst.i.tute of noses, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known about them.

For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father's collecting, wrote either, plump upon noses-or collaterally touching them;-such for instance as Prignitz, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-houses in Silesia, which he had rummaged-has informed us, that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any given tract of country, except Crim Tartary, where they are all crush'd down by the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them-are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;-the difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking notice of;-but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell'd and driven by the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it (bating the case of idiots, whom Prignitz, who had lived many years in Turky, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)-it so happens, and ever must, says Prignitz, that the excellency of the nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wearer's fancy.

It is for the same reason, that is, because 'tis all comprehended in Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus (Andrea) who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn Prignitz with great violence-proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a series of stubborn facts, 'That so far was Prignitz from the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary-the nose begat the fancy.'

-The learned suspected Scroderus of an indecent sophism in this-and Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scroderus had shifted the idea upon him-but Scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis.

My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he should take in this affair; when Ambrose Paraeus decided it in a moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of Prignitz and Scroderus, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at once.

Be witness-

I don't acquaint the learned reader-in saying it, I mention it only to shew the learned, I know the fact myself-

That this Ambrose Paraeus was chief surgeon and nose-mender to Francis the ninth of France, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings (I know not which)-and that, except in the slip he made in his story of Taliacotius's noses, and his manner of setting them on-he was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand.

Now Ambrose Paraeus convinced my father, that the true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon which Prignitz and Scroderus had wasted so much learning and fine parts-was neither this nor that-but that the length and goodness of the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse's breast-as the flatness and shortness of puisne noses was to the firmness and elastic repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively-which, tho' happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb'd, so rebuff'd, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive ad mensuram suam legitimam;-but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother's breast-by sinking into it, quoth Paraeus, as into so much b.u.t.ter, the nose was comforted, nourish'd, plump'd up, refresh'd, refocillated, and set a growing for ever.

I have but two things to observe of Paraeus; first, That he proves and explains all this with the utmost chast.i.ty and decorum of expression:-for which may his soul for ever rest in peace!

And, secondly, that besides the systems of Prignitz and Scroderus, which Ambrose Paraeus his hypothesis effectually overthrew-it overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but turn'd likewise the whole house and every thing in it, except my uncle Toby, quite upside down.

Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-door.