The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (pdf e book reader txt) 📕

spent the greatest part of his time in combing his whiskers, or playing at primero with his chaplain,⁠—would pose any mortal not let into the true secret;⁠—and therefore ’tis worth explaining to the world, was it only for the encouragement of those few in it, who write not so much to be fed⁠—as to be famous.

I own had John de la Casse, the archbishop of Benevento, for whose memory (notwithstanding his Galatea) I retain the highest veneration,⁠—had he been, Sir, a slender clerk⁠—of dull wit⁠—slow parts⁠—costive head, and so forth,⁠—he and his Galatea might have jogged on together to the age of Methuselah for me,⁠—the phænomenon had not been worth a parenthesis.⁠—

But the reverse of this was the truth: John de la Casse was a genius of fine parts and fertile fancy; and yet with all these advantages of nature, which should have pricked him forwards with his Galatea, he lay under an impuissance at the same time of advancing above a line and a half in the compass of a whole summer’s day: this disability in his Grace arose from an opinion he was afflicted with,⁠—which opinion was this,⁠—viz. that whenever a Christian was writing a book (not for his private amusement, but) where his intent and purpose was, bona fide, to print and publish it to the world, his first thoughts were always the temptations of the evil one.⁠—This was the state of ordinary writers: but when a personage of venerable character and high station, either in church or state, once turned author,⁠—he maintained, that from the very moment he took pen in hand⁠—all the devils in hell broke out of their holes to cajole him.⁠—’Twas Term-time with them,⁠—every thought, first and last, was captious;⁠—how specious and good soever,⁠—’twas all one;⁠—in whatever form or colour it presented itself to the imagination,⁠—’twas still a stroke of one or other of ’em levell’d at him, and was to be fenced off.⁠—So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,⁠—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his wit⁠—as his resistance.

My father was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse, archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy estate, to have been the broacher of it.⁠—How far my father actually believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak of my father’s religious notions, in the progress of this work: ’tis enough to say here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal sense of the doctrine⁠—he took up with the allegory of it; and would often say, especially when his pen was a little retrograde, there was as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of John de la Casse’s parabolical representation,⁠—as was to be found in any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.⁠—Prejudice of education, he would say, is the devil,⁠—and the multitudes of them which we suck in with our mother’s milk⁠—are the devil and all.⁠⸺⁠We are haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,⁠—what would his book be? Nothing,⁠—he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,⁠—nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout the kingdom.

This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress my father made in his Tristra-pædia; at which (as I said) he was three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by his own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother: and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,⁠⸺⁠every day a page or two became of no consequence.⁠⸺⁠

⸺⁠Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes, in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

In short, my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,⁠—or in other words,⁠—he advanced so very slow with his work, and I began to live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not happened,⁠⸺⁠which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency, shall not be concealed a moment from the reader⁠⸺⁠I verily believe, I had put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better purpose than to be buried underground.

XVII

⸺’Twas nothing,⁠—I did not lose two drops of blood by it⁠⸺⸺’twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us⁠⸺⁠thousands suffer by choice, what I did by accident.⁠⸺⁠Doctor Slop made ten times more of it, than there was occasion:⁠⸺⁠some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,⁠—and I am this day (August the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man’s reputation.⁠⸺⁠O ’twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!⁠⸺⁠The chambermaid had left no ******* *** under the bed:⁠⸺⁠Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the other,⁠—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to **** *** ** *** ******?

I was five years old.⁠⸺⁠Susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family,⁠⸺⁠so slap came the sash down like lightning upon us;⁠—Nothing is left,⁠—cried Susannah,⁠—nothing is left⁠—for me, but