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

without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expenses, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish: Besides this, he considered that with half the sum thus galloped away, he could do ten times as much good;⁠—and what still weighed more with him than all other considerations put together, was this, that it confined all his charity into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted, namely, to the childbearing and child-getting part of his parish; reserving nothing for the impotent,⁠—nothing for the aged,⁠—nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness, and affliction dwelt together.

For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expense; 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.

I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha, whom, by the by, with all his follies, I love more, and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero of antiquity.

But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in view was to show the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.⁠—For you must know, that so long as this explanation would have done the parson credit,⁠—the devil a soul could find it out,⁠—I suppose his enemies would not, and that his friends could not.⁠⸺⁠But no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expenses of the ordinary’s licence to set her up,⁠—but the whole secret came out; every horse he had lost, and two horses more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their destruction, were known and distinctly remembered.⁠—The story ran like wildfire⁠—“The parson had a returning fit of pride which had just seized him; and he was going to be well mounted once again in his life; and if it was so, ’twas plain as the sun at noonday, he would pocket the expense of the licence, ten times told, the very first year:⁠—So that everybody was left to judge what were his views in this act of charity.”

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.

But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: Order them as they will, they pass thro’ a certain medium, which so twists and refracts them from their true directions⁠⸺⁠that, with all the titles to praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless forced to live and die without it.

Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful example.⁠⸺⁠But to know by what means this came to pass,⁠—and to make that knowledge of use to you, I insist upon it that you read the two following chapters, which contain such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its moral along with it.⁠—When this is done, if nothing stops us in our way, we will go on with the midwife.

XI

Yorick was this parson’s name, and, what is very remarkable in it (as appears from a most ancient account of the family, wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for near,⁠⸺⁠I was within an ace of saying nine hundred years;⁠⸺⁠but I would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however indisputable in itself;⁠⸺⁠and therefore I shall content myself with only saying⁠⸺⁠It had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or transposition of a single letter, for I do not know how long; which is more than I would venture to say of one half of the best surnames in the kingdom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone as many chops and changes as their owners.⁠—Has this been owing to the pride, or to the shame of the respective proprietors?⁠—In honest truth, I think sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day so blend and confound us altogether, that no one shall be able to stand up and swear, “That his own great grandfather was the man who did either this or that.”

This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of the Yorick’s family, and their religious preservation of