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

large grange-house, and some other odd houses and farms within two or three miles, as I said, from the smoke of her own chimney:⁠⸺⁠But I must here, once for all, inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of the twentieth volume,⁠—not to swell the work,⁠—I detest the thought of such a thing;⁠—but by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to such passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be either of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the meaning of the word) by all the world;⁠⸺⁠which, betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,⁠—I am determined shall be the case.⁠—I need not tell your worship, that all this is spoke in confidence. XIV

Upon looking into my mother’s marriage-settlement, in order to satisfy myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could proceed any farther in this history;⁠—I had the good fortune to pop upon the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half straight forwards,⁠—it might have taken me up a month;⁠—which shows plainly, that when a man sits down to write a history,⁠—tho’ it be but the history of Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he knows no more than his heels what lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way,⁠—or what a dance he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over. Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,⁠—straight forward;⁠⸺⁠for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside either to the right hand or to the left,⁠⸺⁠he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s end;⁠⸺⁠but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various

Accounts to reconcile:

Anecdotes to pick up:

Inscriptions to make out:

Stories to weave in:

Traditions to sift:

Personages to call upon:

Panegyricks to paste up at this door;

Pasquinades at that:⁠⸺⁠All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be look’d into, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:⁠⸺⁠In short, there is no end of it;⁠⸺⁠for my own part, I declare I had been at it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could,⁠—and am not yet born:⁠—I have just been able, and that’s all, to tell you when it happen’d, but not how;⁠—so that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished.

These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no conception of when I first set out;⁠—but which, I am convinced now, will rather increase than diminish as I advance,⁠—have struck out a hint which I am resolved to follow;⁠⸺⁠and that is,⁠—not to be in a hurry; but to go on leisurely, writing and publishing two volumes of my life every year;⁠⸺⁠which, if I am suffered to go on quietly, and can make a tolerable bargain with my bookseller, I shall continue to do as long as I live.

XV

The article in my mother’s marriage-settlement, which I told the reader I was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it, I think proper to lay before him,⁠—is so much more fully express’d in the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer’s hand:⁠—It is as follows.

“And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said Walter Shandy, merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had, and, by God’s blessing, to be well and truly solemnised and consummated between the said Walter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux aforesaid, and divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him thereunto specially moving,⁠—doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully agree to and with John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. the above-named Trustees, etc. etc.⁠—to Wit,⁠—That in case it should hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to pass,⁠—That the said Walter Shandy, merchant, shall have left off business before the time or times, that the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall, according to the course of nature, or otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing forth children;⁠—and that, in consequence of the said Walter Shandy having so left off business, he shall in despight, and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said Elizabeth Mollineux,⁠—make a departure from the city of London, in order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at Shandy Hall, in the county of ⸻, or at any other country-seat, castle, hall, mansion-house, messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter to be purchased, or upon any part or parcel thereof:⁠—That then, and as often as the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall happen to be enceint with child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, during her said coverture,⁠—he the said Walter Shandy shall, at his own proper cost and charges, and out of his own proper monies, upon good and reasonable notice, which is hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said Elizabeth Mollineux’s full reckoning, or