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

away into a mix’d government;⁠⸺⁠the form of which, however desirable in great combinations of the species,⁠⸺⁠was very troublesome in small ones,⁠—and seldom produced anything, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.

For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,⁠—my father was for having the man-midwife by all means,⁠—my mother by no means. My father begg’d and intreated she would for once recede from her prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;⁠—my mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to choose for herself,⁠—and have no mortal’s help but the old woman’s.⁠—What could my father do? He was almost at his wit’s end;⁠⸺⁠talked it over with her in all moods;⁠—placed his arguments in all lights;⁠—argued the matter with her like a christian,⁠—like a heathen,⁠—like a husband,⁠—like a father,⁠—like a patriot,⁠—like a man:⁠—My mother answered everything only like a woman; which was a little hard upon her;⁠—for as she could not assume and fight it out behind such a variety of characters,⁠—’twas no fair match:⁠—’twas seven to one.⁠—What could my mother do?⁠⸺⁠She had the advantage (otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and enabled her to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an advantage,⁠⸺⁠that both sides sung Te Deum. In a word, my mother was to have the old woman,⁠—and the operator was to have licence to drink a bottle of wine with my father and my uncle Toby Shandy in the back parlour,⁠—for which he was to be paid five guineas.

I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in the breast of my fair reader;⁠—and it is this,⁠⸺⁠Not to take it absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which I have dropp’d in it,⁠⸺“That I am a married man.”⁠—I own, the tender appellation of my dear, dear Jenny,⁠—with some other strokes of conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a determination against me.⁠—All I plead for, in this case, Madam, is strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to yourself,⁠—as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at present can be produced against me.⁠—Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam, as to desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear Jenny is my kept mistress;⁠—no,⁠—that would be flattering my character in the other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has no kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, for some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know how this matter really stands.⁠—It is not impossible, but that my dear, dear Jenny! tender as the appellation is, may be my child.⁠⸺⁠Consider,⁠—I was born in the year eighteen.⁠—Nor is there anything unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that my dear Jenny may be my friend.⁠—Friend!⁠—My friend.⁠—Surely, Madam, a friendship between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without⁠⸻Fy! Mr. Shandy:⁠—Without anything, Madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment, which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the best French Romances;⁠—it will really, Madam, astonish you to see with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment, which I have the honour to speak of, is dress’d out.

XIX

I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father’s great good sense,⁠⸺⁠knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious too in philosophy,⁠—wise also in political reasoning,⁠—and in polemical (as he will find) no way ignorant,⁠—could be capable of entertaining a notion in his head, so out of the common track,⁠—that I fear the reader, when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a cholerick temper, will immediately throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily at it;⁠—and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant; and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of christian names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what superficial minds were capable of conceiving.

His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct.

The hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more seriousness,⁠⸺⁠nor had he more faith,⁠⸺⁠or more to say on the powers of necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,⁠—or on Dulcinea’s name, in shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the one hand⁠—or of Nyky and Simkin on the other. How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of the names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many, he would add, are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and Nicomedus’d into nothing?

I see plainly, Sir, by your looks (or as the case happened), my father would say⁠—that you do not heartily subscribe to this opinion of mine,⁠—which, to those, he would add, who have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,⁠—I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;⁠⸺⁠and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you,⁠—not as a party in the dispute,⁠—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this matter;⁠⸺⁠you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;⁠—and, if I may presume to penetrate