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

thousands of ’em are there every year that come cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)⁠⸺⁠and considered as nothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my uncle Toby would answer,⁠⸺⁠every such instance is downright Murder, let who will commit it.⁠⸺⁠There lies your mistake, my father would reply;⁠⸺⁠for, in Foro Scientiæ there is no such thing as Murder,⁠⸺’tis only Death, brother.

My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of Lillabullero.⁠⸺⁠You must know it was the usual channel thro’ which his passions got vent, when anything shocked or surprised him:⁠⸺⁠but especially when anything, which he deem’d very absurd, was offered.

As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name to this particular species of argument,⁠—I here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. First, That, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished forever, from every other species of argument⁠⸻as the Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori, or any other argument whatsoever:⁠⸺⁠And, secondly, That it may be said by my children’s children, when my head is laid to rest,⁠⸺⁠that their learn’d grandfather’s head had been busied to as much purpose once, as other people’s;⁠—That he had invented a name,⁠—and generously thrown it into the Treasury of the Ars Logica, for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. And, if the end of disputation is more to silence than convince,⁠—they may add, if they please, to one of the best arguments too.

I do therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it be known and distinguished by the name and title of the Argumentum Fistulatorium, and no other;⁠—and that it rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinum and the Argumentum ad Crumenam, and forever hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman against the man;⁠—and the Argumentum ad Rem, which, contrarywise, is made use of by the man only against the woman;⁠—As these two are enough in conscience for one lecture;⁠⸺⁠and, moreover, as the one is the best answer to the other,⁠—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of in a place by themselves.

XXII

The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was Bishop of Exeter in King James the First’s reign, tells us in one of his Decads, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at London, in the year 1610, by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, “That it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;”⁠⸺⁠and I really think it is so.

And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out;⁠—I think it is full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head.

This is precisely my situation.

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a masterstroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader,⁠—not for want of penetration in him,⁠—but because ’tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;⁠—and it is this: That tho’ my digressions are all fair, as you observe,⁠—and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my absence.

I was just going, for example, to have given you the great outlines of my uncle Toby’s most whimsical character;⁠—when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby’s character went on gently all the time;⁠—not the great contours of it,⁠—that was impossible,⁠—but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there touch’d on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you was before.

By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,⁠—and at the same time.

This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth’s moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;⁠—though I own it suggested the thought,⁠—as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and discoveries have come from such trifling hints.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;⁠⸺⁠they are the life, the soul of reading!⁠—take them out of this book, for instance,⁠—you might as well take the book along with them;⁠—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;⁠—he steps forth like a bridegroom,⁠—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression,⁠—from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock still;⁠—and if he goes on with his main work,⁠—then there is an end of his digression.

⸺⁠This is vile work.⁠—For which reason, from