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

by everything you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.

When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;⁠—it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.⁠⸺⁠Poor devil, he would say,⁠—he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.⁠⸺⁠It unriddled the observations of drivellers and monstrous heads,⁠⸺⁠showing à priori, it could not be otherwise,⁠⸺⁠unless **** I don’t know what. It wonderfully explained and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and commonplace solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sunshine, etc.⁠—which for aught he knew, might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,⁠—as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;⁠⸺⁠but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;⁠—showed that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;⁠—their pleasures more;⁠—the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organisation of the cerebellum was preserved;⁠⸺⁠nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the network was broke or displaced,⁠⸺⁠so that the soul might just act as she liked.

When my father had got so far,⁠⸻what a blaze of light did the accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;⁠—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;⁠⸺⁠no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or the os coxygis on that;⁠⸻and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a name;⁠—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a name;⁠⸺⁠your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,⁠—who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:⁠⸺⁠These, and many more who figured high in the annals of fame,⁠—all came sideway, Sir, into the world.

The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks together in my father’s head;⁠⸺⁠he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the matrix, were not mortal;⁠—so that the belly of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the child.⁠—He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my mother,⁠⸻merely as a matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his hopes,⁠—he thought it as well to say no more of it,⁠⸺⁠contenting himself with admiring,⁠—what he thought was to no purpose to propose.

This was my father Mr. Shandy’s hypothesis; concerning which I have only to add, that my brother Bobby did as great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke of: For happening not only to be christened, as I told you, but to be born too, when my father was at Epsom,⁠⸺⁠being moreover my mother’s first child,⁠—coming into the world with his head foremost,⁠—and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,⁠⸺⁠my father spelt all these together into his opinion: and as he had failed at one end,⁠—he was determined to try the other.

This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not easily to be put out of their way,⁠⸺⁠and was therefore one of my father’s great reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could better deal with.

Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for my father’s purpose;⁠⸺⁠for though this new-invented forceps was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to be the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very thing which ran in my father’s fancy;⁠⸺⁠tho’ not with a view to the soul’s good in extracting by the feet, as was my father’s system,⁠—but for reasons merely obstetrical.

This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle Toby.⁠⸺⁠In what manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up against two such allies in science,⁠—is hard to conceive.⁠—You may conjecture upon it, if you please,⁠⸺⁠and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my uncle Toby got his modesty by the wound he received upon his groin.⁠—You may raise a system to account for the loss of my nose by marriage-articles,⁠—and show the world how it could happen, that I should have the misfortune to be called Tristam, in opposition to my father’s hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, Godfathers and Godmothers not excepted.⁠—These, with fifty other points left yet unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;⁠⸺⁠but I tell you beforehand it will be in vain, for not the sage Alquife, the magician in Don Belianis of Greece, nor the no less famous Urganda, the sorceress his wife, (were they alive), could pretend to come within a league of the truth.

The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of these matters till the next year,⁠⸺⁠when a series of things will be laid open which he little expects.

Book III

Multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia; meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis⁠⸻in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, a seriis vicissim ad jocos transire.

—⁠Joan. Saresberiensis, Episcopus Lugdun. I

⸺“I wish, Dr. Slop,” quoth my