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

my uncle Toby in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d already.⁠⸻Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in⁠⸺⁠this certainly is the greatest, for I have Hafen Slawkenbergius’s folio, Sir, to finish⁠⸺⁠a dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the solution of Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Ponocrates, and Grangousier to relate⁠—a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all;⁠⸻such a head!⁠—would to Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it! XXXIX

There was not any one scene more entertaining in our family⁠—and to do it justice in this point;⁠⸺⁠and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the world concerning this one article the more solemn⁠⸺⁠that I believe in my soul (unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of all things never made or put a family together (in that period at least of it which I have sat down to write the story of)⁠⸺⁠where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and entrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the Shandy Family.

Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours⁠⸺⁠than what frequently arose out of this selfsame chapter of long noses⁠⸻especially when my father’s imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle Toby’s too.

My uncle Toby would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoaking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive Prignitz and Scroderus’s solutions into it.

Whether they were above my uncle Toby’s reason⁠⸻or contrary to it⁠⸻or that his brain was like damp timber, and no spark could possibly take hold⁠⸺⁠or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus’s doctrines⁠⸺⁠I say not⁠—let schoolmen⁠—scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it among themselves⁠⸺⁠

’Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle Toby, and render out of Slawkenbergius’s Latin, of which, as he was no great master, his translation was not always of the purest⁠⸺⁠and generally least so where ’twas most wanted.⁠—This naturally open’d a door to a second misfortune;⁠⸺⁠that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle Toby’s eyes⁠⸻my father’s ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle Toby’s⁠⸻neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of my father’s lecture.

XL

The gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms⁠⸺⁠I mean in man⁠—for in superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits⁠⸺’tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by Intuition;⁠—and beings inferior, as your worships all know⁠⸺⁠syllogize by their noses: though there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and ofttimes to make very well out too:⁠⸻but that’s neither here nor there⁠⸻

The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or⁠—the great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the medius terminus); just as a man, as Locke well observes, by a yard, finds two men’s ninepin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by juxtaposition.

Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby’s deportment⁠—what great attention he gave to every word⁠—and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it⁠⸺⁠surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb⁠⸻then fore-right⁠⸻then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings⁠⸻he would have concluded my uncle Toby had got hold of the medius terminus, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. This, by the by, was more than my father wanted⁠⸺⁠his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures⁠—was to enable my uncle Toby not to discuss⁠⸺⁠but comprehend⁠⸺⁠to hold the grains and scruples of learning⁠⸺⁠not to weigh them.⁠⸺⁠My uncle Toby, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other.

XLI

’Tis a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours’ painful translation of Slawkenbergius⁠⸺’tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the book for a mark, as he spoke⁠⸺⁠that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.⁠⸺⁠

Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Toby’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of Prignitz to him⁠⸻having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green!⁠⸻his body might as well have taken a turn there too⁠—so that with all the semblance of a deep schoolman intent upon the medius terminus⁠⸻my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros