The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;⁠—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;⁠—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;⁠⸺⁠Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,⁠⸺⁠I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me.⁠—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;⁠—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, etc., etc.⁠—and a great deal to that purpose:⁠—Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a halfpenny matter,⁠—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.

Shut the door. I was begot in the night, betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was.⁠—But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this point.

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of ⸻, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in everything he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave,⁠—he had made it a rule for many years of his life,⁠—on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year,⁠—as certain as ever the Sunday-night came,⁠⸺⁠to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the backstairs head, with his own hands:⁠—And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of,⁠—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

⸻How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter? I told you in it, That my mother was not a papist.⁠⸺⁠Papist! You told me no such thing, Sir.⁠—Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that I told you as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could tell you such a thing.⁠—Then, Sir, I must have miss’d a page.⁠—No, Madam,⁠—you have not miss’d a word.⁠⸺⁠Then I was asleep, Sir.⁠—My pride, Madam, cannot allow you that refuge.⁠⸺⁠Then, I declare, I know nothing at all about the matter.⁠—That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your charge; and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that you immediately turn back, that is, as soon as you get to the next full stop, and read the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she returns back:⁠—’Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,⁠—of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart with them⁠⸺⁠The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the younger affirm, “That he never read a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.” The stories of Greece and Rome, run over without this turn and application,⁠—do less service, I affirm it, than the history of Parismus and Parismenus, or of the Seven Champions of England, read with it.

Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.

Such were the outlines of Dr. Slop’s figure, which,⁠—if you have read Hogarth’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;⁠⸺⁠you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred.

Imagine such a one,⁠⸺⁠for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop’s figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour⁠⸺⁠but of strength,⁠⸺⁠alack!⁠⸺⁠scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.⁠⸺⁠They were not.⁠⸺⁠Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way.

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries;⁠—not from want of courage,⁠—I have told you in a former chapter, “that he was a man of courage:”⁠—And will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth,⁠—I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter;⁠⸺⁠nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts;⁠—for he felt this insult of my father’s as feelingly as a man could do;⁠—but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,⁠—no jarring element in it,⁠—all was mixed up so kindly within him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

—Go⁠—says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinnertime,⁠—and which after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;⁠—I’ll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,⁠⸺⁠I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:⁠—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;⁠—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?⁠⸺⁠This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.