which lay scattered upon the ground where | (which you know takes in both the hot Dunkirk stood. The corporal had had mar marched; and cold months) with an eye as fine as the field was clear. the Thracian* Rhodope's beside him, without being able to tell whether it was a black or a blue one. The difficulty was, to get my uncle Toby to look at one at all. 'Tis surmounted. And Now, consider, Sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or writing, or any thing else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which a man has occasion to do, to act by plan: for if ever Plan, independent of all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in the archives of Gotham) it was certainly the plan of Mrs. Wadman's attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, by plan. Now, the plan hanging up in it at this juncture, being the plan of Dunkirk, and the tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she could make: and, besides, eye shines this moment as lucid as her could she have gone upon it, the manœuvre of fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box, was so outdone by that of the fair Beguine's, in Trim's story, that just then, that particular attack, however successful before, became the most heartless attack that could be made. O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce open'd the wickergate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances. She formed a new attack in a moment. I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it, looking, and looking, then rubbing his eyes, and looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun. In vain! for, by all the powers which animate the organ, Widow Wadman's left right; there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of opaque matter floating ing in it. There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle ! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions into thine. If thou lookest, my uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longer, thou art undone. - CHAPTER XXIV. 1 AM half distracted, Captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach'd the door of my uncle Toby's sentry-box; a mote, or sand, or something, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine; do look into it: it is not in the white. In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up, Do look into it, said she, Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart as ever child looked into a raree show-box; and 't were as much a sin to have hurt thee. If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature, I've nothing to say to it. My uncle Toby never did; and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January CHAPTER XXV. AN eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon, in this respect, That it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye, and the carriage of the cannon; by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don't think the comparison a bad one: however, as 'tis made and placed at the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all I desire in return, is, that whenever I speak of Mrs. Wadman's eyes, (except once in the next period) that you keep it in your fancy. I protest, Madam, said my uncle Toby, I can see nothing whatever in your eye. It is not in the white, said Mrs. Wadman. My uncle Toby looked with might and main into the pupil. Now, of all the eyes which ever were created; from your own, Madam, up to those of Venus herself, which certainly * Rhodope Thracia tam inevitabili fascino instructo tam exacte oculis intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis NOT WHO. incidisset, fieri non posset, quin caperetur.-I KNOW were as venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a head, there never was an eye of them all so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose, as the very eye at which he was looking; it was not, Madam, a rolling eye, a romping, or a wanton one; nor was it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious, of high claims and terrifying exactions, which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of which my uncle Toby was made up: but 't was an eye full of gentle salutations, and soft responses, speaking, not like the trumpet stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to holds coarse converse, but whispering soft, like the last low accents of an expiring saint, "How can you live comfortless, Captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on, or trust your cares to?" It was an eye my father was all abuse and foul language approaching rather towards malediction; only he did not do it with as much method as Ernulphus; he was too impetuous; nor with Ernulphus's policy; for though my father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under Heaven, which was either aiding or abetting to his love, yet he never concluded his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and coxcombs, he would say, that ever was let loose in the world. My uncle Toby, on the contrary, took it like a lamb, sat still, and let the poison work in his veins without resistance; in the sharpest exacerbations of his wound (like that on his groin) he never dropt one fretful or discontented word, he blamed neither heaven nor earth, nor thought, But I shall be in love with it myself, if nor spoke an injurious thing of any body, I say another word about it. It did my uncle Toby's business. or any part of it; he sat solitary and pensive with his pipe, looking at his lame leg, then whiffing out a sentimental heigh-ho! which, mixing with the smoke, incommoded no one mortal. CHAPTER XXVI. THERE is nothing shows the characters of my father and my uncle Toby in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of deportment under the same accident; for I call not love a misfortune; from a persuasion, that a man's heart is ever the better for it. Great God! what must my uncle Toby's have been, when 't was all benignity without it! My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this passion before he married; but, from a little subacid kind of drollish impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit to it like a Christian; but would huff, and bounce, and kick, and play the devil, and write the bitterest Philippics against the eye that ever man wrote; there is one in verse upon somebody's eye or other, that, for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; which, in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus : "A devil 'tis, and mischief such doth work As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk."* In short, during the whole paroxysm, • This will be printed with my father's Life of Socrates, c. VOL. II.-W. H. He took it like a lamb, I say. CHAPTER XXVII. THE world is ashamed of being virtuous. My uncle Toby knew little of the world; and therefore, when he felt he was in love with Widow Wadman, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a mystery of, than if Mrs. Wadman had given him a cut with a gaped knife across his finger. Had it been otherwise -yet, as he looked upon Trim as an humble friend, and saw fresh reasons every day of his life to treat him as such -it would have made no variation in the manner in which he informed him of the affair. We lost it, an' please your Honor, Then, an' please your Honor, said the somehow betwixt us; but your Honor was as free from love then, as I am. 'T was just whilst thou went'st off with the wheelbarrow, with Mrs. Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby. She has left a ball here, added my uncle Toby, pointing to his breast. She can no more, an' please your Honor, stand a siege, than she can fly, cried the corporal. But as we are neighbors, Trim, the best way, I think, is to let her know it civilly first, quoth my uncle Toby. Now, if I might presume, said the corporal, to differ from your Honor. Why else do I talk to thee, Trim? said my uncle Toby, mildly. corporal (making a bow first for his commission), we will begin by getting your Honor's laced clothes out of the great campaign-trunk, to be well aired, and have the blue and gold taken up at the sleeves; and I'll put your white ramillie-wig fresh into pipes; and send for a tailor to have your Honor's thin scarlet breeches turned. I had better take the red plush ones, quoth my uncle Toby. They will be too clumsy, said the corporal. CHAPTER XXIX. THOU wilt get a brush and a little chalk Then I would begin, an' please your to my sword. 'T will be only in your Honor, with making a good thundering Precious souls! Mrs. Wadman had told it, with all its circumstances, to Mrs. Bridget, twentyfour hours before; and was, at that very moment, sitting in council with her, touching some slight misgivings with regard to the issue of the affair, which the Devil, who never lies dead in a ditch, had put into her head, before he would allow her half time to get quietly through her Te Deum. We'll know the long and broad of it in ten days, answered Mrs. Bridget; for whilst the captain is paying his addresses to you, I'm confident Mr. Trim will be for making love to me; and I'll let him, as much as he will, added Bridget, to get it all out of him. The measures were taken at once; and my uncle Toby and the corporal went on with theirs. Now, quoth the corporal, setting his left hand a kimbo, and giving such a flourish with his right, as just promised success, and no more, if your Honor will give me leave to lay down the plan of this attack. Thou wilt please me by it, Trim, said my uncle Toby, exceedingly, and as I foresee thou must act in it as my aid-decamp, here's a crown, corporal, to begin with, to steep thy commission. Honor's way, replied Trim. CHAPTER XXX. BUT your Honor's two razors shall be new set, and I will get my Montero-cap furbished up, and put on poor Lieutenant Le Fevre's regimental coat, which your Honor gave me to wear for his sake; and as soon as your Honor is clean shaved, and has got your clean shirt on, with your blue and go gold or your fine scarlet, sometimes one and sometimes t'other, and everything is ready for the attack, we'll march up boldly, as if 't was to the face of a bastion; and whilst your Honor engages Mrs. Wadman in the parlor to the right, I'll attack Mrs. Bridget in the kitchen to the left; and having seized that pass, I'll answer for it, said the corporal, snapping his fingers over his head, that the day is your own. I wish I may but manage it right, said my uncle Toby; but I declare, corporal, I had rather march up to the very edge of a trench. A woman is quite a different thing, said the corporal. I suppose so, quoth my uncle Toby. CHAPTER XXXI. IF anything in this world, which my father said, could have provoked my uncle Toby during the time he was in love, it was the perverse use my father was always making of an expression of Hilarion the hermit; who, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion, would say, though with more facetiousness than became a hermit, "That they were the means he used to make his ass (meaning his body) leave off kicking." It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconic way of expressing, but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and appetites of part of us; so that for many years of my father's life, 't was his constant mode of expression; he never used the word passions once, but ass always, instead of them; so that he might be said truly to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else of some other man's, during all that time. I must here observe to you the difference betwixt My father's Ass and My HOBBY-HORSE, in order to keep characters as separate as may be, in our fancies as we go along. For my Hobby-Horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him. 'T is the sporting little fillyfolly which carries you out for the present hour-a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddle-stick, an uncle Toby's siege, or an anything which a man makes a shift to get astride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life. 'Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation; nor do I really see how the world could do without it. But for my father's ass. Oh! mount him-mount him-mount him (that's three times, is it not?) -mount him not: 'tis a beast concupiscent; and foul befall the man who does not hinder him from kicking. CHAPTER XXXIII, As the ancients agree, brother Toby, said my father, that there are two different and distinct kinds of love, according to the different parts which are affected by it, the brain or liver, I think when a man is in love, it behooves him a little to consider which of the two he has fallen into. What signifies it, brother Shandy, replied my uncle Toby, which of the two it is, provided it will but make a man marry, and love his wife and children? Children! cried my father, rising out of his chair, and looking full in my mother's face, as he forced his way betwixt hers and Doctor Slop's. Children! cried my father, repeating my uncle Toby's words as he walked to and fro. Not, my dear brother Toby, cried my father, recovering himself all at once, and coming close up to the back of my uncle Toby's chair, not that I should be sorry hadst thou a score: on the contrary, I should rejoice, and be as kind, Toby, to every one of them as a father. My uncle Toby stole his hand, unperceived, behind his chair, to give my father's a squeeze. Nay, moreover, continued he, keeping hold of my uncle Toby's hand, so much dost thou possess, my dear Toby, of the milk of human nature, and so little of its asperities, 't is piteous the world is not peopled by creatures which resemble thee! There is, at least, said Yorick, a great deal of reason and plain sense in Captain Shandy's opinion of love; and 'tis amongst the ill-spent hours of my life, which I have to answer for, that I have read so many flourishing poets and rhetoricians in my time from whom I never could extract so much. I wish, Yorick, said my father, you had read Plato: for there you would have learnt that there are two loves. I know there are two religions, replied Yorick, amongst the ancients; one for the vulgar, and another for the learned: but I think one love might have served both of them very well. It could not, replied my father, and for the same reasons; for, of these loves, according to Ficinus's comment upon Velasius, the one is rational, The other is natural; the first ancient, without mother, where Venus had nothing to do; the second begotten of Jupiter and Dione. Pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, what has a man who believes in God to do with this? My father could not stop to answer, for fear of breaking the thread of his discourse. This latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of Venus. The first, which is the golden chain let down from heaven, excites to love heroic, which comprehends in it, and excites to, the desire of philosophy and truth; the second excites to desire simply. I think the procreation of children as beneficial to the world, said Yorick, as the finding out the longitude. To be sure, said my mother, love keeps peace in the world. In the house, my dear, I own. It replenishes the earth, said my mother. But it keeps heaven empty, my dear, replied my father. scarlet breeches, in which the attack was She has gained her point. 'Tis Virginity, cried Slop, triumphant- | Love, you see, is not so much a sentiment ly, which fills Paradise. Well pushed, nun! quoth my father. as a situation, into which a man enters, as my brother Toby would do into a corps, no matter whether he loves the service or no; being once in it, he acts as if he did, and takes every step to show himself a man of prowess. CHAPTER XXXIV. My father had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slashing way with him in his disputations, thrusting and ripping, and giving every one a stroke to remember him by, in his turn, that if there were twenty people in company, in less than half an hour he was sure to have every one of them against him. What did not a little contribute to leave him thus without an ally, was, that if there was any one post more untenable than the rest, he would be sure to throw himself into it; and to do him justice, when he was once there, he would defend it so gallantly, that 't would have been a concern, either to a brave man, or a goodnatured one, to have seen him driven out. Yorick, for this reason, though he would often attack, yet could never bear to do it with all his force. Doctor Slop's Virginity, in the close of the last chapter, had got him for once on the right side of the rampart; and he was beginning to blow up all the convents in Christendom about Slop's ears, when Corporal Trim came into the parlor to inform my uncle Toby, that his thin The hypothesis, like the rest of my father's, was plausible enough, and my uncle Toby had but a single word to object to it, in which Trim stood ready to second him; but my father had not drawn his conclusion. For this reason, continued my father (stating the case over again), notwithstanding all the world knows that Mrs. Wadman affects my brother Toby; and my brother Toby contrariwise affects Mrs. Wadman, and no obstacle in nature to forbid the music striking up this very night, yet will I answer for it, that this self-same tune will not be played this twelvemonth. We have taken our measures badly, quoth my uncle Toby, looking up interrogatively in Trim's face. I would lay my Montero-cap, said Trim. Now Trim's Montero-cap, as I once told you, was his constant wager; and having furbished it up that very night, in order to go upon the attack, it made the odds look more considerable. I would lay, an' please your Honor, my Montero cap to a shilling, was it proper, continued Trim (making a bow), to offer a wager before your Honors. |