Tristram shandy download pdf

While Walter debates one issue after another and returns to the all-important task of compiling the Tristra-paedia p. Although they squabble over its applica- tion, the fact that cataplasms and fomentations are being prepared is proof that Dr.

The humor lies in the horror, and the horror arises from the inconceivability of an Englishman losing his foreskin. Jews, Turks, and a few other strange and exotic peoples might lose theirs, but not a civilized Englishman whose individual property rights were respected. In one telling episode p. It is not the least of his antici- pations of modernism that Sterne should show such uncanny foresight into what the future held.

Press of Florida, , p. Dean Milman, M. London: John Murray, , Kenneth Walker London: W. Kimber, , p. Michel Feher, et al. The incidence of routine male circumcision in Britain never approached the level attained in the 20th-c. United States and probably never exceeded 40 percent. See Gollaher, chap. Andrew H. Shlomo Pines Chicago: Univ.

Works of Philo, trans. Colson and G. Loeb Classical Lib. Hodges quotes Herodotus on p. In his notes to the Penguin edn. And that the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall and may, from time to time, and at all such time and times as are here covenanted and agreed upon,—peaceably and quietly hire the said coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and regress throughout her journey, in and from the said coach, according to the tenor, true intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let, suit, trouble, disturbance, molestation, discharge, hindrance, forfeiture, eviction, vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.

But I was begot and born to misfortunes:—for my poor mother, whether it was wind or water—or a compound of both,—or neither;—or whether it was simply the mere swell of imagination and fancy in her;—or how far a strong wish and 32 desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment:—in short, whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way becomes me to decide.

How this event came about,—and what a train of vexatious disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single member,—shall be laid before the reader all in due time. My father, as anybody may naturally imagine, came down with my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour.

The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, than all the money which the journey, etc. In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down. My father was a gentleman of many virtues,—but he had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.

As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr.

Shandy , poor gentlewoman! Shandy got with her,—was no such mighty matter to have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this hour. This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;—and yet, it was not merely to shelter himself,—nor was it altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this point;—my father had extensive views of things,——and stood moreover, as he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to.

There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by French politicks or French invasions;——nor was he so much in pain of a consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined;—but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;—and then he would say, The Lord have mercy upon us all.

My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,—without the remedy along with it. Whence is it that the few remaining Chateaus amongst them are so dismantled,—so unfurnished, and in so ruinous and desolate a condition?

For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,—my father was for having the man-midwife by all means,—my mother by no means. In a word, my mother was to have the old woman,—and the operator was to have licence to drink a bottle of wine with my father and my uncle Toby Shandy in the back parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, for some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know how this matter really stands.

Shandy :—Without anything, Madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment, which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference of sex. His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct. I see plainly, Sir, by your looks or as the case happened , my father would say—that you do not heartily subscribe to this opinion of mine,—which, to those, he would add, who have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,—I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;——and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you,—not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this matter;——you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;—and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into you,—of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends.

Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper you have so much to expect. I never knew a man able to answer this argument.

To work with them in the best manner he could, was what my father was, however, perpetually forced upon;——for he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend——most of which notions, I verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la Bagatelle ; and as such he would make merry with them for half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss them till another day. All that I maintain here, is, that in this one, of the influence of christian names, however it gained footing, he was serious;—he was all uniformity;—he was systematical, and, like all systematick reasoners, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture everything in nature, to support his hypothesis.

In a word, I repeat it over again;—he was serious;—and, in consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have known better,——as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed upon their child,—or more so, than in the choice of Ponto or Cupid for their puppy-dog.

What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he gives them proper vent:—It was the identical thing which my father did:—for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express Dissertation simply upon the word Tristram ,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.

When this story is compared with the title-page,—Will not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul? I swear it,—if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,—it must have been here;—and if it was not necessary I should be born before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account of it.

I told you in it, That my mother was not a papist. You told me no such thing, Sir. Have you read over again the chapter, Madam, as I desired you? It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to the Republick of letters;—so that my own is quite swallowed up in the consideration of it,—that this selfsame vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and humour,—and so wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more carnal parts of a composition will go down:—The subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards,——the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the ink-horn.

I wish it may have its effects;—and that all good people, both male and female, from her example, may be taught to think as well as read. Le Moyne , De Romigny , and De Marcilly ; hopes they all rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation. Indeed toward the latter end of Queen Anne , the great Addison began to patronize the notion, and more fully explained it to the world in one or two of his Spectators;—but the discovery was not his.

When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of writing will put an end to all kind of reading;—and that in time, As war begets poverty; poverty peace ,——must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and then——we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly where we started.

But I forget my uncle Toby , whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe. One would have thought, that the whole force of the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the family at first,—as is generally the case.

Possibly at the very time this happened, it might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done the Shandy Family any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times and circumstances should give it an opportunity to discharge its office.

Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to operate, is what I am able to explain with great exactness, and is as follows:. You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby had contracted all this from this very source;—that he had spent a great part of his time in converse with your sex; and that from a thorough knowledge of you, and the force of imitation which such fair examples render irresistible, he had acquired this amiable turn of mind.

The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;—but it would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.

But this lay out of his power. In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever;——and neither he, nor, I dare say, Copernicus , would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth. This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace recorded,——and the other would scarce ever let a day pass to an end without some hint at it.

In my plain sense of things, my uncle Toby would answer,——every such instance is downright Murder , let who will commit it. 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.

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.

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 for ever 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.

The learned Bishop Hall , I mean the famous Dr. 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. 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. Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the soul of reading! 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, 54 his whole work stands stock still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of his digression.

I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not baulk my fancy. But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to work.

Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to take, to do this thing with exactness. Some, for instance, draw all their characters with wind-instruments. I am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.

There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the 56 honourable devices which the Pentagraphic Brethren 3 of the brush have shewn in taking copies.

Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the Camera ;—that is most unfair of all,—because, there you are sure to be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes. Indeed, the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, that it was now and then made a matter of dispute,——whether he was really a Hobby-Horse or no: but as the Philosopher would use no other argument to the Sceptic, who disputed with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, and walking across the room;—so would my uncle Toby use no other argument to prove his Hobby-Horse was a Hobby-Horse indeed, but by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world, after that, to determine the point as it thought fit.

In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so much pleasure, and he carried my uncle Toby so well,——that he troubled his head very little with what the world either said or thought about it. It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of him:—But to go on regularly, I only beg you will give me leave to acquaint you first, how my uncle Toby came by him. These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby received great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe they would have laid him in his grave.

And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,—I would tear it out of my book. If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism by injection , as presented to the Doctors of the Sorbonne , with their consultation thereupon, it is as follows.

Vide Deventer, Paris edit. Pentagraph , an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures mechanically, and in any proportion. I have begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege of Namur , where he received his wound.

Nicolas , which inclosed the great sluice or water-stop, where the English were terribly exposed to the shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St.

The issue of which hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the Dutch lodged themselves upon the counter-guard,—and that the English made themselves masters of the covered-way before St.

Nicolas -gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the French officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis sword in hand. Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms; so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle Toby did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too.

What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle Toby , was this,—that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas , extending itself from the bank of the Maes , quite up to the great water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut with such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all sides,—and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast amongst them, that frequently he could neither get backwards or forwards to save his life; and was oft-times obliged to give up the attack upon that very account only.

No doubt my uncle Toby had great command of himself, could guard appearances, I believe, as well as most men;—yet any one may imagine, that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down the counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into the ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:—He did so; and the little and hourly vexations, which may seem trifling and of no account to the man who has not read Hippocrates , yet, whoever has read Hippocrates , or Dr.

James Mackenzie , and has considered well the effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the digestion— Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner? He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other position, when a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the fortification of the town and citadel of Namur , with its environs, it might be a means of giving him ease.

Roch :——so that he was pretty confident he could stick a pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing on when the stone struck him.

All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him from a world of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved the happy means, as you will read, of procuring my uncle Toby his Hobby-Horse. There is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there anything so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such thing as a critick by occupation at table.

So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn it. You see as plain as can be, that I write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that I must sustain my character properly, and contrast it properly too,—else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I should be undone;—at this very moment that I am going here to fill up one place against a critick,—I should have made an opening for a couple.

Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold. Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are not dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received.

When this is melted, and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse 63 which was wont to imprint it. Very well. What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and that is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted understandings.

Gentle critick! When my uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind, he began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the study of it; for nothing being of more 64 importance to him than his recovery, and his recovery depending, as you have read, upon the passions and affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest care to make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to talk upon it without emotion.

Nicolas , where he had the honour to receive his wound. But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. The more my uncle Toby pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it! The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain of science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the first year of his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in Italy or Flanders , of which, by one means or other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he would read with that intense application and delight, that he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner.

Blondel , with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don Quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library. Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in August , ninety-nine, my uncle Toby found it necessary to understand a little of projectiles:—and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he began with N. Tartaglia proved to my uncle Toby to be an impossible thing.

No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road the ball did go: For which purpose he was obliged to set off afresh with old Maltus , and studied him devoutly. Where an exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty.

In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby perceiving that the parameter and semiparameter of the conic section angered his wound, he left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which, like a spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled force. It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily regularity of a clean shirt,——to dismiss his barber unshaven,——and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it, as not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it went on: when, lo!

When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows headstrong,——farewel cool reason and fair discretion! The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of Landen , which was two years before the affair of Namur ;—and as the fellow was well-beloved in the regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle Toby took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my uncle Toby in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom, barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to last, waited upon him and served him with great fidelity and affection.

My uncle Toby loved the man in return, and what attached him more to him still, was the similitude of their knowledge. My uncle Toby was seldom either the one or the other with him,—or, at least, this fault, in Trim , broke no squares with them.

My uncle Toby , as I said, loved the man;——and besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful servant,—but as an humble friend,—he could not bear to stop his mouth. If I durst presume, continued Trim , to give your Honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.

Thou hast said enough, Trim ,—quoth my uncle Toby putting his 71 hand into his breeches-pocket ——I like thy project mightily. How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this matter,——with the history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,——may make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama. Sir, answered Obadiah , making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my Mistress is taken very badly.

Slop , the man-midwife, with all our services,——and let him know your mistress is fallen into labour——and that I desire he will return with you with all speed. It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby , as Obadiah shut the door,——as there is so expert an operator as Dr.

Slop so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and not only the life of my child, brother,——but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter. This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.

Everything in this world, continued my father filling a fresh pipe —every thing in this world, my dear brother Toby , has two handles. Slop , the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.

If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three fifths,—should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas,——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.

I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop upon the stage,—as much, at least I hope as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.

If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a 76 professed Romance , which, before, was a book apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard before he met with Dr.

Slop ;—and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too. 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 out-lines of Dr. Imagine such a one,——for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Had Dr. What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop 77 have been, when you read which you are just going to do that he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall , and had approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, furious,—pop,—full upon him!

Slop was. What could Dr. Slop do? Slop ;—once as he was falling,—and then again when he saw him seated. In short, never was a Dr. Slop so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came into fashion. When Dr.

Slop entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle Toby were discoursing upon the nature of women,——it was hard to determine whether Dr. Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle Toby to have triumphed over my father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. What business Stevinus had in this affair,—is the greatest problem of all:——It shall be solved,—but not in the next chapter.

Writing , when properly managed as you may be sure I think mine is is but a different name for conversation. For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own. Let the reader imagine then, that Dr.

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