The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [107]
set open.--
Unfortunate Strasbergers! was there in the store-house of nature--was there in the lumber-rooms of learning--was there in the great arsenal of chance, one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of Fate to play upon your hearts?--I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves--'tis to write your panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated with expectation--who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one day longer.
On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to Strasburg.
Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly have made some mistake in his numeral characters) 7000 coaches--15000 single-horse chairs- -20000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, syndicks--beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their coaches--The abbess of Quedlingberg, with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the four great dignitaries of his chapter, on her left-hand--the rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback--some on foot--some led--some driven--some down the Rhine--some this way--some that--all set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.
Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale--I say Catastrophe (cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a Drama, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it--it has its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing one out of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them-- without which a tale had better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius, but be kept to a man's self.
In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I Slawkenbergius tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the stranger and his nose.
--From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the Protasis or first entrance--where the characters of the Personae Dramatis are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.
The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the Catastasis, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the first night's uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute--to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the Strasburgers upon the beach in distress, is the Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act.
This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers in the Frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and quietness.
This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the Catastrophe or Peripeitia of my tale--and that is the part of it I am going to relate.
We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep--he enters now upon the stage.
--What dost thou prick up thy ears at?--'tis nothing but a man upon a horse--was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. It was not proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master's word for it; and without any more ifs or ands, let the traveller and his horse pass by.
The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to Strasburg that night. What a fool am I, said the traveller to himself, when he had rode about a league farther, to think of getting into Strasburg this night.-- Strasburg!--the
Unfortunate Strasbergers! was there in the store-house of nature--was there in the lumber-rooms of learning--was there in the great arsenal of chance, one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of Fate to play upon your hearts?--I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves--'tis to write your panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated with expectation--who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one day longer.
On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to Strasburg.
Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly have made some mistake in his numeral characters) 7000 coaches--15000 single-horse chairs- -20000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, syndicks--beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their coaches--The abbess of Quedlingberg, with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the four great dignitaries of his chapter, on her left-hand--the rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback--some on foot--some led--some driven--some down the Rhine--some this way--some that--all set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.
Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale--I say Catastrophe (cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a Drama, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it--it has its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing one out of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them-- without which a tale had better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius, but be kept to a man's self.
In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I Slawkenbergius tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the stranger and his nose.
--From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the Protasis or first entrance--where the characters of the Personae Dramatis are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.
The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the Catastasis, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the first night's uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute--to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the Strasburgers upon the beach in distress, is the Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act.
This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers in the Frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and quietness.
This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the Catastrophe or Peripeitia of my tale--and that is the part of it I am going to relate.
We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep--he enters now upon the stage.
--What dost thou prick up thy ears at?--'tis nothing but a man upon a horse--was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. It was not proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master's word for it; and without any more ifs or ands, let the traveller and his horse pass by.
The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to Strasburg that night. What a fool am I, said the traveller to himself, when he had rode about a league farther, to think of getting into Strasburg this night.-- Strasburg!--the