The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [140]
risen from a feast before he was surfeited--from a banquet before he had got drunken.
'The Thracians wept when a child was born,'--(and we were very near it, quoth my uncle Toby,)--'and feasted and made merry when a man went out of the world; and with reason.--Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it,--it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hands.
'Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I'll shew thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.'
Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (for mark--our appetites are but diseases,)--is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?--not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?
Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh?
There is no terrour, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions--and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's room.--Strip it of these, what is it?--'Tis better in battle than in bed, said my uncle Toby.- -Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its mourning,--its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids--What is it?--Better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby--'tis terrible no way--for consider, brother Toby,--when we are-- death is not;--and when death is--we are not. My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition; my father's eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man--away it went,--and hurried my uncle Toby's ideas along with it.--
For this reason, continued my father, 'tis worthy to recollect, how little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have made.--Vespasian died in a jest upon his close-stool--Galba with a sentence--Septimus Severus in a dispatch--Tiberius in dissimulation, and Caesar Augustus in a compliment.--I hope 'twas a sincere one--quoth my uncle Toby.
--'Twas to his wife,--said my father.
Chapter 3.IV.
--And lastly--for all the choice anecdotes which history can produce of this matter, continued my father,--this, like the gilded dome which covers in the fabric--crowns all.--
'Tis of Cornelius Gallus, the praetor--which, I dare say, brother Toby, you have read.--I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.--He died, said my father as. . .--And if it was with his wife, said my uncle Toby--there could be no hurt in it.-- That's more than I know--replied my father.
Chapter 3.V.
My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.--'Tis a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips--holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck--(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)--she listened with all her powers:- -the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio.
In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church) to the same period.
Chapter 3.VI.
Though in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses--that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and advantages of a complex one,--and a number of as odd movements within it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a Dutch silk-mill.
Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak
'The Thracians wept when a child was born,'--(and we were very near it, quoth my uncle Toby,)--'and feasted and made merry when a man went out of the world; and with reason.--Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it,--it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hands.
'Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I'll shew thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.'
Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (for mark--our appetites are but diseases,)--is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?--not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?
Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh?
There is no terrour, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions--and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's room.--Strip it of these, what is it?--'Tis better in battle than in bed, said my uncle Toby.- -Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its mourning,--its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids--What is it?--Better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby--'tis terrible no way--for consider, brother Toby,--when we are-- death is not;--and when death is--we are not. My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition; my father's eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man--away it went,--and hurried my uncle Toby's ideas along with it.--
For this reason, continued my father, 'tis worthy to recollect, how little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have made.--Vespasian died in a jest upon his close-stool--Galba with a sentence--Septimus Severus in a dispatch--Tiberius in dissimulation, and Caesar Augustus in a compliment.--I hope 'twas a sincere one--quoth my uncle Toby.
--'Twas to his wife,--said my father.
Chapter 3.IV.
--And lastly--for all the choice anecdotes which history can produce of this matter, continued my father,--this, like the gilded dome which covers in the fabric--crowns all.--
'Tis of Cornelius Gallus, the praetor--which, I dare say, brother Toby, you have read.--I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.--He died, said my father as. . .--And if it was with his wife, said my uncle Toby--there could be no hurt in it.-- That's more than I know--replied my father.
Chapter 3.V.
My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.--'Tis a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips--holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck--(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)--she listened with all her powers:- -the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio.
In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church) to the same period.
Chapter 3.VI.
Though in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses--that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and advantages of a complex one,--and a number of as odd movements within it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a Dutch silk-mill.
Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak