The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [148]
man militant upon earth,--both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his wit--as his Resistance.
My father was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse, archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy estate, to have been the broacher of it.--How far my father actually believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak of my father's religious notions, in the progress of this work: 'tis enough to say here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal sense of the doctrine--he took up with the allegory of it; and would often say, especially when his pen was a little retrograde, there was as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of John de la Casse's parabolical representation,-- as was to be found in any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.--Prejudice of education, he would say, is the devil,--and the multitudes of them which we suck in with our mother's milk--are the devil and all.--We are haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,--what would his book be? Nothing,--he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,--nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout the kingdom.
This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress my father made in his Tristra-paedia; at which (as I said) he was three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by this own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,--every day a page or two became of no consequence.--
--Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.
In short my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,--or in other words,--he advanced so very slow with his work, and I began to live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not happened,--which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency, shall not be concealed a moment from the reader--I verily believe, I had put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better purpose than to be buried under ground.
Chapter 3.XVII.
--'Twas nothing,--I did not lose two drops of blood by it--'twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us--thousands suffer by choice, what I did by accident.--Doctor Slop made ten times more of it, than there was occasion:--some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,--and I am this day (August the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man's reputation.--O 'twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!--The chamber-maid had left no ....... ... under the bed:--Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the other,--cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to .... ... .. ... ......?
I was five years old.--Susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family,--so slap came the sash down like lightning upon us;--Nothing is left,--cried Susannah,--nothing is left--for me, but to run my country.- -
My uncle Toby's house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled to it.
Chapter 3.XVIII.
When Susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the circumstances which attended the murder of me,--(as she called it,)--the blood forsook his cheeks,--all accessaries in murder being principals,-- Trim's conscience told him he was as much to blame as Susannah,--and
My father was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse, archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy estate, to have been the broacher of it.--How far my father actually believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak of my father's religious notions, in the progress of this work: 'tis enough to say here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal sense of the doctrine--he took up with the allegory of it; and would often say, especially when his pen was a little retrograde, there was as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of John de la Casse's parabolical representation,-- as was to be found in any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.--Prejudice of education, he would say, is the devil,--and the multitudes of them which we suck in with our mother's milk--are the devil and all.--We are haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,--what would his book be? Nothing,--he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,--nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout the kingdom.
This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress my father made in his Tristra-paedia; at which (as I said) he was three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by this own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,--every day a page or two became of no consequence.--
--Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.
In short my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,--or in other words,--he advanced so very slow with his work, and I began to live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not happened,--which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency, shall not be concealed a moment from the reader--I verily believe, I had put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better purpose than to be buried under ground.
Chapter 3.XVII.
--'Twas nothing,--I did not lose two drops of blood by it--'twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us--thousands suffer by choice, what I did by accident.--Doctor Slop made ten times more of it, than there was occasion:--some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,--and I am this day (August the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man's reputation.--O 'twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!--The chamber-maid had left no ....... ... under the bed:--Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the other,--cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to .... ... .. ... ......?
I was five years old.--Susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family,--so slap came the sash down like lightning upon us;--Nothing is left,--cried Susannah,--nothing is left--for me, but to run my country.- -
My uncle Toby's house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled to it.
Chapter 3.XVIII.
When Susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the circumstances which attended the murder of me,--(as she called it,)--the blood forsook his cheeks,--all accessaries in murder being principals,-- Trim's conscience told him he was as much to blame as Susannah,--and