The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [192]
but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have--you had better stop:--She has a little of the devote: but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour--
-L... help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil.
Chapter 3.XCIII.
All which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much nearer me than I imagined--I wish I was at Abbeville, quoth I, were it only to see how they card and spin--so off we set.
(Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762.) de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi de Nampont a Bernay --- poste de Bernay a Nouvion --- poste de Nouvion a Abbeville poste --but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.
Chapter 3.XCIV.
What a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter.
Chapter 3.XCV.
Was I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster--I should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house--but rather in some decent inn--at home, I know it,--the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention--but mark. This inn should not be the inn at Abbeville--if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so
Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning--Yes, by four, Sir,--or by Genevieve! I'll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.
Chapter 3.XCVI.
'Make them like unto a wheel,' is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop Hall, 'tis one of the severest imprecations which David ever utter'd against the enemies of the Lord--and, as if he had said, 'I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.'--So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)-- is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven.
Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy--and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil--
Hollo! Ho!--the whole world's asleep!--bring out the horses--grease the wheels--tie on the mail--and drive a nail into that moulding--I'll not lose a moment--
Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto, for that would make an Ixion's wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop's habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in Palestine at that time or not--and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country.
I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their '(Greek)'--(their) 'getting out of the body, in order to think well.' No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre--Reason is, half of it, Sense; and the measure of heaven
-L... help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil.
Chapter 3.XCIII.
All which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much nearer me than I imagined--I wish I was at Abbeville, quoth I, were it only to see how they card and spin--so off we set.
(Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762.) de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi de Nampont a Bernay --- poste de Bernay a Nouvion --- poste de Nouvion a Abbeville poste --but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.
Chapter 3.XCIV.
What a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter.
Chapter 3.XCV.
Was I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster--I should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house--but rather in some decent inn--at home, I know it,--the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention--but mark. This inn should not be the inn at Abbeville--if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so
Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning--Yes, by four, Sir,--or by Genevieve! I'll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.
Chapter 3.XCVI.
'Make them like unto a wheel,' is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop Hall, 'tis one of the severest imprecations which David ever utter'd against the enemies of the Lord--and, as if he had said, 'I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.'--So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)-- is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven.
Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy--and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil--
Hollo! Ho!--the whole world's asleep!--bring out the horses--grease the wheels--tie on the mail--and drive a nail into that moulding--I'll not lose a moment--
Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto, for that would make an Ixion's wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop's habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in Palestine at that time or not--and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country.
I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their '(Greek)'--(their) 'getting out of the body, in order to think well.' No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre--Reason is, half of it, Sense; and the measure of heaven