The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [213]
half a yard higher--and Nonsense-- no, Madam,--not there--I mean at the part I am now pointing to with my forefinger--how can we help ourselves?
Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the worst fitted, to have push'd his researches, thro' such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out--had not Bridget's pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah's repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle Toby to look into the affair.
Chapter 4.XXIX.
Why weavers, gardeners, and gladiators--or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some ailment in the foot)--should ever have had some tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists.
A water-drinker, provided he is a profess'd one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at first sight, there is any consequence, or show of logic in it, 'That a rill of cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my Jenny's--'
--The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects--
But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.
--'And in perfect good health with it?'
--The most perfect,--Madam, that friendship herself could wish me--
'And drink nothing!--nothing but water?'
--Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain--see how they give way!--
In swims Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow--they dive into the center of the current--
Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits--And Desire, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other--
O ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have so often governed and turn'd this world about like a mill-wheel--grinding the faces of the impotent--bepowdering their ribs--bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature--
If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius--And, if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.
Which shews they had both read Longinus--
For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.
Chapter 4.XXX.
I wish my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had been accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt something stirring within her in his favour--Something!--something.
--Something perhaps more than friendship--less than love--something--no matter what--no matter where--I would not give a single hair off my mule's tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), to be let by your worships into the secret--
But the truth is, my uncle Toby was not a water-drinker; he drank it neither pure nor mix'd, or any how, or any where, except fortuitously upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had--or during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it would extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact--my uncle Toby drank it for quietness sake.
Now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be produced without a cause, and as it is as well known, that my uncle Toby was neither a weaver--a gardener, or a gladiator--unless as a captain, you will needs have him one--but then he was only a captain of foot--and besides, the whole is an equivocation--There is nothing left for us to suppose, but that my uncle Toby's leg--but that will avail us little in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment in the foot--whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in his foot--for
Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the worst fitted, to have push'd his researches, thro' such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out--had not Bridget's pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah's repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle Toby to look into the affair.
Chapter 4.XXIX.
Why weavers, gardeners, and gladiators--or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some ailment in the foot)--should ever have had some tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists.
A water-drinker, provided he is a profess'd one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at first sight, there is any consequence, or show of logic in it, 'That a rill of cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my Jenny's--'
--The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects--
But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.
--'And in perfect good health with it?'
--The most perfect,--Madam, that friendship herself could wish me--
'And drink nothing!--nothing but water?'
--Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain--see how they give way!--
In swims Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow--they dive into the center of the current--
Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits--And Desire, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other--
O ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have so often governed and turn'd this world about like a mill-wheel--grinding the faces of the impotent--bepowdering their ribs--bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature--
If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius--And, if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.
Which shews they had both read Longinus--
For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.
Chapter 4.XXX.
I wish my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had been accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt something stirring within her in his favour--Something!--something.
--Something perhaps more than friendship--less than love--something--no matter what--no matter where--I would not give a single hair off my mule's tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), to be let by your worships into the secret--
But the truth is, my uncle Toby was not a water-drinker; he drank it neither pure nor mix'd, or any how, or any where, except fortuitously upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had--or during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it would extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact--my uncle Toby drank it for quietness sake.
Now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be produced without a cause, and as it is as well known, that my uncle Toby was neither a weaver--a gardener, or a gladiator--unless as a captain, you will needs have him one--but then he was only a captain of foot--and besides, the whole is an equivocation--There is nothing left for us to suppose, but that my uncle Toby's leg--but that will avail us little in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment in the foot--whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in his foot--for