The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [42]
morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;--and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,--should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;--I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas--and is the true scholastic pendulum,--and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,--abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.
I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-midwife's house:--and that whilst Obadiah has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle Toby from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:--That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;--and have since travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into Yorkshire.--all which put together, must have prepared the reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,--as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.
If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,--when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book apocryphal:--If I am thus pressed--I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,--by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;--and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself;--but this had better begin a new chapter.
Chapter 1.XXXIV.
Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.
Such were the out-lines of Dr. Slop's figure, which--if you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;--you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred.
Imagine such a one,--for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour--but of strength,--alack!--scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.--They were not.-- Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach- horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way.
Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.
Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,--splashing and plunging like a devil thro' thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a phaenomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,--have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. Slop in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's comets?--To say nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of Obadiah and the coach-horse.--In my idea, the vortex alone of 'em was enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall, and had approached
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;--and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,--should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;--I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas--and is the true scholastic pendulum,--and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,--abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.
I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-midwife's house:--and that whilst Obadiah has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle Toby from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:--That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;--and have since travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into Yorkshire.--all which put together, must have prepared the reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,--as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.
If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,--when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book apocryphal:--If I am thus pressed--I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,--by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;--and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself;--but this had better begin a new chapter.
Chapter 1.XXXIV.
Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.
Such were the out-lines of Dr. Slop's figure, which--if you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;--you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred.
Imagine such a one,--for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour--but of strength,--alack!--scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.--They were not.-- Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach- horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way.
Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.
Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,--splashing and plunging like a devil thro' thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a phaenomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,--have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. Slop in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's comets?--To say nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of Obadiah and the coach-horse.--In my idea, the vortex alone of 'em was enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall, and had approached