The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [92]
simile--my father's eye was greater than his appetite--his zeal greater than his knowledge--he cool'd--his affections became divided--he got hold of Prignitz--purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paraeus, Bouchet's Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much to say by-and-bye--I will say nothing now.
Chapter 2.XXIX.
Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.-- Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on--let me beg of you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it--and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till like Tickletoby's mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.--You need not kill him.--
--And pray who was Tickletoby's mare?--'tis just as discreditable and unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.--Who was Tickletoby's mare!--Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read--or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon--I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
(two marble plates)
Chapter 2.XXX.
'Nihil me paenitet hujus nasi,' quoth Pamphagus;--that is--'My nose has been the making of me.'--'Nec est cur poeniteat,' replies Cocles; that is, 'How the duce should such a nose fail?'
The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow'd upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.--My father pish'd and pugh'd at first most terribly--'tis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro' and thro' in its most strict and literal interpretation--he could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.--Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.--I'll study the mystick and the allegorick sense--here is some room to turn a man's self in, brother.
My father read on.--
Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of distress--and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire.)
Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge--so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.--I've got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.--You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.--Pshaw!
Chapter 2.XXIX.
Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.-- Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on--let me beg of you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it--and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till like Tickletoby's mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.--You need not kill him.--
--And pray who was Tickletoby's mare?--'tis just as discreditable and unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.--Who was Tickletoby's mare!--Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read--or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon--I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
(two marble plates)
Chapter 2.XXX.
'Nihil me paenitet hujus nasi,' quoth Pamphagus;--that is--'My nose has been the making of me.'--'Nec est cur poeniteat,' replies Cocles; that is, 'How the duce should such a nose fail?'
The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow'd upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.--My father pish'd and pugh'd at first most terribly--'tis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro' and thro' in its most strict and literal interpretation--he could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.--Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.--I'll study the mystick and the allegorick sense--here is some room to turn a man's self in, brother.
My father read on.--
Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of distress--and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire.)
Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge--so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.--I've got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.--You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.--Pshaw!