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one, replied my uncle Toby,—why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, but because that God pleases to have it so.—That is Grangousier’s solution,2 said my father.—’tis he, continued my uncle Toby, looking up, and not regarding my father’s interruption, who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom.——’tis a pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical,—there is more religion in it than sound science. ’twas no inconsistent part of my uncle Toby’s character,——that he feared God, and reverenced religion.——So the moment my father finished his remark,—my uncle Toby fell a whistling Lillabullero, with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.——

What is become of my wife’s thread-paper?

CHAP. XLII

No matter,——as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of some consequence to my mother,—of none to my father, as a mark in Slawkenbergius. Slawkenbergius in every page of him was a rich treasury of inexhaustible knowledge to my father,—he could not open him amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were lost,——should the wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote, or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also,—and Slawkenbergius only left,—there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again. A treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else,——at matin, noon, and vespers was Hafen Slawkenbergius his recreation and delight: ’twas for ever in his hands,—you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon’s prayer-book,—so worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited1 was it with fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other.

I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius, as my father;—there is a fund in him, no doubt; but in my opinion, the best, I don’t say the most profitable, but the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his tales,——and, considering he was a German, many of them told not without fancy:—these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten tales.——Philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore ’twas certainly wrong in Slawkenbergius to send them into the world by that name;—there are a few of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem rather playful and sportive, than speculative,—but in general they are to be looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many independent facts, all of them turning round somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and collected by him with great fidelity, and added to his work as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.

As we have leisure enough upon our hands,—if you give me leave, madam, I’ll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad.

THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

THE

LIFE

AND

OPINIONS

OF

TRISTRAM SHANDY,

GENTLEMAN.

Multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia; meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis——in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, a seriis vicissim ad jocos transire.

JOAN. SARESBERIENSIS, Episcopus Lugdun.

VOL. IV

LONDON:

Printed for R. and J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall.

M.DCC.LXI

SLAWKENBERGII

FABELLA*

Vespera quâdam frigidulâ, posteriori in parte mensis Augusti, peregrinus, mulo fusco colore insidens, manticâ a tergo, paucis indusijs, binis calceis, braccisque sericis coccinejs repletâ Argentoratum ingressus est.

Militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret, dixit, se apud Nasorum promontorium fuisse, Francofurtum proficisci, et Argentoratum, transitu ad fines Sarmatiæ mensis intervallo, reversurum.

Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit—Di boni, nova forma nasi!

At multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, carpum amento extrahens,