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THE

LIFE

AND

OPINIONS

OF

TRISTRAM SHANDY,

GENTLEMAN.

1

VOL. I

17602

To the Right Honourable

Mr. PITT.1

SIR,

NEVER poor Wight of Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner2 of the kingdom, and in a retired thatch’d house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health,3 and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.

I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book by taking it——(not under your Protection,——it must protect itself, but)—into the country with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile, or can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain——I shall think myself as happy as a minister of state;——perhaps much happier than any one (one only excepted) that I have ever read or heard of.

I am, great Sir,

(and what is more to your Honour,)

I am, good Sir,

Your Well-wisher,

and most humble Fellow-Subject,

THE AUTHOR.

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENT.

CHAP. I

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concern’d in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:1——Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,——I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks,2 this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into; so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a halfpenny matter,–away they go cluttering like hey-go-mad;3 and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.

Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?4——Good G—! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,5——Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?——Nothing.

CHAP. II

——Then, positively, there is nothing in the question, that I can see, either good or bad.——Then let me tell you, Sir, it was a very unseasonable question at least,—because it scattered and dispersed1 the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand-in-hand with the HOMUNCULUS,2 and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception.

The HOMUNCULUS, Sir, in how-ever low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;—to the eye of reason in scientifick research, he stands confess’d—a BEING guarded and circumscribed with rights:——The minutest philosophers,3 who, by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, That the HOMUNCULUS is created by the same hand,—engender’d in the same course of nature,—endowed with the same loco-motive powers and