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By Root 1954 0

ran high, and grief touched his lips with more than ordinary powers,—Sir, you scarce could have distinguished him from Socrates himself.——Every word would breathe the sentiments of a soul disdaining life, and careless about all its issues; for which reason, though my mother was a woman of no deep reading, yet the abstract of Socrates’s oration, which my father was giving my uncle Toby, was not altogether new to her.—She listened to it with composed intelligence, and would have done so to the end of the chapter, had not my father plunged (which he had no occasion to have done) into that part of the pleading2 where the great philosopher reckons up his connections, his alliances, and children; but renounces a security to be so won by working upon the passions of his judges.—“I have friends—I have relations,—I have three desolate children,”—says Socrates.—

——Then, cried my mother, opening the door,——you have one more, Mr. Shandy, than I know of.

By heaven! I have one less,—said my father, getting up and walking out of the room.

CHAP. XIV

——They are Socrates’s children, said my uncle Toby. He has been dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother.

My uncle Toby was no chronologer—so not caring to advance a step but upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe deliberately upon the table, and rising up, and taking my mother most kindly by the hand, without saying another word, either good or bad, to her, he led her out after my father, that he might finish the ecclaircissment himself.

CHAP. XV

Had this volume been a farce,1 which, unless every one’s life and opinions are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, I see no reason to suppose—the last chapter, Sir, had finished the first act of it, and then this chapter must have set off thus.

Ptr..r..r..ing—twing—twang—prut—trut——’tis a cursed bad fiddle.—Do you know whether my fiddle’s in tune or no?—trut..prut..—They should be fifths.——’tis wickedly strung—tr … a.e.i.o.u.-twang.—The bridge is a mile too high, and the sound-post absolutely down,—else—trut . . prut—hark! ’tis not so bad a tone.—Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, dum. There is nothing in playing before good judges,—but there’s a man there—no—not him with the bundle under his arm—the grave man in black.—S’death!2 not the gentleman with the sword on.—Sir, I had rather play a Caprichio to Calliope3 herself, than draw my bow across my fiddle before that very man; and yet, I’ll stake my Cremona to a Jew’s trump,4 which is the greatest musical odds that ever were laid, that I will this moment stop three hundred and fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, without punishing one single nerve that belongs to him.—Twaddle diddle, tweddle diddle,—twiddle diddle,——twoddle diddle,—twuddle diddle,——prut-trut—krish—krash—krush.—I’ve undone you, Sir,—but you see he is no worse,—and was Apollo to take his fiddle after me,5 he can make him no better.

Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle—hum—dum—drum.

—Your worships and your reverences love musick—and God has made you all with good ears—and some of you play delightfully yourselves——trut-prut,—prut-trut.

O! there is—whom I could sit and hear whole days,—whose talents lie in making what he fiddles to be felt,—who inspires me with his joys and hopes, and puts the most hidden springs of my heart into motion.——If you would borrow five guineas of me, Sir,—which is generally ten guineas more than I have to spare—or you, Messrs. Apothecary and Taylor, want your bills paying,—that’s your time.

CHAP. XVI

The first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a little settled in the family, and Susannah had got possession of my mother’s green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the example of Xenophon,1 and write a TRISTRA-pœdia, or system of education for me; collecting first for that purpose his own scattered thoughts, counsels, and notions; and binding them together, so as to form an INSTITUTE for the government of my childhood and adolescence.2 I was my father’s last stake—he had lost my brother Bobby entirely,—he had lost, by his