The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [167]
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CHAP. XXIX
——“which words being heard by all the soldiers which were there, divers of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for the assailant: all this did Gymnast very well remark and consider; and therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his short sword by his thigh) shifting his feet in the stirrup and performing the stirrup-leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he forthwith launched himself aloft into the air, and placed both his feet together upon the saddle, standing upright, with his back turned towards his horse’s head,—Now (said he) my case goes forward. Then suddenly in the same posture wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and turning to the left-hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just into his former position, without missing one jot.——Ha! said Tripet, I will not do that at this time,—and not without cause. Well, said Gymnast, I have failed,—I will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility, turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another frisking gambol as before; which done, he set his right-hand thumb upon the bow of the saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and upholding his whole weight upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and whirled himself about three times: at the fourth, reversing his body and overturning it upside-down, and foreside back, without touching any thing, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s two ears, and then giving himself a jerking swing, he seated himself upon the crupper——”
(This can’t be fighting, said my uncle Toby.——The corporal shook his head at it.——Have patience, said Yorick.)
“Then (Tripet) pass’d his right leg over his saddle, and placed himself en croup.—But, said he, ’twere better for me to get into the saddle; then putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper before him, and thereupon leaning himself, as upon the only supporters of his body, he incontinently turned heels over head in the air, and straight found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle in a tolerable seat; then springing into the air with a summerset, he turned him about like a wind-mill, and made above a hundred frisks, turns and demipommadas.”1—Good God! cried Trim, losing all patience,—one home thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.——I think so too, replied Yorick.——
—I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father.
CHAP. XXX
——No,—I think I have advanced nothing, replied my father, making answer to a question which Yorick had taken the liberty to put to him,—I have advanced nothing in the Tristrapædia, but what is as clear as any one proposition in Euclid.1—Reach me, Trim, that book from off the scrutoir:2——it has oft times been in my mind, continued my father, to have read it over both to you, Yorick, and to my brother Toby, and I think it a little unfriendly in myself, in not having done it long ago:——shall we have a short chapter or two now,—and a chapter or two hereafter, as occasions serve; and so on, till we get through the whole? My uncle Toby and Yorick made the obeisance which was proper; and the corporal, though he was not included in the compliment, laid his hand upon his breast, and made his bow at the same time.——The company smiled. Trim, quoth my father, has paid the full price for staying out the entertainment.——He did not seem to relish the play, replied Yorick.——’twas a Tom-fool-battle, an’ please your reverence, of captain Tripet’s and that other officer, making so many summersets, as they advanced;——the French come on capering now and then in that way,—but not quite so much.
My uncle Toby never felt the consciousness of his existence with more complacency than what the corporal’s, and his own