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By Root 1708 0

and for all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy,—do let this story of our aunt’s and her ashes sleep in peace;——how can you,———how can you have so little feeling and compassion for the character of our family:——What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.——Nay, if you come to that—what is the life of a family:———The life of a family!—my uncle Toby would say, throwing himself back in his arm-chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg.———Yes the life,———my father would say, maintaining his point. How many thousands of ’em are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)——and consider’d as nothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my uncle Toby, would answer,——every such instance is downright MURDER, let who will commit it.——There lies your mistake, my father would reply;——for, in Foro Scientiæ15 there is no such thing as MURDER,——’tis only DEATH, brother.

My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of Lillabullero.16——You must know it was the usual channel thro’ which his passions got vent, when any thing shocked or surprised him;——but especially when any thing, which he deem’d very absurd, was offer’d.

As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name to this particular species of argument,—I here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. First, That, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every other species of argument,———as the Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori,17 or any other argument whatsoever:——And, secondly, That it may be said by my children’s children, when my head is laid to rest,----that their learned grand-father’s head had been busied to as much purpose once, as other people’s:—That he had invented a name,—and generously thrown it into the TREASURY of the Ars Logica,18 for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. And if the end of disputation is more to silence19 than convince,–they may add, if they please, to one of the best arguments too.

I do therefore, by these presents,20 strictly order and command, That it be known and distinguished by the name and title of the Argumentum Fistulatorium, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinum, and the Argumentum ad Crumenam,21 and for ever hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman against the man;—and the Argumentum ad Rem,22 which, contrarywise, is made use of by the man only against the woman:—As these two are enough in conscience for one lecture;——and, moreover, as the one is the best answer to the other,—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of in a place by themselves.

CHAP. XXII

The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was Bishop of Exeter in King James the first’s reign, tells us in one of his Decads, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at London, in the year 1610, by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, “That it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;”1—and I really think it is so.

And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out;—I think it is full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head.

This is precisely my situation.

For in this long digression2 which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader,–not for want of penetration in him,—but because ’tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;—and it is this: That tho’ my digressions are all fair, as you observe,—and that I fly off from