The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [88]
I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands,6——be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.
Great Apollo! if thou art in a giving humour,——give me,——I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it,——and send Mercury,7 with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to——no matter.
Now to any one else, I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and imprecations, which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past, as originals,——except St. Paul’s thumb,——God’s flesh and God’s fish,8 which were oaths monarchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;——else, I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of Ernulphus, a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!—It is thought to be no bad oath,——and by itself passes very well——“G—d damn you.”——Set it beside Ernulphus’s——“God Almighty the Father damn you,—God the Son damn you,—God the Holy Ghost damn you,”——you see ’tis nothing.——There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention,——possess’d more of the excellencies of a swearer,——had such a thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and articulations,—that when Ernulphus cursed,—no part escaped him.—’tis true, there is something of a hardness in his manner,—and, as in Michael Angelo, a want of grace,——but then there is such a greatness of gusto!9—
My father, who generally look’d upon every thing in a light very different from all mankind,——would, after all, never allow this to be an original.——He consider’d rather Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;——for the same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest,10—lest through the rust of time,—and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever.
For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath, from the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror, (By the splendour of God)11 down to the lowest oath of a scavenger, (Damn your eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus.——In short, he would add,—I defy a man to swear out of it.
The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious too;——nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own.
CHAP. XIII
——Bless my soul!——my poor mistress is ready to faint,——and her pains are gone,——and the drops are done,——and the bottle of julap1 is broke,——and the nurse has cut her arm,——(and I, my thumb, cried Dr. Slop) and the child is where it was,2 continued Susannah,——and the midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat.——I’ll look at it, quoth Dr. Slop.——There is no need of that, replied Susannah,——you had better look at my mistress,——but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment.
Human nature is the same