THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN
PART 26
C H A P. LXXIII
OF the few legitimate sons of Adam whose breasts never felt what the sting of love was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to be bastards,)—the greatest heroes of ancient and modern story have carried off amongst them nine parts in ten of the honour; and I wish for their sakes I had the key of my study, out of my draw-well, only for five minutes, to tell you their names—recollect them I cannot—so be content to accept of these, for the present, in their stead.
There was the great king Aldrovandus, and Bosphorus, and Cappadocius, and Dardanus, and Pontus, and Asius,——to say nothing of the iron-hearted Charles the XIIth, whom the Countess of K***** herself could make nothing of.——There was Babylonicus, and Mediterraneus, and Polixenes, and Persicus, and Prusicus, not one of whom (except Cappadocius and Pontus, who were both a little suspected) ever once bowed down his breast to the goddess——The truth is, they had all of them something else to do—and so had my uncle Toby—till Fate—till Fate I say, envying his name the glory of being handed down to posterity with Aldrovandus’s and the rest,—she basely patched up the peace of Utrecht.
——Believe me, Sirs, ’twas the worst deed she did that year.
C H A P. LXXIV
AMONGST the many ill consequences of the treaty of Utrecht, it was within a point of giving my uncle Toby a surfeit of sieges; and though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet Calais itself left not a deeper scar in Mary’s heart, than Utrecht upon my uncle Toby’s. To the end of his life he never could hear Utrecht mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as read an article of news extracted out of the Utrecht Gazette, without fetching a sigh, as if his heart would break in twain.
My father, who was a great MOTIVE-MONGER, and consequently a very dangerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying,—for he generally knew your motive for doing both, much better than you knew it yourself—would always console my uncle Toby upon these occasions, in a way, which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle Toby grieved for nothing in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his hobby-horse.——Never mind, brother Toby, he would say,—by God’s blessing we shall have another war break out again some of these days; and when it does,—the belligerent powers, if they would hang themselves, cannot keep us out of play.——I defy ’em, my dear Toby, he would add, to take countries without taking towns,——or towns without sieges.
My uncle Toby never took this back-stroke of my father’s at his hobby-horse kindly.——He thought the stroke ungenerous; and the more so, because in striking the horse he hit the rider too, and in the most dishonourable part a blow could fall; so that upon these occasions, he always laid down his pipe upon the table with more fire to defend himself than common.
I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle Toby was not eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the contrary:——I repeat the observation, and a fact which contradicts it again.—He was not eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle Toby to make long harangues,—and he hated florid ones; but there were occasions where the stream overflowed the man, and ran so counter to its usual course, that in some parts my uncle Toby, for a time, was at least equal to Tertullus——but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely above him.
My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical orations of my uncle Toby’s, which he had delivered one evening before him and Yorick, that he wrote it down before he went to bed.
I have had
the good fortune to meet with it amongst my father’s papers, with here and
there an insertion of his own, betwixt two crooks, thus [ ], and is endorsed,
MY BROTHER TOBY’S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS OWN PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT IN WISHING TO
CONTINUE THE WAR.
I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of my uncle Toby’s a hundred times, and think it so fine a model of defence,—and shews so sweet a temperament of gallantry and good principles in him, that I give it the world, word for word (interlineations and all), as I find it.
