LIFE and OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent. CHAP. I. E'LL not ftop two mo ments, my dear Sir,-only, as we have got thro' these five volumes, (do, Sir, fit down upon a fet-they are better than nothing) let us just look back upon the country we have pafs'd through.. What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both VOL. VI. B of of us been loft, or devoured by wild beafts in it. Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained fuch a number of Jack Affes?How they view'd and review'd us as we paffed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley! and when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of fight-good God! what a braying did they all fet up together! Prithee, fhepherd! who keeps all thofe Jack Affes ? Heaven be their comforter What are they never curried? Are they never taken in in winter?Bray bray-bray. Bray on,-the world is deeply your debtor ;-louder ftill that's that's nothing-in good footh, you are ill-ufed:Was I a Jack Affe, I folemnly declare, I would bray in G-fol-re-ut from morning, even unto night. W CHA P. II. HEN my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an' all,-and in a kind of triumph redelivered it into Trim's hand, with a nod to lay it upon the 'scrutoire where he found it. -Triftram, faid he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the fame way;-every word, Yorick, by this means, you fee, is converted into a thefis or an hypothefis ;every thefis and hypothefis have an offB 2 Spring fpring of propofitions ;-and each proposition has its own confequences and conclufions; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings.The force of this engine, added my father, is incredible, in opening a child's head.'Tis enough, brother Shandy, cried my uncle Toby, to burft it into a thousand fplinters. I prefume, faid Yorick, fmiling,-iç must be owing to this,(for let logicians fay what they will, it is not to be accounted for fufficiently from the bare ufe of the ten predicaments)-That the famous Vincent Quirino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of which the Cardinal Bembo has given the world fo exact a story,-should be able to pafte up in the publick fchools |
