Part 25

Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and humours runs high——where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason——the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities——and accordingly we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.

It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us:——the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up——then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury——you would think they would never stop:——and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before us.

It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction——that I draw and set up this position as most true and veritable;

That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d’ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives——running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting to their journies end;——some falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks——others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned profession tilting full but against the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.—Here the brethren of another profession, who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way.—What confusion!—what mistakes!——fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears—admirable!—trusting to the passions excited—in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart——instead of measuring them by a quadrant.

In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round——against the stream of corruption—by Heaven!——instead of with it.

In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against predestination; perhaps worse—feeling his patient’s pulse, instead of his apothecary’s——a brother of the Faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in tears—drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;—offering a fee—instead of taking one.

In that spacious HALL, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it, driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might and main, the wrong way!——kicking it out of the great doors, instead of, in——and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the peace and preservation of mankind:——perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them still——a litigated point fairly hung up;——for instance, Whether John o’Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o’Stiles his face, without a trespass, or not—rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many months——and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours know an ACTION should be, with all the stratagems practicable therein,——such as feints,—forced marches,—surprizes—ambuscades—mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides——might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession.

As for the Clergy——No——if I say a word against them, I’ll be shot.——I have no desire; and besides, if I had—I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject——with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account—and therefore ’tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up——and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.——But mark—I say, reported to be—for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.

This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith make appear.

I hate set dissertations——and above all things in the world, ’tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your reader’s conception—when in all likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once—“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”—I am this moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?—they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun-beams.

I enter now directly upon the point.

—Here stands wit—and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like the two knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on which I am sitting.

—You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame—as wit and judgment are of ours—and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments——to answer one another.

Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this matter—let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on—nay, don’t laugh at it,—but did you ever see, in the whole course of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?—Why, ’tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in the other:——do——pray, get off your seats only to take a view of it,——Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?——nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?—and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all?

Now these two knobs——or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature——being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful——the most priz’d—the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at—for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding——or so ignorant of what will do him good therein—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.

Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one—unless they laid hold of the other,——pray what do you think would become of them?——Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e’en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked——this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are upon——so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time against the lawful owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and artifice——that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds——was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it—it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;——but this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it—on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the rest.

This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since——but your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat:——which by-the-bye is one of the many and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.

As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too freely——I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration —That I have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards, any farther than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture—for any purpose——peace be with them!— =>mark only——I write not for them.

C H A P. XIV

EVERY day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have it mended—’tis not mended yet;—no family but ours would have borne with it an hour——and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in the world upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-hinges.——And yet at the same time, he was certainly one of the greatest bubbles to them, I think, that history can produce: his rhetorick and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.—Never did the parlour-door open—but his philosophy or his principles fell a victim to it;——three drops of oil with a feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his honour for ever.

——Inconsistent soul that man is!——languishing under wounds, which he has the power to heal!—his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge!—his reason, that precious gift of God to him—(instead of pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his sensibilities—to multiply his pains, and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them!—Poor unhappy creature, that he should do so!——Are not the necessary causes of misery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow;—struggle against evils which cannot be avoided, and submit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble they create him would remove from his heart for ever?

By all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops of oil to be got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of Shandy Hall——the parlour door hinge shall be mended this reign.

C H A P. XV

WHEN Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour.

Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of hinges, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this.

Had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door should do—

Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its hinges——(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your worship,—otherwise I give up my simile)—in this case, I say, there had been no danger either to master or man, in corporal Trim’s peeping in: the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast asleep—the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it.