Tristram Shandy

“ Slop both fairly started together—there is no man living who had seen the bag with all that Obadiah had done to it,—and known likewise, the great speed the goddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind—which of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother, madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly—at least by twenty knots.—Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be! ”

“ When he started the annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the real merits of Sterne. When so acute a writer as Bagehot condemns much of Tristram Shandy as "a sort of antediluvian fun, in which uncouth saurian jokes play idly in an unintelligible world," he hits the nail on the head of why so many readers nowadays turn with impatience from that work. ”

“ As a matter of fact, its proper description would be "The Opinions of Tristram Shandy's Father, with some Passages from the Life of his Uncle." Its claim to be regarded as a biography of its nominal hero is best illustrated by the fact that Tristram is not born till the third volume, and not breeched till the sixth; that it is not till the seventh that he begins to play any active part in the narrative, appearing then only as a completely colourless and unindividualized figure, a mere vehicle for the conveyance of Sterne's own Continental impressions de voyage ”

“ A genius of much finer mold was Lawrence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy, 1759-67, and the Sentimental Journey, 1768. Tristram Shandy is hardly a novel: the story merely serves to hold together a number of characters, such as Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, conceived with rare subtlety and originality. Sterne's chosen province was the whimsical, and his great model was Rabelais. His books are full of digressions, breaks, surprises, innuendoes, double meanings, mystifications, and all manner of odd turns. {210} Coleridge and Carlyle unite in pronouncing him a great humorist. ”

“ There are sermons of Sterne which alike in manner and matter disclose the author of Tristram Shandy; but they are not among those which he preached or wrote before that work was given to the world. They are not its ancestors but its descendants. They belong to the post-Shandian period, and are in obvious imitation of the Shandian style; while in none of the earlier ones—not even in that famous homily on a Good Conscience, which did not succeed till Corporal Trim preached it before the brothers Shandy and Dr. ”

“ Burton, a well-known Jacobite practitioner who had suffered from the Hanoverian zeal of Yorick’s uncle Jaques in the ’45, is a masterpiece. The York dignitaries are veritable etchings in outline, more instinct with life and individuality than a thousand elaborately painted pictures; all the servants, Obadiah, Susannah, Bridget, and the rest, are the equals of Fielding’s, or of Thackeray’s domestics; and though Tristram himself is the shadow of a shade, I confess that I seem to see a vivid portrait in the three or four strokes which alone give us “my dear, dear Jenny.” ”

“ Yet, let us admit there are certain works which conquer some of us, we cannot tell why. To go a very long way from Cranford, take Tristram Shandy. No one can really criticise Tristram Shandy, and all pretence to do so is mere humbug. ”

“ What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he gives them proper vent:—It was the identical thing which my father did:—for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express Dissertation simply upon the word Tristram,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name. ”

“ Tristram Shandy.—In 1759 appeared the first part of Tristram Shandy—a strange, desultory work, in which many of the curious bits of philosophy are taken from Montaigne, Burton, Rabelais, and others; but which has, besides, great originality in the handling and in the portraiture of characters. Much of what Sterne borrowed from these writers passed for his own in that day, when there were comparatively few readers of the authors mentioned. As to the charge of plagiarism, we may say that Sterne's hero is like the Gargantua of Rabelais in many particulars; but he is a man instead of a monster ”

“ The author of Tristram Shandy was himself only a follower of one of the greatest of French originals, and a follower at a long distance. Even those who have the keenest relish for our “good-humoured, civil, nonsensical, Shandean kind of a book,” ought to admit how far it falls behind Rabelais in exuberance, force, richness of extravagance, breadth of colour, fulness of blood. They may claim, however, for Sterne what, in comparison with these great elements, are the minor qualities of simplicity, [37] tenderness, precision, and finesse. ”

“ It is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to Ernulphus's curse, which was laid upon the corner of the chimney-piece,—as to my uncle Toby who sat under it—it is in vain longer, said my father, in the most querulous monotone imaginable, to struggle as I have done against this most uncomfortable of human persuasions—I see it plainly, that either for my own sins, brother Toby, or the sins and follies of the Shandy-family, heaven has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me ”

“ It may with the utmost probability be affirmed that this was the case with Tristram Shandy and with Sterne. We cannot, it is true, altogether dissociate the permanent attractions of the novel from those characteristics of it which have long since ceased to attract at all; the two are united in a greater or less degree throughout the work; and this being so, it is, of course, impossible to prove to demonstration that it was the latter qualities, and not the former, which procured it its immediate vogue. ”

“ Zückert’s translation of the first six parts9 of Tristram Shandy appeared in 1763, and bore the imprint of the publisher Lange, Berlin und Stralsund. The title read “Das Leben und die Meynungen des Herrn Tristram Shandy,” the first of the long series of “Leben und Meynungen” which flooded the literature of the succeeding decades, this becoming a conventional title for a novel. It is noteworthy that until the publication of parts VII and VIII in 1765, there is no mention of the real author’s name. ”

“ Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself—or with any one else,—the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust,—he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;—that is, he kept others off,—for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her,—or ”

“ MY UNCLE TOBY’S APOLOGETICAL ORATION
I AM not insensible, brother Shandy, that when a man whose profession is arms, wishes, as I have done, for war,—it has an ill aspect to the world;——and that, how just and right soever his motives the intentions may be,—he stands in an uneasy posture in vindicating himself from private views in doing it.
For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be without being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter his wish in the hearing of an enemy ”

“ Let no man, who has read my father's first and second beds of justice, ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.—Heaven! thou knowest how I love them;—thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this moment give my shirt—Thou art a fool, Shandy, says Eugenius, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and 'twill break thy set.—
No matter for that, Eugenius ”

“ But after full account has been taken of Sterne's numerous deflections from the paths of literary rectitude—of his indecency, his buffoonery, his mawkishness, his plagiarisms, his wanton digressiveness—he remains, as the author of ‘Tristram Shandy,’ a delineator of the comedy of human life before whom only three or four humorous writers, in any tongue or of any age, can justly claim precedence. ”

“ It is for just such happy intervals the cycler braves wild winds and high hills. The day, it is true, was from beginning to end uneventful. [90] But we had not looked or hoped for adventures.—Of his journey between Amiens and Paris our Master says not a word. Mr. Tristram Shandy recalls his but to regret that he was then prevented, by troublesome postillions, from gratifying his kindly propensity to sleep. Therefore we felt, that to-day at least, we had no sentimental shortcomings with which to reproach ourselves. ”

“ She is no longer an actor in her own tragedy; and there are those who have considered this print as a farce at the end of it: but surely such was not the author's intention.
The ingenious writer of Tristram Shandy begins the life of his hero before he is born; the picturesque biographer of Mary Hackabout has found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his moral, after her death. A wish usually prevails, even among those who are most humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect should be paid to their remains ”

“ Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the elder Shandy, as by much the finer delineation of the two. I fear his low opinion of the Sentimental Journey will not suit a thorough Sterneist; but I could never get him to modify his criticism. He said, "The oftener you read Sterne, the more clearly will you perceive the great difference between Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey. ”

“ The place of Sterne is unmistakably among writers of the former class. It is by his humour—his humour of character, his dramatic as distinct from his critical descriptive personal humour—though, of course, he possesses this also, as all humourists must—that he lives and will live. In Tristram Shandy, as in the Sermons, there is a sufficiency of wit, and considerably more than a sufficiency of humorous reflection, innuendo, and persiflage ”

“ Thereupon Trim, thwarted in one direction, endeavoured to rob his neighbour Lorry Slim, ‘an unlucky wight,’ of a threadbare pair of black plush breeches. The sketch ends with Trim's signal humiliation. Much of the jesting is coarse, but throughout Sterne gave proofs of his capacity as a literary artist in humour. In its general tone it adumbrates many characteristic features of ‘Tristram Shandy.’ The name Trim Sterne transferred to his novel unaltered. ”

“ Later in the book we have long lists, or catalogues of things which resemble one of Sterne’s favorite mannerisms. But the greater part of the wild, adventurous tale is far removed from its inception, which presented domestic whimsicality in a gallery of originals, unmistakably connected with Tristram Shandy.
Göschen’s “Reise von Johann”42 is a product of the late renascence of sentimental journeying. Master and servant are represented in this book as traveling through southern Germany, a pair as closely related in head and heart as Yorick and La Fleur, or Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim. ”

“ Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour, there may be as many chapters as steps:—let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny:—A sudden impulse comes across me—drop the curtain, Shandy—I drop it—Strike a line here across the paper, Tristram—I strike it—and hey for a new chapter. ”

“ Slop and ends with Corporal Trim's recital of the Sermon on Conscience. Wit, humour, irony, quaint learning, shrewd judgment of men and things, of these Sterne had displayed abundance already; but it is not in the earlier but in the later half of the first instalment of Tristram Shandy that we first become conscious that he is something more than the possessor of all these things; that he is gifted with the genius of creation, and has sent forth new beings into that world of immortal shadows which to many of us is more real than our own. ”

“ The following is an exciting incident that occurred just after the birth of Tristram Shandy. Susannah, the serving-maid, rouses Mr. Shandy with the news that the child is in a fit. Observe the staccato dialogue and the ingenious variation of the paragraph. The humor is typical of Sterne. ”

“ What a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!
Doctor Slop, like a son of a w——, as my father called him for it,—to exalt himself,—debased me to death,—and made ten thousand times more of Susannah’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s time, or less, it was in everybody’s mouth, That poor Master Shandy asterisks ("mastershandy",1,1) ”

“ Slop, interrupting Trim, is more detestable than all the rest;—and seems to have been taken from some pettifogging Lawyer amongst you:—Amongst us, a man's conscience could not possibly continue so long blinded;—three times in a year, at least, he must go to confession. Will that restore it to sight, quoth my uncle Toby?—Go on, Trim, quoth my father, or Obadiah will have got back before thou has got to the end of thy sermon;—'tis a very short one, replied Trim.—I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle Toby, for I like it hugely.—Trim went on. ”