THERE is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an
entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your
criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there any
thing so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the
party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon
the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such
thing as a critick (by occupation) at table.
——I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have left half a
dozen places purposely open for them;—and in the next place, I pay them
all court.—Gentlemen, I kiss your hands, I protest no company could
give me half the pleasure,—by my soul I am glad to see you———I beg only
you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any
ceremony, and fall on heartily.
I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of carrying my
complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for them,—and in
this very spot I stand on; but being told by a Critick (tho’ not by
occupation,—but by nature) that I had acquitted myself well enough, I
shall fill it up directly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be
able to make a great deal of more room next year.
———How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle _Toby_, who, it seems,
was a military man, and whom you have represented as no fool,—be at the
same time such a confused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed, fellow, as—Go
look.
So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn it.—’Tis language
unurbane,—and only befitting the man who cannot give clear and
satisfactory accounts of things, or dive deep enough into the first
causes of human ignorance and confusion. It is moreover the reply
valiant—and therefore I reject it; for tho’ it might have suited my
uncle _Toby_’s character as a soldier excellently well,—and had he not
accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the _Lillabullero_, as
he wanted no courage, ’tis the very answer he would have given; yet it
would by no means have done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I
write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my
illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that I must sustain my
character properly, and contrast it properly too,—else what would
become of me? Why, Sir, I should be undone;—at this very moment that I
am going here to fill up one place against a critick,—I should have
made an opening for a couple.
——Therefore I answer thus:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever
read such a book as _Locke_’s Essay upon the Human
Understanding?——Don’t answer me rashly—because many, I know, quote the
book, who have not read it—and many have read it who understand it
not:—If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will
tell you in three words what the book is.—It is a history.—A history!
of who? what? where? when? Don’t hurry yourself—It is a history-book,
Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a
man’s own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more,
believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick
circle.
But this by the way.
Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the
bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and
confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold.
Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and
transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are not
dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what
it has received.—Call down _Dolly_ your chamber-maid, and I will give
you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain
that _Dolly_ herself should understand it as well as _Malbranch._——When
_Dolly_ has indited her epistle to _Robin_, and has thrust her arm into
the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right side;—take that
opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception
can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by
that one thing which _Dolly_’s hand is in search of.—Your organs are
not so dull that I should inform you—’tis an inch, Sir, of red
seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if _Dolly_ fumbles too
long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not
receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont
to imprint it. Very well. If _Dolly_’s wax, for want of better, is
bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,—tho’ it may receive,—it will not
hold the impression, how hard soever _Dolly_ thrusts against it; and
last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied
thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;——in any one
of these three cases the print left by the thimble will be as unlike
the prototype as a brass-jack.
Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the
confusion in my uncle _Toby_’s discourse; and it is for that very
reason I enlarge upon them so long, after the manner of great
physiologists—to shew the world, what it did _not_ arise from.
What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile source of
obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and that is the unsteady uses of
words, which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted
understandings.
It is ten to one (at _Arthur_’s) whether you have ever read the
literary histories of past ages;—if you have, what terrible battles,
’yclept logomachies, have they occasioned and perpetuated with so much
gall and ink-shed,—that a good-natured man cannot read the accounts of
them without tears in his eyes.
Gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and considered within
thyself how much of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation has
been pestered and disordered, at one time or other, by this, and this
only:—What a pudder and racket in COUNCILS about χδια and υωοςασις; and
in the SCHOOLS of the learned about power and about spirit;—about
essences, and about quintessences;——about substances, and about
space.——What confusion in greater THEATRES from words of little
meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou
wilt not wonder at my uncle _Toby_’s perplexities,—thou wilt drop a
tear of pity upon his scarp and his counterscarp;—his glacis and his
covered way;—his ravelin and his half- moon: ’Twas not by ideas,—by
Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words.