A MAN’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak
it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin’s lining;—rumple the
one,—you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in
this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have
had your jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a
sarcenet, or thin persian.
_Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes,
Antipater, Panætius_, and _Possidonius_ amongst the _Greeks_;——_Cato_
and _Varro_ and _Seneca_ amongst the _Romans_;——_Pantenus_ and _Clemens
Alexandrinus_ and _Montaigne_ amongst the Christians; and a score and a
half of good, honest, unthinking _Shandean_ people as ever lived, whose
names I can’t recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made
after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled
and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to
pieces;——in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and
at the same time, not one of the insides of them would have been one
button the worse, for all you had done to them.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this
sort:——for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it
has been these last nine months together,——and yet I declare, the
lining to it,——as far as I am a judge of the matter,——is not a
three-penny piece the worse;—pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut
and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long-way, have
they been trimming it for me:—had there been the least gumminess in my
lining,—by heaven! it had all of it long ago been frayed and fretted to
a thread.
——You Messrs. the Monthly Reviewers!——how could you cut and slash my
jerkin as you did?——how did you know but you would cut my lining too?
Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will
injure none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,—so God bless
you;—only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and
storm and rage at me, as some of you did last MAY (in which I remember
the weather was very hot)—don’t be exasperated, if I pass it by again
with good temper,—being determined as long as I live or write) which in
my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a
worse word or a worse wish than my uncle _Toby_ gave the fly which
buzz’d about his nose all _dinner-time_,——“Go,—go, poor devil,” quoth
he,—“get thee gone,—why should I hurt thee! This world is surely wide
enough to hold both thee and me.”