WHEN I reflect, brother _Toby_, upon MAN; and take a view of that dark
side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of
trouble—when I consider, brother _Toby_, how oft we eat the bread of
affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our
inheritance——I was born to nothing, quoth my uncle _Toby_, interrupting
my father—but my commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle
leave you a hundred and twenty pounds a year?——What could I have done
without it? replied my uncle _Toby_——That’s another concern, said my
father testily—But I say _Toby_, when one runs over the catalogue of
all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful _Items_ with which the heart of
man is overcharged, ’tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is
enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the
impositions laid upon our nature.——’Tis by the assistance of Almighty
God, cried my uncle _Toby_, looking up, and pressing the palms of his
hands close together——’tis not from our own strength, brother
_Shandy_——a centinel in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to
stand it out against a detachment of fifty men.——We are upheld by the
grace and the assistance of the best of Beings.
——That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,——But
give me leave to lead you, brother _Toby_, a little deeper into the
mystery.
With all my heart, replied my uncle _Toby_.
My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which
_Socrates_ is so finely painted by _Raffael_ in his school of _Athens_;
which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even
the particular manner of the reasoning of _Socrates_ is expressed by
it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the
fore-finger and the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying
to the libertine he is reclaiming——“_You grant me_ this——and this: and
this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in
course.”
So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and
his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle _Toby_ as he sat in his old
fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs——O
_Garrick!_——what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make!
and how gladly would I write such another to avail myself of thy
immortality, and secure my own behind it.