THE first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a
little settled in the family, and _Susanna_ had got possession of my
mother’s green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the
example of _Xenophon_, and write a TRISTRA-_pædia_, or system of
education for me; collecting first for that purpose his own scattered
thoughts, counsels, and notions; and binding them together, so as to
form an INSTITUTE for the government of my childhood and adolescence. I
was my father’s last stake—he had lost my brother _Bobby_ entirely,—he
had lost, by his own computation, full three-fourths of me—that is, he
had been unfortunate in his three first great casts for me—my geniture,
nose, and name,—there was but this one left; and accordingly my father
gave himself up to it with as much devotion as ever my uncle _Toby_ had
done to his doctrine of projectils.—The difference between them was,
that my uncle _Toby_ drew his whole knowledge of projectils from
_Nicholas Tartaglia_—My father spun his, every thread of it, out of his
own brain,—or reeled and cross-twisted what all other spinners and
spinsters had spun before him, that ’twas pretty near the same torture
to him.
In about three years, or something more, my father had got advanced
almost into the middle of his work.—Like all other writers, he met with
disappointments.—He imagined he should be able to bring whatever he had
to say, into so small a compass, that when it was finished and bound,
it might be rolled up in my mother’s hussive.—Matter grows under our
hands.—Let no man say,—“Come—I’ll write a duodecimo.”
My father gave himself up to it, however, with the most painful
diligence, proceeding step by step in every line, with the same kind of
caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite so religious
a principle) as was used by _John de la Casse_, the lord archbishop of
_Benevento_, in compassing his _Galatea;_ in which his Grace of
_Benevento_ spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came
out, it was not of above half the size or the thickness of a _Rider_’s
Almanack.—How the holy man managed the affair, unless he spent the
greatest part of his time in combing his whiskers, or playing at
_primero_ with his chaplain,—would pose any mortal not let into the
true secret;—and therefore ’tis worth explaining to the world, was it
only for the encouragement of those few in it, who write not so much to
be fed—as to be famous.
I own had _John de la Casse_, the archbishop of _Benevento_, for whose
memory (notwithstanding his _Galatea_,) I retain the highest
veneration,—had he been, Sir, a slender clerk—of dull wit—slow
parts—costive head, and so forth,—he and his _Galatea_ might have
jogged on together to the age of _Methuselah_ for me,—the phænomenon
had not been worth a parenthesis.—
But the reverse of this was the truth: _John de la Casse_ was a genius
of fine parts and fertile fancy; and yet with all these great
advantages of nature, which should have pricked him forwards with his
_Galatea_, he lay under an impuissance at the same time of advancing
above a line and a half in the compass of a whole summer’s day: this
disability in his Grace arose from an opinion he was afflicted
with,—which opinion was this,—_viz._ that whenever a Christian was
writing a book (not for his private amusement, but) where his intent
and purpose was, _bonâ fide_, to print and publish it to the world, his
first thoughts were always the temptations of the evil one.—This was
the state of ordinary writers: but when a personage of venerable
character and high station, either in church or state, once turned
author,—he maintained, that from the very moment he took pen in
hand—all the devils in hell broke out of their holes to cajole
him.—’Twas Term-time with them,—every thought, first and last, was
captious;—how specious and good soever,—’twas all one;—in whatever form
or colour it presented itself to the imagination,—’twas still a stroke
of one or other of ’em levell’d at him, and was to be fenced off.—So
that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was
not so much a state of _composition_, as a state of _warfare;_ and his
probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon
earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his
wit—as his RESISTANCE.
My father was hugely pleased with this theory of _John de la Casse_,
archbishop of _Benevento;_ and (had it not cramped him a little in his
creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the _Shandy_
estate, to have been the broacher of it.—How far my father actually
believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak of my
father’s religious notions, in the progress of this work: ’tis enough
to say here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal
sense of the doctrine—he took up with the allegory of it; and would
often say, especially when his pen was a little retrograde, there was
as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of
_John de la Casse_’s parabolical representation,—as was to be found in
any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.—Prejudice of
education, he would say, _is the devil_,—and the multitudes of them
which we suck in with our mother’s milk—_are the devil and all._——We
are haunted with them, brother _Toby_, in all our lucubrations and
researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they
obtruded upon him,—what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add,
throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the
clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes)
throughout the kingdom.
This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress
my father made in his _Tristra-pædia;_ at which (as I said) he was
three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last,
had scarce completed, by this own reckoning, one half of his
undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all that time totally
neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what was almost as bad, by
the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had
spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,——every day
a page or two became of no consequence.——
——Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human
wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and
eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.
In short my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,—or in
other words,—he advanced so very slow with his work, and I began to
live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not
happened,——which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency,
shall not be concealed a moment from the reader——I verily believe, I
had put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better
purpose than to be buried under ground.