THERE is nothing shews the character of my father and my uncle _Toby_,
in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of
deportment, under the same accident——for I call not love a misfortune,
from a persuasion, that a man’s heart is ever the better for it——Great
God! what must my uncle _Toby_’s have been, when ’twas all benignity
without it.
My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this
passion, before he married——but from a little subacid kind of drollish
impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit
to it like a christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick,
and play the Devil, and write the bitterest Philippicks against the eye
that ever man wrote——there is one in verse upon somebody’s eye or
other, that for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest;
which in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus:
“A Devil ’tis——and mischief such doth work
As never yet did _Pagan, Jew_, or _Turk._”[41]
In short, during the whole paroxism, my father was all abuse and foul
language, approaching rather towards malediction——only he did not do it
with as much method as _Ernulphus_——he was too impetuous; nor with
_Ernulphus_’s policy——for tho’ my father, with the most intolerant
spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven,
which was either aiding or abetting to his love——yet never concluded
his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the
bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would
say, that ever was let loose in the world.
My uncle _Toby_, on the contrary, took it like a lamb——sat still and
let the poison work in his veins without resistance——in the sharpest
exacerbations of his wound (like that on his groin) he never dropt one
fretful or discontented word——he blamed neither heaven nor earth——or
thought or spoke an injurious thing of any body, or any part of it; he
sat solitary and pensive with his pipe——looking at his lame leg——then
whiffing out a sentimental heigh ho! which mixing with the smoke,
incommoded no one mortal.
He took it like a lamb——I say.
In truth he had mistook it at first; for having taken a ride with my
father, that very morning, to save if possible a beautiful wood, which
the dean and chapter were hewing down to give to the poor;[42] which
said wood being in full view of my uncle _Toby_’s house, and of
singular service to him in his description of the battle of
_Wynnendale_—by trotting on too hastily to save it——upon an uneasy
saddle——worse horse, &c. &c. . . it had so happened, that the serous
part of the blood had got betwixt the two skins, in the nethermost part
of my uncle _Toby_——the first shootings of which (as my uncle _Toby_
had no experience of love) he had taken for a part of the passion—till
the blister breaking in the one case—and the other remaining—my uncle
_Toby_ was presently convinced, that his wound was not a skin-deep
wound——but that it had gone to his heart.
[41] This will be printed with my father’s Life of _Socrates_, &c. &c.
[42] Mr _Shandy_ must mean the poor _in spirit;_ inasmuch as they
divided the money amongst themselves.