CHAP. I.

If it had not been for these two mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a postillion, who drove them from Stilton to Stamford, the thought had never entered my head. He flew like lightning: there was a slope of three miles and a half;

-we scarcely touched the ground, the motion was most rapid,-most impetuous;'twas communicated to my brain, my heart partook of it." By the great God of day," said I, looking towards the sun, and thrusting my arm out of the fore-window of the chaise, as I made my vow, "I will lock up my study-door the moment I get home, and throw the key of it ninety feet below the surface of the earth, into the draw-well at the back of my house."

The London waggon confirmed me in my resolution; it hung tottering upon the hill, scarcely progressive, dragged-dragged up by eight heavy beasts, "by main strength!"quoth I, nodding; "but your betters draw the same way,-and something of every body's!— O rare!"

Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the bulk,-so little to the stock?

Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only

out of one vessel into another?

Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope! for ever in the same track, -for ever at the same pace?

Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days as well as working days, to be shewing the relics of learning, as monks do the

relics of their saints,-without working oneone single miracle with them?

Who made Man, with powers which dart him from earth to heaven in a moment;-that great, that most excellent, and most noble creature of the world,-the miracle of nature, as Zoroaster, in his book w parts, called him;-the Shekinah of the Divine Presence, as Chrysostom;-the image of God, as Moses; the ray of divinity, as Plato;the Marvel of Marvels, as Aristotle,-to go sneaking on at this pitiful,-pimping, pettifogging rate?

I scorn to be as abusive as Horace upon the occasion;-but if there is no catachresis in the wish, and no sin in it, I wish from my soul, that every imitator in Great Britain, France, and Ireland, had the farcy for his pains; and that there was a farcical house, large enough to hold,-ay-and sublimate them, tag-rag and bob-tail, male and female, all together: and this leads me to the affair of Whiskers:-but, by what chain of ideas, I leave as a legacy in mortmain to Prudes and Tartufs, to enjoy and make the most of.

UPON WHISKERS.

I'm sorry I made it,-'twas as inconsideraté a promise as ever entered a man's head.-A chapter upon whiskers! alas! the world will not bear it!-'tis a delicate world ;-but I knew not of what mettle it was made, nor had I ever seen the underwritten fragment; otherwise, as surely as noses are noses, and whiskers are whiskers still, (let the world say what it will to the contrary,) so surely would I have steered clear of this dangerous chapter.

THE FRAGMENT.

*

-You are half asleep, my good lady, said the old gentleman, taking hold of the old lady's hand, and giving it a gentle squeeze, as he pronounced the word whiskers.-Shall we change the subject?By no means, replied the old lady; I like your account of those matters: so throwing a thin gauze handkerchief over her head, and leaning it back upon the chair with her face turned towards him, and advancing her two feet as she reclined herself,-I desire, continued she, you will go on.

The old gentleman went on as follows:Whiskers! cried the Queen of Navarre, dropping her knotting-ball, as La Fosseuse uttered the word.-Whiskers, madam, said La Fosseuse, pinning the ball to the queen's apron, and making a courtesy as she repeated it.

La Fosseuse's voice was naturally soft and low, yet 'twas an articulate voice; and every letter of the word whiskers fell distinctly upon the Queen of Navarre's ear. --Whiskers? cried the queen, laying a greater stress upon the word, and as if she had still distrusted her ears. -Whiskers, replied La Fosseuse, repeating the word a third time.-There is not a cavalier, madam, of his age in Navarre, continued the maid of honour, pressing the page's interest upon the queen, that has so gallant a pair Of what? cried Margaret, smiling.

-Of whiskers, said La Fosseuse, with infinite modesty

The word whiskers still stood its ground, and continued to be made use of in most of the best companies throughout the little kingdom of Navarre, notwithstanding the indiscreet use which La Fosseuse had made of it: the truth was, La Fosseuse had pronounced the word not only before the queen, but upon sundry other occasions at court, with an accent which always implied something of a mystery.-And as the court of Margaret, as all the world knows, was at that time a mixture of gallantry and devotion, and whiskers being as applicable to the one as the other, the word naturally stood its ground;-it gained full as much as it lost; that is, the clergy were for it, the laity were against it, and, for the women, they were divided.

The excellency of the figure and mien of the young Sieur de Croix, was at that time beginning to draw the attention of the maids of honour towards the terrace before the palace-gate, where the guard was mounted. The Lady De Baussiere fell deeply in love with him,-La Battarelle did the same;-it was the finest weather for it that ever was remembered in Navarre. La Guyol, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, fell in love with the Sieur de Croix also; -La Rebours and La Fosseuse knew better:

VOL. V.

De Croix had failed in an attempt to recommend himself to La Rebours; and La Rebours and La Fosseuse were inseparable.

The Queen of Navarre was sitting with her ladies in the painted bow-window, facing the gate of the second court, as De Croix passed through it. He is handsome, said the Lady Baussiere.- He has a good mien, said La Batarelle. He is finely shaped, said La Guyol.- -I never saw an officer of the horseguards in my life, said La Maronette, with two such legs;Or who stood so well upon

them, said La Sabatiere.- -But he has no whiskers, cried La Fosseuse.—Not a pile, said La Rebours.

The queen went directly to her oratory, musing all the way, as she walked through the gallery, upon the subject; turning it this way and that way in her fancy.-Ave Maria + what can La Fosseuse mean? said she, kneeling down upon the cushion.

La Guyol, La Battarelle, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, retired instantly to their chambers. -Whiskers! said all four of them to themselves, as they bolted their doors on the inside.

The Lady Carnavallette was counting her beads with both hands, unsuspected, under her farthingale. From St Anthony down to St Ursula, inclusive, not a saint passed through her fingers without whiskers; St Francis, St Dominick, St Bennet, St Basil, St Bridget, had all whiskers.

The Lady Baussiere had got into a wilderness of conceits, with moralizing too intricately upon La Fosseuse's text:-she mounted her palfrey, her page followed her, the host passed by,-the Lady Baussiere rode on.

One denier, cried the Order of Mercy,-one single denier, in behalf of a thousand patient captives, whose eyes look towards Heaven and you for their redemption.

-The Lady Baussiere rode on. Pity the unhappy, said a devout, venerable, hoary-headed man, meekly holding up a box, begirt with iron, in his withered hands. I beg for the unfortunate:-good, my lady, 'tis for a prison,-for an hospital,-'tis for an old man, -a poor man undone by shipwreck, by suretyship, by fire:-I call God and all his angels to witness,-'tis to clothe the naked,-to feed the hungry,-'tis to comfort the sick and the broken-hearted.

-The Lady Baussiere rode on. A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground.

-The Lady Baussiere rode on.

He ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfrey, conjuring her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c.Cousin, aunt, sister, mother, for virtue's sake, for your own, for mine, for Christ's sake, remember me!-pity me!

-The Lady Baussiere rode on.

H

table, and nodding to my uncle Toby, to see what was in the letter,-twice in one night is too much for an English gentleman and his son, Mons. Sanson, to be turned back from so lousy a town as Nevers. What think'st thou, Toby? added my father, in a sprightly tone.--Unless it be a garrison-town, said my uncle Toby, for then I shall be a fool, said my father, smiling to himself, as long as I live.- -So giving a second nod, and keeping his compasses still upon Nevers with one hand, and holding his book of the post-roads in the other,-half calculating and half listening, he leaned forwards upon the table with both elbows, as my uncle Toby hummed over the letter.

he's gone! said my uncle Toby.- Where?-Who?cried my father.- -My nephew, said my uncle TobyWhat,-without leave, without money, without governor? cried my father, in amazement. No:- -he is dead, my dear brother, quoth my uncle Toby.- -Without being ill? cried my father again.I dare say not, said my uncle Toby, in a low voice, and fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart;-he has been ill enough, poor lad! I'll answer for him, for he is dead.

When Agrippina was told of her son's death, Tacitus informs us, that not being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she abruptly broke off her work.My father stuck his compasses into Nevers but so much the faster. What contrarieties! his, indeed, was a matter of calculation! Agrippina's must have been quite a different affair; who else could pretend to reason from history?

How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.

CHAP. III.

-AND a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too ;-so look to yourselves. 'Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, or Xenophon, or Epictetus, or Theophrastus, or Lucian,- or some one, perhaps, of later date,― either Cardan, or Budæus, or Petrarch, or Stella, or, possibly, it may be some divine or father of the church,-St Austin, or St Cyprian, or Barnard, who affirms, that it is an irresistible and natural passion, to weep for the loss of our friends or children;-and Seneca (I'm positive) tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel: and accordingly, we find, that David wept for his son Absalom, Adrian for his Antinous, Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise;

and indeed differently from most men, either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the Hebrews and the Romans,-nor slept it off, as the Laplanders, nor hanged it, as the English,-nor drowned it, as the Germans ;nor did he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, nor rhyme it, nor lillabullero it. -He got rid of it, however.

Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these two pages?

When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at first he laid it to his heart,-he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto it.-0, my Tullia! my daughter! my child!-Still, still, still,-it was, 0, my Tullia! -my Tullia! Methinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I talk with my Tullia-But, as soon as he began to look into the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might be said upon the occasion,-nobody upon earth can conceive, says the great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me.

My father was as proud of his eloquence as Marcus Tullius Cicero could be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was, indeed, his strength, and his weakness too. His strength, for he was by nature eloquent; and his weakness, for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one- -(bating the case of a systematic misfortune)-he had all he wanted. -A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which set it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune but as five, my father gained half in half; and, consequently, was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.

This clew will unravel what otherwise would seem very inconsistent in my father's domestic character:-and it is this, that in the provocations arising from the neglects and blunders of servants, or other mishaps, unavoidable in a family, his anger, or rather the duration of it, eternally ran counter to all conjecture.

My father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned over to a most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out of her for his own riding. He was sanguine in all his projects; so talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke, and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or other in Obadiah, it so fell out, that my father's expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced.

My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of Obadiah, and that

there would never be an end of the disaster.

See here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have done!It was not I, said Obadiah.- -How do I know that? replied my father.

Triumph swam in my father's eyes, at the repartee, the Attic salt brought water into them;-and so Obadiah heard no more about it. Now let us go back to my brother's death. Philosophy has a fine saying for every thing. -For Death, it has an entire set: the misery was, they all at once rushed so into my father's head, that 'twas difficult to string them together, so as to make anything of à consistent show out of them.-He took them as they came.""Tis an inevitable chance,- -the first statute in Magna Charta ;-it is an everlasting act of Parliament, my dear brother,-All must die. "If my son could not have died, it had been matter of wonder; not that he is dead.

"Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us.

"To die, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature: tombs and monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves; and the proudest pyramid of them all, which Wealth and Science have erected, has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveller's horizon."- (My father found he got great ease, and went on)" Kingdoms and provinces, and towns and cities, have they not their periods? and when those principles and powers, which at first cemented and put them together, have performed their several evolutions, they fall back.' -Brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby, laying down his pipe at the word evolutions,- Revolutions, I meant, quoth my father by Heaven! I meant revolutions, brother Toby ;-evolutions is nonsense. 'Tis not nonsense, said my uncle Toby. But is it not nonsense to break the thread of such a discourse upon such an occasion? cried my father; do not, dear Toby, continued he, taking him by the hand, do not do not, I beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.My uncle Toby put his pipe into his mouth.

"Where is Troy and Mycenae, and Thebes and Delos, Persepolis and Agrigentum ?" continued my father, taking up his book of post roads, which he had laid down." What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of Cizycum and Mitylene? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more; their names only are left; and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piece-meal to decay, and, in length of time, will be forgotten, and involved with every thing in a perpetual night. The world itself, brother Toby, must,-must come to an end.

Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from Egina towards Megara," (when can this have been, thought my uncle Toby,) "I began to view the country round about.-Egina was be

hind me, Megara was before, Pyræus on the right hand, Corinth on the left.—What flourishing towns now prostrate upon the earth! Alas, alas! said I to myself, that man should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully buried in his presence!Remember, said I to myself again,-remember thou art a man."

Now, my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory letter to Tully:-he had as little skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity:-and as my father, whilst he was concerned in the Turkey trade, had been three or four different times in the Levant, in one of which he had stayed a whole year and an half at Zant, my uncle Toby naturally concluded, that, in some one of these periods, he had taken a trip across the Archipelago into Asia; and that all this sailing affair, with Ægina behind, and Megara before, and Pyræus on the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my father's voyages and reflections.-'Twas certainly in his manner;—and many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations. And pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, laying the end of his pipe upon my father's hand, in a kindly way of interruption, but waiting till he finished the account,—What year of our Lord was this?—'Twas no year of our Lord, replied my father.- -That's im possible, cried my uncle Toby.--Simpleton! said my father,-'twas forty years before Christ was born.

My uncle Toby had but two things for it; either to suppose his brother to be the Wandering Jew, or that his misfortunes had disordered his brain.- "May the Lord God of heaven and earth_protect him and restore him," said my uncle Toby, praying silently for my father, and with tears in his eyes.

My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his harangue with great spirit.

"There is not such great odds, brother Toby, "betwixt good and evil, as the world imagines.' (This way of setting off, by the bye, was not likely to cure my uncle Toby's suspicions.)——— "Labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life."- -Much good may it do them,-said my uncle Toby to himself.

"My son is dead!- -so much the better;'tis a shame, in such a tempest, to have but one anchor.

"But he is gone for ever from us!-be it so. -He is got from under the hands of his barber before he was bald :-He is but risen from a feast before he was surfeited; from a banquet before he had got drunken.

"The Thracians wept when a child was born," (and we were very near it, quoth my uncle Toby)" and feasted and made merry when