-Si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut
mordacius quam deceat Christianum-non Ego, sed Democritus
dixit.--
ERASMUS.
Si quis Clericus, aut Monachus, verba joculatoria, risum moventia,
sciebat, anathema esto.
SECOND COUNCIL OF CARTHAGF.

VOL. VI. ORIG. EDIT.

THE

LIFE AND OPINIONS

OF

TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENT.

СНАР. І.

WE'LL not ftop two moments, my dear
Sir;-only, as we have got thro' these

five volumes* (do, Sir, fit down upon a fet,-they are better than nothing) let us juft look back upon the country we have pass'd through.

What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both of us been loft, or devoured by wild beafts in it!

Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained fuch a number of Jack Affes?How they view'd and review'd us as we paffed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley !-and when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of fight,-good God! what a braying did they all fet up together!

-Prithee, Shepherd, who keeps all thofe Jack Affes? ***

-Heaven be their comforter!-What!' are they never curried? Are they never taken in * Seven, according to the original edition.

VOL. II.

B

in

in winter?-Bray,-bray,-bray. Bray on, the world is deeply your debtor;-louder still;that's nothing:-in good footh, you are ill-used.Was I a Jack Afs, I folemnly declare, I would bray in G-fol-re-ut from morning even unto night.

CHAP. II.

WHEN my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards, through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an' all ;-and, in a kind of triumph, redelivered it into Trim's hand, with a nod to lay it upon the 'scrutoire, where he found it.- -Triftram, faid he, fhall be made to conjugate every word in the Dictionary, backwards and forwards the fame way:-every word, Yorick, by this means, you fee, is converted into a thefis, or an hypothefis ;-every thefis and hypothefis have an offspring of propofitions ;--and each propofition has its own confequences and conclufions; every one of which leads. the mind on again into fresh tracts of enquiries and doubtings.-The force of this engine, added my father, is incredible in opening a child's head.

-Tis enough, brother Shandy, cried my uncle Toby, to burst it into a thousand splinters.

I prefume, faid Yorick, fmiling,-it muft be owing to this,-(for let logicians fay what they will it is not to be accounted for fufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)—that the famous

Vincent

1