And to do justice to _Slawkenbergius_, he has entered the list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man who had ever entered it before him——and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be _en-nich’d_ as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to model their books by——for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject—examined every part of it _dialectically_——then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could strike—or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him to cast upon it—collating, collecting, and compiling——begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: so that _Slawkenbergius_ his book may properly be considered, not only as a model—but as a thorough-stitched DIGEST and regular institute of _noses_, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known about them.
For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father’s collecting, wrote either, plump upon noses——or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as _Prignitz_, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-houses in _Silesia_, which he had rummaged——has informed us, that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any _given_ tract of country, except _Crim Tartary_, where they are all crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;—the difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking notice of;——but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d and driven by the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it (bating the case of idiots, whom _Prignitz_, who had lived many years in _Turky_, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)—it so happens, and ever must, says _Prignitz_, that the excellency of the nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wearer’s fancy.
It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in _Slawkenbergius_, that I say nothing likewise of _Scroderus (Andrea)_ who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn _Prignitz_ with great violence—proving it in his own way, first _logically_, and then by a series of stubborn facts, “That so far was _Prignitz_ from the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the nose begat the fancy.”
—The learned suspected _Scroderus_ of an indecent sophism in this—and _Prignitz_ cried out aloud in the dispute, that _Scroderus_ had shifted the idea upon him——but _Scroderus_ went on, maintaining his thesis.
My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he should take in this affair; when _Ambrose Paræus_ decided it in a moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at once.
Be witness——
I don’t acquaint the learned reader—in saying it, I mention it only to shew the learned, I know the fact myself——
That this _Ambrose Paræus_ was chief surgeon and nose-mender to _Francis_ the ninth of _France_, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings (I know not which)—and that, except in the slip he made in his story of _Taliacotius_’s noses, and his manner of setting them on—he was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand.
Now _Ambrose Paræus_ convinced my father, that the true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon which _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_ had wasted so much learning and fine parts——was neither this nor that——but that the length and goodness of the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse’s breast——as the flatness and shortness of _puisne_ noses was to the firmness and elastic repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively—which, tho’ happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive _ad mensuram suam legitimam_;——but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother’s breast—by sinking into it, quoth _Paraeus_, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up, refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever.
I have but two things to observe of _Paraeus_; first, That he proves and explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression:—for which may his soul for ever rest in peace!
And, secondly, that besides the systems of _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_, which _Ambrose Paræus_ his hypothesis effectually overthrew—it overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and every thing in it, except my uncle _Toby_, quite upside down.
Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-door.
My mother, you must know———but I have fifty things more necessary to let you know first—I have a hundred difficulties which I have promised to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domestick misadventures crowding in upon me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another. A cow broke in (tomorrow morning) to my uncle _Toby_’s fortifications, and eat up two rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced his horn-work and covered way.——_Trim_ insists upon being tried by a court-martial—the cow to be shot—_Slop_ to be _crucifix’d_—myself to be _tristram’d_ and at my very baptism made a martyr of;——poor unhappy devils that we all are!——I want swaddling——but there is no time to be lost in exclamations——I have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle _Toby_ in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d already.——Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in—this certainly is the greatest, for I have _Hafen Slawkenbergius_’s folio, Sir, to finish——a dialogue between my father and my uncle _Toby_, upon the solution of _Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Panocrates_, and _Grangousier_ to relate—a tale out of _Slawkenbergius_ to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all;——such a head!—would to Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it!
C H A P. XXXII
THERE was not any one scene more entertaining in our family—and to do it justice in this point;——and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the world concerning this one article the more solemn——that I believe in my soul (unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of all things never made or put a family together (in that period at least of it which I have sat down to write the story of)——where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the SHANDY FAMILY.
Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours——than what frequently arose out of this self-same chapter of long noses——especially when my father’s imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle _Toby_’s too.
My uncle _Toby_ would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_’s solutions into it.
Whether they were above my uncle _Toby_’s reason——or contrary to it——or that his brain was like _damp_ timber, and no spark could possibly take hold——or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_’s doctrines——I say not—let schoolmen—scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it among themselves——
’Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle _Toby_, and render out of _Slawkenbergius_’s _Latin_, of which, as he was no great master, his translation was not always of the purest——and generally least so where ’twas most wanted.—This naturally open’d a door to a second misfortune;——that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle _Toby_’s eyes——my father’s ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle _Toby_’s——neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of my father’s lecture.