When the letter was brought into the parlour, which contained the news of my brother’s death, my father had got forwards again upon his journey to within a stride of the compasses of the very same stage of _Nevers._——By your leave, Mons. _Sanson_, cried my father, striking the point of his compasses through _Nevers_ into the table—and nodding to my uncle _Toby_ to see what was in the letter—twice of 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 _Toby._——What—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 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.—
C H A P. 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_—or slept it off, as the _Laplanders_—or hanged it, as the _English_, or drowned it, as the _Germans_,—nor did he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or 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.—O my _Tullia!_ my daughter! my child!—still, still, still,—’twas O 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—no body 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 let 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 clue 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 never would be an end of the disaster——See here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have done!——It was not me, 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 into my father’s head, that ’twas difficult to string them together, so as to make any thing of a 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, 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 _Mycenæ_, and _Thebes_ and _Delos_, and _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 _Cizicum_ and _Mitylenæ?_ The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more; the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piece-meals 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 _Ægina_ towards _Megara_,” (_when can this have been? thought my uncle Toby_,) “I began to view the country round about. _Ægina_ was behind 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 voyage 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 impossible, cried my uncle _Toby._—Simpleton! said my father,—’twas forty years before Christ was born.