The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman · Laurence Sterne

Volume II, Chapter 61

113 of 315 · 2 min of reading

----SEE if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to light their pipes!----’Tis abominable, answered Didius;_ it should not go unnoticed, said doctor Kysarcius---- => he was of the Kysarcii of the Low Countries.

Methinks, said Didius, half rising from his chair, in order to remove a bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him and Yorick----you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit upon a more proper place, Mr. Yorick--or at least upon a more proper occasion to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about: If the sermon is of no better worth than to light pipes with----’twas certainly, Sir, not good enough to be preached before so learned a body; and if ’twas good enough to be preached before so learned a body----’twas certainly Sir, too good to light their pipes with afterwards.

----I have got him fast hung up, quoth Didius to himself, upon one of the two horns of my dilemma----let him get off as he can.

I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this sermon, quoth Yorick, upon this occasion----that I declare, Didius, I would suffer martyrdom--and if it was possible my horse with me, a thousand times over, before I would sit down and make such another: I was delivered of it at the wrong end of me----it came from my head instead of my heart----and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the writing and preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it, in this manner--To preach, to shew the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit--to parade in the eyes of the vulgar with the beggarly accounts of a little learning, tinsel’d over with a few words which glitter, but convey little light and less warmth----is a dishonest use of the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our hands--’Tis not preaching the gospel--but ourselves----For my own part, continued Yorick, I had rather direct five words point-blank to the heart.--

As Yorick pronounced the word point-blank, my uncle Toby rose up to say something upon projectiles----when a single word and no more uttered from the opposite side of the table drew every one’s ears towards it--a word of all others in the dictionary the last in that place to be expected--a word I am ashamed to write--yet must be written----must be read--illegal--uncanonical--guess ten thousand guesses, multiplied into themselves--rack--torture your invention for ever, you’re where you was----In short, I’ll tell it in the next chapter.

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End of part 113 of 315