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

Volume III, Chapter 83

203 of 315 · 2 min of reading

I AM now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now,

four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S

These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes----In the fifth volume I have been very good,----the precise line I have described in it being this:

One very squiggly line across the page with loops marked A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D.

By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to Navarre,--and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,--I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse’s devils led me the round you see marked D.--for as for c c c c c they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,--or with my own transgressions at the letters A B D--they vanish into nothing.

In this last volume I have done better still--for from the end of Le Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby’s campaigns,--I have scarce stepped a yard out of my way.

If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible----by the good leave of his grace of Benevento’s devils----but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of going on even thus:

which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master’s ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to the right hand or to the left.

This right line,--the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines----

----The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero----

----The best line!_ say cabbage planters----is the shortest line, says Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.----

I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next birth- day suits!

----What a journey!

Pray can you tell me,--that is, without anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines----by what mistake----who told them so----or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of GRAVITATION?

Alluding to the first edition.

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End of part 203 of 315