connected with the plot, however, is the following passage, which needs a little introduction. Mr. Shandy had a portentous sense of the nonapparent relations between things; as for example of a name upon a man's career. In the course of speculations, which occupy many pages, he had reached a determination to baptise the boy Trismegistus a name which could not fail to lead him to greatness. Unluckily, he was in bed and undressed when the maid Susannah ran to say that the new-born child was dying, and that Mr. Yorick, who was in attendance, could not risk waiting while Mr. Shandy put on his clothes. Susan was accordingly entrusted with the name, and ran, confident in her memory. What happened must be read in the book; the following chapters tell how the truth was broken to Mr. Shandy, and how Uncle Toby and his retainer commented on the misfortune. If my wife will but venture him brother Toby, Trismegistus shall be dressed and brought down to us, whilst you and I are getting our breakfast together. Go, tell Susannah, Obadiah, to step here. She is run up stairs, answered Obadiah, this very instant, sobbing and crying and wringing her hands as if her heart would break. We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby's face, for some time, - we shall have a devilish month of it, brother Toby, said my father, setting his arms a-kimbo, and shaking his head: fire, water, women, wind, brother Toby! 'Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby. That it is, cried my father, to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman's house. Little boots it to the peace of a family, brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved, whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads. And what's the matter, Susannah? . . . They have called the child Tristram; — and my mistress is just got out of an hysteric fit about it. - No!-'tis not my fault said Susanhah, I told him it was Tristram-gistus. Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, said my father, taking down his hat: — but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common reader would imagine. -For he spake in the sweetest modulation,—and took down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs that ever affliction harmonised and attuned together. Go to the bowling-green for Corporal Trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking to Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room. Το Your honour, said Trim, shutting the parlour door before he began to speak, has heard, I imagine, of this unlucky accident. O, yes, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and it gives me great concern. I am heartily concerned too; but I hope your Honour, replied Trim, will do me the justice to believe that it was not in the least owing to me. thee, Trim? cried my uncle Toby, looking kindly in his 'twas Susannah's and the Curate's folly betwixt them. What business could they have together, an' please your Honour, in the garden? In the gallery, thou meanest, replied my uncle Toby. face, Trim found he was upon a wrong scent, and stopped short with a low bow. - Two misfortunes, quoth the Corporal to himself, are twice as many at least as are needful to be talked over at one time. the mischief the cow has done in breaking into the fortifications may be told his Honour hereafter.— Trim's casuistry and address under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle Toby; so he went on with what he had to say to Trim as follows: ... For my own part, Trim, though I can see little or no difference betwixt my nephew's being called Tristram and Trismegistus; yet, as the thing sits so near my brother's heart, Trim, I would freely give a hundred pounds rather than it should have happened. A hundred pounds, an' please your Honour! replied Trim, - I would not give a cherry-stone to boot. . . . Nor would I, Trim, upon my own account, quoth my uncle Toby; - but my brother whom there is no arguing with in this case, — maintains that a great deal more depends, Trim, upon a christian name than what ignorant people imagine; for he says there never was a great or heroic action performed since the world began by one called Tristram.— Nay, he will have it, Trim, that a man can neither -- 'Tis all fancy, an' please be learned, nor wise, nor brave. your Honour :- I fought just as well, continued the Corporal, when the regiment called me Trim, as when they called me James Butler.... And for my own part, said my uncle Toby, though I should blush to boast of myself, Trim;—yet, had my name been Alexander, I could have done no more at Namur than my duty. Bless your Honour! cried Trim, advancing three steps as he spoke, does a man think of his christian name when he goes upon the attack? . . . Or when he stands in the trench, Trim? cried my uncle Toby, looking firm. . . . Or when he enters a breach? said Trim, pushing in between two chairs. Or forces the lines? cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch like a pike. . . . Or facing a platoon? cried Trim, presenting his stick like a firelock. Or when he marches up the glacis? cried my uncle Toby, looking warm and setting his foot upon his stool. ... These two chapters present in little the whole book or would present it if one could add Mr. Shandy's lamentation. But this is wholly impossible. The Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, published in 1765-showed very much the same characteristics; the same humour, the same mastery of pathos (however affected), the same. whimsical style. But it is unrelieved by the wholesome presence of my Uncle Toby and his retainer, and, prodigiously clever as it is, it tastes sickly. Yet to many readers the acute and sympathetic observation of foreign manners is an agreeable substitute for Mr. Shandy's fantastic erudition ; and, on the whole, the book is more easily readable than Tristram. It should be noted that the deliberate cultivation of sensibility in both marks the ascendant influence of Rousseau. CHAPTER XIII THE CLUB. JOHNSON, GOLDSMITH, BURKE, GIBBON, HUME FATE has dealt lavishly with Samuel Johnson. In his life of seventy-five years, from 1709 to 1784, he was, at least in a formal sense, the contemporary of Swift and Pope, who died when Johnson was nearer forty than thirty, and of Burns, who was born when Johnson was fifty and who published his first volume the year after Johnson's death. But his true contemporaries were the men of the period which lies between that dominated by Swift and Pope and the newer revolutionary epoch of which Burns and Blake were the great forerunners. This group included Gray and Collins; it included Goldsmith, a master in many arts; it included the great novelists, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne ; it included Edmund Burke and Edward Gibbon; all of them, in the most evident sense, men of genius. And yet Johnson, whose literary work reveals him. merely as a man of great talent, dominates the intellectual life of that period to our apprehension, as he dominated it in the eyes of his own day. The truth is that Johnson was a man of genius, whose genius found its full expression in one of He those arts which, like the actor's or the singer's, perish normally with the body of the artist. had a genius for conversation and social intercourse. And here is the special kindness of fate, that he alone among great talkers has come down to us still talking. Fate attached to him the greatest of all artists in biography, and, to leave nothing wanting, threw in Sir Joshua. It is unnecessary to do more than recall the outline of a career, so brilliantly sketched in brief by Macaulay, which took the son of a provincial bookseller from Lichfield first to Oxford, then to futile attempts after success as a schoolmaster, and lastly to literary hack work in London. Yet one may note that his first important work, the declamatory satire London, was published in the same year (1738) as Pope's Epilogue to the Satires, and Johnson was ranked as a rival to the elder poet. The comparison might be justified by the following passage from The Vanity of Human Wishes, his adaptation to contemporary topics of Juvenal's Tenth Satire. The picture is autobiographic ; Johnson's own struggles, not yet completed when he wrote, are the theme: When first the college rolls receive his name, Caught from the strong contagion of the gown. |