imperfections in “Tristram Shandy,” both from the standpoint of art and taste; yet withal it remains one of the great classics in English literature, its many passages of genuine humour and wit ensuring an immortality for the wayward genius of Laurence Sterne.  (Sterne, biography:  See Vol.  XIX.)

I

On the fifth day of November, 1718, was I, Tristram Shandy, gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours.  I wish I had been born in the moon, or in any of the planets (except Jupiter or Saturn), because I never could bear cold weather; for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile dirty planet of ours, which of my conscience with reverence be it spoken I take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest; not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate, or could anyhow contrive to be called up to public charges and employments of dignity and power; but that is not my case; and therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it; for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made; for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew breath in it, to this—­I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got in skating against the wind in Flanders—­I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune, and though I will not wrong her by saying she has ever made me feel the weight of any great and signal evil, yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small hero sustained.

II

“I wonder what’s all that noise and running backwards and forwards for above stairs?” quoth my father, addressing himself after an hour and a half’s silence to my Uncle Toby, who, you must know, was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smoking his pipe all the time in mute contemplation of a new pair of black plush breeches which he had got on.  “What can they be doing, brother?” quoth my father; “We can scarce hear ourselves talk.”

“I think,” replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his mouth and striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left thumb as he began his sentence; “I think,” says he—­but to enter rightly into my Uncle Toby’s sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to enter just a little into his character.

III

The wound in my Uncle Toby’s groin, which he received at the siege of Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

He was four years totally confined, partly to his bed and all of it to his room; and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffered unspeakable misery.