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Chapter 30 Nihil me pænitet hujus nasi, quoth Pamphagus;that isMy nose has been the making of me.Nec est cur pniteat, replies Cocles; that is, How the duce should such a nose fail? The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my fathers disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestowd upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.My father pishd and pughd at first most terriblytis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro and thro in its most strict and literal interpretationhe could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.Learned men, brother Toby, dont write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.Ill study the mystick and the allegorick sensehere is some room to turn a mans self in, brother. My father read on. Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of distressand for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire.) Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledgeso that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.Ive got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.Pshaw! cried my father, scratching onI might as well be seven miles off.Ive done itsaid my father, snapping his fingersSee, my dear brother Toby, how I have mended the sense.But you have marrd a word, replied my uncle Toby.My father put on his spectaclesbit his lipand tore out the leaf in a passion. |
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