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Of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in this certainly is the greatest, for I have Hafen Slawkenbergius's folio, Sir, to finish a dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the solution of Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paraeus, Panocrates, and Grangousier to relate a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all; such a head! would to Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it!
There is nothing in these two later volumes to compare, for instance, with that most wearisome exercise in double entendre, Slawkenbergius's Tale; nothing to match that painfully elaborate piece of low comedy, the consultation of philosophers and its episode of Phutatorius's mishap with the hot chestnut; no such persistent resort, in short, to those mechanical methods of mirth-making upon which Sterne, throughout a great part of the fourth volume, almost exclusively relies.
Heavens! thou art a strange creature, Slawkenbergius! what a whimsical view of the involutions of the heart of woman hast thou opened! how this can ever be translated, and yet if this specimen of Slawkenbergius's tales, and the exquisitiveness of his moral, should please the world translated shall a couple of volumes be.
'Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle Toby, and render out of Slawkenbergius's Latin, of which, as he was no great master, his translation was not always of the purest and generally least so where 'twas most wanted.
Is it clear that she will love you, not mistake gratitude for love? It is a very hazardous experiment." "So was William the Norman's, still he was William the Conqueror. Thou biddest me move on from the Past, and be consoled, yet thou wouldst make me as inapt to progress as the mule in Slawkenbergius's tale, with thy cursed interlocutions, 'Stumbling, by Saint Nicholas, every step.
My father thrust back his chair rose up put on his hat took four long strides to the door jerked it open thrust his head half way out shut the door again took no notice of the bad hinge returned to the table pluck'd my mother's thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius's book went hastily to his bureau walked slowly back twisted my mother's thread-paper about his thumb unbutton'd his waistcoat threw my mother's thread-paper into the fire bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill'd his mouth with bran confounded it; but mark! the oath of confusion was levell'd at my uncle Toby's brain which was e'en confused enough already the curse came charged only with the bran the bran, may it please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball.
Is it clear that she will love you, not mistake gratitude for love? It is a very hazardous experiment." "So was William the Norman's, still he was William the Conqueror. Thou biddest me move on from the Past, and be consoled, yet thou wouldst make me as inapt to progress as the mule in Slawkenbergius's tale, with thy cursed interlocutions, 'Stumbling, by Saint Nicholas, every step.
My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the best logician could shew him yet so strange is the weakness of man at the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decades full as entertaining as this I am translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over with half the delight it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses together his Names and his Noses.
How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius's sensorium so that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch'd the key and whose hand it was that blew the bellows as Hafen Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years we can only raise conjectures.
For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this one work towards the end of his prolegomena, which by-the-bye should have come first but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book, and the book itself he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design of his being; or to shorten my translation, for Slawkenbergius's book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this passage ever since I understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing or rather what was what and could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone before; have I Slawkenbergius, felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up myself to this undertaking.
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