The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | Page 8

broken-winded horse, preferably to one of mettle;--for on such a
one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully de vanitate mundi et fuga
faeculi, as with the advantage of a death's-head before him;--that, in all other
exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along,--to as much account as in
his study;-- that he could draw up an argument in his sermon,--or a hole in his breeches,
as steadily on the one as in the other;--that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit
and judgment, were two incompatible movements.--But that upon his steed--he could
unite and reconcile every thing,--he could compose his sermon--he could compose his
cough,--and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to
sleep.--In short, the parson upon such encounters would assign any cause but the true

cause,--and he with-held the true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought
it did honour to him.
But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this gentleman's life, and
about the time when the superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been his
manner, or vanity, or call it what you will,--to run into the opposite extreme.--In the
language of the county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and
generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for
saddling: and as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than
seven miles, and in a vile country,--it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a
whole week together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an
unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the
last;--as much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of
which was generally this; that his horse was either clapp'd, or spavin'd, or greaz'd;--or he
was twitter-bon'd, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him,
which would let him carry no flesh;--so that he had every nine or ten months a bad horse
to get rid of,--and a good horse to purchase in his stead.
What the loss in such a balance might amount to, communibus annis, I would leave to a
special jury of sufferers in the same traffick, to determine;-- but let it be what it would,
the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a murmur, till at length, by repeated
ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and
upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only
disproportioned to his other expences, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable
him from any other act of generosity in his parish: Besides this, he considered that with
half the sum thus galloped away, he could do ten times as much good;--and what still
weighed more with him than all other considerations put together, was this, that it
confined all his charity into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the
least wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his parish; reserving
nothing for the impotent,--nothing for the aged,--nothing for the many comfortless scenes
he was hourly called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness and affliction dwelt
together.
For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and there appeared but two
possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it;--and these were, either to make it an
irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any application whatever,--or else be
content to ride the last poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and
infirmities, to the very end of the chapter.
As he dreaded his own constancy in the first--he very chearfully betook himself to the
second; and though he could very well have explained it, as I said, to his honour,--yet, for
that very reason, he had a spirit above it; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his
enemies, and the laughter of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story, which
might seem a panegyrick upon himself.
I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this reverend gentleman,
from this single stroke in his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest

refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I
love more, and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest
hero of antiquity.
But this is not the moral of my story: