Widow Wadman’s Eye
“I am half distracted, Captain Shandy,” said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my uncle Toby’s sentry-box; “a mote—or sand—or something—I know not what, has got into this eye of mine;—do look into it—it is not in the white.”
In saying which Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up. “Do look into it,” said she.
Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart as ever child looked into a raree show-box; and ’twere as much a sin to have hurt thee.
If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature, I’ve nothing to say to it.
My uncle Toby never did; and I will answer for him that he would have sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January (which, you know, takes in both the hot and cold months) with an eye as fine as the Thracian Rhodope’s beside him, without being able to tell whether it was a black or a blue one.
The difficulty was to get my uncle Toby to look at one at all.
’Tis surmounted. And—
I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it—looking-and looking—then rubbing his eyes—and looking again, with twice the good nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun.
In vain! for, by all the powers which animate the organ—Widow Wadman’s left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right;—there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of opaque matter floating in it. There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions into thine.
If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longer, thou art undone.
An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon, in this respect, that it is not so much the eye or the cannon in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye—and the carriage of the cannon; by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don’t think the comparison a bad one; however, as ’tis made and placed at the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all I desire in return is that whenever I speak of Mrs. Wadman’s eyes (except once in the next period) that you keep it in your fancy.
“I protest, Madam,” said my uncle Toby, “I can see nothing whatever in your eye.”
“It is not in the white,” said Mrs. Wadman. My uncle Toby looked with might and main into the pupil.
Now, of all the eyes which ever were created, from your own, Madam, up to those of Venus herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a head, there never was an eye of them all so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose as the very eye at which he was looking;—it was not, Madam, a rolling eye—a romping, or a wanton one,—nor was it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious—of high claims and terrifying exactions, which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature of which my uncle Toby was made up; but ’twas an eye full of gentle salutations—and soft responses—speaking—not like the trumpet-stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to holds coarse converse, but whispering soft—like the last low accents of an expiring saint-“How can you live comfortless, Captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on—or trust your cares to?”
It was an eye——
But I shall be in love with it myself if I say another word about it.
It did my uncle Toby’s business.
Laurence Sterne (1713–1768).
BUMPERS, SQUIRE JONES.
Ye good fellows all,
Who love to be told where good claret’s in store,
Attend to the call
Of one who’s ne’er frighted,
But greatly delighted
With six bottles more.
Be sure you don’t pass
The good house, Moneyglass,
Which the jolly red god so peculiarly owns,
’Twill well suit your humour—
For, pray, what would you more,
Than mirth with good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones?
Ye lovers who pine
For lasses that oft prove as cruel as fair,
Who whimper and whine
For lilies and roses,
With eyes, lips, and noses,
Or tip of an ear!
Come hither, I’ll show ye
How Phillis and Chloe
No more shall occasion such sighs and such groans;
For what mortal’s so stupid
As not to quit Cupid,
When called to good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones?
Ye poets who write,
And brag of your drinking famed Helicon’s brook,—
Though all you get by it
Is a dinner ofttimes,
In reward for your rhymes,
With Humphry the Duke,—
Learn Bacchus to follow,
And quit your Apollo,
Forsake all the Muses, those senseless old crones:
Our jingling of glasses
Your rhyming surpasses
When crowned with good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones.
Ye soldiers so stout,
With plenty of oaths, though no plenty of coin,
Who make such a rout
Of all your commanders,
Who served us in Flanders,
And eke at the Boyne,—
Come leave off your rattling
Of sieging and battling,
And know you’d much better to sleep in whole bones;
Were you sent to Gibraltar,
Your notes you’d soon alter,
And wish for good claret, and bumpers, Squire Jones.
Ye clergy so wise,
Who mysteries profound can demonstrate so clear,
How worthy to rise!
You preach once a week,
But your tithes never seek
Above once in a year!
Come here without failing,
And leave off your railing
’Gainst bishops providing for dull stupid drones;
Says the text so divine,
“What is life without wine?”
Then away with the claret,—a bumper, Squire Jones!
Ye lawyers so just,
Be the cause what it will, who so learnedly plead,
How worthy of trust!
You know black from white,
You prefer wrong to right,
As you chance to be fee’d:—
Leave musty reports
And forsake the king’s courts,
Where dulness and discord have set up their thrones;
Burn Salkeld and Ventris,4
And all your damned entries,
And away with the claret,—a bumper, Squire Jones!
Ye physical tribe
Whose knowledge consists in hard words and grimace,
Whene’er you prescribe,
Have at your devotion,
Pills, bolus, or potion,
Be what will the case;
Pray where is the need
To purge, blister, and bleed?
When, ailing yourselves, the whole faculty owns
That the forms of old Galen
Are not so prevailing
As mirth with good claret,—and bumpers, Squire Jones!
Ye fox-hunters eke,
That follow the call of the horn and the hound,
Who your ladies forsake
Before they’re awake,
To beat up the brake
Where the vermin is found:—
Leave Piper and Blueman,
Shrill Duchess and Trueman,—
No music is found in such dissonant tones!
Would you ravish your ears
With the songs of the spheres,
Hark away to the claret,—a bumper, Squire Jones!
Arthur Dawson (1700?–1775).