THERE is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence
of making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things
,go badly, as to let your critics and gentry of refined taste run
it down: Nor is there any thing so likely to make them do
it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is full
as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of
your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such
thing as a critic (by occupation) at table.
-I guard against both; for, in the first place, I have left
half a dozen places purposely open for them;-and, in the
next place, I pay them all court,-Gentlemen, I kiss your
hands I protest no company could give me half the
pleasure,-by my soul I am glad to see you I beg only
you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down with-
out any ceremony, and fall on heartily.
I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of
carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh
open for them,-and in this very spot I stand on;-but
being told by a critic, (though not by occupation,-but by
nature) that I had acquitted myself well enough, I shall fill
it up directly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be able
to make a great deal of more room next year.
-How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle Toby,
who, it seems was a military man, and whom you have repre-
sented as no fool,-be at the same time such a confused,
pudding-headed, muddle-headed fellow, as-Go look.
So, Sir Critic, I could have replied; but I scorn it.-Tis
language unurbane,-and only befitting the man who cannot
give clear and satisfactory accounts of things, or dive deep
enough into the first causes of human ignorance and con-
fusion. It is moreover the reply valiant-and therefore I
reject it; for though it might have suited my uncle Toby's
character as a soldier excellently well,-and had he not
accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the Lilla-
bullers,-as he wanted no courage, 'tis the very answer he
would have given; yet it would by no means have done for
me. You see as plain as can be, that I write as a man of
erudition;-that even my similes, my allusions, my illus-
trations, my metaphors, are erudite,-and that I must sus-
tain my character properly, and contrast it properly too,-
else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I should be
undone:-at this very moment that I am going here to fill
up one place against a critic,-I should have made an open-
ing for a couple.
-Therefore I answer thus:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did
you ever read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the Human
Understanding?-Don't answer me rashly-because many,
1 know, quote the book, who have not read it,-and many
have read it who understand it not;-If either of these is
your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three words
what the book is.-It is a history.-A history I of who? what?
where? when? Don't hurry yourself.-It is a history-book, Sir,
(which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what
passes in a man's own mind; and if you will say so much of
the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no con-
temptible figure in a metaphysic circle.
But this by the way.
Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look
down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that
the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of man,
is threefold.
Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight
and transient impressions made by objects when the said
organs are not dull. And, thirdly, a memory like unto a
sieve, not able to retain what it has received.-Call down
Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give you my cap and
bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain that
Dolly herself should understand it as well as Malebranch.
-When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has
thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by
her right side;-take that opportunity to recollect that the
organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this
world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing
which Dolly's hand is in search of.-Your organs are not so
dull that I should inform you-'tis an inch, Sir, of red
seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly
fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over hard-
ened, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the
usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very well: If
Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper
too soft-though it may receive,-it will not hold the im-
pression, how hard soever Dolly thrusts against it; and last
of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but
applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the
bell;-in any one of these three cases, the print, left by the
thimble, will be as unlike the prototype as a brass-jack.
Now you must understand that not one of these was the
true cause of the confusion in my uncle Toby's discourse;
and it is for that very reason I enlarge upon them so long,
after the manner of great physiologists-to shew the world
what it did not arise from.
What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile
source of obscurity it is,-and ever will be,-and that is the
unsteady uses of words which have perplexed the clearest
and most exalted understandings.
It is ten to one (at Arthur's) whether you have ever read
the literary histories of past ages;-if you have,-what
terrible battles, 'yclept logomachies, have they occasioned
and perpetuated with so much gall and ink-shed,-that a
good-natured man cannot read the accounts of them with-
out tears in his eyes.
Gentle critic I when thou hast weighed all this, and con-
sidered within thyself how much of thy own knowledge,
discourse, and conversation has been pestered and dis-
ordered, at one time or other, by this, and this only: -What
a pudder and racket in C0UNCILs about ovóia (essence)
and v¼óotaoiç (absence); and in the SCHOOLS of the
learned about power and about
spirit;-about essences and about quintessences;-about
substances, and about space.-What confusion in greater
THEATRES from words of little meaning, and as indeter-
minate a sense;-when thou considers this, thou wilt not
wonder at my uncle 'Toby's perplexities,-thou wilt drop a
tear of pity upon his scarp and his counterscarp;-his glacis
and his covered way;-his ravelin and his half-moon:
'Twas not by ideas,-by heaven ! his life was put in jeo-
pardy by words.