FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   380   381   382   383   384   385   386   387   388   389   390   391   392   393   394   395   396   397   398   399   400   401   402   403   404  
405   406   407   408   409   410   411   412   413   414   415   416   417   418   419   420   421   422   423   424   425   426   427   428   429   >>   >|  
ever 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 look'd 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 accent 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. Chapter 4.L. There is nothing shews the character of my father and my uncle Toby, in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of deportment, under the same accident--for I call not love a misfortune, from a persuasion, that a man's heart is ever the better for it--Great God! what must my uncle Toby's have been, when 'twas all benignity without it. My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this passion, before he married--but from a little subacid kind of drollish impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit to it like a christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, and play the Devil, and write the bitterest Philippicks against the eye that ever man wrote--there is one in verse upon somebody's eye or other, that for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; which in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus: 'A Devil 'tis--and mischief such doth work As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk.' (This will be printed with my father's Life of Socrates, &c. &c.) In short, during the whole paroxis
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   380   381   382   383   384   385   386   387   388   389   390   391   392   393   394   395   396   397   398   399   400   401   402   403   404  
405   406   407   408   409   410   411   412   413   414   415   416   417   418   419   420   421   422   423   424   425   426   427   428   429   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

father

 

Wadman

 

nature

 

married

 

passion

 

drollish

 

befell

 

submit

 

impatience

 

subacid


deportment

 

accident

 
manner
 

entertaining

 

misfortune

 
persuasion
 

benignity

 

appears

 

papers

 
subject

bitterest

 

mischief

 

transport

 

resentment

 
begins
 

Socrates

 

printed

 
Philippicks
 

paroxis

 

bounce


nights

 

christian

 
repose
 

rolling

 

fitted

 

venereal

 

romping

 
wanton
 
terrifying
 

exactions


curdled

 

claims

 

sparkling

 

petulant

 

imperious

 

protest

 

period

 
created
 

Shandy

 

Chapter