When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social
conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on which
many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets there is
a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love
ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes,
excepting at the due season.
XX.
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but
in striking true.
XX.
To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring
it to full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of
itself.
XX.
The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from
the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the
ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to the
dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.
XX.
Each night ought to have its menu.
XX.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours
everything, that is, familiarity.
XX.
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of
two consecutive nights, he has married too early.
XX.
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it
is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from
time to time.
XX.
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to
awaken.
XX.
The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or
an imbecile.
XX.
The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.
XX.
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a
throne.
XX.
A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making
her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.
It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that Sterne addressed, in Tristram Shandy, the letter written by Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry the widow Wadman.
These celebrated instructions which the most original of English writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.
“MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,
“What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of
love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho’ not
so well for me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of
instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to
thee.
“Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and
thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that
thou should’st have dipped the pen this moment into the ink
instead of myself; but that not being the case—Mrs. Shandy being
now close beside me, preparing for bed—I have thrown together
without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints
and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this,
to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of
the manner in which it will be accepted.
“In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in
the affair—though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I
blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well
knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its
offices thou neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one (during
the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I
would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the
enterprise, whether it be in the morning or in the afternoon,
without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty
God, that He may defend thee from the evil one.
“Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or
five days, but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig
before her, thro’ absence of mind, she should be able to discover
how much has been cut away by Time—how much by Trim.
“‘Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.
“Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim,
Toby—
“‘That women are timid.‘ And ‘tis well they are—else there would be no dealing with them. “Let
