THE learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr Joseph
Hall, who was Bishop of Exeter in King James the First's
reign, tells us in one of his Decads, at the end of his divine
art of meditation, imprinted at London, in the year 1610,
by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, 'That it is an
abominable thing for a man to commend himself;'-and
I really think it is so.
And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in
a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be
found out;-l think it is full as abominable, that a man
should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with
the conceit of it rotting in his head.
This is precisely my situation.
For in this long digression which I was accidentally led
into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a
master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all
along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader,-not for want
of penetration in him-but because 'tis an excellence seldom
looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;-and it is
this: That though my digressions are all fair, as you observe,
-and that I fly off from what I am about, as far and as often
too as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care
to order affairs so, that my main business does not stand
still in my absence.
I was just going, for example, to have given you the great
outlines of my uncle Toby's most whimsical character;-
when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us, and
led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart
of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this you per-
ceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went
on gently all the time;-not the great contours of it,-that
was impossible,-but some familiar strokes and faint desig-
nations of it, were here and there touched in, as we went
along, so that you are much better acquainted with my
uncle Toby now than you was before.
By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a
species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into
it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance
with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is
progressive too,-and at the same time.
This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth's
moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her
progress in her elliptic orbit which brings about the year,
and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we
enjoy;-though I own it suggested the thought,-as I be-
lieve the greatest of our boasted improvements and dis-
coveries have come from such trifling hints.
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;-they are
the life, the soul of reading;-take them out of this book
for instance,-you might as well take the book along with
them;-one cold eternal winter would reign in every page
of it; restore them to the writer;-he steps forth like a bride-
groom,-bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids the
appetite to fail.
All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management
of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader,
but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly
pitiable: For, if he begins a digression,-from that moment,
I observe, his whole work stands stock still;-and if he goes
on with his main work,-then there is an end of his digres-
sion.
-This is vile work.-For which reason, from the be-
ginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work
and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and
have so complicated and involved the digressive and pro-
gressive movements, one wheel within another, that the
whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;-and,
what's more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it
pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life
and good spirits.