In the first volume, therefore, the author does literally everything
but make the slightest progress with his story. Starting off abruptly
with a mock physiologic disquisition upon the importance of a
proper ordering of their mental states on the part of the intending
progenitors of children, he philosophizes gravely on this theme for
two or three chapters; and then wanders away into an account of the
local midwife, upon whose sole services Mrs. Shandy, in opposition
to her husband, was inclined to rely. From the midwife it is an easy
transition to her patron and protector, the incumbent of the parish,
and this, in its turn, suggests a long excursus on the character,
habits, appearance, home, friends, enemies, and finally death, burial,
and epitaph of the Rev. Mr. Yorick. Thence we return to Mr. and Mrs.
Shandy, and are made acquainted, in absurdly minute detail, with an
agreement entered into between them with reference to the place of
sojourn to be selected for the lady's accouchement, the burlesque
deed which records this compact being actually set out at full length.
Thence, again, we are beckoned away by the jester to join him in
elaborate and not very edifying ridicule of the Catholic doctrine
of ante-natal baptism; and thence--but it would be useless to follow
further the windings and doublings of this literary hare.

Yet though the book, as one thus summarizes it, may appear a mere
farrago of digressions, it nevertheless, after its peculiar fashion,
advances. Such definite purpose as underlies the tricks and grimaces
of its author is by degrees accomplished; and before we reach the end
of the first volume the highly humorous, if extravagantly idealized,
figure of Mr. Shandy takes bodily shape and consistency before our
eyes. It is a mistake, I think, of Sir Walter Scott's to regard the
portrait of this eccentric philosopher as intended for a satire upon
perverted and deranged erudition--as the study of a man "whom too much