on its side, and Interest was every half-year stepping in to strengthen it; so that the whimsicality of my father’s brain was far from having the whole honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.—For in a great measure he might be said to have suck’d this in with his mother’s milk. He did his part however.⸺If education planted the mistake (in case it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.
He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.—And for the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly noses, following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.⸻He would often boast that the Shandy family rank’d very high in King Harry the VIII ’s time, but owed its rise to no state engine—he would say—but to that only;⸺but that, like other families, he would add⸺it had felt the turn of the wheel, and had never recovered the blow of my great-grandfather’s nose.⸺It was an ace of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head—and as vile a one for an unfortunate family as ever turn’d up trumps.
⸻Fair and softly, gentle reader!⸻where is thy fancy carrying thee?⸺If there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather’s nose, I mean the external organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face⸺and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third⸺that is, measured downwards from the setting on of the hair.⸺
⸺What a life of it has an author, at this pass!