Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/206

 open him amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were lost,—should the wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote, or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also,—and Slawkenbergius only left,—there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again. A treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else,—at matin, noon, and vespers was Hafen Slawkenbergius his recreation and delight: 'twas for ever in his hands,—you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon's prayer-book,—so worn, so glazed, so contrited