Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/157

 all his works with the left-hand, like Turpilius the Roman, or Hans Holbein of Basil—or whether 'twas more from the blunder of his head than hand—or whether, lastly, it was from the sinister turn, which every thing relating to our family was apt to take—It so fell out, however, to our reproach, that instead of the bend dexter, which since Harry the Eighth's reign was honestly our due—a bend sinister, by some of these fatalities, had been drawn quite across the field of the Shandy-arms. 'Tis scarce credible that the mind of so wise a man as my father was, could be so much incommoded with so small a matter. The word coach—let it be whose it would—or coach-man, or coach-horse, or coach-hire, could never be named in the family, but he constantly complained of carrying this vile mark of Illegitimacy upon the door of his own;