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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXVI.</h2>
<p>I told the Christian reader—I say Christian—hoping
he is one—and if he is not, I am sorry for it—and only
beg he will consider the matter with himself, and not lay the blame
entirely upon this book—</p>
<p>I told him, Sir—for in good truth, when a man is telling a
story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be
going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the
reader's fancy—which, for my own part, if I did not take heed
to do more than at first, there is so much unfixed and equivocal
matter starting up, with so many breaks and gaps in it,—and
so little service do the stars afford, which, nevertheless, I hang
up in some of the darkest passages, knowing that the world is apt
to lose its way, with all the lights the sun itself at noon-day can
give it—and now you see, I am lost myself—!</p>
<p>—But 'tis my father's fault; and whenever my brains come
to be dissected, you will perceive, without spectacles, that he has
left a large uneven thread, as you sometimes see in an unsaleable
piece of cambrick, running along the whole length of the web, and
so untowardly, you cannot so much as cut out a..., (here I hang up
a couple of lights again)—or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, but
it is seen or felt.—</p>
<p>Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum, sayeth
Cardan. All which being considered, and that you see 'tis morally
impracticable for me to wind this round to where I set
out—</p>
<p>I begin the chapter over again.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXVII.</h2>
<p>I told the Christian reader in the beginning of the chapter
which preceded my uncle Toby's apologetical oration,—though
in a different trope from what I should make use of now, That the
peace of Utrecht was within an ace of creating the same shyness
betwixt my uncle Toby and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt the
queen and the rest of the confederating powers.</p>
<p>There is an indignant way in which a man sometimes dismounts his
horse, which, as good as says to him, 'I'll go afoot, Sir, all the
days of my life before I would ride a single mile upon your back
again.' Now my uncle Toby could not be said to dismount his horse
in this manner; for in strictness of language, he could not be said
to dismount his horse at all—his horse rather flung
him—and somewhat viciously, which made my uncle Toby take it
ten times more unkindly. Let this matter be settled by
state-jockies as they like.—It created, I say, a sort of
shyness betwixt my uncle Toby and his hobby-horse.—He had no
occasion for him from the month of March to November, which was the
summer after the articles were signed, except it was now and then
to take a short ride out, just to see that the fortifications and
harbour of Dunkirk were demolished, according to stipulation.</p>
<p>The French were so backwards all that summer in setting about
that affair, and Monsieur Tugghe, the deputy from the magistrates
of Dunkirk, presented so many affecting petitions to the
queen,—beseeching her majesty to cause only her thunderbolts
to fall upon the martial works, which might have incurred her
displeasure,—but to spare—to spare the mole, for the
mole's sake; which, in its naked situation, could be no more than
an object of pity—and the queen (who was but a woman) being
of a pitiful disposition,—and her ministers also, they not
wishing in their hearts to have the town dismantled, for these
private reasons,...—...; so that the whole went heavily on
with my uncle Toby; insomuch, that it was not within three full
months, after he and the corporal had constructed the town, and put
it in a condition to be destroyed, that the several commandants,
commissaries, deputies, negociators, and intendants, would permit
him to set about it.—Fatal interval of inactivity!</p>
<p>The corporal was for beginning the demolition, by making a
breach in the ramparts, or main fortifications of the
town—No,—that will never do, corporal, said my uncle
Toby, for in going that way to work with the town, the English
garrison will not be safe in it an hour; because if the French are
treacherous—They are as treacherous as devils, an' please
your honour, said the corporal—It gives me concern always
when I hear it, Trim, said my uncle Toby;—for they don't want
personal bravery; and if a breach is made in the ramparts, they may
enter it, and make themselves masters of the place when they
please:—Let them enter it, said the corporal, lifting up his
pioneer's spade in both his hands, as if he was going to lay about
him with it,—let them enter, an' please your honour, if they
dare.—In cases like this, corporal, said my uncle Toby,
slipping his right hand down to the middle of his cane, and holding
it afterwards truncheon-wise with his fore-finger
extended,—'tis no part of the consideration of a commandant,
what the enemy dare,—or what they dare not do; he must act
with prudence. We will begin with the outworks both towards the sea
and the land, and particularly with fort Louis, the most distant of
them all, and demolish it first,—and the rest, one by one,
both on our right and left, as we retreat towards the
town;—then we'll demolish the mole,—next fill up the
harbour,—then retire into the citadel, and blow it up into
the air: and having done that, corporal, we'll embark for
England.—We are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting
himself—Very true, said my uncle Toby—looking at the
church.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXVIII.</h2>
<p>A delusive, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt
my uncle Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk,—for a
moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were
slipping from under him:—still—still all went on
heavily—the magic left the mind the weaker—Stillness,
with Silence at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew
their gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby's head;—and
Listlessness, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly
down beside him in his arm-chair.—No longer Amberg and
Rhinberg, and Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year,—and
the prospect of Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond,
the next,—hurried on the blood:—No longer did saps, and
mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair
enemy of man's repose:—No more could my uncle Toby, after
passing the French lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence
break into the heart of France,—cross over the Oyes, and with
all Picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of Paris, and
fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory:—No more was he
to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the
Bastile, and awake with it streaming in his head.</p>
<p>—Softer visions,—gentler vibrations stole sweetly in
upon his slumbers;—the trumpet of war fell out of his
hands,—he took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all others
the most delicate! the most difficult!—how wilt thou touch
it, my dear uncle Toby?</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXIX.</h2>
<p>Now, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way
of talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle
Toby's courtship of widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write
them, would turn out one of the most complete systems, both of the
elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever
was addressed to the world—are you to imagine from thence,
that I shall set out with a description of what love is? whether
part God and part Devil, as Plotinus will have it—</p>
<p>—Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole
of love to be as ten—to determine with Ficinus, 'How many
parts of it—the one,—and how many the other;'—or
whether it is all of it one great Devil, from head to tail, as
Plato has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of
his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my opinion of Plato is
this; that he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of
much the same temper and way of reasoning with doctor Baynyard, who
being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of
'em at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a herse
and six—rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was nothing
in the world, but one great bouncing Cantharidis.—</p>
<p>I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this
monstrous liberty in arguing, but what Nazianzen cried out (that
is, polemically) to Philagrius—</p>
<p>'(Greek)!' O rare! 'tis fine reasoning, Sir
indeed!—'(Greek)' and most nobly do you aim at truth, when
you philosophize about it in your moods and passions.</p>
<p>Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to
inquire, whether love is a disease,—or embroil myself with
Rhasis and Dioscorides, whether the seat of it is in the brain or
liver;—because this would lead me on, to an examination of
the two very opposite manners, in which patients have been
treated—the one, of Aoetius, who always begun with a cooling
clyster of hempseed and bruised cucumbers;—and followed on
with thin potations of water-lilies and purslane—to which he
added a pinch of snuff, of the herb Hanea;—and where Aoetius
durst venture it,—his topaz-ring.</p>
<p>—The other, that of Gordonius, who (in his cap. 15. de
Amore) directs they should be thrashed, 'ad putorem
usque,'—till they stink again.</p>
<p>These are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great
stock of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the
progress of my uncle Toby's affairs: I must anticipate thus much,
That from his theories of love, (with which, by the way, he
contrived to crucify my uncle Toby's mind, almost as much as his
amours themselves,)—he took a single step into
practice;—and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he
found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was
making my uncle Toby a new pair of breeches, he produced
Gordonius's effect upon my uncle Toby without the disgrace.</p>
<p>What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place:
all that is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this—That
whatever effect it had upon my uncle Toby,—it had a vile
effect upon the house;—and if my uncle Toby had not smoaked
it down as he did, it might have had a vile effect upon my father
too.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXX.</h2>
<p>—'Twill come out of itself by and bye.—All I contend
for is, that I am not obliged to set out with a definition of what
love is; and so long as I can go on with my story intelligibly,
with the help of the word itself, without any other idea to it,
than what I have in common with the rest of the world, why should I
differ from it a moment before the time?—When I can get on no
further,—and find myself entangled on all sides of this
mystic labyrinth,—my Opinion will then come in, in
course,—and lead me out.</p>
<p>At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in
telling the reader, my uncle Toby fell in love:</p>
<p>—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a
man is fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or
up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even over head and ears
in it,—carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love
is a thing below a man:—this is recurring again to Plato's
opinion, which, with all his divinityship,—I hold to be
damnable and heretical:—and so much for that.</p>
<p>Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle Toby fell
into it.</p>
<p>—And possibly, gentle reader, with such a
temptation—so wouldst thou: For never did thy eyes behold, or
thy concupiscence covet any thing in this world, more concupiscible
than widow Wadman.</p>
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