I WOULD, not give a groat for that man's knowledge in pen-
craft, who does not understand this,-That the best plain
narrative in the world, tacked very close to the last spirited
apostrophe to my uncle Toby,-would have felt both cold
and vapid upon the reader's palate;-therefore I forthwith
put an end to the chapter,-though I was in the middle of
my story.
-Writers of my stamp have one principle in common
with painters.-Where an exact copying makes our pic-
tures less striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even
more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty.-
This is to be understood cum grano salis; but be it as it will,
-as the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the
apostrophe cool, than any thing else,-'tis not very material
whether upon any other score the reader approves of it
or not.
In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby per-
ceiving that the parameter and the semi-parameter of the
conic section, angered his wound, he left off the study of
projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the
practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which,
like a spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled
force.
It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon
the daily regularity of a clean shirt,-to dismiss his barber
unshaven,-and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient
to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it, as
not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it went
on: When, lo I-all of a sudden, for the change was as quick
as lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his recovery
complained to my father, grew impatient with the surgeon;
-and one morning, as he heard his foot coming up stairs,
he shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in
order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of his
cure, which, he told him, might surely have been accom-
plished at least by that time:-He dwelt long upon the
miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his four
years' melancholy imprisonment;-adding, that had it not
been for the kind looks and fraternal cheerings of the best
of brothers,-he had long since sunk under his misfortunes.
-My father was by. My uncle Toby's eloquence brought
tears into his eyes;-'twas unexpected.-My uncle
Toby, by nature was not eloquent;-it had the greater effect.
-The surgeon was confounded;-not that there wanted
grounds for such, or greater, marks of impatience,-but
'twas unexpected too; in the four years he had attended him,
he had never seen any thing like it in my uncle Toby's car-
riage; he had never once dropped one fretful or discontented
word;-he had been all patience,-all submission.
-We lose the right of complaining sometimes by for-
bearing it;-but we oftner treble the force:-The surgeon
was astonished;-but much more so, when he heard my
uncle Toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his healing
up the wound directly,-0r sending for Monsieur Ronjat,
the King's Serjeant-Surgeon, to do it for him.
The desire of life and health is implanted in man's nature;
-the love of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to
it: These my uncle Toby had in common with his species;
-and either of them had been sufficient to account for
his earnest desire to get well and out of doors;-but I have
told you before that nothing wrought with our family after
the common way;-and from the time and manner in
which this eager desire shewed itself in the present case, the
penetrating reader will suspect there was some other cause
or crotchet for it in my uncle Toby's head: -There was so,
and 'tis the subject of the next chapter to set forth what
that cause and crotchet was. I own, when that's done, 'twill
be time to return back to the parlour fire-side, where we left
my uncle Toby in the middle of his sentence.