IT is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading since
my uncle Toby rung the bell, when Obadiah was ordered
to saddle a horse, and go for Dr Slop, the man-midwife;-so
that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed
Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering
the emergency too, both to go and come;-though,
morally and truly speaking, the man, perhaps, has scarce
had time to get on his boots.
If the hypercritic will go upon this; and is resolved after
all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance be-
twixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;-and,
after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen
seconds, and three fifths,-should take upon him to insult
over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability,
of time;-l would remind him, that the idea of duration and
of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and suc-
cession of our ideas and is the true scholastic pendulum,
-and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,
-abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pen-
dulums whatever.
I would, therefore, desire him to consider that it is but
poor eight miles from Shandy Hall to Dr Slop, the man-
midwife's house;-and that whilst Obadiah has been going
those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle Toby
from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into England:-
That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;-
and have since travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot
and four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into
Yorkshire;-all which put together, must have prepared
the reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr Slop upon
the stage,-as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or
a concerto between the acts.
If my hypercritic is intractable, alledging, that two
minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two
minutes and thirteen seconds,-when I have said all I can
about them;-and that this plea, though it might save me
dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my
book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which,
before, was a book apocryphal:-If I am thus pressed-
I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy
about it all at once,-by acquainting him, that Obadiah
had not got above three-score yards from the stable-yard
before he met with Dr Slop;-and indeed he gave a dirty
proof that he had met with him,-and was within an ace
of giving a tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself;-but this had better begin a new
chapter.