The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain of science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the first year of his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in Italy or Flanders , of which, by one means or other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he would read with that intense application and delight, that he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner.
In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli and Cataneo , translated from the Italian ;—likewise Stevinus , Moralis , the Chevalier de Ville , Lorini , Cochorn , Sheeter , the Count de Pagan , the Marshal Vauban , Mons. Blondel , with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don Quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library.
Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in August , ninety-nine, my uncle Toby found it necessary to understand a little of projectiles:—and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from the fountainhead, he began with N. Tartaglia , who it seems was the first man who detected the imposition of a cannonball’s doing all that mischief under the notion of a right line—This N. Tartaglia proved to my uncle Toby to be an impossible thing.
⸺Endless is the search of Truth.
No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the cannonball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road the ball did go: For which purpose he was obliged to set off afresh with old Maltus , and studied him devoutly.—He proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius , wherein, by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise part to be a Parabola —or