I would not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pencraft, 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 pictures 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 anything 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 perceiving that the parameter and semiparameter 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!—all of a sudden, for the change was 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 upstairs, he shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of