⸺Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby , in the simplicity of his heart,—but Modesty .—My sister, I dare say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. I will not say whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;⸺’tis for his advantage to suppose he had,⸺as, I think, he could have added no One Word which would have improved it.
If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at the period’s end,—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis .⸺Just Heaven! how does the Poco piu and the Poco meno of the Italian artists;—the insensible more or less , determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statute! How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the fiddlestick, et cetera,—give the true swell, which gives the true pleasure!—O my countrymen;—be nice;—be cautious of your language;—and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend.
⸺“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle Toby , “does not choose to let a man come so near her ****.” Make this dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis.—Take the dash away, and write Backside ,⸺’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out, and put Cover’d way in, ’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby’s head, that if he had been left to have added one word to the sentence,⸺that word was it.
But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether the snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due time.