Though the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk , in his affair with widow Wadman , had fixed him in a resolution never more to think of the sex—or of aught which belonged to it;—yet corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed in my uncle Toby’s case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and strong citadel.⸺In Trim’s case there was a concurrence of nothing in the world, but of him and Bridget in the kitchen;—though in truth, the love and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had my uncle Toby employed his time and genius in tagging of points⸺I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down his arms, and followed his example with pleasure. When therefore my uncle Toby sat down before the mistress—corporal Trim incontinently took ground before the maid.
Now, my dear friend Garrick , whom I have so much cause to esteem and honour—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no matter)—can it escape your penetration—I defy it—that so many playwrights, and opificers of chitchat have ever since been working upon Trim’s and my uncle Toby’s pattern.⸺I care not what Aristotle , or Pacuvius , or Bossu , or Ricaboni say—(though I never read one of them)⸺there is not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and madam Pompadour’s vis-à-vis; than betwixt a single amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing throughout a grand drama⸺Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind—is quite lost in five acts;—but that is neither here nor there.
After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my uncle Toby’s quarter, a most minute account of every particular of