would procure thee the most beautiful women in my empire, and I would oblige thee, nolens, volens, to beget for me one subject every month ⸺
As my father pronounced the last word of the sentence—my mother took a pinch of snuff.
Now I would not, quoth my uncle Toby , get a child, nolens, volens, that is, whether I would or no, to please the greatest prince upon earth⸺
⸺And ’twould be cruel in me, brother Toby , to compel thee; said my father—but ’tis a case put to show thee, that it is not thy begetting a child—in case thou should’st be able—but the system of Love and Marriage thou goest upon, which I would set thee right in⸺
There is at least, said Yorick , a great deal of reason and plain sense in captain Shandy’s opinion of love; and ’tis amongst the ill-spent hours of my life, which I have to answer for, that I have read so many flourishing poets and rhetoricians in my time, from whom I never could extract so much⸺
I wish, Yorick , said my father, you had read Plato ; for there you would have learnt that there are two Loves —I know there were two Religions , replied Yorick , amongst the ancients⸺one—for the vulgar, and another for the learned;—but I think one Love might have served both of them very well—
It could not; replied my father—and for the same reasons: for of these Loves, according to Ficinus’s comment upon Velasius , the one is rational⸺
⸺the other is natural ⸺
the first ancient⸺without mother⸺where Venus had nothing to do: the second, begotten of Jupiter and Dione —