I WOULD not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pen-craft, 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 any thing 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 semi-parameter 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 up stairs, he
shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in order to
expostulate with him upon the protraction of the cure, which, he told
him, might surely have been accomplished at least by that time:—He
dwelt long upon the miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his
four years melancholy imprisonment;——adding, that had it not been for
the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of brothers,—he had
long since sunk under his misfortunes.——My father was by. My uncle
_Toby_’s eloquence brought tears into his eyes;——’twas unexpected:——My
uncle _Toby_, by nature was not eloquent;—it had the greater
effect:——The surgeon was confounded;——not that there wanted grounds for
such, or greater marks of impatience,—but ’twas unexpected too; in the
four years he had attended him, he had never seen any thing like it in
my uncle _Toby_’s carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or
discontented word;——he had been all patience,—all submission.
—We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it;—but we
often treble the force:—The surgeon was astonished; but much more so,
when he heard my uncle Toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his
healing up the wound directly,—or sending for Monsieur _Ronjat_, the
king’s serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him.
The desire of life and health is implanted in man’s nature;——the love
of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it: These my uncle
_Toby_ had in common with his species—and either of them had been
sufficient to account for his earnest desire to get well and out of
doors;——but I have told you before, that nothing wrought with our
family after the common way;——and from the time and manner in which
this eager desire shewed itself in the present case, the penetrating
reader will suspect there was some other cause or crotchet for it in my
uncle _Toby_’s head:——There was so, and ’tis the subject of the next
chapter to set forth what that cause and crotchet was. I own, when
that’s done, ’twill be time to return back to the parlour fire-side,
where we left my uncle _Toby_ in the middle of his sentence.