IT is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle
_Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and
go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with
reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically
speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and
come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce
had time to get on his boots.
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to
take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of
the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more
than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon
him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather
probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and
of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our
ideas——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a
scholar, I will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the
jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.
I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight
miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house:—and
that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have
brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into
_England_:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and
have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a
journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire._—all which put
together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance
of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a
song, or a concerto between the acts.
If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and
thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen
seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea,
though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically,
rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which,
before, was a book apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an end
to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by
acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from
the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. _Slop_;—and indeed he gave a
dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a
tragical one too.
Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter.