IF the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of
ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle _Toby_’s kitchen-garden, and
which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is not
in me,—but in his imagination;—for I am sure I gave him so minute a
description, I was almost ashamed of it.
When FATE was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great
transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this
little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been
destined,—she gave a nod to NATURE,—’twas enough—Nature threw half a
spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so _much_ clay
in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so _little_
of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much
glory, nasty in foul weather.
My uncle _Toby_ came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans
along with him, of almost every fortified town in _Italy_ and
_Flanders;_ so let the duke of _Marlborough_, or the allies, have set
down before what town they pleased, my uncle _Toby_ was prepared for
them.
His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as
ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design was known) to take
the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a
scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of
which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small
piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he
transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the
place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the
ditches,—the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several
banquets, parapets, &c.—he set the corporal to work——and sweetly went
it on:——The nature of the soil,—the nature of the work itself,—and
above all, the good-nature of my uncle _Toby_ sitting by from morning
to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past- done
deeds,—left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name.
When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper
posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle _Toby_ and the
corporal began to run their first parallel.—I beg I may not be
interrupted in my story, by being told, _That the first parallel should
be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the
place,—and that I have not left a single inch for it;_——for my uncle
_Toby_ took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the
sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason
generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his
cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of
which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle _Toby_’s
and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a
sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages
(but there is no guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up as
many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a
weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to
rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work——surely
they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take
the following sketch of them in the mean time.