NOW, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of
talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle
_Toby_’s courtship of widow _Wadman_, whenever I got time to write
them, would turn out one of the most complete systems, both of the
elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was
addressed to the world——are you to imagine from thence, that I shall
set out with a description of _what love is?_ whether part God and part
Devil, as _Plotinus_ will have it——
——Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be
as ten——to determine with _Ficinus_, “_How many parts of it—the
one,—and how many the other;_”—or whether it is _all of it one great
Devil_, from head to tail, as _Plato_ has taken upon him to pronounce;
concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my
opinion of _Plato_ is this; that he appears, from this instance, to
have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with
doctor _Baynyard_, who being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining
that half a dozen of ’em at once, would draw a man as surely to his
grave, as a herse and six—rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was
nothing in the world, but one great bouncing _Cantharidis._——
I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous
liberty in arguing, but what _Nazianzen_ cried out (_that is,
polemically_) to _Philagrius_——
“’Ευγε!” _O rare! ’tis fine reasoning, Sir indeed!_—“οτι φιλοσοφεισ ευ
Παθεσ.” _and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize
about it in your moods and passions._
Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to
inquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself with _Rhasis_
and _Dioscorides_, whether the seat of it is in the brain or
liver;—because this would lead me on, to an examination of the two very
opposite manners, in which patients have been treated——the one, of
_Aœtius_, who always begun with a cooling clyster of hempseed and
bruised cucumbers;—and followed on with thin potations of water-lilies
and purslane—to which he added a pinch of snuff, of the herb
_Hanea;_—and where _Aœtius_ durst venture it,—his topaz-ring.
——The other, that of _Gordonius_, who (in his cap. 15. _de Amore_)
directs they should be thrashed, “_ad putorem usque_,”——till they stink
again.
These are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great stock
of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the progress of my
uncle _Toby_’s affairs: I must anticipate thus much, That from his
theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my
uncle _Toby_’s mind, almost as much as his amours themselves,)—he took
a single step into practice;—and by means of a camphorated cerecloth,
which he found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he
was making my uncle _Toby_ a new pair of breeches, he produced
_Gordonius_’s effect upon my uncle _Toby_ without the disgrace.
What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: all that
is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this——That whatever effect
it had upon my uncle _Toby_,——it had a vile effect upon the house;——and
if my uncle _Toby_ had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had
a vile effect upon my father too.