——’TWILL come out of itself by and bye.——All I contend for is, that I
am not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so
long as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the
word itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in common
with the rest of the world, why should I differ from it a moment before
the time?——When I can get on no further,—and find myself entangled on
all sides of this mystic labyrinth,—my Opinion will then come in, in
course,—and lead me out.
At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the
reader, my uncle _Toby fell in love:_
—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is
_fallen_ in love,—or that he is _deeply_ in love,—or up to the ears in
love,—and sometimes even _over head and ears in it_,—carries an
idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing _below_ a
man:—this is recurring again to _Plato_’s opinion, which, with all his
divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for
that.
Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle _Toby_ fell into it.
——And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation—so wouldst thou:
For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in
this world, more concupiscible than widow _Wadman._