——BUT softly——for in these sportive plains, and under this genial sun,
where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and
dancing to the vintage, and every step that’s taken, the judgment is
surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding all that has been
said upon _straight lines_[37] in sundry pages of my book—I defy the
best cabbage planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or
forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he
will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—I defy
him to go on coolly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages
one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if
slits in petticoats are unsew’d up—without ever and anon straddling
out, or sidling into some bastardly digression——In _Freeze-land,
Fog-land_, and some other lands I wot of—it may be done——
But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every
idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear
_Eugenius_—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where I now
sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle _Toby_’s amours, and with
all the meanders of JULIA’s track in quest of her DIEGO, in full view
of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand——
What a work it is likely to turn out!
Let us begin it.
[37] Vid. Vol. III. p. 243.