of us been loft, or devoured by wild beafts in it.

Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained fuch a number of Jack Affes?How they view'd and review'd us as we paffed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley! and when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of fight-good God! what a braying did they all fet up together!

Prithee, fhepherd! who keeps

all thofe Jack Affes ?

Heaven be their comforter

What are they never curried? Are they never taken in in winter ?—Bray bray-bray. Bray on,the world is deeply your debtor

louder till

that's

that's nothing-in good footh, you Was I a Jack Affe, I

are ill-ufed:

folemnly declare, I would bray in G-fol-re-ut from morning, even unto night.

W

CHA P. II.

HEN my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an' all, and in a kind of triumph redelivered it into Trim's hand, with a nod to lay it upon the 'fcrutoire where he found it. -Triftram, said he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the fame way;every word, Lorick, by this means, you fee, is converted into a thefis or an hypothefis ;every thefis and hypothefis have an offspring

B 2

spring of propofitions;—and each propofition has its own confequences and conclufions; every one of which leads 'the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings. -The force of this engine, added my father, is incredible, in opening a child's head. 'Tis enough, brother Shandy, cried my uncle Toby, to burft it into a thoufand fplinters.

I prefume, faid Yorick, fmiling,-it must be owing to this,(for let logicians fay what they will, it is not to be accounted for fufficiently from the bare ufe of the ten predicaments)-That the famous Vincent Quirino, amongst the many other aftonishing feats of his childhood, of which the Cardinal Bembo has given the world fo exact a ftory,fhould be able to paste up in the publick schools

at Rome, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thoufand, five hundred, and fixty different thefes, upon the most abftrufe points of the most abftrufe theology; and to defend and maintain them in fuch fort, as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents.

What is that, cried my father, to what is told us of Alphonfus Toftatus, who, almoft in his nurse's arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them ?What fhall we fay of the great Pierefkius?— That's the very man, cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Schevling, and from Schevling back again, merely to see Stevinus's flying chariot.-He was a very great man! added my uncle Toby; (meaning Stevinus)-He was fo; B 3 bro

brother Toby, faid my father, (meaning Pierefkius) and had multiplied his ideas fo faft, and increafed his knowlege to fuch a prodigious stock, that, if we may give credit to an ancedote concerning him, which we cannot withhold here, without fhaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever at feven years of age, his father committed entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of five years old,-with the fole management of all his concerns.-Was the father as wife as the fon? quoth my uncle Toby:-I fhould think not, faid Yorick:But what are these, continued my father(breaking out in a kind of enthusiasm) -what are these, to those prodigies of childhood in Grotius, Scioppius, Heinfius, Politian, Pafcal, Jofeph Scaliger, Ferdinand de Cordouè, and others-fome of which left off their fubftantial forms at