Whilst I am worth one to pay a weeder, thy path from thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown up.-Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall never be demolished.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

My father's collection was not great; but, to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good fortune, however, to set off well, in getting Bruscambille's prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing; for he gave no more for Bruscambille than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stallman saw my father had for the book, the moment he laid his hands upon it.-There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom, said the stall-man, except what are chained up in the libraries of the curious. My father flung down the money as quick as lightning,—took Bruscambille into his bosom,—hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille all the way.

To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille is,—inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either, 'twill be no objection against the simile-to say, That when my father got home, he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, 'tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress;—that is, from morning even unto night: which, by the by, how delightful soever it may prove to the enamorato,—is of little or no entertainment at all to by-standers.-Take notice, I go no farther with the simile;-my father's eye was greater than his appetite, —his zeal greater than his knowledge,―he cooled,—his affections became divided;——he got hold of Prignitz,-purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paræus, Bouchet's Evening Conferences, and, above all, the 'great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much to say by and by,-I will say nothing now.

CHAPTER LXXX.

Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study, in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than the celebrated Dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.--Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or, if he is so nimble as to slip on, -let me beg of you, like an unbacked filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it,—and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till, like Tickletoby's mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt. You need not kill him.

-And pray who was Tickletoby's mare ?-'Tis just as discreditable and unscholarlike a question, sir, as to have asked what years (ab urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.Who was Tickletoby's mare!——Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader!—read,—or, by the knowledge of the great Saint Paraleipomenon, I tell you beforehand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows I mean much konwledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the chequered one.

CHAPTER LXXXI.

"NIHIL me pœnitet hujus nasi," quoth Pamphagus :— that is," My nose has been the making of me."

"Nec est

cur pæniteat," replies Cocles; that is, "How the deuce should such a nose fail ?"

The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtility or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestowed upon man, on purpose to investigate Truth, and fight for her on all sides.—My father pish'd and pugh'd at first most terribly.'Tis worth something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it, through and through, in its most strict and literal interpretation. He could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhap, there is more meant than is said in it, quoth my father.-Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.—I'll study the mystic and the allegoric sense.-Here is some room to turn a man's self in, brother.

My father read on.

Now, I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth, That a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that, in a case of distress, and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad excitandum focum (to stir up the fire).

Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge; so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it. I've got within a single letter, brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.-You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.--Pshaw! cried

my father, scratching on,-I might as well be seven miles off.I've done it,―said my father, snapping his fingers. See, my dear brother Toby, how I have mended the sense.-But you have marr'd a word, replied my uncle Toby.--My father put on his spectacles,-bit his lip,-and tore out the leaf in a passion.

CHAPTER LXXXII.

O SLAWKENBERGIUS! thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrazias,thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which in one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of, tell me, Slawkenbergius! what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears ?-art thou sure thou heard'st it ?--which first cried out to thee,-Go,-go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life, -neglect thy pastimes,-call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature,-macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand FOLIO for them, upon the subject of their noses.

How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius's sensorium, so that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touched the key, and whose hand it was that blew the bellows, -as Hafen Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years, we can only raise conjec

tures.

Slawkenbergius was played upon, for aught I know, like one of Whitefield's disciples; that is, with such a distinct intelligence, sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his instrument,—as to make all reasoning upon it needless.

-For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this one work,-towards the end of his prolegomena; which, by the by, should have come first,—but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book and the book itself,he informs his reader, That ever since he had arrived at the age