being able to get to the bottom of what I was about, I had turned back with them.

The third was an affair of trade with a gossip, for a hand-basket of Provence figs for four sous; this would have been transacted at once, but for a case of conscience at the close of it; for when the figs were paid for it turned out that there were two dozen of eggs covered over with vine-leaves at the bottom of the basket; as I had no intention of buying eggs, I made no sort of claim of them, as for the space they had eccupied, what signified it? I had figs enough for my money.

But it was my intention to have the basket, it was the gossip's intention to keep it, without which she could do nothing with her eggs; and unless I had the basket, I could do as little with my figs, which were too ripe already, and most of 'em burst at the side; this brought on a short contention, which terminated in sundry proposals, what we should both do.

How we disposed of our eggs and figs, I defy you, or the devil himself, had he not been there (which I am persuaded he was), to form the least probable conjecture. You will read the whole of it, not this year, for I am hastening to the story of my Uncle Toby's amours; but you will read it in the collection of those which have arose out of the journey across this plain, and which, therefore, I call my

: PLAIN STORIES.

How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers, in this journey of it, over so barren a tract, the world must judge; but the traces of it, which are now all set a-vibrating together this moment, tell me 'tis the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for as I had made no convention with my man with the gun as to time, by stopping and talking to every soul I met who was not in a full trot, joining all parties before me, waiting for every soul behind, hailing all those who were coming through cross-roads, arresting all kinds of beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers, friars; not passing by a woman in a mulberry-tree without commending her legs, and tempting her into conversation with a pinch of snuff. In short, by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever, which chance held out to me in this journey, I turned my plain into a city; I was always in company, and with great variety too; and as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some proposals always on his part to offer to every beast he met, I am confident we could have passed through Pall Mall or St. James's Street for a month together, with fewer adventures, and seen less of human nature. O! there is that sprightly frankness which at once unpins every plait of a Languedocian's dress, that, whatever is beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days. I will delude my fancy, and believe it is so.

'Twas in the road betwixt Nismes and Lunel, where there is the best Muscatto wine in all France, and which, by-the-by, belongs to the honest canons of Montpellier; and foul befall the man who has drank it at their table, who grudges them a drop of it.

The sun was set-they had done their work; the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made a dead point.-"'Tis the fife and tambourin," said I.

"I'm frightened to death," quoth he.- "They are running at the ring of pleasure," said I, giving him a prick.-"By St. Boogar, and all the saints at the back-side of the door of purgatory," said he (making the same resolution with the Abbess of Andouillets), "I'll not go a step further." -"'Tis very well, Sir," said I, "I will never argue a point with one of your family as long as I live." So leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch, and t'other into that-"I'll take a dance," said I, "so stay you here."

A sunburnt daughter of Labour rose up from the group to meet me, as I advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chestnut, approaching rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single

tress.

"We want a cavalier," said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer them." And a cavalier ye shall have," said I, taking hold of both of them.

"Hadst thou, Nannette, been arrayed like a duchess! But that cursed slit in thy petticoat!"

Nannette cared not for it.

"We could not have done without you," said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other.

A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he had added a tambourin of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank."Tie me up this tress instantly," said Nannette, putting a piece of string into my hand. It taught me to forget I was a stranger. The whole knot fell down. We had been seven years acquainted.

The youth struck the note upon the tambourin, his pipe followed, and off we bounded-" the deuce take that slit !

The sister of the youth who had stolen her voice from heaven sung alternately with her brother, 'twas a Gascoigne roundelay

Viva la joia!
Fidon la tristessa !

The nymphs joined in unison, and their swains an octave below them.

us.

66

I would have given a crown to have it sewed up; Nannette would not have given a sous; Viva la joia! was in her lips-Viva la joia! was in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt She looked amiable. Why could I not live and end my days thus? Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows," cried I, "why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?" Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious. "Then 'tis time to dance off," quoth I: so, changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from Lunel to Montpellier; from thence to Pesçnas, Beziers; I danced it along through Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle Naudairy, till at last I danced myself into Perdrillo's pavilion, where, pulling a paper of blank lines, that I might go on straight forwards without digression or parenthesis, in my Uncle Toby's amours.I began thus.

VOLUME VIII.

CHAPTER I.

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* 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 unsewed up, without ever and anon straddling out, or fiddling into some bastardly digression. In Freezeland, Fogland, 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 unscrewing my ink-horn to write my Uncle Toby's amours, and with all the meanders of Julia's tract in quest of her Diego, in full view of my study window, if thou comest not and takest me by the handWhat a work is it likely to turn out !

Let us begin it.

CHAPTER II.

But now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which, if not imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as I live (whereas the comparison may be imparted to him any hour in the day). I'll just mention it, and begin in good earnest.

The thing is this.

That of all the several ways of beginning a book, which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best. I'm sure it is the most religious, for I begin with writing the first sentence, and trusting to Almighty God for the second. 'Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his

* Vide p. 236.

street door, and calling in his neighbours, and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his imps, with their hammers and engines, &c., only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the whole.

I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up, catching the idea, even sometimes before it half-way reaches me.

I believe in my conscience, I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man.

Pope and his portrait * are fools to me; no martyr is ever so full of faith or fire-I wish I could say of good works too; but I have no

Zeal or anger, or
Anger or zeal.

And till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name, the errantest Tartufe, in science, in politics, or in religion, shall never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word or a more unkind greeting, than what he will read in the next chapter.

CHAPTER V.

WHY weavers, gardeners and gladiators, or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some ailment in the foot), should ever have had some tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and duly settled and accounted for by ancient and modern physiologists.

A water-drinker, provided he is a professed one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament; not that, at first sight, there is any consequence or show of logic in it, "That a rill of cold water, dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my Jenny's."

The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects.

But it shows the weakness and imbecility of human reason.

"And in perfect good health with it?"

The most perfect, madam, that Friendship herself could wish me. "And drink nothing!-nothing but water!"

Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain, see how they give way!

In swims Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow; they dive into the centre of the current.

Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits. And Desire, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them as they swim by her, with the other.

Ó, ye water-drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain that ye have so often governed and turned this world about like a mill-wheel, grinding the faces of the impotent, bepowdering their ribs, bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face

of Nature?

⚫ Vide Pope's portrait.

"If I was you," quoth Yorick, "I would drink more water, Eugenius."-"And if I was you, Yorick," replied Eugenius, would I."

Which shows they had both read Longinus.

SO

For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own as long as I live.

CHAPTER VI.

I WISH my Uncle Toby had been a water-drinker, for then the thing had been accounted for, that the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt something stirring within her in his favour. Something! something.

Something, perhaps, more than friendship, less than love; something -no matter what-no matter where I would not give a single hair of my mule's tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), to be let by your worships into the secret.

But the truth is, my Uncle Toby was not a water-drinker; he drank it neither pure nor mixed, or anyhow, or anywhere, except fortuitously upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had, or during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it would extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact, my Uncle Toby drank it for quietness sake.

Now, as all the world knows that no effect in Nature can be produced without a cause; and as it is as well known that my Uncle Toby was neither a weaver, a gardener, or a gladiator, unless as a captain, you will needs have him one; but then he was only a captain of foot, and besides the whole is an equivocation-there is nothing left for us to suppose, but that my Uncle Toby's leg; but that will avail us little in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment in the foot, whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in his foot, for my Uncle Toby's leg was not emaciated at all. It was a little stiff and awkward from a total disuse of it for three years he lay confined at my father's house in town; but it was plump and muscular, and in all other respects as good and promising a leg as the other.

I declare I do not recollect any one opinion or passage of my life where my understanding was more at a loss to make ends meet, and torture the chapter I had been writing to the service of the chapter following it, than in the present case. One would think I took a pleasure in running into difficulties of this kind merely to make fresh experiments of getting out of them. Inconsiderate soul that thou art! What! are not the unavoidable distresses with which, as an author and a man, thou art hemmed in on every side of thee-are they, Tristram, not sufficient, but thou must entangle thyself still more?

Is it not enough that thou art in debt, and that thou hast ten cartloads of thy fifth and sixth volumes still-still unsold, and almost at thy wit's end how to get them off thy hands.

To this hour art thou not tormented with the vile asthma thou gattest in skating against the wind in Flanders? and is it but two months ago that in a fit of laughter thou breakest a vessel in thy lungs, whereby in