Chapter C: H a P. LXXX

——’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._

C H A P. LXXXI

TO conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your hand.——Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind——as like your mistress as you can——as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis all one to me——please but your own fancy in it.

——Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so exquisite!

——Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle _Toby_ resist it?

Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot misrepresent.