; - the want of all kind of writing will put an end to all
kind of reading; - and that in time, As war begets poverty, poverty peace, --
must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge, - and then --we shall have
all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly where we started.
    -- Happy! thrice happy Times! I only wish that the æra of my begetting, as
well as the mode and manner of it, had been a little alter'd, - or that it could
have been put off with any convenience to my father or mother, for some twenty
or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the literary world might have
stood some chance. --
    But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have left knocking the
ashes out of his tobacco pipe.
    His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our
atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst one of the
first-rate productions of it, had not there appear'd too many strong lines in it
of a family-likeness, which shewed that he derived the singularity of his temper
more from blood, than either wind or water, or any modifications or combinations
of them whatever: And I have, therefore, oft times wondered, that my father,
tho' I believe he had his reasons for it, upon his observing some tokens of
excentricity in my course when I was a boy, - should never once endeavour to
account for them in this way; for all the SHANDY FAMILY were of an original
character throughout; -- I mean the males, - the females had no character at
all, - except, indeed, my great aunt DINAH, who, about sixty years ago, was
married and got with child by the coachman, for which my father, according to
his hypothesis of Christian names, would often say, She might thank her
godfathers and godmothers.
    It will seem very strange, -- and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle
in the reader's way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon guessing
how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after it
had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the peace and unity,
which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my father and my uncle Toby. One
would have thought, that the whole force of the misfortune should have spent and
wasted itself
