ance.--

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 appeared 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 eccentricity,
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 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 in the family at
first,--as is generally the case.--But nothing ever wrought with our
family after the ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this happened,
it might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions are sent
down for our good, and that as this had never done the Shandy Family
any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times and circumstances
should give it an opportunity to discharge its office.--Observe,
I determine nothing upon this.--My way is ever to point out to the
curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs
of the events I tell;--not with a pedantic Fescue,--or in the decisive
manner or Tacitus, who outwits himself and his reader;--but with the
officious humility of a heart devoted to the assistance merely of the
inquisitive;--to them I write,--and by them I shall be r