r, or say more than what I have
said already,--That my uncle Toby was a gentleman of unparallel'd
modesty, which happening to be somewhat subtilized and rarified by the
constant heat of a little family pride,--they both so wrought together
within him, that he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt Dinah
touch'd upon, but with the greatest emotion.--The least hint of it was
enough to make the blood fly into his face;--but when my father enlarged
upon the story in mixed companies, which the illustration of his
hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,--the unfortunate blight of one
of the fairest branches of the family, would set my uncle Toby's honour
and modesty o'bleeding; and he would often take my father aside, in the
greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give
him any thing in the world, only to let the story rest.

My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle
Toby, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done
any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir'd of
another, to have made my uncle Toby's heart easy in this, or any other
point. But this lay out of his power.

--My father, as I told you was a philosopher in
grain,--speculative,--systematical;--and my aunt Dinah's affair was
a matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the
planets to Copernicus:--The backslidings of Venus in her orbit fortified
the Copernican system, called so after his name; and the backslidings
of my aunt Dinah in her orbit, did the same service in establishing my
father's system, which, I trust, will for ever hereafter be called the
Shandean System, after his.

In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a
sense of shame as any man whatever;--and neither he, nor, I dare say,
Copernicus, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken
the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they
owed, as they thought, to truth.--Amicus Plato, my father would say,
construing the words to my uncle Toby, as he went along, Amicus Plato;
that is, Dinah was my aunt;--sed magis amica veritas--but Truth is my
sister.

This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the
source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the
tale of family disgrace recorded,--and the other would scarce ever let a
day pass to an end without some hint at it.

For God's sake, m