hree first fingers of his
right-hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a little, he addressed
himself to my uncle Toby as follows:

Chapter 2.XLII.

When I reflect, brother Toby, upon Man; and take a view of that dark
side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of
trouble--when I consider, brother Toby, how oft we eat the bread
of affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our
inheritance--I was born to nothing, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting my
father--but my commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle leave
you a hundred and twenty pounds a year?--What could I have done without
it? replied my uncle Toby--That's another concern, said my father
testily--But I say Toby, when one runs over the catalogue of all the
cross-reckonings and sorrowful Items with which the heart of man is
overcharged, 'tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is enabled
to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the impositions
laid upon our nature.--'Tis by the assistance of Almighty God, cried
my uncle Toby, looking up, and pressing the palms of his hands close
together--'tis not from our own strength, brother Shandy--a centinel
in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to stand it out against a
detachment of fifty men.--We are upheld by the grace and the assistance
of the best of Beings.

--That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,--But
give me leave to lead you, brother Toby, a little deeper into the
mystery.

With all my heart, replied my uncle Toby.

My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which
Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens; which
your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the
particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it--for
he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and
the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine
he is reclaiming--'You grant me this--and this: and this, and this, I
don't ask of you--they follow of themselves in course.'

So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and
his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle Toby as he sat in his old
fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs--O
Garrick!--what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make!
and how gladly would I write such another to avail myself of thy
immortalit