which is the right and
which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to be concealed--it
shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my chapter of
Button-holes--and not one chapter before.

And now that you have just got to the end of these (According to the
preceding Editions.) three volumes--the thing I have to ask is, how you
feel your heads? my own akes dismally!--as for your healths, I know,
they are much better.--True Shandeism, think what you will against it,
opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake
of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body
to run freely through its channels, makes the wheel of life run long and
cheerfully round.

Was I left, like Sancho Panca, to choose my kingdom, it should not be
maritime--or a kingdom of blacks to make a penny of;--no, it should be
a kingdom of hearty laughing subjects: And as the bilious and more
saturnine passions, by creating disorders in the blood and humours, have
as bad an influence, I see, upon the body politick as body natural--and
as nothing but a habit of virtue can fully govern those passions, and
subject them to reason--I should add to my prayer--that God would give
my subjects grace to be as Wise as they were Merry; and then should I be
the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people under heaven.

And so with this moral for the present, may it please your worships and
your reverences, I take my leave of you till this time twelve-month,
when, (unless this vile cough kills me in the mean time) I'll have
another pluck at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you
little dream of.

End of the Second Volume.

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENT.--VOLUME THE THIRD

Dixero si quid forte jocosius, hoc mihi juris Cum venia
dabis.--Hor.

--Si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut
mordacius quam deceat Christianum--non Ego, sed Democritus
dixit.--Erasmus.

Si quis Clericus, aut Monachus, verba joculatoria, risum
moventia, sciebat, anathema esto. Second Council of
Carthage.

To the Right Honorable John, Lord Viscount Spencer.

My Lord,

I Humbly beg leave to offer you these two Volumes (Volumes V. and VI. in
the first Edition.); they are the best my talents, with such bad health
as I have, could produce:--had Providence granted me a larger stock of
either, they had been a much more proper present to yo