pieces of
antiquity.--And as my father, whilst he was concerned in the Turkey
trade, had been three or four different times in the Levant, in one
of which he had stayed a whole year and an half at Zant, my uncle Toby
naturally concluded, that, in some one of these periods, he had taken a
trip across the Archipelago into Asia; and that all this sailing affair
with Aegina behind, and Megara before, and Pyraeus on the right hand,
&c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my father's voyage and
reflections.--'Twas certainly in his manner, and many an undertaking
critic would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations.--And
pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, laying the end of his pipe upon
my father's hand in a kindly way of interruption--but waiting till he
finished the account--what year of our Lord was this?--'Twas no year
of our Lord, replied my father.--That's impossible, cried my uncle
Toby.--Simpleton! said my father,--'twas forty years before Christ was
born.

My uncle Toby had but two things for it; either to suppose his brother
to be the wandering Jew, or that his misfortunes had disordered his
brain.--'May the Lord God of heaven and earth protect him and restore
him!' said my uncle Toby, praying silently for my father, and with tears
in his eyes.

--My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his
harangue with great spirit.

'There is not such great odds, brother Toby, betwixt good and evil,
as the world imagines'--(this way of setting off, by the bye, was not
likely to cure my uncle Toby's suspicions).--'Labour, sorrow, grief,
sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life.'--Much good may do
them--said my uncle Toby to himself.--

'My son is dead!--so much the better;--'tis a shame in such a tempest to
have but one anchor.

'But he is gone for ever from us!--be it so. He is got from under the
hands of his barber before he was bald--he is but risen from a feast
before he was surfeited--from a banquet before he had got drunken.

'The Thracians wept when a child was born,'--(and we were very near it,
quoth my uncle Toby,)--'and feasted and made merry when a man went out
of the world; and with reason.--Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts
the gate of envy after it,--it unlooses the chain of the captive, and
puts the bondsman's task into another man's hands.

'Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I'll shew
thee a prisoner who dreads his liber