of triumph redelivered it into Trim's hand, with a nod to lay it upon
the 'scrutoire, where he found it.--Tristram, said he, shall be made to
conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same
way;--every word, Yorick, by this means, you see, is converted into a
thesis or an hypothesis;--every thesis and hypothesis have an off-spring
of propositions;--and each proposition has its own consequences and
conclusions; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh
tracks of enquiries and doubtings.--The force of this engine, added my
father, is incredible in opening a child's head.--'Tis enough, brother
Shandy, cried my uncle Toby, to burst it into a thousand splinters.--

I presume, said Yorick, smiling,--it must be owing to this,--(for let
logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted for sufficiently
from the bare use of the ten predicaments)--That the famous Vincent
Quirino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of
which the Cardinal Bembo has given the world so exact a story,--should
be able to paste up in the public schools at Rome, so early as in the
eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand five hundred and
fifty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most
abstruse theology;--and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to
cramp and dumbfound his opponents.--What is that, cried my father, to
what is told us of Alphonsus Tostatus, who, almost in his nurse's arms,
learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one
of them?--What shall we say of the great Piereskius?--That's the very
man, cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked
a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Shevling, and
from Shevling back again, merely to see Stevinus's flying chariot.--He
was a very great man! added my uncle Toby (meaning Stevinus)--He was so,
brother Toby, said my father (meaning Piereskius)--and had multiplied
his ideas so fast, and increased his knowledge to such a prodigious
stock, that, if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning him, which
we cannot withhold here, without shaking the authority of all anecdotes
whatever--at seven years of age, his father committed entirely to
his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of five years
old,--with the sole management of all his concerns.--Was the father
as wise as the son? quoth my uncle Toby:--I should think not, said
Yorick: