t taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for
the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my father's
first and second beds of justice, ever rise up and say again, from
collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to
carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.--Heaven! thou knowest how
I love them;--thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would
this moment give my shirt--Thou art a fool, Shandy, says Eugenius, for
thou hast but a dozen in the world,--and 'twill break thy set.--

No matter for that, Eugenius; I would give the shirt off my back to be
burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how
many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike
into the tail of it.--Think ye not that in striking these in,--he might,
per-adventure, strike something out? as sure as a gun.--

--But this project, by the bye.

The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing his to
perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with
charging them to the top with tobacco,--he went with contentment to bed.

Chapter 3.LXX.

The corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby, in
order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before
my uncle Toby came.

He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in
front of my uncle Toby's sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about
a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the
convenience of charging, &c.--and the sake possibly of two batteries,
which he might think double the honour of one.

In the rear and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the
sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken his
post:--He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right,
betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand,--and the ebony pipe
tipp'd with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left,
betwixt the finger and thumb of the other--and with his right knee fixed
firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the
corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his
two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, which
faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that morning.
His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the enemy a
single puff or two;--but the pleasure of the puf