he
world;--and that, how just and right soever his motives the intentions
may be,--he stands in an uneasy posture in vindicating himself from
private views in doing it.

For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be without
being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter his wish in
the hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy will not believe
him.--He will be cautious of doing it even to a friend,--lest he may
suffer in his esteem:--But if his heart is overcharged, and a secret
sigh for arms must have its vent, he will reserve it for the ear of
a brother, who knows his character to the bottom, and what his true
notions, dispositions, and principles of honour are: What, I hope, I
have been in all these, brother Shandy, would be unbecoming in me to
say:--much worse, I know, have I been than I ought,--and something
worse, perhaps, than I think: But such as I am, you, my dear brother
Shandy, who have sucked the same breasts with me,--and with whom I have
been brought up from my cradle,--and from whose knowledge, from the
first hours of our boyish pastimes, down to this, I have concealed
no one action of my life, and scarce a thought in it--Such as I am,
brother, you must by this time know me, with all my vices, and with
all my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my temper, my passions, or my
understanding.

Tell me then, my dear brother Shandy, upon which of them it is, that
when I condemned the peace of Utrecht, and grieved the war was not
carried on with vigour a little longer, you should think your brother
did it upon unworthy views; or that in wishing for war, he should be bad
enough to wish more of his fellow-creatures slain,--more slaves made,
and more families driven from their peaceful habitations, merely for his
own pleasure:--Tell me, brother Shandy, upon what one deed of mine do
you ground it? (The devil a deed do I know of, dear Toby, but one for a
hundred pounds, which I lent thee to carry on these cursed sieges.)

If, when I was a school-boy, I could not hear a drum beat, but my heart
beat with it--was it my fault?--Did I plant the propensity there?--Did I
sound the alarm within, or Nature?

When Guy, Earl of Warwick, and Parismus and Parismenus, and Valentine
and Orson, and the Seven Champions of England, were handed around the
school,--were they not all purchased with my own pocket-money? Was that
selfish, brother Shandy? When we read over the siege of Troy, which
la