would I.

Which shews they had both read Longinus--

For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as
long as I live.

Chapter 4.XXX.

I wish my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had
been accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt
something stirring within her in his favour--Something!--something.

--Something perhaps more than friendship--less than love--something--no
matter what--no matter where--I would not give a single hair off my
mule's tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain
has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), to
be let by your worships into the secret--

But the truth is, my uncle Toby was not a water-drinker; he drank it
neither pure nor mix'd, or any how, or any where, except fortuitously
upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had--or
during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it would
extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact--my uncle Toby
drank it for quietness sake.

Now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be produced
without a cause, and as it is as well known, that my uncle Toby was
neither a weaver--a gardener, or a gladiator--unless as a captain, you
will needs have him one--but then he was only a captain of foot--and
besides, the whole is an equivocation--There is nothing left for us to
suppose, but that my uncle Toby's leg--but that will avail us little in
the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment in
the foot--whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in his
foot--for my uncle Toby's leg was not emaciated at all. It was a little
stiff and awkward, from a total disuse of it, for the three years he lay
confined at my father's house in town; but it was plump and muscular,
and in all other respects as good and promising a leg as the other.

I declare, I do not recollect any one opinion or passage of my life,
where my understanding was more at a loss to make ends meet, and torture
the chapter I had been writing, to the service of the chapter following
it, than in the present case: one would think I took a pleasure in
running into difficulties of this kind, merely to make fresh experiments
of getting out of 'em--Inconsiderate soul that thou art! What! are not
the unavoidable distresses with which, as an author and a man, thou art
hemm'd in on every side of thee--are