the last word of the sentence--my mother took a
pinch of snuff.

Now I would not, quoth my uncle Toby, get a child, nolens, volens, that
is, whether I would or no, to please the greatest prince upon earth--

--And 'twould be cruel in me, brother Toby, to compel thee; said my
father--but 'tis a case put to shew thee, that it is not thy begetting
a child--in case thou should'st be able--but the system of Love and
Marriage thou goest upon, which I would set thee right in--

There is at least, said Yorick, a great deal of reason and plain sense
in captain Shandy's opinion of love; and 'tis amongst the ill-spent
hours of my life, which I have to answer for, that I have read so many
flourishing poets and rhetoricians in my time, from whom I never could
extract so much--I wish, Yorick, said my father, you had read Plato;
for there you would have learnt that there are two Loves--I know there
were two Religions, replied Yorick, amongst the ancients--one--for the
vulgar, and another for the learned;--but I think One Love might have
served both of them very well--

I could not; replied my father--and for the same reasons: for of
these Loves, according to Ficinus's comment upon Velasius, the one is
rational--

--the other is natural--the first ancient--without mother--where Venus
had nothing to do: the second, begotten of Jupiter and Dione--

--Pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, what has a man who believes in
God to do with this? My father could not stop to answer, for fear of
breaking the thread of his discourse--

This latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of Venus.

The first, which is the golden chain let down from heaven, excites
to love heroic, which comprehends in it, and excites to the desire of
philosophy and truth--the second, excites to desire, simply--

--I think the procreation of children as beneficial to the world, said
Yorick, as the finding out the longitude--

--To be sure, said my mother, love keeps peace in the world--

--In the house--my dear, I own--

--It replenishes the earth; said my mother--

But it keeps heaven empty--my dear; replied my father.

--'Tis Virginity, cried Slop, triumphantly, which fills paradise.

Well push'd nun! quoth my father.

Chapter 4.LVIII.

My father had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slashing way with
him in his disputations, thrusting and ripping, and giving every one a
stroke to remember him by in his turn--that if there were twenty