ing her into conversation with a pinch of snuff:-in short, by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever, which chance held out to me in this journey, -I turned my plain into a city;-I was always in company, and with great variety too; and as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some proposals always on his part to offer to every beast he met,I am confident we could have passed through Pall-Mall or St. James's-street for a month together, with fewer adventures, and seen less of human nature.

O! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait of a Languedocian's dress,-that whatever is beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days!—I will delude my fancy, and believe it is so.

'Twas in the road betwixt Nismes and Lunel, where there is the best Muscatto wine in all France, and which, by the bye, belongs to the honest canons of Montpellier; -and foul befal the man who has drunk it at their table, who grudges them a drop of it.

The sun was set;-they had done their work ;-the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh,-and the swains were preparing for a carousal ;-my mule made a dead point. 'Tis the fife and tabourin, said I.- - I'm frighten'd to death, quoth he.They are running at the ring of pleasure, said I, giving him a prick.

By Saint Bridget, and all the saints at the backside of the door of purgatory, said he- (making the same resolution with the abbess of Andoüillets') I'll not go a step farther.-'Tis very well, sir, said I;-I never will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live; so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch, and t'other into that, I'll take a dance, said I;-so stay you here.

A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the group to meet me, as I advanced towards them: her hair, which was a dark chesnut, approaching rather

*

to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single

tress.

We want a cavalier, said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer them.- And a cavalier ye shall

have, said I, taking hold of both of them.

Hadst thou, Nannette, been arrayed like a duchesse!

But that cursed slit in thy. petticoat! Nannette cared not for it..

We could not have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, and leading me up with the other.

A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat

upon the bank.- Tie me up this tress instantly, said Nannette, putting a piece of string into my hand.

-It taught me to forget I was a stranger.-The whole knot fell down.-We had been seven years acquainted.

The youth struck the note upon the tabourin,-his pipe followed, and off we bounded. The deuce take

that slit!'

The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung alternately with her brother ;'twas a Gascoigne roundelay.

VIVA LA JOIA!

FIDON LA TRISTESSA!

The nymphs joined in unison, and their swains an octave below them.

I would have given a crown to have had it sewed up.-Nannette would not have given a sous :- - Viva la joia! was in her lips :- Viva la joia! was in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us. She looked amiable !-Why could I not live, and end my days thus? Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here,—and dance, and

t.

sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious.--Then 'tis time to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from Lunel to Montpellierfrom thence to Pesçnas, Beziers.-I danced it along through Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle Naudairy, till at last I danced myself into Perdrillo's pavilion ; where, pulling out a paper of black lines, that I might go on straight forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle Toby's amours,

I began thus:

But softly,- for in these sportive plains, and under this genial sun, where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and, every step that's taken, the judgment is surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding all that has been said upon straight lines in sundry pages of my book,-I defy the best cabbage-planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or for wards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)-I defy him to go on coolly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages, one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if slits in petticoats are unsewed up,-without ever and anon straddling out, or sidling into some bastardly digression. In Freeze-land, Fog-land, and some other lands I wot of,-it may be done ;

But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent;in this land, my dear Eugenius,-in this fertile land of

chivalry and romance, where I now sit, unscrewing my inkhorn to write my uncle Toby's amours, and with all the meanders of Julia's track in quest of her Diego in full view of my study-window, if thou comest not and takest me by the hand,

What a work it is likely to turn out!
Let us begin it.

CHAPTER CCXLVI.

It is with love as with cuckoldom-but now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which, if not imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as I live (whereas the comparison may be imparted to him any hour in the day)—I'll just mention it, and begin in good earnest.

The thing is this:

That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best. I'm sure it is the most religious, for I begin with writing the first sentence, and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

'Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his street-door, and calling in his neighbours, and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his imps, with their hammers and engines, &c. only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the whole.

I wish you saw me half-starting out of my chair; with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up, catching the idea, even sometimes before it half-way reaches me!

-I believe, in my conscience, I intercept many a thought which Heaven intended for another man.

Pope and his Portrait1 are fools to me:-no martyr is ever so full of faith or fire,-I wish I could say of good works too;-but I have no

same name,

Zeal or anger,—or
Anger or zeal ;·

and, till gods and men agree together to call it by the the arrantest Tartufe in science,-in politics, or in religion, shall never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind greeting, than what we will read in the next chapter.

CHAPTER CCXLVII.

-Bon jour!-good-morrow!-so you have got your cloak on betimes!-but 'tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly ;-'tis better to be well mounted than go o'foot ;-and obstructions in the glands are dangerous. And how goes it with thy concubine,thy wife, and thy little ones o'both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady,-your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins?-I hope they have. got better of their colds, coughs, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes.

-What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood, give such a vile purge,-puke,-poultice, plaster,-night-draught,-clyster, blister!And why so many grains of calomel? Santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail!By my great-aunt Dinah's old black velvet mask! I think there was no occasion for it.

Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off and on, before she was got with child by the coachman,-not one of our family would 1 Vide Pope's Portrait.

VOL. II.

1