CHAPTER CCLXVII.

As soon as the Corporal had finished the story of his amour,—or, rather, my uncle Toby for Wadman silently sallied forth from her arbour, replaced the pin in her mob, passed the wicker-gate, and advanced slowly towards my uncle Toby's sentry-box: the disposition which Trim had made in my uncle Toby's mind, was too favourable a crisis to be let slip.

-The attack was determined upon it was facilitated still more by my uncle Toby's having ordered the Corporal to wheel off the pioneer's shovel, the spade, the pick-axe, the picquets, and other military stores which lay scattered upon the ground where Dunkirk stood.-The Corporal had marched,-the field was clear.

Now consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or writing, or any thing else (whether in rhyme to it or not) which a man has occasion to do,to act by plan for if ever plan, independent of all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold, (I mean in the archives of Gotham)—it was certainly the plan of Mrs. Wadman's attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, by plan.-Now, the plan hanging up in it at this juncture, being the plan of Dunkirk,— and the tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she could make; and, besides, could she have gone upon it,―the manœuvre of fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box, was so outdone by that of the fair Beguine's in Trim's story,-that, just then, that particular attack, however successful before,-became the most heartless attack that could be made.

O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce opened the wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

-She formed a new attack in a moment.

CHAPTER CCLXVIII.

I am half distracted, Captain Shandy, said /Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my uncle Toby's sentry-box ;- -a mote,--or sand,-or something, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine; do look into it :-it is not in the white.

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up.-Do look into it, said she.

Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart as ever child looked into a rareeshow-box; and 'twere as much a sin to have hurt thee.

If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature, I've nothing to say to it.

My uncle Toby never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January, (which, you know, takes in both the hot and cold months) with an eye as fine as the Thracian Rhodope's 1 beside him, without being able to tell whether it was a black or a blue one.

1

The difficulty was, to get my uncle Toby to look at one at all.

'Tis surmounted. And

I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it,-looking, and looking, then rubbing his eyes,—and looking again with twice the good-nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun.

In vain! for, by all the powers which animate the

1 Rhodope Thracia, tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exacte oculis intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non posset, quin caperetur.-1 know not who.

organ,-Widow Wadman's left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right;-there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of opake matter floating in it. There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent, delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine.

-If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longer,-thou art undone.

CHAPTER CCLXIX.

An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon, in this respect,—that it is not so much the eye or the cannon in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye, -and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don't think the comparison a bad one: however, as 'tis made, and placed at the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament; all I desire in return, is, that whenever I speak of Mrs. Wadman's eyes, (except once in the next period) that you keep it in your fancy.

I protest, madam, said my uncle Toby, I can see nothing whatever in your eye.

-It is not in the white, said Mrs. Wadman.My uncle Toby looked with might and main into the pupil.

Now, of all the eyes which ever were created ;from your own, madam, up to those of Venus herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a head,-there never was an eye of them all so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose, as the very eye at which he was looking:-it was not, madam, a rolling eye,—a romping,—or a wanton one;—

nor was it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious, of high claims and terrifying exactions, which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of which my uncle Toby was made up;-but 'twas an eye full of gentle salutations,-and soft responses;-speaking, -not like the trumpet-stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to holds coarse converse; but whispering soft,-like the last low accents of an expiring saint, How can you live comfortless, Captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on, or trust your cares to?'

It was an eye

But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word about it.

It did my uncle Toby's business.

CHAPTER CCLXX.

There is nothing shows the characters of my father and my uncle Toby in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of deportment under the same accident; for I call not love a misfortune, from a persuasion, that a man's heart is ever the better for it. -Great God! what must my uncle Toby's have been, when 'twas all benignity without it!

My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this passion before he married ;-but, from a little subacid kind of drollish impatience in his nature, whenever it befel him, he would never submit to it like a Christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, and play the devil, and write the bitterest Philippics against the eye that ever man wrote:-there is one in verse upon somebody's eye or other, that, for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; which, in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus :

A devil 'tis, and mischief such doth work,
As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk. 1

father was

In short, during the whole paroxysm, my all abuse and foul language, approaching rather towards malediction;-only he did not do it with as much method as Ernulphus ;-he was too impetuous : nor with Ernulphus's policy;—for though my father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, which was either aiding or abetting to his love, yet he never concluded his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and coxcombs, he would say, that ever was let loose in the world.

My uncle Toby, on the contrary, took it like a lamb;-sat still, and let the poison work in his veins without resistance:-in the sharpest exacerbations of his wound, (like that on his groin) he never dropped one fretful or discontented word, he blamed neither heaven nor earth,-nor thought nor spoke an injurious thing of any body, nor any part of it; he sat solitary and pensive with his pipe,-looking at his lame leg, then whiffing out a sentimental heigh-ho! which, mixing with the smoke, incommoded no one mortal. He took it like a lamb, I say.

In truth, he had mistook it at first; for, having taken a ride with my father that very morning, to save, if possible, a beautiful wood, which the dean and chapter were hewing down to give to the poor;2 which said wood being in full view of my uncle Toby's house, and of singular service to him in his description of the battle of Wynnendale,-by trotting on too hastily to save it, upon an uneasy saddle, worse horse, &c. &c. . . it had so happened, that the serous part of the blood had got betwixt the two skins, in the nether

1 This will be printed with my father's Life of Socrates, &c. 2 Mr. Shandy must mean the poor in spirit; inasmuch as they divided the money amongst themselves.