d that it rank hereafter with the
Argumentum Baculinum and the Argumentum ad Crumenam, and for ever
hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman
against the man;--and the Argumentum ad Rem, which, contrarywise, is
made use of by the man only against the woman;--As these two are enough
in conscience for one lecture;--and, moreover, as the one is the best
answer to the other,--let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of
in a place by themselves.

Chapter 1.XXII.

The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was
Bishop of Exeter in King James the First's reign, tells us in one of
Decads, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at London,
in the year 1610, by John Beal, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, 'That
it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;'--and I really
think it is so.

And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind
of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out;--I think it is
full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out
of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head.

This is precisely my situation.

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all
my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of
digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been
over-looked by my reader,--not for want of penetration in him,--but
because 'tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a
digression;--and it is this: That tho' my digressions are all fair, as
you observe,--and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as
often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care
to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my
absence.

I was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of
my uncle Toby's most whimsical character;--when my aunt Dinah and the
coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into
the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you
perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went on gently
all the time;--not the great contours of it,--that was impossible,--but
some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there
touch'd on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted
with my uncle Toby now than you