t best to draw his knowledge from the
fountain-head, he began with N. Tartaglia, who it seems was the first
man who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball's doing all that
mischief under the notion of a right line--This N. Tartaglia proved to
my uncle Toby to be an impossible thing.

--Endless is the search of Truth.

No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the cannon-ball did not
go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to enquire
and find out which road the ball did go: For which purpose he was
obliged to set off afresh with old Maltus, and studied him devoutly.--He
proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, by certain
Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise path to
be a Parabola--or else an Hyperbola,--and that the parameter, or latus
rectum, of the conic section of the said path, was to the quantity and
amplitude in a direct ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the
angle of incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal plane;--and
that the semiparameter,--stop! my dear uncle Toby--stop!--go not one
foot farther into this thorny and bewildered track,--intricate are the
steps! intricate are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the
troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom Knowledge
will bring upon thee.--O my uncle;--fly--fly,--fly from it as from a
serpent.--Is it fit--goodnatured man! thou should'st sit up, with
the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with
hectic watchings?--Alas! 'twill exasperate thy symptoms,--check thy
perspirations--evaporate thy spirits--waste thy animal strength, dry up
thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,--impair
thy health,--and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.--O my uncle!
my uncle Toby.

Chapter 1.XXIX.

I would not give a groat for that man's knowledge in pen-craft, who does
not understand this,--That the best plain narrative in the world, tacked
very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle Toby--would
have felt both cold and vapid upon the reader's palate;--therefore I
forthwith put an end to the chapter, though I was in the middle of my
story.

--Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters. Where
an exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less
evil; deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than
beauty. This is to be understood cum grano salis; but be it as it
will