udden coming, and a discourse upon
fortification;--yet I fear'd it.--Talk of what we will, brother,--or let
the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for the subject,--you are
sure to bring it in. I would not, brother Toby, continued my
father,--I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and
horn-works.--That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. Slop, interrupting
him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun.

Dennis the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the insinuation
of a pun, more cordially than my father;--he would grow testy upon it at
any time;--but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious discourse, was
as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the nose;--he saw no difference.

Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Dr. Slop,--the
curtins my brother Shandy mentions here, have nothing to do with
beadsteads;--tho', I know Du Cange says, 'That bed-curtains, in all
probability, have taken their name from them;'--nor have the horn-works
he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the horn-works of
cuckoldom: But the Curtin, Sir, is the word we use in fortification, for
that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two bastions and
joins them--Besiegers seldom offer to carry on their attacks directly
against the curtin, for this reason, because they are so well flanked.
('Tis the case of other curtains, quoth Dr. Slop, laughing.) However,
continued my uncle Toby, to make them sure, we generally choose to place
ravelins before them, taking care only to extend them beyond the fosse
or ditch:--The common men, who know very little of fortification,
confound the ravelin and the half-moon together,--tho' they are very
different things;--not in their figure or construction, for we make
them exactly alike, in all points; for they always consist of two faces,
making a salient angle, with the gorges, not straight, but in form of
a crescent;--Where then lies the difference? (quoth my father, a little
testily.)--In their situations, answered my uncle Toby:--For when a
ravelin, brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a
ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin;--it
is a half-moon;--a half-moon likewise is a half-moon, and no more, so
long as it stands before its bastion;--but was it to change place, and
get before the curtin,--'twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon,
in that case, is not a half-moon;--'tis no more than a ravelin.--I
thin