k, quoth my father, that the noble science of defence has its weak
sides--as well as others.

As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh'd my father) which, continued my
uncle Toby, my brother was speaking of, they are a very considerable
part of an outwork;--they are called by the French engineers, Ouvrage a
corne, and we generally make them to cover such places as we suspect
to be weaker than the rest;--'tis formed by two epaulments or
demi-bastions--they are very pretty,--and if you will take a walk, I'll
engage to shew you one well worth your trouble.--I own, continued my
uncle Toby, when we crown them,--they are much stronger, but then they
are very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, so that, in my
opinion, they are most of use to cover or defend the head of a camp;
otherwise the double tenaille--By the mother who bore us!--brother Toby,
quoth my father, not able to hold out any longer,--you would provoke a
saint;--here have you got us, I know not how, not only souse into the
middle of the old subject again:--But so full is your head of these
confounded works, that though my wife is this moment in the pains of
labour, and you hear her cry out, yet nothing will serve you but to
carry off the man-midwife.--Accoucheur,--if you please, quoth Dr.
Slop.--With all my heart, replied my father, I don't care what they
call you,--but I wish the whole science of fortification, with all its
inventors, at the devil;--it has been the death of thousands,--and it
will be mine in the end.--I would not, I would not, brother Toby,
have my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes,
ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur, and
of all the towns in Flanders with it.

My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries;--not from want of
courage,--I have told you in a former chapter, 'that he was a man of
courage:'--And will add here, that where just occasions presented, or
called it forth,--I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner
taken shelter;--nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness
of his intellectual parts;--for he felt this insult of my father's
as feelingly as a man could do;--but he was of a peaceful, placid
nature,--no jarring element in it,--all was mixed up so kindly within
him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

--Go--says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed
about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner