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The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop’s head.—He had not digested it.—No, replied Dr. Slop, ’twould be full as proper, if the midwife came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle Toby,—and but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what might have become of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.3———Nor, replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby’s hobby-horsical reflection, though full as hobby-horsically himself)—do I know, Captain Shandy, what might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to * * * * * *——the application of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so a propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a name.

CHAP. XIV

Let us go back to the * * * * * *——in the last chapter.

It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you, in petto,1 ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d-doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot,——but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long as Tully’s second Philippick,2—it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.——And then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldy and incommodious to his action,—so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.—Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute,—hid his BAMBINO3 in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it,—and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders,4——Oh, Sirs! it has done wonders.——It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation.

These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles,—and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five and twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them,——with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great stile of design.———All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within, and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.5———We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.

CHAP. XV

Dr. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle Toby,——’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, where your reverences took so much notice of the * * * * * *, which had he managed,—my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a raveline,—Dr. Slop would never have given them up;——and my uncle Toby would as soon thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.

When a proposition can be taken in two senses,——’tis a law in disputation That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side,——“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into