No wonder I itch so much as I do, to get at these amours—They are the choicest morsel of my whole story! and when I do get at ’em——assure yourselves, good folks—(nor do I value whose squeamish stomach takes offence at it) I shall not be at all nice in the choice of my words!——and that’s the thing I have to _declare._——I shall never get all through in five minutes, that I fear——and the thing I _hope_ is, that your worships and reverences are not offended—if you are, depend upon’t I’ll give you something, my good gentry, next year to be offended at——that’s my dear _Jenny_’s way—but who my _Jenny_ is—and which is the right and which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to be _concealed_—it shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my chapter of Button-holes——and not one chapter before. And now that you have just got to the end of these[21] three volumes——the thing I have to _ask_ is, how you feel your heads? my own akes dismally!——as for your healths, I know, they are much better.—True _Shandeism_, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round. Was I left, like _Sancho Pança_, to choose my kingdom, it should not be maritime—or a kingdom of blacks to make a penny of;—no, it should be a kingdom of hearty laughing subjects: And as the bilious and more saturnine passions, by creating disorders in the blood and humours, have as bad an influence, I see, upon the body politick as body natural——and as nothing but a habit of virtue can fully govern those passions, and subject them to reason——I should add to my prayer—that God would give my subjects grace to be as WISE as they were MERRY; and then should I be the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people under heaven. And so with this moral for the present, may it please your worships and your reverences, I take my leave of you till this time twelve-month, when, (unless this vile cough kills me in the mean time) I’ll have another pluck at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you little dream of. [21] According to the preceding Editions. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME Tristram Shandy _Tristram Shandy_ THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN ——— Volume the Third ——— Dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris Cum venia dabis.——                  HOR. —Si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut mordacius quam deceat Christianum—non Ego, sed Democritus dixit.—                 ERASMUS. Si quis Clericus, aut Monachus, verba joculatoria, risum moventia, sciebat, anathema esto.                 Second Council of CARTHAGE. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE J O H N, LORD VISCOUNT SPENCER MY LORD,