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 meantime) I’ll have another pluck at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you little dream of. [Footnote 4.14: According to the original Editions.] THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY GENTLEMAN 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 JOHN, LORD VISCOUNT SPENCER MY LORD, I humbly beg leave to offer you these two Volumes;[D.1] they are the best my talents, with such bad health as I have, could produce: --had Providence granted me a larger stock of either, they had been a much more proper present to your Lordship. I beg your Lordship will forgive me, if, at the same time I dedicate this work to you, I join Lady SPENCER, in the liberty I take of inscribing the story of _Le Fever_ to her name; for which I have no other motive, which my heart has informed me of, but that the story is a humane one. I am, MY LORD, Your Lordship’s most devoted and most humble Servant, LAUR. STERNE. [Footnote D.1: Volumes V. and VI. in the first Edition.] BOOK V CHAPTER I If it had not been for those two mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a postillion who drove them from Stilton to Stamford, the thought had never entered my head. He flew like lightning----there was a slope of three miles and a half----we scarce touched the ground----the motion was most rapid----most impetuous------’twas communicated to my brain--my heart partook of it---- “By the great God of day,” said I, looking towards the sun, and thrusting my arm out of the fore-window of the chaise, as I made my vow, “I will lock up my study-door the moment I get home, and throw the key of it ninety feet below the surface of the earth, into the draw-well at the back of my house.” The London waggon confirmed me in my resolution; it hung tottering upon the hill, scarce progressive, drag’d--drag’d up by eight _heavy beasts_-- “by main strength! ----quoth I, nodding----but your betters draw the same way----and something of everybody’s! ----O rare!” Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the _bulk_--so little to the _stock?_ Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? for ever in the same track--for ever at the same pace?