To my uncle Mr. _Toby Shandy_ do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle _Toby_ well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity (as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which I had done it, --the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach, --he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, That I should neither think nor act like any other man’s child: --_But alas!_ continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling down his cheeks, _My Tristram’s misfortunes began nine months before ever he came into the world_. --My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, --but she knew no more than her backside what my father meant, --but my uncle, Mr. _Toby Shandy_, who had been often informed of the affair, --understood him very well. CHAPTER IV I know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers at all, who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of everything which concerns you. It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever, --be no less read than the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ itself--and in the end, prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window; --I find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing everything in it, as _Horace_ says, _ab Ovo_. _Horace_, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy; --(I forget which), --besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. _Horace’s_ pardon; --for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived. To such, however, as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better advice, than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, ’tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.