What these perplexities of my uncle _Toby_ were, ----’tis impossible for you to guess; --if you could, --I should blush; not as a relation, --not as a man, --nor even as a woman, --but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at anything. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page, --I would tear it out of my book. BOOK II CHAPTER I I have begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle _Toby_ was involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege of _Namur_, where he received his wound. I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of King _William’s_ wars, --but if he has not, --I then inform him, that one of the most memorable attacks in that siege, was that which was made by the _English_ and _Dutch_ upon the point of the advanced counterscarp, between the gate of _St. Nicolas_, which inclosed the great sluice or water-stop, where the _English_ were terribly exposed to the shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of _St. Roch_. The issue of which hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the _Dutch_ lodged themselves upon the counter-guard, --and that the _English_ made themselves masters of the covered-way before _St. Nicolas_-gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the _French_ officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis sword in hand. As this was the principal attack of which my uncle _Toby_ was an eye-witness at _Namur_, ----the army of the besiegers being cut off, by the confluence of the _Maes_ and _Sambre_, from seeing much of each other’s operations, ----my uncle _Toby_ was generally more eloquent and particular in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences and distinctions between the scarp and counter-scarp, --the glacis and covered-way, --the half-moon and ravelin, --as to make his company fully comprehend where and what he was about. Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms; so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle _Toby_ did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too. To speak the truth, unless the company my father led upstairs were tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle _Toby_ was in one of his explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep the discourse free from obscurity.