No sooner was my uncle _Toby_ satisfied which road the cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road the ball did go: For which purpose he was obliged to set off afresh with old _Maltus_, and studied him devoutly. --He proceeded next to _Galileo_ and _Torricellius_, wherein, by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise part to be a PARABOLA--or else an HYPERBOLA, --and that the parameter, or _latus rectum_, of the conic section of the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct _ratio_, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal plane; --and that the semiparameter, ----stop! my dear uncle _Toby_----stop! --go not one foot farther into this thorny and bewildered track, --intricate are the steps! intricate are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom KNOWLEDGE will bring upon thee. --O my uncle; --fly--fly, fly from it as from a serpent. ----Is it fit----good-natured man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings? ----Alas! ’twill exasperate thy symptoms, --check thy perspirations--evaporate thy spirits--waste thy animal strength, --dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body, ----impair thy health, ----and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age. ----O my uncle! my uncle _Toby_. CHAPTER IV I would not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pencraft, who does not understand this, ----That the best plain narrative in the world, tacked very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle _Toby_----would have felt both cold and vapid upon the reader’s palate; --therefore I forthwith put an end to the chapter, though I was in the middle of my story. ------Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters. Where an exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty. This is to be understood _cum grano salis_; but be it as it will, --as the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the apostrophe cool, than any thing else, --’tis not very material whether upon any other score the reader approves of it or not. In the latter end of the third year, my uncle _Toby_ perceiving that the parameter and semiparameter of the conic section angered his wound, he left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which, like a spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled force.