I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house; --and that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into _England_: --That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years; --and have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire_, ----all which put together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage, --as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts. If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds, --when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which, before, was a book apocryphal: ----If I am thus pressed --I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once, ----by acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard before he met with Dr. _Slop_; --and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too. Imagine to yourself; --but this had better begin a new chapter. CHAPTER IX Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor _Slop_, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards. Such were the out-lines of Dr. _Slop’s_ figure, which, --if you have read _Hogarth’s_ analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would; ----you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred. Imagine such a one, ----for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. _Slop’s_ figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour----but of strength, ----alack! ----scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition. ----They were not. ----Imagine to yourself, _Obadiah_ mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way. Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.