I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby's story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now, (four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S)These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes (Alluding to the first edition.)--In the fifth volume I have been very good,--the precise line I have described in it being this:
(one very squiggly line across the page with loops marked A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D)By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to Navarre,--and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,--I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse's devils led me the round you see marked D.--for as for C C C C C they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,--or with my own transgressions at the letters ABD--they vanish into nothing.
In this last volume I have done better still--for from the end of Le Fever's episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby's campaigns,--I have scarce stepped a yard out of my way.
If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible--by the good leave of his grace of Benevento's devils--but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of going on even thus:
(straight line across the page) which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master's ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to the right hand or to the left.
This right line,--the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines----The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero----The best line! say cabbage planters--is the shortest line, says Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.--I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next birth-day suits!
--What a journey!
Pray can you tell me,--that is, without anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines--by what mistake--who told them so--or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of Gravitation?