Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 1).pdf/149

 course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and then—we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly where we started.

Happy! Thrice happy Times! I only wish that the æra of my begetting, as well as the mode and manner of it, had been a little alter'd,—or that it could have been put off with any convenience to my father or mother, for some twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the literary world might have stood some chance.

But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco pipe.

His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our atmo-