Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/168

 key, and no way applicable to the subject started;—so that with all their knowledge, they could not tell what in the world to make of it.

Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didiuss hands, in order to bemawl Yorick to some purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable Zds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle Tobys good nature felt a pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing Phutatorius stop short, without any attempt or desire to go on—a third party began to suppose,