Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 6).pdf/13

 at Rome, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand, five hundred, and sixty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most abstrute theology;—and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents.—What is that, cried my father, to what is told us of Aphonsus Tostatus, who, almost in his nurse's arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?—What shall we say of the great Piereskius?—That's the very man, cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Schevling, and from Schevling back again, merely to see Stevinus's flying chariot.—He was a very great man! added my uncle Toby; (meaning Stevinus)—He was so;