Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 6).pdf/148



, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the most compleat systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world—are you to imagine from thence, that I shall set out with a description of what love is? whether part God and part Devil, as Plotinus will have it

—Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as ten—to determine, with Ficinus, "How many parts of it—the one,—and