Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 8).pdf/8

 all that has been said upon straight lines in sundry pages of my book—I defy the best cabbage planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—I defy him to go on cooly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if flits in petticoats are unsew'd up—without ever and anon straddling out, or sidling into some bastardly digression—In Freeze-land, Fog-land and some other lands I wot of—it may be done

But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every idea,