In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.
Chapter 4.XXVIII.
'It is with Love as with Cuckoldom'—the suffering party is at least the third, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is Love—may be Hatred, in that—Sentiment half a yard higher—and Nonsense—no, Madam,—not there—I mean at the part I am now pointing to with my forefinger—how can we help ourselves?
Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the worst fitted, to have push'd his researches, thro' such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out—had not Bridget's pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah's repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle Toby to look into the affair.
Chapter 4.XXIX.
Why weavers, gardeners, and gladiators—or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some ailment in the foot)—should ever have had some tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists.
A water-drinker, provided he is a profess'd one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at first sight, there is any consequence, or show of logic in it, 'That a rill of cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my Jenny's—'
—The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects—
But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.
—'And in perfect good health with it?'
—The most perfect,—Madam, that friendship herself could wish me—
'And drink nothing!—nothing but water?'
—Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain—see how they give way—!
In swims Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow—they dive into the center of the current—
Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits—And Desire, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other—
O ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have so often governed and turn'd this world about like a mill-wheel—grinding the faces of the impotent—bepowdering their ribs—bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature—
If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius—And, if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.
Which shews they had both read Longinus—
For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.
Chapter 4.XXX.
