WHEN My uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind,
he began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost
diligence, to the study of it; for nothing being of more
importance to him than his recovery, and his recovery
depending, as you have read, upon the passions and affec-
tions of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest care to
make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to
talk upon it without emotion.
In a fortnight's close and painful application, which, by
the bye, did my uncle Toby's wound, upon his groin, no
good,-he was enabled, by the help of some marginal docu-
ments at the feet of the elephant, together with Gobesius's
military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the
Flemish, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity;
and before he was two full months gone,-he was right
eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the
advanced counterscarp with great order;-but having, by
that time, gone much deeper into the art, than what his first
motive made necessary, - my uncle Toby was able to cross
the Maes and Sambre; make diversions as far as Vauban's
line, the abbey of Salsines, &c. and give his visitors as distinct
a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the gate of St
Nicolas, where he had the honour to receive his wound.
But the desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, in-
creases ever with the acquisition of it. The more my uncle
Toby pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it;-
by the same process and electrical assimilation, as I told
you, though which I ween the souls of connoisseurs them-
selves, by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness,
at length, to get all be-virtued,-be-pictured,-be-butter-
flied, and be-fiddled.
The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain
of science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his
thirst, so that, before the first year of his confinement had
well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in Italy
or Flanders, of which, by one means or other, he had not
procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully
collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their demoli-
tions, their improvements, and new works, an which he
would read with that intense application and delight, that
he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his
dinner.
In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli and
Cataneo, translated from the Italian;-likewise Stevinus,
Marolis, the Chevalier de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter,
the Count de Pagan, the Marshal Vauban, Mons. Blondel,
with almost as many more books of military architecture,
as Toby found it necessary to
understand a little of projectiles:-And having judged it
best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he
began with N. Tartaglia, who it seems was the first man
who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball's doing all
that mischief under the notion of a right line.-This N.
Tartaglia proved to my uncle Toby to be an impossible
thing.
-Endless is the Search of Truth.
No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied which road the
cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and
resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road
the ball did go: For which purpose he was obliged to set
off afresh with old Maltus, and studied him devoutly.-
He proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, by
certain geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the
precise path to be a PARABOLA-or else an HYPERBOLA,-
and that the parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic section
of the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a
direct ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle
of incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal
plane;-and that the semi-parameter,-stop I my dear
uncle Toby,-stop I-go not one foot further into this
thorny and bewildered track,-intricate are the steps! intri-
cate are the mases of this labyrinth I intricate are the
troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom,
KNOWLEDGE, will bring upon thee. - my uncle !-fly-
fly-fly from it as from a serpent.-Is it fit, good-natured
man! thou should'st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin,
whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings?-
Alas! 'twill exasperate thy symptoms,-Check thy perspira-
tions,-evaporate thy spirits,-waste thy animal strength,-
dry up thy radical moisture,-bring thee into a costive
habit of body, impair thy health,-and hasten all the in-
firmities of thy old age.-O my uncle ! my uncle Toby !