CHAPTER VIII

It is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle _Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife; --so that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come; ----though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.

If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door; --and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three fifths, --should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time; --I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas, ----and is the true scholastic pendulum, ----and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter, --abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.

I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house; --and that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into _England_: --That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years; --and have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire_, ----all which put together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage, --as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.

If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds, --when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which, before, was a book apocryphal: ----If I am thus pressed --I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once, ----by acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard before he met with Dr. _Slop_; --and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.

Imagine to yourself; --but this had better begin a new chapter.

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