Chapter C: H a P. LVII

ALBEIT, gentle reader, I have lusted earnestly, and endeavoured carefully (according to the measure of such a slender skill as God has vouchsafed me, and as convenient leisure from other occasions of needful profit and healthful pastime have permitted) that these little books which I here put into thy hands, might stand instead of many bigger books—yet have I carried myself towards thee in such fanciful guise of careless disport, that right sore am I ashamed now to intreat thy lenity seriously——in beseeching thee to believe it of me, that in the story of my father and his christian-names—I have no thoughts of treading upon _Francis_ the First——nor in the affair of the nose—upon _Francis_ the Ninth—nor in the character of my uncle _Toby_——of characterizing the militiating spirits of my country—the wound upon his groin, is a wound to every comparison of that kind—nor by _Trim_—that I meant the duke of _Ormond_—or that my book is wrote against predestination, or free-will, or taxes—If ’tis wrote against any thing,——’tis wrote, an’ please your worships, against the spleen! in order, by a more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles in laughter, to drive the _gall_ and other _bitter juices_ from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his majesty’s subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which belong to them, down into their duodenums.