Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/108

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[102]

I say, reported to be,—for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.

This by the help of the observations already premised, and I hope already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith make appear.

I hate set dessertations,—and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception,—when in all likelihood, if you had looked about you,might