Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 5).pdf/41

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Now my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory letter to Tully.—He had as little skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity.—And as my father, whilst he was concerned in the Turky trade, had been three or four different times in the Levant, in one of which he had staid a whole year and a half at Zant, my uncle Toby naturally concluded, that in some one of these periods he had taken a trip across the Archipelago into Asia; and that all this sailing affair with Ægina behind, and Megara before, and Pyræus on the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my father's voyage and reflections.—'Twas certainly in his manner, and many an undertaking critick would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations.—And pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, laying the end of his pipe upon my father's handin