“They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.
“Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her parlor.
“And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers--beware of taking it--thou canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other things as thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and thy Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to suppose--thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by that means.
“_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges--and I believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat’s flesh, nor red deer--nor even foal’s flesh by any means; and carefully abstain--that is, as much as thou canst,--from peacocks, cranes, coots, didappers and water-hens.
“As for thy drink--I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects; but if thy stomach palls with it--discontinue it from time to time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine, and lettuce, in the stead of them.
“There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present--
“Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.--So wishing everything, dear Toby, for the best,
Under the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have omitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from advising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen of cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. He recommended the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the power of magic liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirable example of the English government, which in time of peace has two hundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time of need, furnish double that quantity when it is desirable to scour the sea and carry off a whole foreign navy.