The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman/Volume 8/Chapter 4
CHAP. IV.
" It is with Love as with Cuckoldom"—the suffering party is at least the third, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is Love—may be Hatred, in that—Sentiment half a yard higher— ——— —and Nonsense—no Madam,—not there—I mean at the part I am now pointing to with my forefinger—how can we help ourselves?
Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the worst fitted, to have push'd his researches, thro' such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, so see what they would turn out—had not Bridget's pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah's repeated manifesto's thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle Toby to look into the affair.