Chapter 1.XIV.

Upon looking into my mother's marriage settlement, in order to satisfy
myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could
proceed any farther in this history;--I had the good fortune to pop upon
the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half straight
forwards,--it might have taken me up a month;--which shews plainly, that
when a man sits down to write a history,--tho' it be but the history of
Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he knows no more than his heels what lets
and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way,--or what a dance
he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over. Could a
historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,--
straight forward;--for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without
ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,-
-he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his
journey's end;--but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he
is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight
line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways
avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting
his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can
fly; he will moreover have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon:
Panegyricks to paste up at this door;
Pasquinades at that:--All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt
from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be look'd into,