might, naturally enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world
into such a determination against me.--All I plead for, in this case,
Madam, is strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as
to yourself,--as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till
you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at present can be produced
against me.--Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam, as to desire
you should therefore think, that my dear, dear Jenny is my kept mistress;--
no,--that would be flattering my character in the other extreme, and giving
it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has no kind of right to. All I
contend for, is the utter impossibility, for some volumes, that you, or the
most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know how this matter really
stands.--It is not impossible, but that my dear, dear Jenny! tender as the
appellation is, may be my child.--Consider,--I was born in the year
eighteen.--Nor is there any thing unnatural or extravagant in the
supposition, that my dear Jenny may be my friend.--Friend!--My friend.--
Surely, Madam, a friendship between the two sexes may subsist, and be
supported without--Fy! Mr. Shandy:--Without any thing, Madam, but that
tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in friendship, where there
is a difference of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and
sentimental parts of the best French Romances;--it will really, Madam,
astonish you to see with what a variety of chaste expressions this
delicious sentiment, which I have the honour to speak of, is dress'd out.



Chapter 1.XIX.

I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, than
pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father's great good
sense,--knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious too in