The chestnut burn offers the occasion for another piece of bawdiness, and the learned men (including Yorick and Eugenius) exercise their wit in discussing remedies.
Walter Shandy is always Walter Shandy, and when he is rescued from his dilemma of what to do about Tristram's name by the legacy, he is immediately back on the horns of a new dilemma: clear the Ox-moor or send Bobby on a trip. As we see shortly, indecision is so painful to him that he is grateful for any solution, regardless of the consequences.
Tristram again indulges his fancy in holding a carrot before the horse — the reader — by only mentioning Bobby's death. But the trick keeps us going forward until we come at last to the details. He takes seriously the business of "some sort of connection" in his work; Bobby's death will carry us over to the next installment, just as will the promise of a Chapter on Whiskers (whatever that might be). The most important promise, however, is the story of Uncle Toby's "amours": that is what kept the eighteenth-century reader afloat. He will finally keep that promise too. Whether it is the "choicest morsel" of the book is for the reader to decide, but it is worth pointing out that if a book such as this depends on one "choicest morsel" for its justification, it probably isn't a very important book. The best thing is to consider this as another Shandean statement and put it in its place next to all the Shandean characteristics that make up the book.
This final chapter of Book 4 is designed to hook the reader: the author lists the things that he intends to do as a bridge between the present section and the forthcoming ones. He coyly says that he will continue to say nothing about his "dear Jenny," he reminds the reader that humor is the basic justification for his book because it keeps the reader healthy by stimulating the "vital fluids" in their appropriate functioning, and he promises the reader an extraordinary story if the reader will read the next installment.
(The "vile cough" that he warns may kill him in the meantime does finally kill Laurence Sterne in 1768, a year after the ninth book of Tristram Shandy.)
