Tristram reiterates the principle behind his storytelling: "when a man is telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader's fancy." He tries to keep the reader from getting lost; then he gets lost himself. "But 'tis my father's fault," as the reader will see when Tristram's "brains come to be dissected." He decides to begin the chapter over again.
Uncle Toby did not "dismount his [hobby] horse at all — his horse rather flung him." During the peace of Utrecht he had nothing to do; then, according to the articles of the treaty, it was stipulated that Dunkirk was to be demolished. He and Trim discuss the best way of destroying their fortifications, and they are once again caught up in the spirit: "we retreat towards the town; — then we'll demolish the mole, — next fill up the harbour, — then retire into the citadel, and blow it up into the air; and having done that, corporal, we'll embark for England. — We are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting himself — Very true, said my uncle Toby — looking at the church."
No more war games to play, Toby becomes listless: "The trumpet of war fell out of his hands, — he took up the lute, sweet instrument!" And now it is time, says Tristram, to fulfill his promise to tell about Uncle Toby's courtship of Widow Wadman. He is most confident that it will turn out to be "one of the most compleat systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world." He cites authorities on "love" and learned medical treatises on the physiology of love, and he tells what Walter did to "protect" Toby from adverse consequences of being in love (one thing Walter did was to have the tailor sew a "camphorated cere-cloth" into Toby's new breeches, as a lining).
