Assamblage

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, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:——In short there is no end of it

(Laurence Sterne. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Book I, Chapter XIV)

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