generally read, and from his obscurity, it would have been vain to have expected any illustration of a modern writer.

Readers are often inclined to regard with veneration, what they do not understand. They suppose a work to be deep, in proportion to its darkness, and give the author credit for recondite learning, in many passages, where his incapacity, or his carelessness, have prevented him from explaining himself with clearness. It was not the business of Sterne to undeceive those, who considered his Tristram as a work of unfathomable knowledge.

He had read with avidity the ludicrous writers, who flourished under the last princes of the race of Valois, and the first of the Bourbons. They were at once courtiers, men of wit, and, some of them, profound scholars. They offered to a mind full of sensibility, and alive to every impression of curiosity and voluptuousness, the private history of an age, in

which every class of readers feels a deep interest; in which the heroic spirit of chivalry seemed to be tempered by letters, and the continued conflict of powerful and intrepid minds produced memorable changes, in religion, in politics, and philosophy. They shewed, to a keen observer of the passions, the secret movements, which directed the splendid scenes beheld with astonishment by Europe. They exhibited statesmen and heroes drowning their country in blood, for the favours of a mistress, or a quarrel at a ball; and veiling under the shew of patriotism, or religious zeal, the meanest and most criminal motives. While he was tempted to imitate their productions, the dormant reputation of most of these authors seemed to invite him to a secret treasure of learning, wit, and ridicule. To the facility of these acquisitions, we probably owe much of the gaiety of Sterne, His imagination, untamed by previous labour, and unsated by a long acquaint

ance with literary folly, dwelt with enthusiasm on the grotesque pictures of manners and opinions, displayed in his favourite authors. It may even be suspected, that by this influence he was drawn aside from his natural bias to the pathetic; for in the serious parts of his works, he seems to have depended on his own force, and to have found in his own mind whatever he wished to produce; but in the ludicrous, he is generally a copyist, and sometimes follows his original so closely, that he forgets the changes of manners, which give an appearance of extravagance to what was once correct ridicule.

It is more necessary to preserve a strict attention to manners, in works of this sort, because the ludicrous, by its nature, tends to exaggeration. The passion of laughter, the strongest effect of ludicrous impressions, seems to be produced by the intensity, or more properly, the excess of pleasurable ideas: circum præcordia

ludere, is the proper character of this class of emotions. Thus, a certain degree of fulness improves the figure, but if it be encreased to excessive fatness, it becomes risible. So in the qualities of the mind, modesty is agreeable—extreme bashfulness is ridiculous: we are amused with vivacity, we laugh at levity. If we observe the conversation of a professed jester, it will appear that his great secret consists in exaggeration. This is also the art of caricaturists: 'add but a trifling degree of length or breadth to the features of an agreeable face, and they become ludicrous. In like manner, unbolster Falstaff, and his wit will affect us less, the nearer he approaches to the size of a reasonable man.

I may add, that in idiots, and persons of weak understanding, laughter is a common expression of surprise or pleasure; and Young has observed,

That fools are ever on the laughing side.

All these remarks prove, that we do not reason with the accuracy which some authors suppose, concerning the turpitude, or incongruity of the ideas presented to us, before we give way to mirth. If their theory were just, a malicious critic might prove from their effects, the incongruity of their own discussions.

There is little difficulty in accounting for the number and excellence of the ludicrous writers, who appeared during the sixteenth century, and who not only resemble each other in their manner, but employ similar turns of thought, and by often relating the same anecdotes, shew that they drew their materials from a

common store.

The Amadis, and other similar romances, had amused the short intervals of repose, which the pursuits of love and arms afforded, previous to the reign of Francis I. That prince, equally the patron of letters and of dissoluteness, formed