appear that wit, like beauty, can break through the most unpromising disguise.

From Rabelais, Sterne seems to have caught the design of writing a general satire on the abuse of speculative opinions. The dreams of Rabelais's commentators have indeed discovered a very different intention in his book, but we have his own authority for rejecting their surmises as groundless. In the dedication of part of his work to Cardinal Chastillon, he mentions the political allusions imputed to him, and disclaims, them expressly. He declares, that he wrote for the recreation of persons languishing in sickness, or under the pressure of grief and anxiety, and that his joyous prescription had succeeded with many patients. Que plusieurs gens, langoureux, malades, ou autrement fachez et desolez, avoient à la lecture d' icelles trompe leur ennui, temps joyeusement passé, et reçue allegresse et consolation nouvelle. And he adds, seulement avois egard et intention par escrit donner ce peu de soul

agement que pouvois ès affligez et malades absens. The religious disputes, which then agitated Europe, were subjects of ridicule too tempting to be withstood, especially as Rabelais was protected by the Chastillon family; this, with his abuse of the monks, excited such a clamour against him, that Francis I. felt a curiosity to hear his book read, and as our author informs us, found nothing improper in it.*

The birth and education of Pantagruel evidently gave rise to those of Martinus Scriblerus, and both were fresh in Sterne's memory, when he composed the first chapters of Tristram Shandy.

It must be acknowledged, that the application of the satire is more clear in Rabelais, than in his imitators. Rabelais attacked boldly the scholastic mode of education, in that part of his work; and shewed the superiority of a natural me

* Et n'avoit trouvé passage aulcun suspect.

thod of instruction, more accommodated to the feelings and capacities of the young. But Sterne, and the authors of Scriblerus, appear to ridicule the folly of some individual; for no public course of education has ever been proposed, similar to that which they exhibit.

Perhaps it was Sterne's purpose, to deride the methods of shortening the business of education, which several ingenious men have amused themselves by contriving. The Lullian art, which was once much celebrated, was burlesqued by Swift, in his Project of a Literary Turning Machine, in the Voyage to Laputa. Des Cartes has defined Lully's plan to be, the art of prating copiously, and without judgment, concerning things of which we are ignorant:* an art so generally practised in our times, that its author is no more thought of than the

* Ars Lullii, ad copiosè, et sine judicio de iis qua nescimus garriendum. Brucker. Histor, Critic. Philos t. ii. p. 205.

inventor of the compass.

Lully's seems to have been similar to the fortune-telling schemes which we see on the ladies' fans, that enable any person to give an answer to any question, without understanding either one or the other. Erasmus touched briefly on this subject, in his Ars Notoria, where he has exposed, in a few words, the folly of desiring to gain knowledge, without an adequate exertion of the faculties. Providence, as he says finely, has decreed, that those common acquisitions, money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labour.* Those who seldom knew the want of power on other occa

Atqui sic visum est superis. Opes istas vulgares, aurum, gemmas, argentum, palatia, regnum, nonnunquam largiuntur ignavis et immerentibus; sed quæ veræ sunt opes, ac propriè nostræ sunt, voluerunt parari laboribus.

sions, have felt it on this: DIONYSIUS and FREDERICK both experienced, that there is no royal road to the genuine honours of literature..

If Sterne had been sufficiently ac quainted with the philosophical systems of his time, he might have converted the Lullian art, into an excellent burlesque of the Leibnitzian doctrine of pre-established harmony, then warmly discussed, and now completely forgotten. He seems to have avoided with care every controversial subject, which could involve him in difficulties. I observe in the sneer at Water-landish knowledge, among the criticisms of Yorick's sermons, a slight glance at a celebrated theological dispute: but, like his own monk, he had looked down at the prebendary's vest, and the hectic passed away in a moment.*

* Dr. Brown's Estimate is referred to in another passage, so oscurely, that modern readers can hardly recognize it.