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considerable price, and was happy to dispose of it very soon after, to a collector, who fell in love with the frontispiece.

"The Life of a Satyrical Puppy, called Nim," is a small octavo volume, of 118 pages, "by T. M. printed by and for Humphrey Mosley, at the Prince's Arms, in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1657.” It is dedicated to George Duke of Buckingham, and presents to him Nim, and Bung his man, "both born to attend his lordship's mirth." It appears to me a very lame attempt at personal satire, the object of which cannot now be discovered. The book is extremely rare. Nothing can be more unlike the style of Tristram Shandy, than the contents of this work, and I acquit Sterne completely from the charge of having copied it..

The frontispiece represents Nim and his man, in the dress of the times. The figure of Bung serves to explain a phrase

in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night; he is cross-gartered. The trunk-breeches do not reach quite to the knee, above and below which, the garter is applied spirally, till it disappears in the boot.

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Why," says our poet, "may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bunghole?" These masters of ridicule may be tracked to a state of similar degradation, through the works of estimable. writers, to miserable farces, and at length to the jest-books, where the dregs of different authors are so effectually intermingled, that the brightest wit is confounded with the vilest absurdity.

CHAPTER III.

Sketches of ludicrous writers, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

THE spring has not been more celebrated by poets, than the evening by the authors of facetious books. Perhaps the jovial Deipnosophists of Athenæus influenced Bouchet, and some of the more learned writers of this kind, who represent their discussions as taking place after supper. In the Moyen de Parvenir, the company are supposed to be constantly at table, and to form a sort of Everlasting club.

I. The Serees, or Evenings, of GUILLAUME BOUCHET, have gone through three editions; the first at Paris, in three

volumes, duodecimo, 1608; the other of Rouen, in the same form; the date, 1615; the third, which is inferior to these, at Lyons, in 1614, in three volumes, octavo, bound together. They are all extremely rare, in this country.

That Sterne had seen this book in the SKELTON Library, I have strong reason to believe; he must have been much gratified with its grotesque wit, and its laboured discussions of trifles; but I cannot perceive that he has made much use of it. The art of transplanting teeth, which has been considered as a recent invention, is mentioned by Bouchet, in his twenty-seventh Sereé. "J'ai vu aussi une jeune Dame, qui se fit arracher une dent, ou parce qu'elle estoit gateé, ou mal situeé, puis s'en fit remettre une autre, quélle fit arracher a une sienne Damoiselle, laquelle reprit, et servit comme les autres."

II. The Apres-Diners, or Afternoons, of the Count D'Arete, ought perhaps to

have preceded Bouchet. This was one of the league-libels against Henry IV, and contains, like many, other political satires, more venom than wit. My copy of it was published in 1614, at Paris.

III. The Epidorpides, or After Supper-times, of Caspar Ens, is a collection of apophthegms, and serious stories, intermixed with some ludicrous matter. The copy in my possession was published at Cologne, 1624, in duodecimo. The introduction contains an uncommon display of learning, respecting the suppers of the Romans: their furniture, their dishes, their mode of decubitus at table, and particularly their different kinds of bread, are discussed with the diligence of an Apicius: the author must certainly talked with some old Roman

have ghost.' IV. The Escraignes Dijonnoises, or Booths of Dijon, by Tabourot, were published at Paris, in 1595. They contain