Ces derniers paroles, à toutes deux, furent partagées, de façon que la Cadette en avoit pour le moins les trois quarts & demi pour elle, et ce ne fut meme que par reflection subite, qu'il en donna le reste à l'ainée:*

The admirable story of Uncle Toby and the Fly, which Sterne applied to the comparatively mild Reviewers of his day, contains a strange coincidence with a passage in thé Entretiens of Balzac.

Go-go, poor devil," quoth he→ get thee gone"-why should. I hurt "thee? This world is surely wide enough, "to hold both thee and me.".

"N'avez vous point oui parler," says Balzac, “de ce Moucheron qui entra "dans l'oeil du Roi Jacques d'Angleterre, "un jour qu'il etoit a la Chasse. Aus "sitot l'impatience prit le Roi, il des "cendit de Cheval en jurant, (ce qui lui etoit assez ordinaire) il s'appella

*Paysan Parvenu, partie 2mera

+ Tristram Shandy, vol. iii. chap, iv,

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"malheureux, il appella insolent le Mou"cheron, et lui adressant sa parole, “mechant animal, lui dit-il, n'est ce pas "assez de trois grands Royaumes que je te "laisse pour te promener, sans qu'il faille que tu te viennes loger dans mes yeux ? * Sterne is, perhaps, the only writer who has spoken with due praise of the pleasure to be derived from fish-ponds; for the Archbishop, Dubravius, who pub lished a quarto volume, de Piscinis, has taken the matter so completely for granted, that he has not once adverted to it. "There is something, Sir," says Sterne," in fish-ponds-but what it is "I leave to system-builders and fish-pond diggers betwixt 'em to find out but "there is something, under the first

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disorderly transport of humours, so "unaccountably becalming in an orderly “and a sober walk towards one of them, "that I have often wondered that neither

* Memoires de Litterature par Sallengre, tom. ip. 155.

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Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any of “your noted law-givers, ever gave any "order about them."*

The following verses, taken from Carew's Survey of Cornwall, as published by Lord Dunstanville, though not very poetical, may be, to some readers, an agreeable commentary on this passage.

I wait not at the lawyer's gate,

Ne shoulder climers down the stairs,
I vaunt not manhood by debates,
I envy not the miser's fears,

But mean in state, and calm in sprite,
My fishful pond is my delight.
Where equal distant island views,
His forced banks, and otter's cage,
Where salt and fresh the pool renews,
As spring and drought increase or swage,
Where boat presents his service prest,
And net becomes the fishes nest.

Where sucking millet, swallowing basse,
Side-walking crab, wry-mouthed flouk,
And slip-fist eel, as evenings pass,
For safe bait at due place do look,
Bold to approach, quick to espy,
Greedy to catch, ready to fly.

* Tristram Shandy, vol. iv. chap. xvii.

In heat the top, in cold the deep,

In spring the mouth the mids in neap,
With changeless change by shoals thy keep,
Fat, fruitful, ready, but not cheap,

Thus mean in state and calm in sprite
My fishful pond is my delight.

I have thus put the reader in possession of every observation respecting this agreeable author,* which it would be important or proper to communicatc. If his opinion of Sterne's learning and originality 'be lessened by the perusal, he must, at least, admire the dexterity and the good taste with which he has incorporated in his work so many passages, written with very different views by their respective authors. It was evidently Sterne's purpose to make a pleasant, saleable book, coute que coute; and after taking his general plan from some of the older

* I have seen some anecdotes of Sterne, in the European Magazine, in which Madame de Lmentioned in the Sentimental Journey, was said to be Madame de Lamberti, and the Count de B. the Count de Bretueil; upon what authority I do not know.

French writers, and from Burton, he made prize of all the good thoughts that came in his way.

Voltaire has compared the merits of Rabelais and Sterne, as satirists of the abuse of learning, and, I think, has done neither of them justice. This great distinction is obvious; that Rabelais derided absurdities then existing in full force, and intermingled much sterling sense with the grossest parts of his book; Sterne, on the contrary, laughs at many exploded opinions, and forsaken fooleries, and contrives to degrade some of his most solemn passages by a vicious levity. Rabelais flew a higher pitch, too, than Sterne. Great part of the voyage to the Pays de Lanternois, which so severely stigmatizes the vices of the Romish clergy of that age, was per

*I do not recollect to have seen it observed by Rabelais's Commentators, that this name, as well as the plan of the Satire, is imitated from Lucian's True History. Lucian's town is called Lychnopolis.