misalliance; but that the latter are quite distinct from the former, may
be made evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality of the
characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are all
antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of Tristram
Shandy, and by supposing, instead of them, the presence of two or three
callous debauchees. The result will be pure disgust. Sterne cannot be
too severely censured for thus using the best dispositions of our nature
as the panders and condiments for the basest.

The excellencies of Sterne consist--

1. In bringing forward into distinct consciousness those minutiae of
thought and feeling which appear trifles, yet have an importance for the
moment, and which almost every man feels in one way or other. Thus is
produced the novelty of an individual peculiarity, together with the
interest of a something that belongs to our common nature. In short,
Sterne seizes happily on those points, in which every man is more or
less a humourist. And, indeed, to be a little more subtle, the
propensity to notice these things does itself constitute the humourist,
and the superadded power of so presenting them to men in general gives
us the man of humour. Hence the difference of the man of humour, the
effect of whose portraits does not depend on the felt presence of
himself, as a humourist, as in the instances of Cervantes and
Shakspeare--nay, of Rabelais too; and of the humourist, the effect of
whose works does very much depend on the sense of his own oddity, as in
Sterne's case, and perhaps Swift's; though Swift again would require a
separate classification.

2. In the traits of human nature, which so easily assume a particular
cast and colour from individual character. Hence this excellence and the