pathos connected with it quickly pass into humour, and form the ground
of it. See particularly the beautiful passage, so well known, of Uncle
Toby's catching and liberating the fly:


"Go,"--says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which had
buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time, and
which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by
him;--"I'll not hurt thee," says my Uncle Toby, rising from his chair,
and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,--"I'll not hurt a
hair of thy head:--Go," says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his
hand as he spoke, to let it escape;--"go, poor devil, get thee gone,
why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both
thee and me." (Vol. ii. ch. 12.)


Observe in this incident how individual character may be given by the
mere delicacy of presentation and elevation in degree of a common good
quality, humanity, which in itself would not be characteristic at all.

3. In Mr. Shandy's character,--the essence of which is a craving for
sympathy in exact proportion to the oddity and unsympathizability of
what he proposes;--this coupled with an instinctive desire to be at
least disputed with, or rather both in one, to dispute and yet to
agree--and holding as worst of all--to acquiesce without either
resistance or sympathy. This is charmingly, indeed, profoundly
conceived, and is psychologically and ethically true of all Mr.
Shandies. Note, too, how the contrasts of character, which are always
either balanced or remedied, increase the love between the brothers.