individualizing and vividness by unusual, yet probable, combinations:--


Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop,
of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of
back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a
serjeant in the horseguards. ... Imagine such a one;--for such I say,
were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by
foot, waddling through the dirt upon the 'vertebrae' of a little
diminutive pony, of a pretty colour--but of strength,--alack! scarce
able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads
been in an ambling condition;--they were not. Imagine to yourself
Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a
full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way. (Vol.
ii. c. 9.)


7. I think there is more humour in the single remark, which I have
quoted before--"Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon
long noses for nothing!"--than in the whole Slawkenburghian tale that
follows, which is mere oddity interspersed with drollery.

8. Note Sterne's assertion of, and faith in, a moral good in the
characters of Trim, Toby, &c. as contrasted with the cold scepticism of
motives which is the stamp of the Jacobin spirit. Vol. v. c. 9.

9. You must bear in mind, in order to do justice to Rabelais and Sterne,
that by right of humoristic universality each part is essentially a
whole in itself. Hence the digressive spirit is not mere wantonness, but
in fact the very form and vehicle of their genius. The connection, such