This person, as we

a treatise of Midwifery in 1751. have elsewhere noticed, was on bad terms with Sterne's uncle; and though there had come strife and unkindness between the uncle and the nephew, yet the latter seems to have retained aversion against the enemy of the former. But Sterne, being no politician, had forgiven the Jacobite, and only persecutes the Doctor with his raillery, as a quack and a Catholic.

It is needless to dwell longer on a work so generally known. The style employed by Sterne is fancifully ornamented, but at the same time vigorous and masculine, and full of that animation and force which can only be derived by an intimate acquaintance with the early English prose-writers. In the power of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he has never been excelled, if indeed he has ever been equalled; and may be at once recorded as one of the most affected, and one of the most simple writers, as one of the greatest plagiarists, and one of the most original geniuses whom England has produced. Dr. Ferriar, who seemed born to trace and detect the various mazes through which Sterne carried on his depredations upon ancient and dusty authors, apologises for the rigour of his inquest, by doing justice to those merits which were peculiarly our author's own. We cannot better close this article than with the sonnet in which his ingenious inquisitor makes the amende honourable to the shade of Yorick.

Sterne, for whose sake I plod through miry ways,
Of antique wit and quibbling mazes drear,

Let not thy shade malignant censure fear,

Though aught of borrowed mirth my search betrays.
Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days;
(Erewhile to Guise or wanton Valois dear)
Till waked by thee in Skelton's joyous pile,
She flung on Tristram her capricious rays;

But the quick tear that checks our wondering smile,
In sudden pause or unexpected story,
Owns thy true mastery-and Le Fevre's woes,
Maria's wanderings, and the Prisoner's throes,
Fix thee conspicuous on the throne of glory."

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

THROUGH

FRANCE AND ITALY.

France.

-THEY order, said I, this matter better in

-You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the world.Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, That one-and-twenty miles sailing, for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights;-I'll look into them. So, giving up the argument,—I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches;" the coat I have on," said I, looking at the sleeve, "will do,"-took a place in the Dover stage; and, the packet sailing at nine the next morning, -by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, so incontestibly in France, that, had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the droits

d'aubaine;*—my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, -portmanteau and all, must have gone to the King of France; even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my grave, would have been torn from my neck!-Ungenerous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your subjects had beckoned to their coast!-by Heaven! Sire, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me 'tis the monarch of a people so civilised and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with!

But I have scarce set foot in your

dominions.

CALAIS.

WHEN I had finished my dinner, and drank the King of France's health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but, on the contrary, high honour for the humanity of his temper,-I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation.

—No, said I, the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be misled, like other people; but there is a mildness in their blood. As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek, more warm and friendly to man than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could have produced.

* All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scots excepted) dying in France, are seized, by virtue of this law, though the heir be upon the spot;-the profit of these contingencies being farmed, there is no redress.

-Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we do by the way?

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him, as if he sought for an object to share it with.-In doing this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate,—the arteries beat all cheerily together, and every power which sustained life performed it with so little friction, that 'twould have confounded the most physical precieuse in France: with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine.

I'm confident, said I to myself, I should have overset her creed.

The accession of that idea carried Nature, at that time, as high as she could go;-I was at peace with the world before, and this finished the treaty with myself.

-Now, was I a king of France, cried I, what a moment for an orphan to have begged his father's portmanteau of me!

THE MONK.

CALAIS.

I HAD scarce uttered the words, when a poor monk, of the order of St. Francis, came into the room, to beg something for his convent. No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies, or one man may

C