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additional play of Shakespeare, book of the Faerie Queene, novel of Thackeray or of Fielding, consent not to know Sterne?" And I at least answer without

the slightest hesitation that I would not. It is possible that he is not supreme; but he is not replaceable; and what you cannot replace, you cannot dispense with.

If any test of this other than the conscience of all capable students of literature be wanted, it will be found in that famous "Roundabout" paper which Thackeray devoted to Dessein's. Thackeray was one of the greatest English men of letters in prose. He was an admirable parodist; and though he had causes, legitimate and illegitimate, for not liking Sterne, he had far too many wits not to know that to belittle your man effectually when you parody him, you must be like. But the speeches which, in the ghostly dialogue, Thackeray puts in Sterne's mouth are not in the least like. They are not Sterne at all. Nobody, easy as it looks, has ever written complete Sternese but Sterne. They can pile on the sensibility like Mackenzie, and they can, like the author of the fragment printed with the, as I think, spurious Letters, exaggerate the "sculduddery." They can put stars, and dashes, and points, and everything of that kind; but they cannot write Sterne.

And when it comes to this, that a man, imitating much, is himself inimitable, what further passport (a most germane word) does he want to the land of matters unforgot-what further protection from the droit d'aubaine of any power?

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SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

THROUGH

FRANCE AND ITALY

BY MR YORICK.

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-T

FRANCE AND ITALY.

HEY order, said I, this matter better in
France-

-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

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