tant, mon nez y enfrondroit comme en beurre, et la s'eslevoit et croissoit comme la paste dedans la mets. Les durs tetins des Nourrices font les enfans camus. Mais gay, gay, ad formam nasi cognoscitur ad te levavi."*

Sterne even condescended to adopt some of those lively extravagancies, which (as) Rabelais declares that he wrote "en mangeant & buvant") would tempt us to believe that the Gallic wit, like Dr. King, sometimes "Drank till he could not speak, and then he writ."

"Bon jour! good morrow!-so you have got your cloak on betimes! but 't is a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly 't is better to be well mounted than go o' foot-and obstructions in the glands are dangerous-And how goes it with thy concubine thy wife-and thy little ones o' both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady, &c.t

* Liv. 1. chap. xli.

+ Tristram Shandy, vol. viii. chap. iii,

"Gens de bien," says Rabelais," " Dieu vous sauve et gard. Ou estes vous? je ne peux vous voir. Attendez que je chausse mes lunettes. Ha, ha, bien & beau s'én va Quaresme, je vous voy. Et doncques? Vous avez eu bonne vinee, á ce que l'on m á dit. -Vous, vos femmes, enfans, parens et familles estes en santè desiree. Cela va bien, cela est bon, cela me plaist-" &c.

BEROALDE, Sieur de VERVILLE, a canon of the cathedral of Tours, considered his reputation as a wit, more than as a clergyman, in his Moyen de Parvenir, published in 1599; a book disgusting by its grossness, but extremely curious, from the striking pictures which it offers, of the manners and knowledge of the age. From him, I suspect, Sterne took Mr. Shandy's repartee to Obadiah.

"My father had a little favourite mare, which he had consigned over to a most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out of her for his own riding: he was

sanguine in all his projects; so talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke, bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or other in Obadiah, it so fell out, that my father's expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced.

"My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of Obadiah, and that there never would be an end of the disaster.-See here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have done. It was not I, said Obadiah-How do I know that? replied my father."*

Un petit garçon de Paris appella un autre, fils de Putain, qui s'en prit à pleurer, et le vint dire à sa mere, qui lui dit: que ne lui as-tu dit qu'il avoit menti? Et que savois-je, dit il.t

*Tristram Shandy, vol. v. chap. iii.

+ Moyen de Parvenir, tom. i. p. 69.

D

The Moyen de Parvenir has all the abruptness, and quickness of transition, which Sterne was so fond of assuming. There is also some galimatias, though not so much as in Rabelais. I own it is possible, that Sterne may have found this turn in some other book, for Beroalde has furnished subjects of pillage to a great number of authors. He mentions a curious badge of party, which I think Sterne would have noticed, if he had been acquainted with the book. 66 Je me souviens qu'aux seconds troubles nous etions en garnison à la Charité. Etant en garde s'il passoit un homme avec une braguette, nous l'appellions Papiste, et la lui coupions; c'etoit mal fait, d'autant que sous tel signe y à de grand mysteres quelquefois cachés.-Je m' en repentis, et m'en allai à Cosne, ou nous nous fimes soldats derechef, et nous mismes es bandes catholiques. Il nous avint une autre cause de remords de conscience; c'ést que voyant ces èbraguetés, les disions Huguenots."

* Moyen de Parvenir, tom. i. p. 59.

The detection of imitations is certainly, in many cases, decided by taste, more than by reasoning; the investigation is slow, but the conviction is rapid.

The skilful miner thus each cranny tries,
Where wrapt in dusky rocks the crystal lies,
Slow on the varying surface tracks his spoil,
Oft' leaves, and oft' renews his patient toil;
Till to his watchful eye the secret line

Betrays the rich recesses of the mine;
Then the rude portals to his stroke give way;
Th' imprison'd glories glitter on the day.

It is sufficiently evident, from the works of Sterne's Eugenius,* that he, at least, was deeply read in Beroalde, who wanted nothing but decency to render him an universal favourite.

Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigné is well known by his historical works, in which, valuable and interesting as they are, he has not always been able to conceal his satirical disposition. In his Baron de Fanesté, with all

* John Hall Stevenson, Esq, of Skelton Castle.