hell to be only skeletons, or the shadows, which had accompanied the natural bodies of men upon earth.*

Again, at the end of the same chapter in Tristram Shandy; "but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing? I-I who must be cut short in the midst of my days," &c. Burton concludes his chapter "on Maids', Nunns', and Widows' Melancholy," in the same manner. "But where am I? into what sub

ject have I rushed? What have I to do?"+ &c.

The preface to Tristram, which is whimsically placed near the end of the third volume, contains another of Burton's sallies. "Lay hold of me,-I am giddy-I am stone-blind- I'm dying-I am goneHelp! help! help!"

Burton, in his Digression of Air, stops himself in a metaphysical ramble, in the same manner. But, hoo! I am now gone

* Απαντες γαρ ατεχνώς αλληλοις γίνονται ομοιοι, των οξέων γεγυμνωμένων. εκειντο δ' επ' αλληλοις αμαυροι, &c.

***

+ Page 124.

quite out of sight: I am almost giddy with roving about.

It was observed to me by Mr. Isaac Read, that Sterne had made use of the notes to Blount's Translation of Philostratus. The most striking resemblances are contained in Blount's Observations on Death, in which he has copied nearly the whole of Lord Verulam's Essay on that subject. Blount also declared war against gravity of manners, and there are many eccentricities scattered through his annotations (which are almost as bulky as the explanatory notes to our modern poems) that Sterne had turned to his own account, though it is difficult to trace them distinctly.

I shall just observe by the way, that a pretty passage in the Story of the King of Bohemia and his seven castles;" MODESTY scarce touches with a finger what LIBERALITY offers her with both her hands open"-alludes to a picture of Guido's, the design of which it describes tolerably well.

Retournons a nos moutons, as Rabelais would

say; in matters of painting, it is dangerous for a man to trust his own eyes, till he has taken his degree of Connoisseur.

It confirms me strongly in the belief that the character of Mr. Shandy is a personification of the authorship of Burton, when I find such a passage as the following in Sterne. "There is a Philippic in verse on somebody's eye or other, that for two or three nights together had put him by his rest; which, in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus ;

"A devil 't is-and mischief such doth work, As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk.”

This choice couplet is quoted by Burton* from some bad poet, now unknown, of whose name he only gives the initials.

"Hilarion the hermit, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion,— would say though with more facetiousness

* Page 331.

than became an hermit-That they were the means he used, to make his ass (meaning his body) leave off kicking."*

"By this means Hilarion made his ass, as he called his own body, leave kicking (so Hierome relates of him in his life) when the Devil tempted him to any foul offence.”+

"I wish, Yorick, said my father, you had read Plato; for there you would have learnt that there are two LOVES-of these loves, according to Ficinus's comment upon Velasius, the one is rationalthe other is natural -the first ancientwithout mother-where Venus has nothing to do: the second, begotten of Jupiter and Dione-"

One Venus is ancient, without a mother, and descended from heaven, whom we call cœlestial. The younger begotten of Jupiter

*Tris. Shandy, vol. viii. chap. xxxi.

+ Burton, p. 333.

Tris. Shandy, vol. viii. chap. xxxiii.

|| Velasius is quoted through all the preceding passages in Burton.

8.

and Dione, whom commonly we call Venus. Ficinus, in his comment upon this place, cap. following Plato, called these two loves, two devils, or good and bad angels according to us, which are still hovering about our souls.*

Mr. Shandy observes, on his son's circumcision, that the trine and sextile aspects have jumped away. This is taken from Burton. Many other small plagiarisms might be noticed, but I shall confine my observations to those of more consequence,

The fragment respecting the Abderitans, in the Sentimental Journey, is taken from Burton's chapter of Artificial Allurements. At Abdera in Thrace (says Burton) Andromeda, one of Euripides' tragedies being played, the spectators were so much moved with the object, and those pathetical speeches of Perseus, among the rest, O Cupid, prince of gods and men, &c. that every man almost, a good while

* Page 260.

+ Page 263. Objects of Love.

+ Page 301.