plained that Tristram Shandy is in many places disgustfully obscure.

The admirers of Sterne extol his wit. But I believe it will be found that his wit is of the lowest kind, and the easiest of invention; for is it not for the most part allusive obscenity? a species of wit to be found in its fullest perfection in the vulgarest and vilest haunts of vice. It is, indeed, easy to attract the notice and the admiration of the youthful and the wanton, by exhibiting loose images under a transparent veil. It is true indeed there is usually a veil, and the decent are therefore tempted to read; but the veil, like the affected modesty of a courtezan, serves only as an artifice to facilitate corruption.

The praise of humour has been lavished on him with peculiar bounty. If quaintness is humour, the praise is all his own, and let Cervantes and Fielding bow their heads to Sterne. They who admire Uncle Toby, Doctor Slop, and Corporal Trim, as natural characters, or as exhibiting true humour in their manners and conversations, are little acquainted with nature, and have no just taste for genuine humour. It is evident enough that the author meant to be humorous and witty, and many of his readers, in the abundance of their good nature, have taken the will for the deed.

But till obscurity, till obscenity, till quaintness, till impudence, till oddity, and mere wantonness, wildness, and extravagance, are perfections in writing, Tristram Shandy cannot justly claim the rank to which it has been raised by folly and fashion, by caprice, libertinism, and ignorance. I know that this censure will be considered as blasphemy by the idolaters of Sterne; but I hope it will not sour that milk of human kindness which they may have imbibed from his writings; and to an excessive de

guage. Such a power conspicuously marks both a Shakspeare and a Sterne; though Sterne is far below. Shakspeare in the scale of genius.

I am ready to allow to Sterne another and a most exalted merit besides, and above the praise of genius. There never was a heathen philosopher of any age or nation, who has recommended, in so affecting a manner, the benignant doctrines of a general philanthropy. He has corrected the acrimony of the heart, smoothed the asperities of natural tempers, and taught the milk of human kindness to flow all cheerily (it is his own expression) in gentle and uninterrupted channels.

To have effected so amiable a purpose is a great praise, a distinguished honour. I lament that the praise is lessened and the honour sullied by many faults and many follies, which render the writings of Sterne justly and greatly reprehensible.

If we consider them as compositions, and are guided in our judgment by the dictates of sound criticism, and by those standards of excellence, the rectitude of which has been decided by the testimony of the politest ages, it will be necessary to pronounce on them a severe sentence. The great critic of antiquity required, as the necessary constituents of a legitimate composition, a beginning, a middle,, and an end. I believe it will be difficult to find. them in the chaotic confusion of Tristram Shandy. But, disregarding the tribunal of Aristotle, to which the modern pretenders to genius do not consider themselves as amenable, it will still be true, even by. the decisions of reason and common sense, that his writings abound with faults.

Obscurity has always been deemed one of the. greatest errors of which a writer can be guilty; and there have been few readers, except those who thought that the acknowledgment would derogate

plained that Tristram Shandy is in many places disgustfully obscure.

The admirers of Sterne extol his wit. But I believe it will be found that his wit is of the lowest kind, and the easiest of invention; for is it not for the most part allusive obscenity? a species of wit to be found in its fullest perfection in the vulgarest and vilest haunts of vice. It is, indeed, easy to attract the notice and the admiration of the youthful and the wanton, by exhibiting loose images under a transparent veil. It is true indeed there is usually a veil, and the decent are therefore tempted to read; but the veil, like the affected modesty of a courtezan, serves only as an artifice to facilitate corruption.

The praise of humour has been lavished on him with peculiar bounty. If quaintness is humour, the praise is all his own, and let Cervantes and Fielding bow their heads to Sterne. They who admire Uncle Toby, Doctor Slop, and Corporal Trim, as natural characters, or as exhibiting true humour in their manners and conversations, are little acquainted with nature, and have no just taste for genuine humour. It is evident enough that the author meant to be humorous and witty, and many of his readers, in the abundance of their good nature, have taken the will for the deed.

But till obscurity, till obscenity, till quaintness, till impudence, till oddity, and mere wantonness, wildness, and extravagance, are perfections in writing, Tristram Shandy cannot justly claim the rank to which it has been raised by folly and fashion, by caprice, libertinism, and ignorance. I know that this censure will be considered as blasphemy by the idolaters of Sterne; but I hope it will not sour that milk of human kindness which they may have imbibed from his writings; and to an excessive de

affectedly pretend. Let their philanthropy repress awhile their resentment, and I will venture to predict, that time will insensibly strip the writer of those honours which never belonged to him.

But will you allow his sermons no merit? I allow some of them the merit of the pathetic; but the laborious attempts to be witty and humorous have spoiled the greater part of them. The appearance of sincerity is one of the best beauties of a sermon. But Sterne seems as if he were laughing at his audience, as if he had ascended the pulpit in a frolic, and preached in mockery. Had he however written nothing but his sermons, he would not have been censured as the destroyer of the morals and the happiness of private life.

There are, indeed, exquisite touches of the pathetic interspersed throughout all his works. His pathetic stories are greatly admired. The pathetic was the chief excellence of his writings; his admirers will be displeased if one were to add, that it is the only one which admits of unalloyed applause. It is certainly this which chiefly adorns the Sentimental Journey; a work which, whatever are its merits, has had a pernicious influence on the virtue, and consequently on the happiness, of public and private society.

That softness, that affected and excessive sympathy at first sight, that sentimental affection, which is but lust in disguise, and which is so strongly inspired by the Sentimental Journey and by Tristram Shandy, have been the ruin of thousands of our countrymen and countrywomen, who fancied that, while they were breaking the laws of God and man, they were actuated by the fine feelings of sentimental affection. How much are divorces multiplied since Sterne appeared?

have displayed, in private life, a bad and a hard heart; and I shall not hesitate to pronounce him, though many admire him as the first of philosophers, the grand promoter of adultery, and every species of illicit commerce.

No. CXLVI.

On the Weight and Efficacy which Morality may derive from the Influence and Example of those who are called the Great.

IT is true, indeed, that the world abounds with moral instruction, and that there is scarcely any good thing so easily obtained as good advice; but it is no less true, that moral instruction and good advice are found to possess a very small degree of influence in the busy walks of active life. In the church, we hear the Scriptures read and sermons preached; in the library, we study and admire the morality of the philosophers; but how few, in the actual pursuits of ambition, of interest, of pleasure, and even in the common occupations and intercourse of ordinary life, suffer their conduct to be regulated by the precept of a Solomon, of a Socrates, or of him who was greater than either!

No sentence is triter, than that all example is more powerful than precept; but when the example is set by the rich and the great, its influence on the herd of mankind becomes irresistible. What can books effect? what avail the gentle admonitions of the retired moralist, against the examples of lords, dukes, and East India nabobs? Can the still small