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pare for as many surprises in the moral world, as science has brought about in the physical.

I will close this Essay (would that it had been worthier of the subject!) with a few disconnected passages from Tristram Shandy, worthy to be had in everlasting remembrance.

Corporal Trim about to read a sermon." If you have any objection," said my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop. "Not in the least," replied Dr. Slop: "for it does not appear on which side of the question it is wrote it may be a composition of a divine of our church, as well as yours; so that we run equal risques." "Tis wrote upon neither side," quoth Trim; "for 'tis only upon conscience, an' please your honors."

Passage of an Excommunication, with the comment upon it.—" May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him! May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him! May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him." “Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,” cried my uncle Toby, "but nothing to this. I couldn't find it in my heart to curse my dog so." Memento and Money" I have left Trim my bowling-green,” cried my uncle Toby.-My father smiled.-"I have left him, moreover, a pension," continued my uncle Toby -My father looked grave. "Is this a fit time," said my father to himself, "to talk of pensions and grenadiers ?” Unconscious Self-betrayal.-" I am at a loss, Captain Shandy," quoth Dr. Slop, "to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most; whether in physiology or divinity." Slop had not forgot Trim's comment upon the sermon. "This poor fellow," continued Dr. Slop, "has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this point." "That he has," said my father. Very likely," said my uncle. "I'm sure of it," quoth Yorick.

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War and the Fly." I wish the whole science of fortification, with all its inventors, at the devil," said my father. "It has been the death of thousands, and it will be mine in the end. I would not, I would not, brother Toby, have my brain so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be the proprietor of Namur, and of all the towns in Flanders with it."

(Tristram's father, who afterwards apologizes for this sally of impatience, was not aware that the occupation of his brother Toby's head with all this scientific part of war was the very reason why he did not think of it's being the "death of thousands.")

"My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries; not from want of cour age; I have told vou, in a former chapter, that he was a man of courage

and will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth, I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter; nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts; for he felt this insult of my father's as feelingly as a man could do; but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,-no jarring elements in it,—all was mixed up so kindly within him: my uncle Toby had scarcely a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

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Go," says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which had buzz ed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him; "I'll not hurt thee," says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room with the fly in his hand; "I'll not hurt a hair of thy head Go," says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape; "go, poor devil! get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?-this world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.”

People think they are in no want of such lessons as these nowadays; but to say nothing of their flattering themselves too much on that point (for there are "flies" of many sizes), it is greatly because Sterne has taught them. This illustrious Irishman (I have a "Shandean" reason for speaking of him under that title) is Rabelais, reborn at a riper period of the world, and gifted with sentiment. To accuse him of cant and sentimentality, is itself a cant or an ignorance; or at least, if neither of these, it is but to misjudge him from an excess of manner here and there. The matter always contains the solidest substance of truth and duty. It is a thousand pities he retained something of the coarseness of Rabelais, because it prevents his book from being put into everybody's hands; though upon his own principle of turning evil to good, perhaps even this blemish has served to draw attention to it. Among passages which are supposed to be connected with that coarseness, but really are not so, are some which are yet destined to be of important service to mankind; and if I were requested to name the book of all others, which combined Wit and Humor under their highest appearance of levity with the profoundest wisdom, it would be Tristram Shandy.

4

CHAUCER,

BORN, 1324 ?-DIED, 1400 ?

THE graver portion of the genius of this great poet will be more fitly noticed in the volume to be entitled Action and Passion. He is here only in his gayer mood.

I retain the old spelling for three reasons:-first, because it is pleasant to know the actual words of such a writer, as far as they can be ascertained; second, because the antiquity is part of the costume; and third, because I have added a modern prose version, which removes all difficulty in the perusal. I should rather say I have added the version for the purpose of retaining the immortal man's own words, besides being able to show perhaps how strongly every word of a great poet tells in the most modern prose version, provided his ideas are not absolutely misrepresented. At all events, the reader may go uninterruptedly, if he pleases, through the version, and then turn to the original for the finer traits, and for a music equally correct and beautiful.

I wish I could have given more than one comic story out of Chaucer; but the change of manners renders it difficult at any time, and impossible in a book like the present. The subjects with which the court and gentry of the times of the Henries and Edwards could be entertained, are sometimes not only indecorous but revolting. It is a thousand pities that the unbounded sympathy of the poet with everything that interested his fellow-creatures did not know, in this instance, where to stop. Yet we must be cautious how we take upon ourselves to blame him. Even Shakspeare did not quite escape the infection of indecency in a

much later and highly refined age; and it may startle us to suspect, that what is readable in the gravest and even the most scrupulous circles in our own day, may not be altogether so a hundred years hence. Allusions and phrases which are thought harmless now, and that from habit really are so, may then appear in as different a light as those which we are astonished to think our ancestors could endure. Nay, opinions and daily practices exist, and are treated with respect, which may be regarded by our posterity as the grossest and cruellest barbarisms. We may, therefore, cease to wonder at the apparently unaccountable spectacle presented by such writers as Chaucer, who combine a license the most indelicate with the utmost refinements of thought and feeling.

When Chaucer is free from this taint of his age, his humor is of a description the most thoroughly delightful; for it is at once entertaining, profound, and good-natured. If this last quality be thought a drawback by some, as wanting the relish of personality, they may supply even that (as some have supplied it), by suppos ing that he drew his characters from individuals, and that the individuals were very uncomfortable accordingly. I confess I see no ground for the supposition beyond what the nature of the case demands. Classes must of course be drawn, more or less, from the individuals composing them; but the unprofessional particulars added by Chaucer to his characters (such as the Mer. chant's uneasy marriage, and the Franklin's prodigal son), are only such as render the portraits more true, by including them in the general category of human kind. The gangrene which the Cook had on his shin, and which has been considered as a remarkable instance of the gratuitous, is, on the contrary (besides its masterly intimation of the perils of luxury in general), painfully in character with a man accustomed to breathe an unhealthy atmosphere, and to be encouraging bad humors with tasting sauces and syrups. Besides, the Cook turns out to be a drunkard.

Chaucer's comic genius is so perfect, that it may be said to include prophetic intimations of all that followed it. The liberalthinking joviality of Rabelais is there; the portraiture of Cer. vantes, moral and external; the poetry of Shakspeare; the learn ing of Ben Jonson; the manners of the wits of Charles the

Second; the bonhomie of Sterne; and the insidiousness, without the malice, of Voltaire. One of its characteristics is a certain tranquil detection of particulars, expressive of generals; as in the instance just mentioned of the secret infirmity of the Cook. Thus the Prioress speaks French; but it is "after the school of Stratford at Bow." Her education was altogether more showy than substantial. The lawyer was the busiest man in the world, and yet he "seemed busier than he was." He made something out of nothing, even in appearances.

He is as studious Observe, too, the

Another characteristic is his fondness for seeing the spiritual in the material; the mind in the man's aspect. of physiognomy as Lavater, and far truer. poetry that accompanies it, the imaginative sympathy in the matter of fact. His Yeoman, who is a forester, has a head "like a nut." His Miller is as brisk and healthy as the air of the hill on which he lives, and as hardy and as coarse-grained as his conscience. We know, as well as if we had ridden with them, his oily-faced Monk; his lisping Friar (who was to make confession easy to the ladies); his carbuncled Summoner or Church-Bailiff, the grossest form of ecclesiastical sensuality; and his irritable money-getting Reve or Steward, with his cropped head and calf-less legs, who shaves his beard as closely as he reckons with his master's tenants.

The third great quality of Chaucer's humor is its fair play,— the truth and humanity which induces him to see justice done to good and bad, to the circumstances which make men what they are, and the mixture of right and wrong, of wisdom and of folly, which they consequently exhibit. His worst characters have some little saving grace of good-nature, or at least of joviality and candor. Even the Pardoner, however impudently, acknow. ledges himself to be a "vicious man." His best people, with one exception, betray some infirmity. The good Clerk of Oxford, for all his simplicity and singleness of heart, has not escaped the pedantry and pretension of the college. The Good Parson seems without a blemish, even in his wisdom; yet when it comes to his turn to relate a story, he announces it as a "little" tale, aud then tells the longest and most prosing in the book,—a whole sermonizing volume. This, however, might be an expression of

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