366 Sterne and the Duke of Wharton : a Dramatic Scene. (^Oct. 



Wharton. Stay, my rigid monk, some half hour ago, were expressed 

 thy chastened yearnings to exist but amidst wax-tapers and painted 

 windows ; now, thou art out-Rochestering Rochester. I contend, that 

 in all thy sententious journeyings — thy rencontres with pretty Jilles-de- 

 chambres and prattling milliners — thy exchanging of snuff-boxes, thy 

 grievings over a dead ass, and thy maniac-like communings with Maria, 

 thou wert but playing the mime to Rousseau ! 



Sterne. Critics have accused me of being a plagiarist in words, but 

 Eugenius impugns me as a plagiarist in deeds. Stiil, following up my 

 censures of Rousseau, I will maintain that, in love, possession takes the 

 precedence of all its delights. Ask Garrick, after he has been playing 

 Romeo, whether it be not the veriest dream, to wait beneath the balcony 

 of his mistress (another's wife the while), beseeching the " sun to kiU 

 the envious moon," and wishing that he " were a glove upon her hand, 

 that he might touch her cheek." I know Davy better, than not to sup- 

 pose that he will laugh in his sleeve at his eye-wiping audience. The 

 doting young gentleman and the adored young lady may each retire to 

 their couch of solitude, to dream about " Romeo and Juliet," and 

 Garrick's acting; but, mark it, Eugenius — the curtain drops; the 

 audience depart, the stage-lights are extinguished, and the actor is 

 charioted to his home, where he finds awaiting him, a sumptuous supper, 

 two or three bottles of champagne, and Mrs. Garrick ! 



Wharton. Well, well, Yorick; sneer not at Rousseau, for thou art his 

 counterpart. 



Sterne. Not in fiddling, any how : but I give up the argument, for I 

 grow weary of litigation. Look here, Eugenius, {taking up a volume of 

 Shakspeare,) these, not exclusive of" Romeo and Juliet," are the emana- 

 tions of a genius, seduced not by wit on the one hand, nor intoxicated 

 by imagination on the other ; of one who watched Nature till he beheld 

 her emerge from her mint, and then entered and stole her dies. 



Wharton. Ay : but Shakspeare's paucity of wit is attributable to his 

 not possessing the quality, and not to his judicious abstinence from it. 

 That he took no cognizance of the good-humoured raillery of Ben 

 Jonson, is a proof that he abstained from the combat, because wanting 

 the weapon with which he was challenged. 



Sterne. Fallacy, Eugenius. What is his character of FalstafF, but the 

 life and soul of wit embodied in an earthly and every-day shape ? De- 

 pict the poet as an abstracted painter, Avhose energies were absorbed in 

 the task of ornamenting with original pictures an alabaster temple, 

 reared in the recess of a woody solitude, and destined to be eternal — 

 how could he stay his pencil, and stoop from the dome of that ever- 

 during fabric to listen to the jibes and jests of one planting perishable 

 flowers, or even more lasting evergreens, around its portico.'' Look at 

 their visages ; the lucid veil of poetry hides the one ; the other is, what 

 the offended Dekker declared it to be, " like unto a rotten apple." 



Wharton. And yet it is surpi'ising that Shakspeare should have made 

 such clumsy essays to be sprightly and satirical, ending often, in the 

 school-boy achievement of a silly play upon words. 



Sterne. Professedly making his fools speak foolishly, and his wise men 

 sagely. 



Wharton. Well — so be it. How wags the world with thee at thy 

 curacy, Yorick ? 



Sterne. 'Tis a lonely wilderness, a cenobitish seclusion. Thou knowest 



