54 Comments on Sterne: 
I believe this brilliant paffage is founded on the | 
Prologue to Rabelais’s fourth Book. Some of 
Sterne’s other imitations do him more credit; but 
in the eighth volume of Triftram he was not very 
Nice in taking affiftance. ‘‘ Gens de Bien, fays 
** Rabelais, ‘‘ Dieu vous ‘auve et gard. Ou eftes 
** vous? je ne peux vous voir. Attendez que je 
** chauffe mes lunettes. Ha, ha, bien & beau f’én 
*““ va Quarefme, je vous voy. Et doncques? 
Vous avez eu bonne vinee, a ce que l'on m’a dit. 
---- Vous, vos femmes, enfans, parens et familles 
“ eftes en fanté defiree. Cela va bien, cela eft bon, 
“+ cela me plaift—”&c. Certainly this trafh muft 
be one of thofe paffages, efcaped, as Rabelais declares 
that he wrote ‘en mangeant et buvant,’ after he 
had taken a cup too much. 
Perhaps it would do violence to the analogy, to 
fay that the exquifite dialogues, fcattered through 
Trifttam Shandy, took any colour from  thofe 
delivered by Rabelais.—At leaft, it would appear to 
be refining too far. Yet the contraft and contention 
of characters and profeflions fo ftriking in both 
romances; the ftrong ridicule thrown, upon the 
love of hypothefis; and the art with which abfur- 
dities in every walk of fcience are expofed, have 
always impreffed me with a general idea of refem- 
blance; and have recalled Pantagruel, Panurge and 
Epiftemon, in many of the Shandean converfations. 
If there be any degree of imitation in this refpect, it 
is greatly to Sterne’s honour. A higher polifh was 
never 
et 
es 
