Comments on Sterne. 63 
** Niobe for her children—and that Apollodorus 
** and Crito both fhed tears for Socrates before his 
** death.” — This is well rallied, as the following 
pafflage will evince; but Sterne fhould have con- 
fidered. how much he owed to poor old Burton. 
** Death and departure of friends are things generally grie- 
** vous; Omnium que in vita humana contingunt, luctus 
** atgue mors funt acerbiffima, [Cardan. de Confol. 
** lib. 2.] the moft auftere and bitter accidents that can 
** happen to aman in this life, in eternum valedicere, to 
“* part for ever, to forfake the world and all our friends, 
‘* °tis ultimum terribilium, the laft and the greateft terrour, 
** moft irkfome and troublefome unto us, ©&c.—Nay many 
‘© generous {pirits, and grave flaid men otherwife, are fo 
** tender in this, that at the lofs of a dear friend they will 
“cry out, roar, and tear their hair, lamenting fome 
‘* months after, howling O hone, as thofe Irifh women, 
** and Greeks at their Graves, commit many indecent 
** aétions,” &c.* All this is corroborated by quo- 
tations from Ortelius, Catullus, Virgil, Lucan and 
Tacitus. I take them in the order affigned them 
by Burton. For he fays with great probability of 
himfelf, that he commonly wrote as faft as poffible, 
and poured out his quotations juft as they happened 
to occur to his memory. But to proceed with Mr, 
Shandy’s Confolation. 
ate 22) 
* Anat, of Melanch, p. 219. 
