'Romances and Novels. 165 



tish novels, like those of Fielding, Richardson, 



SMOLLET, BURNEY, andRADCLIFFE. 



To the class of novels, rather than to any other, 

 belongs that remarkable production*, the Life and 

 Opinions of Tristram Shandy, by the Reverend 

 Laurence Sterne. Notwithstanding the often 

 repeated, and well supported charges, brought 

 against this writer, of borrowing without acknow- 

 ledgment, many of his best thoughts from pre- 

 ceding British and French authors," yet his work 

 is an unique in the history of literature. When it 

 first appeared his readers w 7 ere astonished at the 

 singular farrago of obscurity, whim, indecency, 

 and extravagance which it exhibited. The majo- 

 rity appeared to be at a loss, for a time, what 

 judgment to form of its merits. But some of the 

 friends of the writer, professing to comprehend his 

 meaning, and disposed to place him high in the 

 ranks of wit and humour, gave the signal to ad- 

 mire. The signal was obeyed; and multitudes, 

 to the present day, have continued to mistake his 

 capricious and exceptionable singularities for ef- 

 forts of a great and original genius. But his ge- 

 nius and writings have certainly been overrated. 

 That he possessed considerable powers, of a cer- 

 tain description, is readily admitted; that the Epi- 

 sodes of Le Fevre and Maria are almost unrivalled, 

 as specimens of the tender and pathetic, must also 

 be granted; but those parts of his works which 

 deserve this character bear so small a proportion 

 to the rest, and the great mass of what he has 

 written is either so shamefully obscene, so quaintly 

 obscure, or so foolishly unmeaning, that there are 



u It seems to be now well ascertained that Sterne carried to a very 

 great length, the practice of filling his pages with plunder from other writers. 

 His freedoms of this kind with the works of Rabelais, Burton (author 

 of the Anatomy of Melancholy) and Crebillon, junior, have been par- 

 ticularly detected. 



