imitators, have attempted to copy, without proving, by their total failure, the difficulty of acquir ing a manner so singularly, so curiously original. Like ether, its spirit is too subtile and volatile to become the vehicle of any other person's ideas. And then that frolic fancy !—that all-atoning wit! -that style which my ear finds so natural, easy, animated, and eloquent!-how could you thus scorn them?

My dear Sir, who are they from whom he has borrowed? Some slight, very slight, resemblance perhaps exists between the best sallies of Swift's humour and Sterne's: but Swift has not any of Sterne's pathos, and Sterne has none of the filthiness of Swift, though too apt to sport licentiously with comic double-meanings. His fault, in that respect, however justly censurable, has no tendency to injure the minds of his readers by inflaming their passions. Swift and Rabelais, whom he is also accused of copying, never interest the affections, while Sterne guides, turns, and precipitates them into any channel he pleases.

I can believe that he took the hint of character for his sub-acid philosopher from the Martinus Scriblerius of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot; but there is an immense superiority in the vividness with which he has coloured his Shandy; in the dramatic spirit he has infused into the character;

in the variety of situations in which he has placed the hypothesis-monger,—all natural, probable, and exquisitely humorous. We see and hear the little domestic group at Shandy-hall; nor can we help an involuntary conviction, not only that they all existed, but that they had been of our acquaintance; and where may be found even the most shadowy prototype in books, of uncle Toby and his Trim, of Mrs Shandy and Dr Slop* ? At last this note of your's in your great work against Sterne-this note,

"At which my very locks have stood on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine,"

Confirms anew an observation of mine, long since made;—that I never knew a man or woman of letters, however ingenious, ingenuous, and judicious, as to their general taste, but there was some one fine writer, at least, to which their " Lynx's beam became the mole's dim curtain." Mason, Hayley, and Boothby, are moles to Ossian. Gray was a mole to Rousseau.-Darwin is a mole to Milton, and that you will say is indeed a

* For a more discriminating parallel between the Scriblerius Fragment and Tristram Shandy, see a letter to this gentleman further on in the collection, and dated Oct. 30, 1788.-S.

molism. Envy made Johnson a mole to all our best poets, except Dryden and Pope. You are a mole to Sterne ;-and I-for why should not my portly self run in amongst you intellectually greater folk?-I am a mole to Spencer, so far at least, that, though I perceive the power of his ge nius in the mass, and infinitely admire particular passages, I could never read a book of the FairyQueen through, without being ennuied past bearing by the Hydra-headed allegories.

But molism of this kind always existed. Plato was a mole to Homer.-You are no mole to me, however, for, in truth, you have looked at the little stars of my imagination, through Mr Herschel's last optic-glass.

Proceeding through your Lowth, often have I, in imagination, enjoyed the pleasures that must result to you from the consciousness of having honourably completed so great a work—the reputation of which must increase as time rolls on. May health, and domestic happiness, be added to the sunny glow of that consciousness!

LETTER LXXXIII.

CAPTAIN SEWARD*.

Dec. 7, 1787.

Is it possible that Lord Heathfield should not see the impropriety of my presuming to intrude upon the Duke of Richmond's attention with an interference, by request, in military promotions, ́since I can scarcely be said to have the shadow of a personal acquaintance with his Grace ?

My father's present state, the almost utter loss of all his intellectual faculties, is known. Did he possess them, impertinent surely would be an acknowledgement from him, that he supposed the Duke meant any thing more than a polite compliment, by giving the name of obligation to the civility of ordering our servants to make up a bed for him during three nights, and to prepare a bason of gruel for him in the morning, before he went to the field. This was literally all he could be prevailed upon to accept beneath this roof, when, in his years of bloom, he united the occupation of Mars to the form of Adonis. I was then a

* This respectable character is still alive, and resident at Southampton.-1810.

green girl, "something between the woman and the child," nor have I ever since beheld the Duke of Richmond. Though I so perfectly remember him, it is more than probable that he remembers not me; and it would be more than impertinent to presume that I could have interest with him.

As to incurring obligations, I should be very glad thus to incur them from the Duke for your advantage ;-but observation, and indeed the revolt I have always myself felt from officious recommendation, invariably proved to me that it injures instead of promoting the interests of the recommended. His Grace would certainly be disgusted by my seeming to suppose that any mention I could make of a relation, or friend, could operate in their favour. Disgust has a withering influence upon patronage. What is it I could say, that has a shadow of probability to enhance the Duke's good opinion of a military man?-that man already recommended to him by Lord Heathfield, the greatest General existing, whose praise ought to be the passport to martial honours and emolument. An attempt of this sort from me would be just as likely to be of use, as if, had I been in Gibraltar during the siege, and when our artillery was pouring on the enemy, I had thrown a bonfire-squib into the mouth of a forty-pounder to assist the force of the explosion.