head on Trim's shoulder--'but corruption!'--Susanah took it off.

"Now I love you for this;--and 'tis this delicious mixture within
you, which makes you dear creatures what you are;--and he, who
hates you for it--all I can say of the matter is--that he has
either a pumpkin for his head, or a pippin for his heart...."

"Wanting the remainder of a fragment of paper on which he found an
amusing story, he asked his French servant for it; La Fleur said he
had wrapped it round the stalks of a bouquet, which he had given to
his _demoiselle_ upon the Boulevards. 'Then, prithee, La Fleur,'
said I 'step back to her, and see if thou canst get it.' 'There is
no doubt of it,' said La Fleur, and away he flew.

"In a very little time the poor fellow came back quite out of
breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks than would
arise from the simple irreparability of the payment. _Juste ciel!_
in less than two minutes that the poor fellow had taken his last
farewell of her--his faithless mistress had given his _gage
d'amour_ to one of the Count's footmen--the footman to a young
semptress--and the semptress to a fiddler, with my fragment at the
end of it. Our misfortunes were involved together--I gave a sigh,
and La Fleur echoed it back to my ear. 'How perfidious!' cried La
Fleur, 'How unlucky,' said I.

"'I should not have been mortified, Monsieur,' quoth La Fleur, 'If
she had lost it.'

"'Nor I, La Fleur,' said I, 'had I found it.'"

We very commonly form our opinion of an Author's character from his
writings, and there is no doubt that his tendencies can scarcely fail to
betray themselves to a careful observer. But experience has generally
taught him to curb or quicken his feelings according to the notions of
the public taste, so that he often expresses the sentiments of others
rather than his own. Hence a literary friend once observed to me that a
man is very different from what his writings would lead you to suppose.
I think there are certain indications in Sterne's writings that he
introduced those passages to which objection was justly taken for the
purpose of catching the favour of the public. He had already published
some Sermons, which, he says, "found neither purchasers nor readers."

Conscious of his talent, and being no doubt reminded of it by his
friends, he wished to obtain a field fo