unfortunate peasant who had lost his dumb companion, and
here a tender-hearted gentleman looking on and pitying him. As for
any attempts to bring out, by objective dramatic touches, either the
grievousness of the bereavement or the grief of the mourner, such
attempts as are made to do this are either commonplace or "one step
in advance" of the sublime. Take this, for instance: "The mourner was
sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with his ass's pannel and its
bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time, then laid them
down, looked at them, and shook his head. He then took the crust of
bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time
in his hand, then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle--looked
wistfully at the little arrangement he had made--and then gave a sigh.
The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him," &c. Simplicity,
indeed, of a marvellous sort which could show itself by so
extraordinary a piece of acting as this! Is there any critic who
candidly thinks it natural--I do not mean in the sense of mere
every-day probability, but of conformity to the laws of human
character? Is it true that in any country, among any people, however
emotional, grief--real, unaffected, un-selfconscious grief--ever did
or ever could display itself by such a trick as that of laying a piece
of bread on the bit of a dead ass's bridle? Do we not feel that if we
had been on the point of offering comfort or alms to the mourner, and
saw him go through this extraordinary piece of pantomime, we should
have buttoned up our hearts and pockets forthwith? Sentiment,
again, sails very near the wind of the ludicrous in the reply to the
Traveller's remark that the mourner had been a merciful master to the
dead ass. "Alas!" the latter says, "I thought so when he was alive,
but now that he is dead I think otherwise. I fear the weight of
_myself and my afflictions_ have been too much for him." And the scene
ends flatly enough with the scrap of morality: "'Shame on the world!'
said I to myself. 'Did we love each other as this poor soul loved his
ass, 'twould be something.'"

The whole incident, in short, is one of those examples of the
deliberate-pathetic with which Sterne's highly natural art had
least, and his highly artificial nature most, to do. He is never so
unsuccessful as when, after formally announcing, as it were, that he
means to be touching, he proceeds to select his subject, to marshal
his character