of which depends,
firstly, on the modesty it gives pain to; or, secondly, on the
innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs; or thirdly,
on a certain oscillation in the individual's own mind between the
remaining good and the encroaching evil of his nature--a sort of
dallying with the devil--a fluxionary art of combining courage and
cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle with his fingers for the
first time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring
with which a child touches a hot tea-urn, because it has been
forbidden; so that the mind has its own white and black angel; the
same or similar amusement as may be supposed to take place between
an old debauchee and a prude--the feeling resentment, on the one
hand, from a prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a
character; and, on the other, an inward sympathy with the enemy. We
have only to suppose society innocent, and then nine-tenths of this
sort of wit would be like a stone that falls in snow, making no
sound, because exciting no resistance; the remainder rests on its
being an offence against the good manners of human nature itself.

"This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with wit,
drollery, fancy, and even humour; and we have only to regret the
misalliance; but that the latter are quite distinct from the former,
may be made evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality
of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are
all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of
_Tristram Shandy_, and by supposing, instead of them, the presence
of two or three callous debauchees. The result will be pure disgust.
Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus using the best
dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for the
basest."--COLERIDGE, _Literary Remains_, vol. i, pp. 141, 142.

171 "He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never
forgets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of
feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence
to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last
guinea....

"The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the
pleasing truth with which the principal ch