"'But when a soldier,' said I, 'an' please your Reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water, or engaged for months together in long and dangerous marches--detached here--countermanded there; benumbed in his joints;--perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, he must say his prayers how and when he can.' 'I believe', said I, for I was piqued, quoth the Corporal, 'for the reputation of the army--I believe, an't please your Reverence--that when a soldier gets time to pray he prays as heartily as a Parson--though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy." "'Thou should'st not have said _that_, Trim,' said my uncle Toby; 'for God only knows who is a hypocrite and who is not. At the great and general review of us all, Corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen who have done their duties in this world and who have not, and we shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly.' "'I hope we shall,' said Trim. "'It is the Scripture,' said my uncle Toby, 'and I will show it thee in the morning.'" Now this beautiful naturalness, this delightful, artistic abstention from all rant or extravagance, makes us wish overmuch that the whole guileless character of my uncle Toby had been as {214} charmingly and as decently set in the text; but unfortunately, there is a continuous embroidery of it all with ribald blotches, and far-fetched foulness of speech; nor is his coarseness--like that of Fielding--half excused by the coarseness of the age; it is inherent and vital: Fielding, indeed, is vulgar and coarse, and obstreperous--with the scent of bad spirits and bad company on him;[14] but this other, though a parson, and perfumed, and wearing may-be, satin small-clothes, has vile and grovelling tastes that overflow in double-meanings of lewdness: even Goldsmith, who was not squeamish, calls him "the blackguard parson." It is not probable that Goldsmith ever encountered him; nor did Dr. Johnson. Beauclerk, Garrick, and Walpole would have been more in his line; for he loved the glint, and the capital letters, and the showy tag-rags of fashion. And on the strength of his literary reputation, which had sudden and brilliant burst, and of his good family--since a not far-off ancestor had been Archbishop of York--he {215} conquered and enjoyed, for his little day, all that London fashion had to offer. I suspect he took a solid comfort in dying in so respectable a quarter as Old Bond Street. He was buried over Bayswater way, not far from the Marble Arch, in the graveyard then pertaining to St. George's (Hanover Square) church. And there was a story, supported by a good deal of circumstantial evidence, that his body was spirited away and recognized a few days afterward by a medical student among the spoils of a dissecting-room. This story would horrify more than it did, had it attached to an author whose humor had kindled love;--as if this man did