But where the saying is very remarkable, or depends on some peculiar circumstances, we may conclude that there is one original, and that upon this pivot a number of different names and characters have been made to revolve. It has been ascribed to or appropriated by many. We have read of two eminent comic writers in classical times dying of laughter at seeing an ass eat figs. Here it is most probable that there was some standing joke upon this subject, or that some instance of the kind occurred, and so this strange death came to be attributed to several individuals. The saying, "On two days is a wife enjoyable, That of her bridal and her burial," attributed to Palladas in the fifth century A.D., was really due to Hipponax in the fifth century B.C. There is a story that Lord Stair was so like Louis XIV. that, when he went to the French Court, the King asked him whether his mother was ever in France, and that he replied "No, your Majesty, but my father was." This is in reality a Roman story, and the answer was made to Augustus by a young man from the country. Sydney Smith's reply when it was proposed to pave the approach to St. Paul's with blocks of wood, "The canons have only to put their heads together and it will be done," was not original; Rochester had made a similar remark to Charles II. when he noticed a construction near Shoreditch: and the story of the man who complained that the chicken brought up for his dinner had only one leg, and was told to go and look into the roost-house, is to be found in an old Turkish jest-book of the fifteenth century. When Byron said of Southey's poems that "they would be read when Homer and Virgil were forgotten--but not till then," he was no doubt repeating what Porson said of Sir Richard Blackmore's. "Most literary stories," observes Mr. Willmott, "seem to be shadows, brighter or fainter, of others told before." CHAPTER VI. Sterne--His Versatility--Dramatic Form--Indelicacy--Sentiment and Geniality--Letters to his Wife--Extracts from his Sermons--Dr. Johnson. Sterne exceeded Smollett[10] in indelicacy as much as in humorous talent. He calls him Smelfungus, because he had written a fastidious book of travels. But he profited by his works, and the character of Uncle Toby reminds us considerably of Commodore Trunnion. But Sterne is more immediately associated in our minds with Swift, for both were clergymen, and both Irishmen by birth, though neither by parentage. Sterne's great-grandfather had been Archbishop of York, and his mother heiress of Sir Roger Jacques, of Elvington in Yorkshire. Through family interest Sterne became a Prebendary of York, and obtained two livings; at one of which he spent his time in quiet obscurity until his forty-seventh year, when the production of "Tristram Shandy" made him famous. He did not long enjoy his laurels, dying nine years afterwards in 1768.