Sterne is our best example of the plagiarist whom none dare make ashamed. He robbed other men’s orchards with both hands; and yet no more original writer than he ever went to press in these isles. He has been dogged, of course; but, as was befitting in his case, it has been done pleasantly. Sterne’s detective was the excellent Dr. Ferriar, of Manchester, whose ‘Illustrations of Sterne,’ first published in 1798, were written at an earlier date for the edification of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Those were pleasant days, when men of reading were content to give their best thoughts first to their friends and then--ten years afterwards--to the public. Dr. Ferriar’s book is worthy of its subject. The motto on the title-page is delightfully chosen. It is taken from the opening paragraph of Lord Shaftesbury’s ‘Miscellaneous Reflections’: ‘Peace be with the soul of that charitable and Courteous Author who for the common benefit of his fellow-Authors introduced the ingenious way of MISCELLANEOUS WRITING.’ Here Dr. Ferriar stopped; but I will add the next sentence: ‘It must be owned that since this happy method was established the Harvest of Wit has been more plentiful and the Labourers more in number than heretofore.’ Wisely, indeed, did Charles Lamb declare Shaftesbury was not too genteel for him. No pleasanter penance for random thinking can be devised than spending an afternoon turning over Shaftesbury’s three volumes and trying to discover how near he ever did come to saying that ‘Ridicule was the test of truth.’ Dr. Ferriar’s happy motto puts the reader in a sweet temper to start with, for he sees at once that the author is no pedantic, soured churl, but a good fellow who is going to make a little sport with a celebrated wit, and show you how a genius fills his larder. The first thing that strikes you in reading Dr. Ferriar’s book is the marvellous skill with which Sterne has created his own atmosphere and characters, in spite of the fact that some of the most characteristic remarks of his characters are, in the language of the Old Bailey, ‘stolen goods.’ ‘“There is no cause but one,” replied my Uncle Toby, “why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, but because God pleases to have it so.” “That is Grangousier’s solution,” said my father. “’Tis he,” continued my Uncle Toby, looking up and not regarding my father’s interruption, “who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions and for such ends as is agreeable to His infinite wisdom.”’ ‘“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh”; and if those are not the words of my Uncle Toby, it is idle to believe in anything’: and yet we read in Rabelais--as, indeed, Sterne suggests to us we should--‘“Pourquoi,” dit Gargantua, “est-ce que frère Jean a si beau nez?” “Parce,” répondit Grangousier, “qu’ainsi Dieu l’a voulu, lequel nous fait en telle forme et à telle fin selon son divin arbitre, que fait un potier ses vaisseaux.”’