1. In bringing forward into distinct consciousness those minutiae of thought and feeling which appear trifles, yet have an importance for the moment, and which almost every man feels in one way or other. Thus is produced the novelty of an individual peculiarity, together with the interest of a something that belongs to our common nature. In short, Sterne seizes happily on those points, in which every man is more or less a humourist. And, indeed, to be a little more subtle, the propensity to notice these things does itself constitute the humourist, and the superadded power of so presenting them to men in general gives us the man of humour. Hence the difference of the man of humour, the effect of whose portraits does not depend on the felt presence of himself, as a humourist, as in the instances of Cervantes and Shakspeare--nay, of Rabelais too; and of the humourist, the effect of whose works does very much depend on the sense of his own oddity, as in Sterne's case, and perhaps Swift's; though Swift again would require a separate classification. 2. In the traits of human nature, which so easily assume a particular cast and colour from individual character. Hence this excellence and the pathos connected with it quickly pass into humour, and form the ground of it. See particularly the beautiful passage, so well known, of Uncle Toby's catching and liberating the fly: "Go,"--says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;--"I'll not hurt thee," says my Uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,--"I'll not hurt a hair of thy head:--Go," says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;--"go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me." (Vol. ii. ch. 12.) Observe in this incident how individual character may be given by the mere delicacy of presentation and elevation in degree of a common good quality, humanity, which in itself would not be characteristic at all. 3. In Mr. Shandy's character,--the essence of which is a craving for sympathy in exact proportion to the oddity and unsympathizability of what he proposes;--this coupled with an instinctive desire to be at least disputed with, or rather both in one, to dispute and yet to agree--and holding as worst of all--to acquiesce without either resistance or sympathy. This is charmingly, indeed, profoundly conceived, and is psychologically and ethically true of all Mr. Shandies. Note, too, how the contrasts of character, which are always either balanced or remedied, increase the love between the brothers.