Were it not that the genuine humour of
_Tristram Shandy_ in a great measure evaporates in translation, one
would be forced to admit that the work which is the more catholic
in its appeal to appreciation is the better of the two. But, having
regard to this disappearance of genuine and unquestionable excellences
in the process of translation, I see no good reason why those
Englishmen--the great majority, I imagine--who prefer _Tristram
Shandy_ to the _Sentimental Journey_ should feel any misgivings as to
the soundness of their taste. The humour which goes the deepest
down beneath the surface of things is the most likely to become
inextricably interwoven with those deeper fibres of associations which
lie at the roots of a language; and it may well happen, therefore,
though from the cosmopolitan point of view it is a melancholy
reflection, that the merit of a book, to those who use the language
in which it is written, bears a direct ratio to the persistence of its
refusal to yield up its charm to men of another tongue.
The favour, however, with which the _Sentimental Journey_ was received
abroad, and which it still enjoys (the last French translation is
very recent), is, as Mr.
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