The catalogue is a reasonably long one; but it is not, of
course, to be supposed that Sterne helped himself equally freely from
every author named in it. His obligations to some of them are, as Dr.
Ferriar admits, but slight. From Rabelais, besides his vagaries of
narrative, Sterne took, no doubt, the idea of the _Tristra-paedia_
(by descent from the "education of Pantagruel," through "Martinus
Scriblerus"); but though he has appropriated bodily the passage in
which Friar John attributes the beauty of his nose to the pectoral
conformation of his nurse, he may be said to have constructively
acknowledged the debt in a reference to one of the characters in the
Rabelaisian dialogue.[1]
[Footnote 1: "There is no cause but one," said my Uncle Toby, "why
one man's nose is longer than another, but because that God pleases to
have it so." "That is Grangousier's solution," said my father. "'Tis
He," continued my Uncle Toby, "who makes us all, and frames and puts
us together in such forms ... and for such ends as is agreeable to
His infinite wisdom."--_Tristram Shandy_, vol. iii. c. 41. "Par ce,
repondit Grangousier, qu'ainsi Dieu l'a voulu, lequel nous fait en
cette forme et cette fin selon divin arbitre.
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