"--_Rabelais_, book i. c.
41. In another place, however (vol. viii. c. 3), Sterne has borrowed a
whole passage from this French humourist without any acknowledgment at
all.]
Upon Beroalde, again, upon D'Aubigne, and upon Bouchet he has made no
direct and _verbatim_ depredations. From Bruscambille he seems to have
taken little or nothing but the not very valuable idea of the tedious
buffoonery of vol. iii. c. 30, _et sqq._; and to Scarron he, perhaps,
owed the incident of the dwarf at the theatre in the _Sentimental
Journey_, an incident which, it must be owned, he vastly improved in
the taking. All this, however, does not amount to very much, and it
is only when we come to Dr. Ferriar's collations of _Tristram Shandy_
with the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ that we begin to understand what
feats Sterne was capable of as a plagiarist. He must, to begin with,
have relied with cynical confidence on the conviction that famous
writers are talked about and not read, for he sets to work with the
scissors upon Burton's first page:
"Man, the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
principal and mighty work of God; wonder of nature, as Zoroaster calls
him; _audacis naturae miraculum_, the marvel of marvels, as Plato; the
abridgment and epitome of the world, as Pliny," &c.
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