"
Sterne:
"When Tully was bereft of his daughter, at first he laid it to his
heart, he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto
it. O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!--Still, still, still--'twas O
my Tullia, my Tullia! Me thinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I
talk with my Tullia. But as soon as he began to look into the stores
of philosophy, and _consider how many excellent things might be said
upon the occasion_, nobody on earth can conceive, says the great
orator, how happy, how joyful it made me."
"Kingdoms and provinces, cities and towns," continues Burton, "have
their periods, and are consumed." "Kingdoms and provinces, and towns
and cities," exclaims Mr. Shandy, throwing the sentence, like
the "born orator" his son considered him, into the rhetorical
interrogative, "have they not their periods?" "Where," he proceeds,
"is Troy, and Mycenae, and Thebes, and Delos, and Persepolis, and
Agrigentum? What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of
Cyzicum and Mytilene? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon"
(and all, with the curious exception of Mytilene, enumerated by
Burton) "are now no more.
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