ix.; so is the jest about Franciscus
Ribera's computation of the amount of cubic space required by the
souls of the lost; so is Hilarion the hermit's comparison of his body
with its unruly passions to a kicking ass. And there is a passage in
the _Sentimental Journey_, the "Fragment in the Abderitans," which
shows, Dr. Ferriar thinks--though it does not seem to me to show
conclusively--that Sterne was unaware that what he was taking from
Burton had been previously taken by Burton from Lucian.
There is more excuse, in the opinion of the author of the
_Illustrations_, for the literary thefts of the preacher than for
those of the novelist; since in sermons, Dr. Ferriar observes drily,
"the principal matter must consist of repetitions."
But it can hardly, I think, be admitted that the kind of "repetitions"
to which Sterne had recourse in the pulpit--or, at any rate,
in compositions ostensibly prepared for the pulpit--are quite
justifiable. Professor Jebb has pointed out, in a recent volume of
this series, that the description of the tortures of the Inquisition,
which so deeply moved Corporal Trim in the famous Sermon on
Conscience, was really the work of Bentley; but Sterne has pilfered
more freely from a divine more famous as a preacher than the great
scholar whose words he appropriated on that occasion.
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