Chaotic as it is in the syntactical sense, it is
a perfectly clear vehicle for the conveyance of thought: we are as
rarely at a loss for the meaning of one of Sterne's sentences as we
are, for very different reasons, for the meaning of one of Macaulay's.
And his language is so full of life and colour, his tone so animated
and vivacious, that we forget we are reading and not _listening_, and
we are as little disposed to be exacting in respect to form as though
we were listeners in actual fact. Sterne's manner, in short, may
be that of a bad and careless writer, but it is the manner of a
first-rate talker; and this, of course, enhances rather than detracts
from the unwearying charm of his wit and humour.
To attempt a precise and final distinction between these two
last-named qualities in Sterne or any one else would be no very
hopeful task, perhaps; but those who have a keen perception of either
find no great difficulty in discriminating, as a matter of feeling,
between the two. And what is true of the qualities themselves is
true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the men by whom they have been most
conspicuously displayed. Some wits have been humourists also; nearly
all humourists have been also wits; yet the two fall, on the whole,
into tolerably well-marked classes, and the ordinary uncritical
judgment would, probably, enable most men to state with sufficient
certainty the class to which each famous name in the world's
literature belongs.
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