'Did we love each other as this poor soul loved his
ass, 'twould be something.'"
The whole incident, in short, is one of those examples of the
deliberate-pathetic with which Sterne's highly natural art had
least, and his highly artificial nature most, to do. He is never so
unsuccessful as when, after formally announcing, as it were, that he
means to be touching, he proceeds to select his subject, to marshal
his characters, to group his accessories, and with painful and
painfully apparent elaboration to work up his scene to the weeping
point. There is no obviousness of suggestion, no spontaneity of
treatment about this "Dead Ass" episode; indeed, there is some reason
to believe that it was one of those most hopeless of efforts--the
attempt at the mechanical repetition of a former triumph. It is by no
means improbable, at any rate, that the dead ass of Nampont owes its
presence in the _Sentimental Journey_ to the reception met with by the
live ass of Lyons in the seventh volume of _Tristram Shandy_. And yet
what an astonishing difference between the two sketches!
"'Twas a poor ass, who had just turned in, with a couple of large
panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and
cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious with his two fore-feet on the
inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the
street, as not knowing very well whether he would go in or no.
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