skilful.  There is something almost irritating, as a waste of powers on unworthy material, in the prettiness of the picture which Sterne draws of the preparations for the departure of the two religieuses—­the stir in the simple village, the co-operating labours of the gardener and the tailor, the carpenter and the smith, and all those other little details which bring the whole scene before the eye so vividly that Sterne may, perhaps, in all seriousness, and not merely as a piece of his characteristic persiflage, have thrown in the exclamation, “I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been there.”  Nothing, again, could be better done than the sketch of the little good-natured, “broad-set” gardener, who acted as the ladies’ muleteer, and the recital of the indiscretions by which he was betrayed into temporary desertion of his duties.  The whole scene is Chaucerian in its sharpness of outline and translucency of atmosphere:  though there, unfortunately, the resemblance ends.  Sterne’s manner of saying what we now leave unsaid is as unlike Chaucer’s, and as unlike for the worse, as it can possibly be.

Still, a certain amount of this element of the non nominandum must be compounded for, one regrets to say, in nearly every chapter that Sterne ever wrote; and there is certainly less than the average amount of it in the seventh volume.  Then, again, this volume contains the famous scene with the ass—­the live and genuinely touching, and not the dead and fictitiously pathetic, animal; and that perfect piece of comic dialogue—­the interview between the puzzled English traveller and the French commissary of the posts.  To have suggested this scene is, perhaps, the sole claim of the absurd fiscal system of the Ancien regime upon the grateful remembrance of the world.  A scheme of taxation which exacted posting-charges from a traveller who proposed to continue his journey by water, possesses a natural ingredient of drollery infused into its mere vexatiousness; but a whole volume of satire could hardly put its essential absurdity in a stronger light than is thrown upon it in the short conversation between the astonished Tristram and the officer of the fisc, who had just handed him a little bill for six livres four sous: 

  “‘Upon what account?’ said I.

  “‘’Tis upon the part of the King,’ said the commissary, heaving
  up his shoulders.

  “‘My good friend,’ quoth I, ‘as sure as I am I, and you are you—­’

  “‘And who are you?’ he said.

“‘Don’t puzzle me,’ said I.  ‘But it is an indubitable verity,’ I continued, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration,’ that I owe the King of France nothing but my good-will, for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all the health and pastime in the world.’

“‘Pardonnez-moi,’ replied the commissary.  ’You are indebted to him six livres four sous for the next post from hence to St. Fons, on your route to Avignon, which being a post royal, you pay double for the horses and postilion, otherwise ’twould have amounted to no more than three livres two sous.’

  “‘But I don’t go by land,’ said I.