A dangerous precedent, perhaps; but a great accomplishment: and, even as a precedent, the leader of a very remarkable company.

In not a few noteworthy later books--in a very much greater number of parts of later books--as we take our hats off to the success we are saluting not a new but an old friend, and that friend Sterne.
On the second great count--character--Sterne's record is still more distinguished: and here there is no legerdemain about the matter.

There is a consensus of all sound opinion to the effect that my Uncle Toby is an absolute triumph--even among those who think that, as in the case of Colonel Newcome later, it would have been possible to achieve that triumph without letting his simplicity run so near to something less attractive.

It is not the sentiment that is here to blame, because Sterne has luckily not forgotten (as he has in the case of his dead donkeys and his live Marias) that humour is the only thing that will keep such sentiment from turning mawkish, if not even rancid; and that the antiseptic effect will not be achieved by keeping your humour and your sentiment in separate boxes.

Trim is even better: he is indeed next to Sancho--and perhaps Sam Weller--the greatest of all "followers" in the novel: he supplies the only class-figure in which Sterne perhaps beats Fielding himself.