And the peculiarity extends to his two chief named heroines, Mrs.Shandy and the Widow.

Never were any two female personages more unceremoniously treated in the way of scanty and incidental appearance.

Never were any personages of scanty and incidental appearance made more alive and more female.
His details and accessories of all kinds, descriptive, literary, and other, would give subject for a separate chapter; but we must turn (for this chapter is already too long) to his phrase--in dialogue, narrative, whatever you please to call it.

For the fact is that these two things, and all others in which phrase and expression can be used, melt into each other with Sterne in a manner as "flibberti-gibbety" as most other things about him.

This phrase or expression is of course artificial to the highest degree: and it is to it that the reproach of depending on mechanical aids chiefly applies.