There are few among the young people who do not refresh their sense of humour occasionally from that shelf, Sterne is relegated to some distant and high corner.

The less often that he is taken down the better.

Thackeray makes some half excuse for him because of the greater freedom of the times.

But "the times" were the same for the two.

Both Sterne and Goldsmith wrote in the reign of George II.; both died in the reign of George III..