' 'Admirable grammarism!' 'But in
suspending his voice, was the sense suspended likewise? Did no
expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm? Was the
eye silent? Did you narrowly look?' 'I looked only at the stop
watch, my lord.' 'Excellent observer!'"
His sensibility and taste in this direction was probably one of the
bonds of the close intimacy, which existed between himself and David
Garrick.
We find among his works, numerous instances of his peculiar and artistic
punctuation. Sometimes he continues an exclamation by means of dashes
for three lines. Sometimes, by way of pause, he leaves out a whole page,
and the first time he does this he humorously adds:--"Thrice happy book!
thou wilt have one page which malice cannot blacken." One of the
chapters of Tristram begins--
"And a chapter it shall have."
"A sermon commences--Judges xix. 1. 2. 3.
"'And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in
Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of
Mount Ephraim, who took unto himself a concubine.'
"'A concubine! but the text accounts for it, for in those days
'there was no king in Israel!' then the Levite, you will say, like
every other man in it, did what was right in his own eyes; and so,
you may add, did his concubine too, for she went away.
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