Nescio. “The mercury must have been some degrees below zero, I should guess.”
Apple. “Oh! most miserable! (Puff.) Physician, heal thyself. You are like the man that preached against dishonesty with a stolen shilling in his pocket.”
Pulito. “Cease this ‘childish treble’—take another cup of coffee, and then tell me what you think of ‘Tristram Shandy,’ which I have found lying here on the sofa, ‘dejected and alone.’”
Apple. “Think of it? (Puff.) What should I think of it, but that it’s the finest book in the world? I prefer it to both Swift and Smollett.”
Nescio. “Well, now, in candor, I do not like it very much, nor did I ever. I have sometimes stared at his strange conceits, and laughed at his queer conjunctions, and been, in a few instances, actually ravished by his beauty and his naturalness. But, then, look at the astounding proofs of his thievish propensities—at his plagiarisms from Rabelais, which were traced out by his English bloodhound; and, whether original or borrowed, look at his tedious and fruitless wanderings, enlivened, it is true, by conceptions as beautiful as they are new, yet putting one out of patience and out of breath.”
Apple. (Puff.)
“‘Cease: no more.
You smell this business with a sense as cold
As is a dead man’s nose.’
I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Quod. You and I must part if you say any thing prejudicial to my beloved Laurence. Shakspeare, Fielding and Sterne are my favorites par eminence, and ‘let my tongue cleave,’ (puff)—‘let my right hand forget,’ (puff)—if I do not defend them till—my last cigar—that is, in a quiet way, by swearing to my belief, which is as firm as the laws of the Medes, or the determination of a pig. As for logic, hang your silly syllogisms—hem!—I would not argue the point, if Sterne were my grandfather.”