Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768) [attrib.]

Yorick's Meditations: Upon Various Interesting and Important Subjects

London

Printed for R. Stevens

1760

"What's a meditation, but a collection of the reveries of a mind; and what is of a more moving nature than the mind--so far from thinking in train, it flies from one subject to another, with a rapidity inexpressible--from meditating upon the planetary system, it can with ease deviate into a meditation upon hobby-horses, tho' there does not appear to be any considerable connexion between the ideas--and yet Hobbs has affirmed, that thoughts have always some connexion."

It has frequently happened, that a book has been by the public in general looked upon as the thing--and has notwithstanding been thought a very bad thing by judicious critics--but this has never happened to any thing of mine--whatever I write will by all the world be allowed to be the thing; and if any one should take upon him to assert, that this meditation is not the thing, I must beg leave to tell him that he has no taste--but this is a digression from my subject--no matter for that, a digression is quite the thing in a history, and surely it must be much more so in a meditation. What's a meditation, but a collection of the reveries of a mind; and what is of a more moving nature than the mind--so far from thinking in train, it flies from one subject to another, with a rapidity inexpressible--from meditating upon the planetary system, it can with ease deviate into a meditation upon hobby-horses, tho' there does not appear to be any considerable connexion between the ideas--and yet Hobbs has affirmed, that thoughts have always some connexion.
(pp. 9-10)

Motion

Reading in ECCO-TCP

Yorick's Meditations: Upon Various Interesting and Important Subjects. Viz. Upon Nothing. Upon Something. Upon the Thing. (London: Printed for R. Stevens, 1760). <Link to ECCO-TCP>

10/26/2013