Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 5).pdf/33

  or Lucian—or some one perhaps of later date—either Cardan, or Budæus, or Petrarch, or Stella—or possibly it may be some divine or father of the church, St. Austin, or St. Cyprian, or Barnard, who affirms that it is an irresistable and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children—and Seneca (I'm positive) tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel.—And accordingly we find, that David wept for his son Absolom—Adrian for his Antinous—Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the Hebrews and the Romans—or slept it off, as the Laplanders—or hang'd it, as the English, or drowned it, as the Germans—nor did he