To a Young Ass in the 18th-century, with many philosophers and writers, including Godwin, William Shield, and others, releasing their horses and mules to walk alongside them. A direct literary connection is to William Crowe's "To an Ass" (1793) and the poem incorporates a quote from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet". The idea of connecting with a lowly form of animal also appears in many literary works, including Robert Burns poems (example – "To a Mouse"), Southey's poems (example – "To a Spider"), the works of Laurence Sterne (both "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey") and Cervantes's "Don Quixote". Richard Holmes, Coleridge's 20th-century biographer, points out
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy caught hold of the fille de chambre's...End of vol II". The sentence is open to interpretation. You can say the last word is omitted, or that he stretched out "his" hand, and caught "hers" (this would be grammatically correct). Another interpretation is to incorporate 'End of Vol. II' into the sentence, so that he grabs the Fille de Chambre's 'End'. Because Sterne died before he could finish the novel, his long-time friend John Hall-Stevenson (identified with "Eugenius" in the novel) wrote a continuation. It is titled "Yorick's Sentimental Journey Continued: To Which Is Prefixed Some Account of the Life and