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
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman to the morality of dancing schools. Much of the singularity of "Tristram Shandy's" characters is drawn from Burton. Burton indulges himself in a Utopian sketch of a perfect government in his introductory address to the reader, and this forms the basis of the notions of "Tristram Shandy" on the subject. And Sterne parodies Burton's use of weighty quotations. The first four chapters of "Tristram Shandy" are founded on some passages in Burton. In Chapter 3, Volume 5, Sterne parodies the genre of "consolatio", mixing and reworking passages from three "widely separated sections" of Burton's "Anatomy", including a parody of Burton's