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 (by José Paulo Paes, 1984), Catalan (by Joaquim Mallafré, 1993), Norwegian (by Bjørn Herrman, 1995–96), Finnish (by Kersti Juva, 1998). Well known in philosophy and mathematics, the so-called "paradox of Tristram Shandy" was introduced by Bertrand Russell in his book "The Principles of Mathematics" to evidentiate the inner contradictions that arise from the assumption that infinite sets can have the same cardinality—as would be the case with a gentleman who spends one year to write the story of one day of his life, if he were able to write for an infinite length of time. The paradox depends upon the