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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sterne, by H.D. Traill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+
+Title: Sterne
+
+Author: H.D. Traill
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2004 [EBook #12142]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STERNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Bill Hershey and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+STERNE
+
+
+BY
+
+H.D. TRAILL
+
+
+1882
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+
+The materials for a biography of Sterne are by no means abundant.
+Of the earlier years of his life the only existing record is that
+preserved in the brief autobiographical memoir which, a few months
+before his death, he composed, in the usual quaint _staccato_ style of
+his familiar correspondence, for the benefit of his daughter. Of his
+childhood; of his school-days; of his life at Cambridge, and in his
+Yorkshire vicarage; of his whole history, in fact, up to the age of
+forty-six, we know nothing more than he has there jotted down. He
+attained that age in the year 1759; and at this date begins that
+series of his _Letters_, from which, for those who have the patience
+to sort them out of the chronological confusion in which his daughter
+and editress involved them, there is, no doubt, a good deal to be
+learnt. These letters, however, which extend down to 1768, the year
+of the writer's death, contain pretty nearly all the contemporary
+material that we have to depend on. Freely as Sterne mixed in the best
+literary society, there is singularly little to be gathered about him,
+even in the way of chance allusion and anecdote, from the memoirs and
+_ana_ of his time. Of the many friends who would have been competent
+to write his biography while the facts were yet fresh, but one, John
+Wilkes, ever entertained--if he did seriously entertain--the idea
+of performing this pious work; and he, in spite of the entreaties of
+Sterne's widow and daughter, then in straitened circumstances, left
+unredeemed his promise to do so. The brief memoir by Sir Walter Scott,
+which is prefixed to many popular editions of _Tristram Shandy_ and
+the _Sentimental Journey,_ sets out the so-called autobiography in
+full, but for the rest is mainly critical; Thackeray's well-known
+lecture essay is almost wholly so; and nothing, worthy to be dignified
+by the name of a _Life of Sterne_, seems ever to have been published,
+until the appearance of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's two stout volumes,
+under this title, some eighteen years ago. Of this work it is hardly
+too much to say that it contains (no doubt with the admixture of a
+good deal of superfluous matter) nearly all the information as to the
+facts of Sterne's life that is now ever likely to be recovered. The
+evidence for certain of its statements of fact is not as thoroughly
+sifted as it might have been; and with some of its criticism I, at
+least, am unable to agree. But no one interested in the subject of
+this memoir can be insensible of his obligations to Mr. Fitzgerald
+for the fruitful diligence with which he has laboured in a too long
+neglected field.
+
+H.D.T.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+(1713-1724.)
+
+BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+(1724-1733.)
+
+SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+(1738-1759.)
+
+LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+(1759-1760.)
+
+"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+(1760-1762.)
+
+
+LONDON TRIUMPHS.--FIRST SET OF SERMONS.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. III.
+AND IV.--COXWOLD.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. V. AND VI.--FIRST VISIT TO
+THE CONTINENT.--PARIS.--TOULOUSE.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+(1762-1765.)
+
+LIFE IN THE SOUTH.--RETURN TO ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. VII.
+AND VIII.--SECOND SET OF SERMONS
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+(1765-1768)
+
+FRANCE AND ITALY.--MEETING WITH WIFE AND DAUGHTER.--RETURN TO
+ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOL. IX.--"THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY"
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+(1768.)
+
+LAST DAYS AND DEATH
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR. FERRIAR'S
+"ILLUSTRATIONS"
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--HUMOUR AND SENTIMENT
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CREATIVE AND DRAMATIC POWER.--PLACE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+
+
+STERNE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.
+
+(1713-1724.)
+
+Towards the close of the month of November, 1713, one of the last of
+the English regiments which had been detained in Flanders to supervise
+the execution of the treaty of Utrecht arrived at Clonmel from
+Dunkirk. The day after its arrival the regiment was disbanded; and
+yet a few days later, on the 24th of the month, the wife of one of its
+subalterns gave birth to a son. The child who thus early displayed the
+perversity of his humour by so inopportune an appearance was Laurence
+Sterne. "My birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung
+notes by which he has been somewhat grandiloquently said to have
+"anticipated the labours" of the biographer--"my birthday was ominous
+to my poor father, who was the day after our arrival, with many other
+brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a wife
+and two children."
+
+Roger Sterne, however, now late ensign of the 34th, or Chudleigh's
+regiment of foot, was after all in less evil case than were many,
+probably, of his comrades. He had kinsmen to whom he could look for,
+at any rate, temporary assistance, and his mother was a wealthy widow.
+The Sternes, originally of a Suffolk stock, had passed from that
+county to Nottinghamshire, and thence into Yorkshire, and were at
+this time a family of position and substance in the last-named county.
+Roger's grandfather had been Archbishop of York, and a man of more
+note, if only through the accident of the times upon which he
+fell, than most of the incumbents of that see. He had played an
+exceptionally energetic part even for a Cavalier prelate in the great
+political struggle of the seventeenth century, and had suffered with
+fortitude and dignity in the royal cause. He had, moreover, a further
+claim to distinction in having been treated with common gratitude
+at the Restoration by the son of the monarch whom he had served. As
+Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, he had "been active in sending the
+University plate to his Majesty," and for this offence he was seized
+by Cromwell and carried in military custody to London, whence, after
+undergoing imprisonment in various goals, and experiencing other
+forms of hardship, he was at length permitted to retire to an obscure
+retreat in the country, there to commune with himself until that
+tyranny should be overpast. On the return of the exiled Stuarts
+Dr. Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and a few years later was
+translated to the see of York. He lived to the age of eighty-six, and
+so far justified Burnet's accusation against him of "minding chiefly
+enriching himself," that he seems to have divided no fewer than four
+landed estates among his children. One of these, Simon Sterne,
+a younger son of the Archbishop, himself married an heiress, the
+daughter of Sir Roger Jaques of Elvington; and Roger, the father of
+Laurence Sterne, was the seventh and youngest of the issue of this
+marriage. At the time when the double misfortune above recorded befell
+him at the hands of Lucina and the War Office, his father had been
+some years dead; but Simon Sterne's widow was still mistress of
+the property which she had brought with her at her marriage, and to
+Elvington, accordingly, "as soon," writes Sterne, "as I was able to be
+carried," the compulsorily retired ensign betook himself with his wife
+and his two children. He was not, however, compelled to remain long
+dependent on his mother. The ways of the military authorities were as
+inscrutable to the army of that day as they are in our day to our
+own. Before a year had passed the regiment was ordered to be
+re-established, and "our household decamped with bag and baggage for
+Dublin." This was in the autumn of 1714, and from that time onward,
+for some eleven years, the movements and fortunes of the Sterne
+family, as detailed in the narrative of its most famous member, form a
+history in which the ludicrous struggles strangely with the pathetic.
+
+A husband, condemned to be the Ulysses-like plaything of adverse gods
+at the War Office; an indefatigably prolific wife; a succession of
+weak and ailing children; misfortune in the seasons of journeying;
+misfortune in the moods of the weather by sea and land--under all this
+combination of hostile chances and conditions was the struggle to
+be carried on. The little household was perpetually "on the move"--a
+little household which was always becoming and never remaining
+bigger--continually increased by births, only to be again reduced by
+deaths--until the contest between the deadly hardships of travel and
+the fatal fecundity of Mrs. Sterne was brought by events to a natural
+close. Almost might the unfortunate lady have exclaimed, _Quae regio
+in terris nostri non plena laboris?_ She passes from Ireland to
+England, and from England to Ireland, from inland garrison to sea-port
+town and back again, incessantly bearing and incessantly burying
+children--until even her son in his narrative begins to speak of
+losing one infant at this place, and "leaving another behind" on that
+journey, almost as if they were so many overlooked or misdirected
+articles of luggage. The tragic side of the history, however,
+overshadows the grotesque. When we think how hard a business was
+travel even under the most favourable conditions in those days,
+and how serious even in our own times, when travel is easy, are the
+discomforts of the women and children of a regiment on the march--we
+may well pity these unresting followers of the drum. As to Mrs. Sterne
+herself, she seems to have been a woman of a pretty tough fibre, and
+she came moreover of a campaigning stock. Her father was a "noted
+suttler" of the name of Nuttle, and her first husband--for she was a
+widow when Roger Sterne married her--had been a soldier also. She
+had, therefore, served some years' apprenticeship to the military life
+before these wanderings began; and she herself was destined to live to
+a good old age. But somehow or other she failed to endow her offspring
+with her own robust constitution and powers of endurance. "My father's
+children were," as Laurence Sterne grimly puts it, "not made to last
+long;" but one cannot help suspecting that it was the hardships of
+those early years which carried them off in their infancy with such
+painful regularity and despatch, and that it was to the same cause
+that their surviving brother owed the beginnings of that fatal malady
+by which his own life was cut short.
+
+The diary of their travels--for the early part of Sterne's memoirs
+amounts to scarcely more--is the more effective for its very brevity
+and abruptness. Save for one interval of somewhat longer sojourn than
+usual at Dublin, the reader has throughout it all the feeling of
+the traveller who never finds time to unpack his portmanteau. On
+the re-enrolment of the regiment in 1714, "our household," says the
+narrative, "decamped from York with bag and baggage for Dublin. Within
+a month my father left us, being ordered to Exeter; where, in a sad
+winter, my mother and her two children followed him, travelling from
+Liverpool, by land, to Plymouth." At Plymouth Mrs. Sterne gave birth
+to a son, christened Joram; and, "in twelve months time we were all
+sent back to Dublin. My mother," with her three children, "took ship
+at Bristol for Ireland, and had a narrow escape from being cast away
+by a leak springing up in the vessel. At length, after many perils
+and struggles, we got to Dublin." Here intervenes the short
+breathing-space, of which mention has been made--an interval
+employed by Roger Sterne in "spending a great deal of money" on a
+"large house," which he hired and furnished; and then "in the year one
+thousand seven hundred and nineteen, all unhinged again." The regiment
+had been ordered off to the Isle of Wight, thence to embark for Spain,
+on "the Vigo Expedition," and "we," who accompanied it, "were driven
+into Milford Haven, but afterwards landed at Bristol, and thence by
+land to Plymouth again, and to the Isle of Wight;" losing on this
+expedition "poor Joram, a pretty boy, who died of the smallpox." In
+the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Sterne and her family remained till the Vigo
+Expedition returned home; and during her stay there "poor Joram's loss
+was supplied by the birth of a girl, Anne," a "pretty blossom," but
+destined to fall "at the age of three years." On the return of the
+regiment to Wicklow, Roger Sterne again sent to collect his family
+around him. "We embarked for Dublin, and had all been cast away by a
+most violent storm; but, through the intercession of my mother, the
+captain was prevailed upon to turn back into Wales, where we stayed
+a month, and at length got into Dublin, and travelled by land to
+Wicklow, where my father had, for some weeks, given us over for lost."
+Here a year passed, and another child, Devijeher--so called after the
+colonel of the regiment--was born. "From thence we decamped to stay
+half a year with Mr. Fetherston, a clergyman, about seven miles from
+Wicklow, who, being a relative of my mother's, invited us to his
+parsonage at Animo.[1]" From thence, again, "we followed the regiment
+to Dublin," where again "we lay in the barracks a year." In 1722 the
+regiment was ordered to Carrickfergus. "We all decamped, but got no
+further than Drogheda; thence ordered to Mullingar, forty miles west,
+where, by Providence, we stumbled upon a kind relation, a collateral
+descendant from Archbishop Sterne, who took us all to his castle, and
+kindly entertained us for a year." Thence, by "a most rueful journey,"
+to Carrickfergus, where "we arrived in six or seven days." Here, at
+the age of three, little Devijeher obtained a happy release from his
+name; and "another child, Susan, was sent to fill his place, who also
+left us behind in this weary journey." In the "autumn of this year, or
+the spring of the next"--Sterne's memory failing in exactitude at the
+very point where we should have expected it to be most precise--"my
+father obtained permission of his colonel to fix me at school;" and
+henceforth the boy's share in the family wanderings was at an end. But
+his father had yet to be ordered from Carrickfergus to Londonderry,
+where at last a permanent child, Catherine, was born; and thence to
+Gibraltar, to take part in the Defence of that famous Rock, where the
+much-enduring campaigner was run through the body in a duel, "about
+a goose" (a thoroughly Shandian catastrophe); and thence to Jamaica,
+where, "with a constitution impaired" by the sword-thrust earned in
+his anserine quarrel, he was defeated in a more deadly duel with the
+"country fever," and died. "His malady," writes his son, with a touch
+of feeling struggling through his dislocated grammar, "took away his
+senses first, and made a child of him; and then in a month or two
+walking about continually without complaining, till the moment he sat
+down in an arm-chair and breathed his last."
+
+[Footnote 1: "It was in this parish," says Sterne, "that I had that
+wonderful escape in falling through a mill race while the mill was
+going, and being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known
+to all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people
+flocked to seeme." More incredible still does it seem that Thoresby
+should relate the occurrence of an accident of precisely the same kind
+to Sterne's great-grandfather, the Archbishop. "Playing near a mill,
+he fell within a claw; there was but one board or bucket wanting in
+the whole wheel, but a gracious Providence so ordered it that the void
+place came down at that moment, else he had been crushed to death; but
+was reserved to be a grand benefactor afterwards." (Thoresby, ii. 15.)
+But what will probably strike the reader as more extraordinary even
+than this coincidence is that Sterne should have been either unaware
+of it, or should have omitted mention of it in the above passage.]
+
+There is, as has been observed, a certain mixture of the comic and the
+pathetic in the life-history of this obscure father of a famous
+son. His life was clearly not a fortunate one, so far as external
+circumstances go; but its misfortunes had no sort of consoling dignity
+about them. Roger Sterne's lot in the world was not so much an unhappy
+as an uncomfortable one; and discomfort earns little sympathy, and
+absolutely no admiration, for its sufferers. He somehow reminds us
+of one of those Irish heroes--good-natured, peppery, debt-loaded,
+light-hearted, shiftless--whose fortunes we follow with mirthful and
+half-contemptuous sympathy in the pages of Thackeray. He was obviously
+a typical specimen of that class of men who are destitute alike of the
+virtues and failings of the "respectable" and successful; whom many
+people love and no one respects; whom everybody pities in their
+struggles and difficulties, but whom few pity without a smile.
+
+It is evident, however, that he succeeded in winning the affection of
+one who had not too much affection of the deeper kind to spare for any
+one. The figure of Roger Sterne alone stands out with any clearness by
+the side of the ceaselessly flitting mother and phantasmal children of
+Laurence Sterne's Memoir; and it is touched in with strokes so vivid
+and characteristic that critics have been tempted to find in it
+the original of the most famous portrait in the Shandy gallery. "My
+father," says Sterne, "was a little, smart man, active to the last
+degree in all exercises, most patient of fatigue and disappointments,
+of which it pleased God to give him full measure. He was, in his
+temper, somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly, sweet disposition,
+void of all design, and so innocent in his own intentions, that he
+suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times a
+day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose." This is a
+captivating little picture; and it no doubt presents traits which may
+have impressed themselves early and deeply on the imagination which
+was afterwards to give birth to "My Uncle Toby." The simplicity of
+nature and the "kindly, sweet disposition" are common to both the
+ensign of real life and to the immortal Captain Shandy of fiction; but
+the criticism which professes to find traces of Roger Sterne's "rapid
+and hasty temper" in my Uncle Toby is compelled to strain itself
+considerably. And, on the whole, there seems no reason to believe that
+Sterne borrowed more from the character of his father than any
+writer must necessarily, and perhaps unconsciously, borrow from his
+observation of the moral and mental qualities of those with whom he
+has come into most frequent contact.
+
+That Laurence Sterne passed the first eleven years of his life with
+such an exemplar of these simple virtues of kindliness, guilelessness,
+and courage ever before him, is perhaps the best that can be said
+for the lot in which his early days were cast. In almost all other
+respects there could hardly have been--for a quick-witted, precocious,
+imitative boy--a worse bringing-up. No one, I should imagine, ever
+more needed discipline in his youth than Sterne; and the camp is a
+place of discipline for the soldier only. To all others whom necessity
+attaches to it, and to the young especially, it is rather a school of
+license and irregularity. It is fair to remember these disadvantages
+of Sterne's early training, in judging of the many defects as a man,
+and laxities as a writer, which marked his later life; though, on the
+other hand, there is no denying the reality and value of some of
+the countervailing advantages which came to him from his boyish
+surroundings. The conception of my Uncle Toby need not have been taken
+whole from Roger Sterne, or from any one actual captain of a marching
+regiment; but the constant sight of, and converse with, many captains
+and many corporals may undoubtedly have contributed much to the vigour
+and vitality of Toby Shandy and Corporal Trim. So far as the externals
+of portraiture were concerned, there can be no doubt that his art
+benefited much from his early military life. His soldiers have the
+true stamp of the soldier about them in air and language; and when
+his captain and corporal fight their Flemish battles over again we are
+thoroughly conscious that we are listening, under the dramatic form,
+to one who must himself have heard many a chapter of the same splendid
+story from the lips of the very men who had helped to break the pride
+of the Grand Monarque under Marlborough and Eugene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.
+
+(1723-1738.)
+
+It was not--as we have seen from the Memoir--till the autumn of 1723,
+"or the spring of the following year," that Roger Sterne obtained
+leave of his colonel to "fix" his son at school; and this would bring
+Laurence to the tolerably advanced age of ten before beginning his
+education in any systematic way. He records, under date of 1721, that
+"in this year I learned to write, &c.;" but it is not probable that
+the "&c."--that indolent symbol of which Sterne makes such irritating
+use in all his familiar writing--covers, in this case, any wide extent
+of educational advance. The boy, most likely, could just read and
+write, and no more, at the time when he was fixed at school, "near
+Halifax, with an able master:" a judicious selection, no doubt, both
+of place as well as teacher. Mr. Fitzgerald, to whose researches we
+owe as much light as is ever likely to be thrown upon this obscure and
+probably not very interesting period of Sterne's life, has pointed out
+that Richard Sterne, eldest son of the late Simon Sterne, and uncle,
+therefore, of Laurence, was one of the governors of Halifax Grammar
+School, and that he may have used his interest to obtain his nephew's
+admission to the foundation as the grandson of a Halifax man, and so,
+constructively, a child of the parish. But, be this as it may, it
+is more than probable that from the time when he was sent to Halifax
+School the whole care and cost of the boy's education was borne by his
+Yorkshire relatives. The Memoir says that, "by God's care of me, my
+cousin Sterne, of Elvington, became a father to me, and sent me to
+the University, &c., &c.;" and it is to be inferred from this that the
+benevolent guardianship of Sterne's uncle Richard (who died in 1732,
+the year before Laurence was admitted of Jesus College, Cambridge)
+must have been taken up by his son. Of his school course--though it
+lasted for over seven years--the autobiographer has little to say;
+nothing, indeed, except that he "cannot omit mentioning" that anecdote
+with which everybody, I suppose, who has ever come across the briefest
+notice of Sterne's life is familiar. The schoolmaster "had the ceiling
+of the schoolroom new-whitewashed, and the ladder remained there. I,
+one unlucky day, mounted it, and wrote with a brush, in large capital
+letters, LAU. STERNE for which the usher severely whipped me. My
+master was very much hurt at this, and said before me that never
+should that name be effaced, for I was a boy of genius, and he was
+sure I should come to preferment. This expression made me forget the
+blows I had received." It is hardly to be supposed, of course, that
+this story is pure romance; but it is difficult, on the other hand,
+to believe that the incident has been related by Sterne exactly as it
+happened. That the recorded prediction may have been made in jest--or
+even in earnest (for penetrating teachers have these prophetic moments
+sometimes)--is, of course, possible; but that Sterne's master was
+"very much hurt" at the boy's having been justly punished for an act
+of wanton mischief, or that he recognized it as the natural privilege
+of nascent genius to deface newly-whitewashed ceilings, must have been
+a delusion of the humourist's later years. The extreme fatuity which
+it would compel us to attribute to the schoolmaster seems inconsistent
+with the power of detecting intellectual capacity in any one else. On
+the whole, one inclines to suspect that the remark belonged to that
+order of half sardonic, half kindly jest which a certain sort
+of pedagogue sometimes throws off, for the consolation of a
+recently-caned boy; and that Sterne's vanity, either then or
+afterwards (for it remained juvenile all his life), translated it into
+a serious prophecy. In itself, however, the urchin's freak was only
+too unhappily characteristic of the man. The trick of befouling what
+was clean (and because it was clean) clung to him most tenaciously all
+his days; and many a fair white surface--of humour, of fancy, or of
+sentiment--was to be disfigured by him in after-years with stains
+and splotches in which we can all too plainly decipher the literary
+signature of Laurence Sterne.
+
+At Halifax School the boy, as has been said, remained for about eight
+years; that is, until he was nearly nineteen, and for some months
+after his father's death at Port Antonio, which occurred in March,
+1731. "In the year '32," says the Memoir, "my cousin sent me to the
+University, where I stayed some time." In the course of his first year
+he read for and obtained a sizarship, to which the college records
+show that he was duly admitted on the 6th of July, 1733. The selection
+of Jesus College was a natural one: Sterne's great-grandfather,
+the afterwards Archbishop, had been its Master, and had founded
+scholarships there, to one of which the young sizar was, a year after
+his admission, elected. No inference can, of course, be drawn from
+this as to Sterne's proficiency, or even industry, in his academical
+studies: it is scarcely more than a testimony to the fact of decent
+and regular behaviour. He was _bene natus_, in the sense of being
+related to the right man, the founder; and in those days he need
+be only very _modicé doctus_ indeed in order to qualify himself for
+admission to the enjoyment of his kinsman's benefactions. Still he
+must have been orderly and well-conducted in his ways; and this he
+would also seem to have been, from the fact of his having passed
+through his University course without any apparent break or hitch, and
+having been admitted to his Bachelor's degree after no more than the
+normal period of residence. The only remark which, in the Memoir, he
+vouchsafes to bestow upon his academical career is, that "'twas there
+that I commenced a friendship with Mr. H----, which has been lasting
+on both sides;" and it may, perhaps, be said that this _was_, from one
+point of view, the most important event of his Cambridge life. For Mr.
+H---- was John Hall, afterwards John Hall Stevenson, the "Eugenius" of
+_Tristram Shandy_, the master of Skelton Castle, at which Sterne was,
+throughout life, to be a frequent and most familiar visitor; and,
+unfortunately, also a person whose later reputation, both as a man and
+a writer, became such as seriously to compromise the not very robust
+respectability of his clerical comrade. Sterne and Hall were distant
+cousins, and it may have been the tie of consanguinity which first
+drew them together. But there was evidently a thorough congeniality of
+the most unlucky sort between them; and from their first meeting, as
+undergraduates at Jesus, until the premature death of the elder, they
+continued to supply each other's minds with precisely that sort of
+occupation and stimulus of which each by the grace of nature stood
+least in need. That their close intimacy was ill-calculated to raise
+Sterne's reputation in later years may be inferred from the fact
+that Hall Stevenson afterwards obtained literary notoriety by the
+publication of _Crazy Tales_, a collection of comic but extremely
+broad ballads, in which his clerical friend was quite unjustly
+suspected of having had a hand. Mr. Hall was also reported,
+whether truly or falsely, to have been a member of Wilkes's famous
+confraternity of Medmenham Abbey; and from this it was an easy step
+for gossip to advance to the assertion that the Rev. Mr. Sterne had
+himself been admitted to that unholy order.
+
+Among acquaintances which the young sizar of Jesus might have more
+profitably made at Cambridge, but did not, was that of a student
+destined, like himself, to leave behind him a name famous in English
+letters. Gray, born three years later than Sterne, had entered a
+year after him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Peterhouse, and the two
+students went through their terms together, though the poet at the
+time took no degree. There was probably little enough in common
+between the shy, fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of
+Peterhouse, and a scholar of Jesus, whose chief friend and comrade was
+a man like Hall; and no close intimacy between the two men, if they
+had come across each other, would have been very likely to arise.
+But it does not appear that they could have ever met or heard of each
+other, for Gray writes of Sterne, after _Tristram Shandy_ had made
+him famous, in terms which clearly show that he did not recall his
+fellow-undergraduate.
+
+In January, 1736, Sterne took his B.A. degree, and quitted Cambridge
+for York, where another of his father's brothers now makes his
+appearance as his patron. Dr. Jacques Sterne was the second son of
+Simon Sterne, of Elvington, and a man apparently of more marked and
+vigorous character than any of his brothers. What induced him now to
+take notice of the nephew, whom in boyhood and early youth he had left
+to the unshared guardianship of his brother, and brother's son,
+does not appear; but the personal history of this energetic
+pluralist--Prebendary of Durham, Archdeacon of Cleveland, Canon
+Residentiary, Precentor, Prebendary, and Archdeacon of York, Rector of
+Rise, and Rector of Hornsey-cum-Riston--suggests the surmise that he
+detected qualities in the young Cambridge graduate which would
+make him useful. For Dr. Sterne was a typical specimen of the
+Churchman-politician, in days when both components of the compound
+word meant a good deal more than they do now. The Archdeacon was a
+devoted Whig, a Hanoverian to the backbone; and he held it his duty
+to support the Protestant succession, not only by the spiritual but by
+the secular arm. He was a great electioneerer, as befitted times when
+the claims of two rival dynasties virtually met upon the hustings, and
+he took a prominent part in the great Yorkshire contest of the year
+1734. His most vigorous display of energy, however, was made, as was
+natural, in "the '45." The Whig Archdeacon, not then Archdeacon of
+the East Riding, nor as yet quite buried under the mass of preferments
+which he afterwards accumulated, seems to have thought that this
+indeed was the crisis of his fortunes, and that, unless he was
+prepared to die a mere prebendary, canon, and rector of one or two
+benefices, now was the time to strike a blow for his advancement
+in the Church. His bustling activity at this trying time was indeed
+portentous, and at last took the form of arresting the unfortunate
+Dr. Burton (the original of Dr. Slop), on suspicion of holding
+communication with the invading army of the Pretender, then on its
+march southward from Edinburgh. The suspect, who was wholly innocent,
+was taken to London and kept in custody for nearly a year before
+being discharged, after which, by way of a slight redress, a letter
+of reprimand for his _trop de zèle_ was sent by direction of
+Lord Carteret to the militant dignitary. But the desired end was
+nevertheless attained, and Dr. Sterne succeeded in crowning the
+edifice of his ecclesiastical honours.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: A once-familiar piece of humorous verse describes the
+upset of a coach containing a clerical pluralist:
+
+  "When struggling on the ground was seen
+  A Rector, Vicar, Canon, Dean;
+  You might have thought the coach was full,
+  But no! 'twas only Dr. Bull."
+
+Dr. Jacques Sterne, however, might have been thrown out of one of the
+more capacious vehicles of the London General Omnibus Company, with
+almost the same misleading effect upon those who only _heard_ of the
+mishap.]
+
+
+There can be little doubt that patronage extended by such an uncle to
+such a nephew received its full equivalent in some way or other, and
+indeed the Memoir gives us a clue to the mode in which payment was
+made. "My uncle," writes Sterne, describing their subsequent rupture,
+"quarrelled with me because I would not write paragraphs in the
+newspapers; though he was a party-man, I was not, and detested such
+dirty work, thinking it beneath me. From that time he became my
+bitterest enemy." The date of this quarrel cannot be precisely fixed;
+but we gather from an autograph letter (now in the British Museum)
+from Sterne to Archdeacon Blackburne that by the year 1750 the two men
+had for some time ceased to be on friendly terms. Probably, however,
+the breach occurred subsequently to the rebellion of '45, and it may
+be that it arose out of the excess of partisan zeal which Dr. Sterne
+developed in that year, and which his nephew very likely did not, in
+his opinion, sufficiently share. But this is quite consistent with the
+younger man's having up to that time assisted the elder in his party
+polemics. He certainly speaks in his "Letters" of his having "employed
+his brains for an ungrateful person," and the remark is made in a way
+and in a connexion which seems to imply that the services rendered
+to his uncle were mainly _literary_. If so, his declaration that he
+"would not write paragraphs in the newspapers" can only mean that
+he would not go on writing them. Be this as it may, however, it
+is certain that the Archdeacon for some time found his account in
+maintaining friendly relations with his nephew, and that during that
+period he undoubtedly did a good deal for his advancement. Sterne was
+ordained deacon by the Bishop of Lincoln in March, 1736, only three
+months after taking his B.A. degree, and took priest's orders in
+August, 1738, whereupon his uncle immediately obtained for him the
+living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, into which he was inducted a few days
+afterwards. Other preferments followed, to be noted hereafter; and
+it must be admitted that until the quarrel occurred about the "party
+paragraphs" the Archdeacon did his duty by his nephew after the
+peculiar fashion of that time. When that quarrel came, however, it
+seems to have snapped more ties than one, for in the Memoir Sterne
+speaks of his youngest sister Catherine as "still living, but most
+unhappily estranged from me by my uncle's wickedness and her own
+folly." Of his elder sister Mary, who was born at Lille a year before
+himself, he records that "she married one Weemans in Dublin, who used
+her most unmercifully, spent his substance, became a bankrupt, and
+left my poor sister to shift for herself, which she was able to do but
+for a few months, for she went to a friend's house in the country and
+died of a broken heart." Truly an unlucky family.[1] Only three to
+survive the hardships among which the years of their infancy were
+passed, and this to be the history of two out of the three survivors!
+
+[Footnote 1: The mother, Mrs. Sterne, makes her appearance once more
+for a moment in or about the year 1758. Horace Walpole, and after him
+Byron, accused Sterne of having "preferred whining over a dead ass to
+relieving a living mother," and the former went so far as to declare
+"on indubitable authority" that Mrs. Sterne, "who kept a school (in
+Ireland), having run in debt on account of an extravagant daughter,
+would have rotted in a gaol if the parents of her scholars had not
+raised a subscription for her." Even "the indubitable authority,"
+however, does not positively assert--whatever may be meant to be
+insinuated--that Sterne himself did nothing to assist his mother, and
+Mr. Fitzgerald justly points out that to pay the _whole_ debts of a
+bankrupt school might well have been beyond a Yorkshire clergyman's
+means. Anyhow there is evidence that Sterne at a later date than this
+was actively concerning himself about his mother's interests. She
+afterwards came to York, whither he went to meet her; and he then
+writes to a friend: "I trust my poor mother's affair is by this time
+ended to _our_ comfort and hers."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.
+
+(1738-1759.)
+
+Great writers who spring late and suddenly from obscurity into fame
+and yet die early, must always form more or less perplexing subjects
+of literary biography. The processes of their intellectual and
+artistic growth lie hidden in nameless years; their genius is not
+revealed to the world until it has reached its full maturity, and many
+aspects of it, which, perhaps, would have easily explained themselves
+if the gradual development had gone on before men's eyes, remain
+often unexplained to the last. By few, if any, of the more celebrated
+English men of letters is this observation so forcibly illustrated as
+it is in the case of Sterne: the obscure period of his life so greatly
+exceeded in duration the brief season of his fame, and its obscurity
+was so exceptionally profound. He was forty-seven years of age when,
+at a bound, he achieved celebrity; he was not five-and-fifty when he
+died. And though it might be too much to say that the artist sprang,
+like the reputation, full-grown into being, it is nevertheless true
+that there are no marks of positive immaturity to be detected even in
+the earliest public displays of his art. His work grows, indeed, most
+marvellously in vividness and symmetry as he proceeds, but there
+are no visible signs of growth in the workman's skill. Even when the
+highest point of finish is attained we cannot say that the hand is any
+more cunning than it was from the first. As well might we say that the
+last light touches of the sculptor's chisel upon the perfected statue
+are more skilful than its first vigorous strokes upon the shapeless
+block.
+
+It is certain, however, that Sterne must have been storing up his
+material of observation, secreting his reflections on life and
+character, and consciously or unconsciously maturing his powers of
+expression, during the whole of those silent twenty years which have
+now to be passed under brief review. With one exception, to be noted
+presently, the only known writings of his which belong to this
+period are sermons, and these--a mere "scratch" collection of pulpit
+discourses, which, as soon as he had gained the public ear, he
+hastened in characteristic fashion to rummage from his desk and carry
+to the book-market--throw no light upon the problem before us. There
+are sermons of Sterne which alike in manner and matter disclose the
+author of _Tristram Shandy_; but they are not among those which he
+preached or wrote before that work was given to the world. They
+are not its ancestors but its descendants. They belong to the
+post-Shandian period, and are in obvious imitation of the Shandian
+style; while in none of the earlier ones--not even in that famous
+homily on a Good Conscience, which did not succeed till Corporal Trim
+preached it before the brothers Shandy and Dr. Slop--can we trace
+either the trick of style or the turn of thought that give piquancy to
+the novel. Yet the peculiar qualities of mind, and the special faculty
+of workmanship of which this turn of thought and trick of style were
+the product, must of course have been potentially present from the
+beginning. Men do not blossom forth as wits, humourists, masterly
+delineators of character, and skilful performers on a highly-strung
+and carefully-tuned sentimental instrument all at once, after entering
+their "forties;" and the only wonder is that a possessor of these
+powers--some of them of the kind which, as a rule, and in most men,
+seeks almost as irresistibly for exercise as even the poetic instinct
+itself--should have been held so long unemployed. There is, however,
+one very common stimulus to literary exertions which in Sterne's case
+was undoubtedly wanting--a superabundance of unoccupied time. We
+have little reason, it is true, to suppose that this light-minded
+and valetudinarian Yorkshire parson was at any period of his life an
+industrious "parish priest;" but it is probable, nevertheless, that
+time never hung very heavily upon his hands. In addition to the
+favourite amusements which he enumerates in the Memoir, he was all
+his days addicted to one which is, perhaps, the most absorbing of
+all--flirtation. Philandering, and especially philandering of the
+Platonic and ultra-sentimental order, is almost the one human
+pastime of which its votaries never seem to tire; and its constant
+ministrations to human vanity may serve, perhaps, to account for their
+unwearied absorption in its pursuit. Sterne's first love affair--an
+affair of which, unfortunately, the consequences were more lasting
+than the passion--took place immediately upon his leaving Cambridge.
+To relate it as he relates it to his daughter: "At York I became
+acquainted with your mother, and courted her for two years. She owned
+she liked me, but thought herself not rich enough or me too poor to
+be joined together. She went to her sister's in Staffordshire, and I
+wrote to her often. I believe then she was partly determined to have
+me, but would not say so. At her return she fell into a consumption,
+and one evening that I was sitting by her, with an almost broken heart
+to see her so ill, she said: 'My dear Laury, I never can be yours, for
+I verily believe I have not long to live! But I have left you every
+shilling of my fortune.' Upon that she showed me her will. This
+generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and we
+were married in 1741." The name of this lady was Elizabeth Lumley, and
+it was to her that Sterne addressed those earliest letters which his
+daughter included in the collection published by her some eight years
+after her father's death. They were added, the preface tells us, "in
+justice to Mr. Sterne's delicate feelings;" and in our modern usage
+of the word "delicate," as equivalent to infirm of health and probably
+short of life, they no doubt do full justice to the passion which they
+are supposed to express. It would be unfair, of course, to judge any
+love-letters of that period by the standard of sincerity applied in
+our own less artificial age. All such compositions seem frigid and
+formal enough to us of to-day; yet in most cases of genuine attachment
+we usually find at least a sentence here and there in which the
+natural accents of the heart make themselves heard above the affected
+modulations of the style. But the letters of Sterne's courtship
+maintain the pseudo-poetic, shepherd-and-shepherdess strain
+throughout; or, if the lover ever abandons it, it is only to make
+somewhat maudlin record of those "tears" which flowed a little too
+easily at all times throughout his life. These letters, however, have
+a certain critical interest in their bearing upon those sensibilities
+which Sterne afterwards learned to cultivate in a forcing-frame, with
+a view to the application of their produce to the purposes of an
+art of pathetic writing which simulates nature with such admirable
+fidelity at its best, and descends to such singular bathos at its
+worst.
+
+The marriage preluded by this courtship did not take place till
+Sterne had already been three years Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, the
+benefice which had been procured for him by his uncle the Archdeacon;
+through whose interest also he was appointed successively to two
+prebends--preferments which were less valuable to him for their
+emolument than for the ecclesiastical status which they conferred upon
+him, for the excuse which they gave him for periodical visits to the
+cathedral city to fulfil the residential conditions of his offices,
+and for the opportunity thus afforded him of mixing in and studying
+the society of the Close. Upon his union with Miss Lumley, and, in a
+somewhat curious fashion, by her means, he obtained in addition the
+living of Stillington. "A friend of hers in the South had promised her
+that if she married a clergyman in Yorkshire, when the living became
+vacant he would make her a compliment of it;" and made accordingly
+this singular "compliment" was. At Sutton Sterne remained nearly
+twenty years, doing duty at both places, during which time
+"books, painting, fiddling, and shooting were," he says, "my chief
+amusements." With what success he shot, and with what skill he
+fiddled, we know not. His writings contain not a few musical
+metaphors and allusions to music, which seem to indicate a competent
+acquaintance with its technicalities; but the specimen of his
+powers as an artist, which Mr. Fitzgerald has reproduced from his
+illustrations of a volume of poems by Mr. Woodhull, does not dispose
+one to rate highly his proficiency in this accomplishment. We may
+expect that, after all, it was the first-mentioned of his amusements
+in which he took the greatest delight, and that neither the brush,
+the bow, nor the fowling-piece was nearly so often in his hand as
+the book. Within a few miles of Sutton, at Skelton Castle, an almost
+unique Roman stronghold, since modernized by Gothic hands, dwelt
+his college-friend John Hall Stevenson, whose well-stocked library
+contained a choice but heterogeneous collection of books--old French
+"ana," and the learning of mediaeval doctors--books intentionally and
+books unintentionally comic, the former of which Sterne read with an
+only too retentive a memory for their jests, and the latter with an
+acutely humorous appreciation of their solemn trifling. Later on it
+will be time to note the extent to which he utilized these results of
+his widely discursive reading, and to examine the legitimacy of the
+mode in which he used them: here it is enough to say generally that
+the materials for many a burlesque chapter of _Tristram Shandy_ must
+have been unconsciously storing themselves in his mind in many an
+amused hour passed by Sterne in the library of Skelton Castle.
+
+But before finally quitting this part of my subject it may be as well,
+perhaps, to deal somewhat at length with a matter which will doubtless
+have to be many times incidentally referred to in the course of this
+study, but which I now hope to relieve myself from the necessity of
+doing more than touch upon hereafter. I refer of course to Sterne's
+perpetually recurring flirtations. This is a matter almost as
+impossible to omit from any biography of Sterne as it would be to omit
+it from any biography of Goethe. The English humourist did not, it
+is true, engage in the pastime in the serious, not to say scientific,
+spirit of the German philosopher-poet; it was not deliberately made by
+the former as by the latter to contribute to his artistic development;
+but it is nevertheless hardly open to doubt that Sterne's philandering
+propensities did exercise an influence upon his literary character and
+work in more ways than one. That his marriage was an ill-assorted and
+unhappy union was hardly so much the cause of his inconstancy as its
+effect. It may well be, of course, that the "dear L.," whose moral and
+mental graces her lover had celebrated in such superfine, sentimental
+fashion, was a commonplace person enough. That she was really a woman
+of the exquisite stolidity of Mrs. Shandy, and that her exasperating
+feats as an _assentatrix_ did, as has been suggested, supply the model
+for the irresistibly ludicrous colloquies between the philosopher
+and his wife, there is no sufficient warrant for believing. But it
+is quite possible that the daily companion of one of the most
+indefatigable jesters that ever lived may have been unable to see
+a joke; that she regarded her husband's wilder drolleries as mere
+horse-collar grimacing, and that the point of his subtler humour
+escaped her altogether. But even if it were so, it is, to say the
+least of it, doubtful whether Sterne suffered at all on this ground
+from the wounded feelings of the _mari incompris_, while it is next to
+certain that it does not need the sting of any such disappointment
+to account for his alienation. He must have had plenty of time and
+opportunity to discover Miss Lumley's intellectual limitations during
+the two years of his courtship; and it is not likely that, even if
+they were as well marked as Mrs. Shandy's own, they would have
+done much of themselves to estrange the couple. Sympathy is not the
+necessity to the humourist which the poet finds, or imagines, it to be
+to himself: the humourist, indeed, will sometimes contrive to extract
+from the very absence of sympathy in those about him a keener relish
+for his reflections. With sentiment, indeed, and still more with
+sentimentalism, the case would of course be different; but as for Mr.
+Sterne's demands for sympathy in that department of his life and art,
+one may say without the least hesitation that they would have been
+beyond the power of any one woman, however distinguished a disciple of
+the "Laura Matilda" school, to satisfy. "I must ever," he frankly
+says in one of the "Yorick to Eliza" letters, "I must ever have some
+Dulcinea in my head: it harmonizes the soul;" and he might have added
+that he found it impossible to sustain the harmony without frequently
+changing the Dulcinea. One may suspect that Mrs. Sterne soon had cause
+for jealousy, and it is at least certain that several years before
+Sterne's emergence into notoriety their estrangement was complete. One
+daughter was born to them in 1745, but lived scarcely mare than long
+enough to be rescued from the _limbus infantium_ by the prompt
+rites of the Church. The child was christened Lydia, and died on the
+following day. Its place was filled in 1747 by a second daughter, also
+christened Lydia, who lived to become the wife of M. de Medalle, and
+the not very judicious editress of the posthumous "Letters." For
+her as she grew up Sterne conceived a genuine and truly fatherly
+affection, and it is in writing to her and of her that we see him at
+his best; or rather one might say it is almost only then that we can
+distinguish the true notes of the heart through that habitual falsetto
+of sentimentalism which distinguishes most of Sterne's communications
+with the other sex. There was no subsequent issue of the marriage,
+and, from one of the letters most indiscreetly included in Madame de
+Medalle's collection, it is to be ascertained that some four years or
+so after Lydia's birth the relations between Sterne and Mrs. Sterne
+ceased to be conjugal, and never again resumed that character.
+
+It is, however, probable, upon the husband's own confessions, that he
+had given his wife earlier cause for jealousy, and certainly from the
+time when he begins to reveal himself in correspondence there seems to
+be hardly a moment when some such cause was not in existence--in the
+person of this, that, or the other lackadaisical damsel or coquettish
+matron. From Miss Fourmantelle, the "dear, dear Kitty," to whom Sterne
+was making violent love in 1759, the year of the York publication
+of _Tristram Shandy_, down to Mrs. Draper, the heroine of the famous
+"Yorick to Eliza" letters, the list of ladies who seem to have kindled
+flames in that susceptible breast is almost as long and more real
+than the roll of mistresses immortalized by Horace. How Mrs. Sterne at
+first bore herself under her husband's ostentatious neglect there
+is no direct evidence to show. That she ultimately took refuge in
+indifference we can perceive, but it is to be feared that she was not
+always able to maintain the attitude of contemptuous composure. So, at
+least, we may suspect from the evidence of that Frenchman who met
+"le bon et agréable Tristram," and his wife, at Montpellier, and who,
+characteristically sympathizing with the inconstant husband, declared
+that his wife's incessant pursuit of him made him pass "d'assez
+mauvais moments," which he bore "with the patience of an angel."
+But, on the whole, Mrs. Sterne's conduct seems by her husband's own
+admissions to have been not wanting in dignity.
+
+As to the nature of Sterne's love-affairs I have come, though not
+without hesitation, to the conclusion that they were most, if not all
+of them, what is called, somewhat absurdly, Platonic. In saying this,
+however, I am by no means prepared to assert that they would all of
+them have passed muster before a prosaic and unsentimental British
+jury as mere indiscretions, and nothing worse. Sterne's relations
+with Miss Fourmantelle, for instance, assumed at last a profoundly
+compromising character, and it is far from improbable that the worst
+construction would have been put upon them by one of the plain-dealing
+tribunals aforesaid. Certainly a young woman who leaves her mother at
+York, and comes up to London to reside alone in lodgings, where she is
+constantly being visited by a lover who is himself living _en garçon_
+in the metropolis, can hardly complain if her imprudence is fatal to
+her reputation; neither can he if his own suffers in the same way.
+But, as I am not of those who hold that the conventionally "innocent"
+is the equivalent of the morally harmless in this matter, I cannot
+regard the question as worth any very minute investigation. I am
+not sure that the habitual male flirt, who neglects his wife to sit
+continually languishing at the feet of some other woman, gives much
+less pain and scandal to others, or does much less mischief to himself
+and the objects of his adoration, than the thorough-going profligate;
+and I even feel tempted to risk the apparent paradox that, from
+the artistic point of view, Sterne lost rather than gained by the
+generally Platonic character of his amours. For, as it was, the
+restraint of one instinct of his nature implied the over-indulgence
+of another which stood in at least as much need of chastenment. If his
+love-affairs stopped short of the gratification of the senses, they
+involved a perpetual fondling and caressing of those effeminate
+sensibilities of his into that condition of hyper-aesthesia which,
+though Sterne regarded it as the strength, was in reality the
+weakness, of his art.
+
+Injurious, however, as was the effect which Sterne's philanderings
+exercised upon his personal and literary character, it is not likely
+that, at least at this period of his life at Sutton, they had in any
+degree compromised his reputation. For this he had provided in
+other ways, and principally by his exceedingly injudicious choice
+of associates. "As to the squire of the parish," he remarks in the
+Memoir, "I cannot say we were on a very friendly footing, but at
+Stillington the family of the C[rofts] showed us every kindness: 'twas
+most agreeable to be within a mile and a half of an amiable family who
+were ever cordial friends;" and who, it may be added, appear to have
+been Sterne's only reputable acquaintances. For the satisfaction of
+all other social needs he seems to have resorted to a companionship
+which it was hardly possible for a clergyman to frequent without
+scandal--that, namely, of John Hall Stevenson and the kindred spirits
+whom he delighted to collect around him at Skelton--familiarly known
+as "Crazy" Castle. The club of the "Demoniacs," of which Sterne makes
+mention in his letters, may have had nothing very diabolical about it
+except the name; but, headed as it was by the suspected ex-comrade
+of Wilkes and his brother monks of Medmenham, and recruited by gay
+militaires like Colonels Hall and Lee, and "fast" parsons like the
+Rev. "Panty" Lascelles (mock godson of Pantagruel), it was certainly
+a society in which the Vicar of Sutton could not expect to enroll
+himself without offence. We may fairly suppose, therefore, that it
+was to his association with these somewhat too "jolly companions" that
+Sterne owed that disfavour among decorous country circles, of which
+he shows resentful consciousness in the earlier chapters of _Tristram
+Shandy._
+
+But before we finally cross the line which separates the life of the
+obscure country parson from the life of the famous author, a word or
+two must be said of that piece of writing which was alluded to a few
+pages back as the only known exception to the generally "professional"
+character of all Sterne's compositions of the pre-Shandian era. This
+was a piece in the allegoric-satirical style, which, though not very
+remarkable in itself, may not improbably have helped to determine its
+author's thoughts in the direction of more elaborate literary efforts.
+In the year 1758 a dispute had arisen between a certain Dr. Topham, an
+ecclesiastical lawyer in large local practice, and Dr. Fountayne, the
+then Dean of York. This dispute had originated in an attempt on the
+part of the learned civilian, who appears to have been a pluralist of
+an exceptionally insatiable order, to obtain the reversion of one of
+his numerous offices for his son, alleging a promise made to him on
+that behalf by the Archbishop. This promise--which had, in fact, been
+given--was legally impossible of performance, and upon the failure
+of his attempt the disappointed Topham turned upon the Dean, and
+maintained that by _him_, at any rate, he had been promised another
+place of the value of five guineas per annum, and appropriately known
+as the "Commissaryship of Pickering and Pocklington." This the Dean
+denied, and thereupon Dr. Topham fired off a pamphlet setting forth
+the circumstances of the alleged promise, and protesting against the
+wrong inflicted upon him by its non-performance. At this point Sterne
+came to Dr. Fountayne's assistance with a sarcastic apologue entitled
+the "History of a good Warm Watchcoat," which had "hung up many years
+in the parish vestry," and showing how this garment had so excited
+the cupidity of Trim, the sexton, that "nothing would serve him but
+he must take it home, to have it converted into a warm under-petticoat
+for his wife and a jerkin for himself against the winter." The
+symbolization of Dr. Topham's snug "patent place," which he wished
+to make hereditary, under the image of the good warm watchcoat, is of
+course plain enough; and there is some humour in the way in which the
+parson (the Archbishop) discovers that his incautious assent to Trim's
+request had been given _ultra vires._ Looking through the parish
+register, at the request of a labourer who wished to ascertain his
+age, the parson finds express words of bequest leaving the watch-coat
+"for the sole use of the sextons of the church for ever, to be worn by
+them respectively on winterly cold nights," and at the moment when he
+is exclaiming, "Just Heaven! what an escape have I had! Give this
+for a petticoat to Trim's wife!" he is interrupted by Trim himself
+entering the vestry with "the coat actually ript and cut out" ready
+for conversion into a petticoat for his wife. And we get a foretaste
+of the familiar Shandian impertinence in the remark which follows,
+that "there are many good similes subsisting in the world, but which I
+have neither time to recollect nor look for," which would give you an
+idea of the parson's astonishment at Trim's impudence. The emoluments
+of "Pickering and Pocklington" appear under the figure of a "pair of
+black velvet plush breeches" which ultimately "got into the possession
+of one Lorry Slim (Sterne himself, of course), an unlucky wight, by
+whom they are still worn: in truth, as you will guess, they are very
+thin by this time."
+
+The whole thing is the very slightest of "skits;" and the quarrel
+having been accommodated before it could be published, it was
+not given to the world until after its author's death. But it is
+interesting, as his first known attempt in this line of composition,
+and the grasping sexton deserves remembrance, if only as having handed
+down his name to a far more famous descendant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II.
+
+(1759-1760.)
+
+Hitherto we have had to construct our conception of Sterne out of
+materials of more or less plausible conjecture. We are now at last
+approaching the region of positive evidence, and henceforward, down
+almost to the last scene of all, Sterne's doings will be chronicled,
+and his character revealed, by one who happens, in this case, to be
+the best of all possible biographers--the man himself. Not that such
+records are by any means always the most trustworthy of evidence.
+There are some men whose real character is never more effectually
+concealed than in their correspondence. But it is not so with Sterne.
+The careless, slipshod letters which Madame de Medalle "pitchforked"
+into the book-market, rather than edited, are highly valuable as
+pieces of autobiography. They are easy, naïve, and natural, rich in
+simple self-disclosure in almost every page; and if they have more
+to tell us about the man than the writer, they are yet not wanting
+in instructive hints as to Sterne's methods of composition and his
+theories of art.
+
+It was in the year 1759 that the Vicar of Sutton and Prebendary of
+York--already, no doubt, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence
+to many worthy people in the county--conceived the idea of astonishing
+and scandalizing them still further after a new and original fashion.
+His impulses to literary production were probably various, and not all
+of them, or perhaps the strongest of them, of the artistic order. The
+first and most urgent was, it may be suspected, the simplest and most
+common of all such motive forces. Sterne, in all likelihood, was in
+want of money. He was not, perhaps, under the actual instruction of
+that _magister artium_ whom the Roman satirist has celebrated; for he
+declared, indeed, afterwards, that "he wrote not to be fed, but to be
+famous." But the context of the passage shows that he only meant to
+deny any absolute compulsion to write for mere subsistence. Between
+this sort of constraint and that gentler form of pressure which arises
+from the wish to increase an income sufficient for one's needs, but
+inadequate to one's desires, there is a considerable difference; and
+to repudiate the one is not to disclaim the other. It is, at any
+rate, certain that Sterne engaged at one time of his life in a rather
+speculative sort of farming, and we have it from himself in a passage
+in one of his letters, which may be jest, but reads more like
+earnest, that it was his losses in this business that first turned his
+attention to literature.[1] His thoughts once set in that direction,
+his peculiar choice of subject and method of treatment are easily
+comprehensible. Pantagruelic burlesque came to him, if not naturally,
+at any rate by "second nature." He had a strong and sedulously
+cultivated taste for Rabelaisian humour; his head was crammed with all
+sorts of out-of-the-way learning constantly tickling his comic sense
+by its very uselessness; he relished more keenly than any man the
+solemn futilities of mediaeval doctors, and the pedantic indecencies
+of casuist fathers; and, along with all these temptations to an
+enterprise of the kind upon which he entered, he had been experiencing
+a steady relaxation of deterrent restraints. He had fallen out with
+his uncle some years since,[2] and the quarrel had freed him from at
+least one influence making for clerical propriety of behaviour. His
+incorrigible levities had probably lost him the countenance of most of
+his more serious acquaintances; his satirical humour had as probably
+gained him personal enemies not a few, and it may be that he had
+gradually contracted something of that "naughty-boy" temper, as we
+may call it, for which the deliberate and ostentatious repetition of
+offences has an inexplicable charm. It seems clear, too, that, growth
+for growth with this spirit of bravado, there had sprung up--in
+somewhat incongruous companionship, perhaps--a certain sense of wrong.
+Along with the impulse to give an additional shock to the prejudices
+he had already offended, Sterne felt impelled to vindicate what he
+considered the genuine moral worth underlying the indiscretions of the
+offender. What, then, could better suit him than to compose a novel
+in which he might give full play to his simious humour, startle more
+hideously than ever his straighter-laced neighbours, defiantly defend
+his own character, and caricature whatever eccentric figure in the
+society around him might offer the most tempting butt for ridicule?
+
+[Footnote 1: "I was once such a puppy myself," he writes to a certain
+baronet whom he is attempting to discourage from speculative farming
+of this sort, "and had my labour for my pains and two hundred pounds
+out of pocket. Curse on farming! (I said). Let us see if the pen will
+not succeed better than the spade."]
+
+[Footnote 2: He himself, indeed, makes a particular point of this in
+explaining his literary venture. "Now for your desire," he writes to
+a correspondent in 1759, "of knowing the reason of my turning author?
+why, truly I am tired of employing my brains for other people's
+advantage. 'Tis a foolish sacrifice I have made for some years for an
+ungrateful person."--_Letters_, i. 82.]
+
+All the world knows how far he ultimately advanced beyond the
+simplicity of the conception, and into what far higher regions of art
+its execution led him. But I find no convincing reason for believing
+that _Tristram Shandy_ had at the outset any more seriously artistic
+purpose than this; and much indirect evidence that this, in fact, it
+was.
+
+The humorous figure of Mr. Shandy is, of course, the Cervantic centre
+of the whole; and it was out of him and his crotchets that Sterne,
+no doubt, intended from the first to draw the materials of that often
+unsavoury fun which was to amuse the light-minded and scandalize the
+demure. But it can hardly escape notice that the two most elaborate
+portraits in Vol. I.--the admirable but very flatteringly idealized
+sketch of the author himself in Yorick, and the Gilrayesque caricature
+of Dr. Slop--are drawn with a distinctly polemical purpose, defensive
+in the former case and offensive in the latter. On the other hand,
+with the disappearance of Dr. Slop caricature of living persons
+disappears also; while, after the famous description of Yorick's
+death-bed, we meet with no more attempts at self-vindication. It
+seems probable, therefore, that long before the first two volumes
+were completed Sterne had discovered the artistic possibilities of
+"My Uncle Toby" and "Corporal Trim," and had realized the full
+potentialities of humour contained in the contrast between the
+two brothers Shandy. The very work of sharpening and deepening the
+outlines of this humorous antithesis, while it made the crack-brained
+philosopher more and more of a burlesque unreality, continually added
+new touches of life and nature to the lineaments of the simple-minded
+soldier; and it was by this curious and half-accidental process that
+there came to be added to the gallery of English fiction one of the
+most perfect and delightful portraits that it possesses.
+
+We know from internal evidence that _Tristram Shandy_ was begun in the
+early days of 1759; and the first two volumes were probably completed
+by about the middle of the year. "In the year 1760," writes Sterne, "I
+went up to London to publish my two first volumes of _Shandy_." And it
+is stated in a note to this passage, as cited in Scott's memoir, that
+the first edition was published "the year before" in York. There is,
+however, no direct proof that it was in the hands of the public before
+the beginning of 1760, though it is possible that the date of its
+publication may just have fallen within the year. But, at all
+events, on the 1st of January, 1760, an advertisement in the _Public
+Advertiser_ informed the world that "this day" was "published, printed
+on superfine writing-paper, &c., _The Life and Opinions of Tristram
+Shandy_. York. Printed for and sold by John Hinxham, Bookseller in
+Stonegate." The great London publisher, Dodslecy, to whom the book
+had been offered, and who had declined the venture, figures in the
+advertisement as the principal London bookseller from whom it was
+to be obtained. It seems that only a few copies were in the first
+instance sent up to the London market; but they fell into good hands,
+for there is evidence that _Tristram Shandy_ had attracted the notice
+of at least one competent critic in the capital before the month of
+January was out. But though the metropolitan success of the book
+was destined to be delayed for still a month or two, in York it had
+already created a _furore_ in more senses than one. For, in fact,
+and no wonder, it had in many quarters given the deepest offence. Its
+Rabelaisian license of incident and allusion was calculated to offend
+the proprieties--the provincial proprieties especially--even in that
+free-spoken age; and there was that in the book, moreover, which a
+provincial society may be counted on to abominate, with a keener
+if less disinterested abhorrence than any sins against decency. It
+contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature
+of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and
+covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed
+to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific
+world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this
+circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent,
+to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects as
+to be worth quoting. His correspondent was a Dr. * * * * * (asterisks
+for which it is now impossible to substitute letters); and the burden
+of what seem to have been several communications in speech and writing
+on the subject was the maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." With such
+seriousness and severity had his correspondent dwelt upon this adage,
+that "at length," writes Sterne, "you have made me as serious and as
+severe as yourself; but, that the humours you have stirred up might
+not work too potently within me, I have waited four days to cool
+myself before I could set pen to paper to answer you." And thus he
+sets forth the results of his four days' deliberation:
+
+"'De mortuis nil nisi bonum.' I declare I have considered the wisdom
+and foundation of it over and over again as dispassionately and
+charitably as a good Christian can, and, after all, I can find nothing
+in it, or make more of it than a nonsensical lullaby of some nurse,
+put into Latin by some pedant, to be chanted by some hypocrite to the
+end of the world for the consolation of departing lechers. 'Tis, I
+own, Latin, and I think that is all the weight it has, for, in plain
+English, 'tis a loose and futile position below a dispute. 'You are
+not to speak anything of the dead but what is good.' Why so? Who
+says so? Neither reason nor Scripture. Inspired authors have done
+otherwise, and reason and common sense tell me that, if the characters
+of past ages and men are to be drawn at all, they are to be drawn like
+themselves, that is, with their excellences and their foibles; and it
+as much a piece of justice to the world, and to virtue, too, to do the
+one as the other. The ruling passion, _et les égarements du coeur_,
+are the very things which mark and distinguish a man's character,
+in which I would as soon leave out a man's head as his hobby-horse.
+However, if, like the poor devil of a painter, we must conform to the
+pious canon, 'De mortuis,' &c., which I own has a spice of piety in
+the _sound_ of it, and be obliged to paint both our angels and our
+devils out of the same pot, I then infer that our Sydenhams and our
+Sangrados, our Lucretias and our Messalinas, our Somersets and our
+Bolingbrokes, are alike entitled to statues, and all the historians or
+satirists who have said otherwise since they departed this life,
+from Sallust to S----e, are guilty of the crimes you charge me with,
+'cowardice and injustice.' But why cowardice? 'Because 'tis not
+courage to attack a dead man who can't defend himself.' But why do you
+doctors attack such a one with your incision knife? Oh! for the good
+of the living. 'Tis my plea."
+
+And, having given this humorous twist to his argument, he glides off
+into extenuatory matter. He had not even, he protests, made as much as
+a surgical incision into his victim (Dr. Richard Mead, the friend of
+Bentley and of Newton, and a physician and physiologist of high repute
+in his day); he had but just scratched him, and that scarce skin-deep.
+As to the "droll foible" of Dr. Mead, which he had made merry with,
+"it was not first reported (even to the few who can understand the
+hint) by me, but known before by every chambermaid and footman within
+the bills of mortality"--a somewhat daring assertion, one would
+imagine, considering what the droll foible was; and Dr. Mead,
+continues Sterne, great man as he was, had, after all, not fared worse
+than "a man of twice his wisdom"--to wit Solomon, of whom the same
+remark had been made, that "they were both great men, and, like all
+mortal men, had each their ruling passion."
+
+The mixture of banter and sound reasoning in this reply is, no doubt,
+very skilful. But, unfortunately, neither the reasoning nor the
+banter happens to meet the case of this particular defiance of the
+"De mortuis" maxim, and as a serious defence against a serious charge
+(which was what the occasion required) Sterne's answer is altogether
+futile. For the plea of "the good of the living," upon which, after
+all, the whole defence, considered seriously, rests, was quite
+inapplicable as an excuse for the incriminated passage. The only
+living persons who could possibly be affected by it, for good or
+evil, were those surviving friends of the dead man, to whom Sterne's
+allusion to what he called Dr. Mead's "droll foible" was calculated to
+cause the deepest pain and shame.
+
+The other matter of offence to Sterne's Yorkshire readers was of a
+much more elaborate kind. In the person of Dr. Slop, the grotesque
+man-midwife, who was to have assisted, but missed assisting, at
+Tristram's entry into the world, the good people of York were not slow
+to recognize the physical peculiarities and professional antecedents
+of Dr. Burton, the local accoucheur, whom Archdeacon Sterne had
+arrested as a Jacobite. That the portrait was faithful to anything
+but the external traits of the original, or was intended to reproduce
+anything more than these, Sterne afterwards denied; and we have
+certainly no ground for thinking that Burton had invited ridicule on
+any other than the somewhat unworthy ground of the curious ugliness
+of his face and figure. It is most unlikely that his success as a
+practitioner in a branch of the medical art in which imposture is the
+most easily detected, could have been earned by mere quackery; and
+he seems, moreover, to have been a man of learning in more kinds than
+one. The probability is that the worst that could be alleged against
+him was a tendency to scientific pedantry in his published
+writings, which was pretty sure to tickle the fancy of Mr. Sterne.
+Unscrupulously, however, as he was caricatured, the sensation which
+appears to have been excited in the county by the burlesque portrait
+could hardly have been due to any strong public sympathy with the
+involuntary sitter. Dr. Burton seems, as a suspected Jacobite, to have
+been no special favourite with the Yorkshire squirearchy in general,
+but rather the reverse thereof. Ucalegon, however, does not need to be
+popular to arouse his neighbour's interest in his misfortunes; and the
+caricature of Burton was doubtless resented on the _proximus ardet_
+principle by many who feared that their turn was coming next.
+
+To all the complaints and protests which reached him on the subject
+Sterne would in any case, probably, have been indifferent; but he was
+soon to receive encouragement which would have more than repaid a
+man of his temper for twice the number of rebukes. For London cared
+nothing for Yorkshire susceptibilities and Yorkshire fears. Provincial
+notables might be libelled, and their friends might go in fear
+of similar treatment, but all that was nothing to "the town," and
+_Tristram Shandy_ had taken the town by storm. We gather from a
+passage in the letter above quoted that as early as January 30
+the book had "gained the very favourable opinion" of Mr. Garrick,
+afterwards to become the author's intimate friend; and it is certain
+that by the time of Sterne's arrival in London, in March, 1760,
+_Tristram Shandy_ had become the rage.
+
+To say of this extraordinary work that it defies analysis would be the
+merest inadequacy of commonplace. It was meant to defy analysis; it
+is of the very essence of its scheme and purpose that it should do so;
+and the mere attempt to subject it systematically to any such process
+would argue an altogether mistaken conception of the author's intent.
+Its full "official" style and title is _The Life and Opinions of
+Tristram Shandy, Gent.,_ and it is difficult to say which it contains
+the less about--the opinions of Tristram Shandy or the events of
+his life. As a matter of fact, its proper description would be "The
+Opinions of Tristram Shandy's Father, with some Passages from the Life
+of his Uncle." Its claim to be regarded as a biography of its nominal
+hero is best illustrated by the fact that Tristram is not born till
+the third volume, and not breeched till the sixth; that it is not till
+the seventh that he begins to play any active part in the narrative,
+appearing then only as a completely colourless and unindividualized
+figure, a mere vehicle for the conveyance of Sterne's own Continental
+_impressions de voyage_; and that in the last two volumes, which
+are entirely taken up with the incident of his uncle's courtship, he
+disappears from the story altogether. It is to be presumed, perhaps,
+though not very confidently, that the reader would have seen more
+of him if the tale had been continued; but how much or how little
+is quite uncertain. The real hero of the book is at the outset Mr.
+Shandy, senior, who is, later on, succeeded in this place of dignity
+by my Uncle Toby. It not only served Sterne's purpose to confine
+himself mainly to these two characters, as the best whereon to display
+his powers, but it was part of his studied eccentricity to do so. It
+was a "point" to give as little as possible about Tristram Shandy in
+a life of Tristram Shandy; just as it was a point to keep the reader
+waiting throughout the year 1760 for their hero to be so much as born.
+In the first volume, therefore, the author does literally everything
+but make the slightest progress with his story. Starting off abruptly
+with a mock physiologic disquisition upon the importance of a
+proper ordering of their mental states on the part of the intending
+progenitors of children, he philosophizes gravely on this theme for
+two or three chapters; and then wanders away into an account of the
+local midwife, upon whose sole services Mrs. Shandy, in opposition
+to her husband, was inclined to rely. From the midwife it is an easy
+transition to her patron and protector, the incumbent of the parish,
+and this, in its turn, suggests a long excursus on the character,
+habits, appearance, home, friends, enemies, and finally death, burial,
+and epitaph of the Rev. Mr. Yorick. Thence we return to Mr. and Mrs.
+Shandy, and are made acquainted, in absurdly minute detail, with an
+agreement entered into between them with reference to the place of
+sojourn to be selected for the lady's accouchement, the burlesque
+deed which records this compact being actually set out at full length.
+Thence, again, we are beckoned away by the jester to join him in
+elaborate and not very edifying ridicule of the Catholic doctrine
+of ante-natal baptism; and thence--but it would be useless to follow
+further the windings and doublings of this literary hare.
+
+Yet though the book, as one thus summarizes it, may appear a mere
+farrago of digressions, it nevertheless, after its peculiar fashion,
+advances. Such definite purpose as underlies the tricks and grimaces
+of its author is by degrees accomplished; and before we reach the end
+of the first volume the highly humorous, if extravagantly idealized,
+figure of Mr. Shandy takes bodily shape and consistency before our
+eyes. It is a mistake, I think, of Sir Walter Scott's to regard the
+portrait of this eccentric philosopher as intended for a satire upon
+perverted and deranged erudition--as the study of a man "whom too much
+and too miscellaneous learning had brought within a step or two of
+madness." Sterne's conception seems to me a little more subtle and
+less commonplace than that. Mr. Shandy, I imagine, is designed to
+personify not "crack-brained learning" so much as "theory run mad." He
+is possessed by a sort of Demon of the Deductive, ever impelling him
+to push his premises to new conclusions without ever allowing him time
+to compare them with the facts. No doubt we are meant to regard him as
+a learned man; but his son gives us to understand distinctly and very
+early in the book that his crotchets were by no means those of a weak
+receptive mind, overladen with more knowledge than it could digest,
+but rather those of an over-active intelligence, far more deeply and
+constantly concerned with its own processes than with the thoughts
+of others. Tristram, indeed, dwells pointedly on the fact that his
+father's dialectical skill was not the result of training, and that he
+owed nothing to the logic of the schools. "He was certainly," says his
+son, "irresistible both in his orations and disputations," but
+that was because "he was born an orator _([Greek: Theodidaktos])_.
+Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of logic and rhetoric
+were so blended in him, and withal he had so shrewd a guess at the
+weaknesses and passions of his respondent, that Nature might have
+stood up and said, 'This man is eloquent.' And yet," continues the
+filial panegyric,
+
+  "He had never read Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle,
+  nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor
+  Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing
+  he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty
+  struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or
+  Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as
+  in what the difference of an argument _ad ignorantiam_ and an argument
+  _ad hominem_ consisted; and when he went up along with me to
+  enter my name at Jesus College, in * * * *, it was a matter of just
+  wonder with my worthy tutor and two or three Fellows of that learned
+  society that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools
+  should be able to work after that fashion with them."
+
+Surely we all know men of this kind, and the
+consternation--comparable only to that of M. Jourdain under the
+impromptu carte-and-tierce of his servant-maid--which their sturdy
+if informal dialectic will often spread among many kinds of "learned
+societies." But such men are certainly not of the class which Scott
+supposed to have been ridiculed in the character of Walter Shandy.
+
+Among the crotchets of this born dialectician was a theory as to the
+importance of Christian names in determining the future behaviour
+and destiny of the children to whom they are given; and, whatever
+admixture of jest there might have been in some of his other fancies,
+in this his son affirms he was absolutely serious. He solemnly
+maintained the opinion "that there was a strange kind of magic bias
+which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed
+upon our character and conduct." How many Caesars and Pompeys, he
+would say, by mere inspiration of their names have been rendered
+worthy of them! And how many, he would add, are there who might have
+done exceeding well in the world had not their characters and spirits
+been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing! He was astonished
+at parents failing to perceive that "when once a vile name was
+wrongfully or injudiciously given, 'twas not like a case of a man's
+character, which, when wronged, might afterwards be cleared; and
+possibly some time or other, if not in the man's life, at least after
+his death, be somehow or other set to rights with the world." This
+name-giving injury, he would say, "could never be undone; nay, he
+doubted whether an Act of Parliament could reach it; he knew, as well
+as you, that the Legislature assumed a power over surnames; but for
+very strong reasons, which he could give, it had never yet adventured,
+he would say, to go a step further."
+
+With all this extravagance, however, there was combined an admirable
+affectation of sobriety. Mr. Shandy would have us believe that he
+was no blind slave to his theory. He was quite willing to admit the
+existence of names which could not affect the character either
+for good or evil--Jack, Dick, and Tom, for instance; and such the
+philosopher styled "neutral names," affirming of them, "without a
+satire, that there had been as many knaves and fools at least as wise
+and good men since the world began, who had indifferently borne them,
+so that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary
+directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other's
+effects; for which reason he would often declare he would not give a
+cherry-stone to choose among them. Bob, which was my brother's name,
+was another of these neutral kinds of Christian names which operated
+very little either way; and as my father happened to be at Epsom when
+it was given him, he would ofttimes thank Heaven it was no worse."
+Forewarned of this peculiarity of Mr.
+
+Shandy's, the reader is, of course, prepared to hear that of all
+the names in the universe the philosopher had the most unconquerable
+aversion for Tristram, "the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it
+of anything in the world." He would break off in the midst of one
+of his frequent disputes on the subject of names, and "in a spirited
+epiphonema, or rather erotesis," demand of his antagonist "whether he
+would take upon him to say he had ever remembered, whether he had
+ever read, or whether he had ever heard tell of a man called Tristram
+performing anything great or worth recording. No, he would say.
+Tristram! the thing is impossible." It only remained that he should
+have published a book in defence of the belief, and sure enough "in
+the year sixteen," two years before the birth of his second son, "he
+was at the pains of writing an express dissertation simply upon the
+word Tristram, showing the world with great candour and modesty the
+grounds of his great abhorrence to the name." And with this idea
+Sterne continues to amuse himself at intervals till the end of the
+chapter.
+
+That he does not so persistently amuse the reader it is, of course,
+scarcely necessary to say. The jest has not substance enough--few of
+Sterne's jests have--to stand the process of continual attrition to
+which he subjects it. But the mere historic gravity with which the
+various turns of this monomania are recorded--to say nothing of the
+seldom failing charm of the easy, gossiping style--prevents the thing
+from ever becoming utterly tiresome. On the whole, however, one begins
+to grow impatient for more of the same sort as the three admirable
+chapters on the Rev. Mr. Yorick, and is not sorry to get to the
+opening of the second volume, with its half-tender, half-humorous, and
+wholly delightful account of Uncle Toby's difficulties in describing
+the siege operations before Namur, and of the happy chance by which
+these difficulties made him ultimately the fortunate possessor of a
+"hobby."
+
+Throughout this volume there are manifest signs of Sterne's unceasing
+interest in his own creations, and of his increasing consciousness of
+creative power. Captain Toby Shandy is but just lightly sketched-in
+the first volume, while Corporal Trim has not made his appearance on
+the scene at all; but before the end of the second we know both of
+them thoroughly, within and without. Indeed, one might almost say
+that in the first half-dozen chapters which so excellently recount
+the origin of the corporal's fortification scheme, and the wounded
+officer's delighted acceptance of it, every trait in the simple
+characters--alike yet so different in their simplicity--of master and
+of man becomes definitely fixed in the reader's mind. And the total
+difference between the second and the first volume in point of
+fulness, variety, and colour is most marked. The artist, the inventor,
+the master of dialogue, the comic dramatist, in fact, as distinct from
+the humorous essayist, would almost seem to have started into being
+as we pass from the one volume to the other. There is nothing in the
+drolleries of the first volume--in the broad jests upon Mr. Shandy's
+crotchets, or even in the subtler humour of the intellectual collision
+between these crotchets and his brother's plain sense--to indicate the
+kind of power displayed in that remarkable colloquy _à quatre_, which
+begins with the arrival of Dr. Slop and ends with Corporal Trim's
+recital of the Sermon on Conscience. Wit, humour, irony, quaint
+learning, shrewd judgment of men and things, of these Sterne had
+displayed abundance already; but it is not in the earlier but in the
+later half of the first instalment of _Tristram Shandy_ that we first
+become conscious that he is something more than the possessor of all
+these things; that he is gifted with the genius of creation, and has
+sent forth new beings into that world of immortal shadows which to
+many of us is more real than our own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+LONDON TRIUMPHS.--FIRST SET OF SERMONS.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS.
+III. AND IV.--COXWOLD.--VOLS. V. AND VI.--FIRST VISIT TO THE
+CONTINENT.--PARIS.--TOULOUSE.
+
+(1760-1762.)
+
+Sterne alighted from the York mail, just as Byron "awoke one morning,"
+to "find himself famous." Seldom indeed has any lion so suddenly
+discovered been pursued so eagerly and by such a distinguished crowd
+of hunters. The chase was remarkable enough to have left a lasting
+impression on the spectators; for it was several years after (in 1773)
+that Dr. Johnson, by way of fortifying his very just remark that "any
+man who has a name or who has the power of pleasing will be generally
+invited in London," observed gruffly that "the man Sterne," he was
+told, "had had engagements for three months." And truly it would
+appear from abundant evidence that "the man Sterne" gained such a
+social triumph as might well have turned a stronger head than his.
+Within twenty-four hours after his arrival his lodgings in Pall Mall
+were besieged by a crowd of fashionable visitors; and in a few weeks
+he had probably made the acquaintance of "everybody who was anybody"
+in the London society of that day.
+
+How thoroughly he relished the delights of celebrity is revealed, with
+a simple vanity which almost disarms criticism, in many a passage
+of his correspondence. In one of his earliest letters to Miss
+Fourmantelle we find him proudly relating to her how already he "was
+engaged to ten noblemen and men of fashion." Of Garrick, who had
+warmly welcomed the humourist whose merits he had been the first to
+discover, Sterne says that he had "promised him at dinner to numbers
+of great people." Amongst these great people who sought him out for
+themselves was that discerning patron of ability in every shape, Lord
+Rockingham. In one of the many letters which Madame de Medalle flung
+dateless upon the world, but which from internal evidence we can
+assign to the early months of 1760, Sterne writes that he is about to
+"set off with a grand retinue of Lord Rockingham's (in whose suite I
+move) for Windsor" to witness, it should seem, an installation of
+a Knight of the Garter. It is in his letters to Miss Fourmantelle,
+however, that his almost boyish exultation at his London triumph
+discloses itself most frankly. "My rooms," he writes, "are filling
+every hour with great people of the first rank, who strive who shall
+most honour me." Never, he believes, had such homage been rendered to
+any man by devotees so distinguished. "The honours paid me were the
+greatest that were ever known from the great."
+
+The self-painted portrait is not, it must be confessed, altogether
+an attractive one. It is somewhat wanting in dignity, and its air of
+over-inflated complacency is at times slightly ridiculous. But we must
+not judge Sterne in this matter by too severe a standard. He was by
+nature neither a dignified nor a self-contained man: he had a head
+particularly unfitted to stand sudden elevation; and it must be
+allowed that few men's power of resisting giddiness at previously
+unexplored altitudes was ever so severely tried. It was not only "the
+great" in the sense of the high in rank and social distinction by
+whom he was courted; he was welcomed also by the eminent in genius and
+learning; and it would be no very difficult task for him to flatter
+himself that it was the latter form of recognition which, he really
+valued most. Much, at any rate, in the way of undue elation may be
+forgiven to a country clergyman who suddenly found himself the centre
+of a court, which was regularly attended by statesmen, wits, and
+leaders of fashion, and with whom even bishops condescended to open
+gracious diplomatic communication. "Even all the bishops," he writes,
+"have sent their compliments;" and though this can hardly have been
+true of the whole Episcopal Bench, it is certain that Sterne received
+something more than a compliment from one bishop, who was a host in
+himself. He was introduced by Garrick to Warburton, and received high
+encouragement from that formidable prelate.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: It is admitted, moreover, in the correspondence with Miss
+Fourmantelle that Sterne received something more substantial from the
+Bishop, in the shape of a purse of gold; and this strange present gave
+rise to a scandal on which something will be said hereafter.]
+
+The year 1760, however, was to bring to Sterne more solid gains than
+that of mere celebrity, or even than the somewhat precarious money
+profits which depend on literary vogue. Only a few weeks after his
+arrival in town he was presented by Lord Falconberg with the curacy of
+Coxwold, "a sweet retirement," as he describes it, "in comparison of
+Sutton," at which he was in future to pass most of the time spent
+by him in Yorkshire. What obtained him this piece of preferment is
+unknown. It may be that _Tristram Shandy_ drew the Yorkshire peer's
+attention to the fact that there was a Yorkshireman of genius living
+within a few miles of a then vacant benefice in his lordship's gift,
+and that this was enough for him. But Sterne himself says--in writing
+a year or so afterwards to a lady of his acquaintance--"I hope I have
+been of some service to his lordship, and he has sufficiently requited
+me;" and in the face of this plain assertion, confirmed as it is by
+the fact that Lord Falconberg was on terms of friendly intimacy with
+the Vicar of Coxwold at a much later date than this, we may dismiss
+idle tales about Sterne's having "black-mailed" the patron out of a
+presentation to a benefice worth no more, after all, than some 70£ a
+year net.
+
+There is somewhat more substance, however, in the scandal which got
+abroad with reference to a certain alleged transaction between Sterne
+and Warburton. Before Sterne had been many days in London, and while
+yet his person and doings were the natural subjects of the newest
+gossip, a story found its way into currency to the effect that the
+new-made Bishop of Gloucester had found it advisable to protect
+himself against the satiric humour of the author of the _Tristram
+Shandy_ by a substantial present of money. Coming to Garrick's ears,
+it was repeated by him--whether seriously or in jest--to Sterne,
+from whom it evoked a curious letter, which in Madame de Medalle's
+collection has been studiously hidden away amongst the correspondence
+of seven years later. "'Twas for all the world," he began, "like a cut
+across my finger with a sharp pen-knife. I saw the blood--gave it a
+suck, wrapt it up, and thought no more about it.... The story you told
+me of Tristram's pretended tutor this morning"--(the scandal was, that
+Warburton had been threatened with caricature in the next volume of
+the novel, under the guise of the hero's tutor)--"this vile story, I
+say, though I then saw both how and where it wounded, I felt little
+from it at first, or, to speak more honestly (though it ruins my
+simile), I felt a great deal of pain from it, but affected an air,
+usual in such accidents, of feeling less than I had." And he goes on
+to repudiate, it will be observed, not so much the moral offence of
+corruption, in receiving money to spare Warburton, as the intellectual
+solecism of selecting him for ridicule. "What the devil!" he
+exclaims, "is there no one learned blockhead throughout the schools
+of misapplied science in the Christian world to make a tutor of for
+my Tristram--are we so run out of stock that there is no one
+lumber-headed, muddle-headed, mortar-headed, pudding-head chap amongst
+our doctors...but I must disable my judgment by choosing a Warburton?"
+Later on, in a letter to his friend, Mr. Croft, at Stillington, whom
+the scandal had reached through a "society journal" of the time, he
+asks whether people would suppose he would be "such a fool as to fall
+foul of Dr. Warburton, my best friend, by representing him so weak a
+man; or by telling such a lie of him as his giving me a purse to buy
+off the tutorship of Tristram--or that I should be fool enough to own
+that I had taken a purse for that purpose?" It will be remarked that
+Sterne does not here deny having received a purse from Warburton,
+but only his having received it by way of black-mail: and the most
+mysterious part of the affair is that Sterne did actually receive the
+strange present of a "purse of gold" from Warburton (whom at that time
+he did not know nor had ever seen); and that he admits as much in one
+of his letters to Miss Fourmantelle. "I had a purse of guineas given
+me yesterday by a Bishop," he writes, triumphantly, but without
+volunteering any explanation of this extraordinary gift. Sterne's
+letter to Garrick was forwarded, it would seem, to Warburton; and the
+Bishop thanks Garrick for having procured for him "the confutation of
+an impertinent story the first moment I heard of it." This, however,
+can hardly count for much. If Warburton had really wished Sterne to
+abstain from caricaturing him, he would be as anxious--and for much
+the same reasons--to conceal the fact as to suppress the caricature.
+He would naturally have the disclosure of it reported to Sterne
+for formal contradiction, as in fulfilment of a virtual term in the
+bargain between them. The epithet of "irrevocable scoundrel," which
+he afterwards applied to Sterne, is of less importance, as proceeding
+from Warburton, than it would have been had it come from any one not
+habitually employing Warburton's peculiar vocabulary; but it at least
+argues no very cordial feeling on the Bishop's side. And, on the
+whole, one regrets to feel, as I must honestly confess that I do feel,
+far less confident of the groundlessness of this rather unpleasant
+story than could be wished. It is impossible to forget, however, that
+while the ethics of this matter were undoubtedly less strict in those
+days than they are--or, at any rate, are recognized as being--in our
+own, there is nothing in Sterne's character to make us suppose him to
+have been at all in advance of the morality of his time.
+
+The incumbent-designate did not go down at once to take possession of
+his temporalities. His London triumph had not yet run its course. The
+first edition of Vols. I. and II. of _Tristram Shandy_ was exhausted
+in some three months. In April, Dodsley brought out a second; and,
+concurrently with the advertisement of its issue, there appeared--in
+somewhat incongruous companionship--the announcement, "Speedily will
+be published, The Sermons of Mr. Yorick." The judicious Dodsley, or
+possibly the judicious Sterne himself (acute enough in matters of
+this kind), had perceived that now was the time to publish a series of
+sermons by the very unclerical lion of the day. There would--they,
+no doubt, thought--be an undeniable piquancy, a distinct flavour of
+semi-scandalous incongruity in listening to the Word of Life from the
+lips of this loose-tongued droll; and the more staid and serious the
+sermon, the more effective the contrast. There need not have been
+much trouble in finding the kind of article required; and we may be
+tolerably sure that, even if Sterne did not perceive that fact for
+himself, his publisher hastened to inform him that "anything would
+do." Two of his pulpit discourses, the Assize Sermon and the Charity
+Sermon, had already been thought worthy of publication by their author
+in a separate form; and the latter of these found a place in the
+series; while the rest seem to have been simply the chance sweepings
+of the parson's sermon-drawer. The critics who find wit, eccentricity,
+flashes of Shandyism, and what not else of the same sort in these
+discourses, must be able--or so it seems to me--to discover these
+phenomena anywhere. To the best of my own judgment the Sermons
+are--with but few and partial exceptions--of the most commonplace
+character; platitudinous with the platitudes of a thousand pulpits,
+and insipid with the _crambe repetita_ of a hundred thousand homilies.
+A single extract will fully suffice for a specimen of Sterne's
+pre-Shandian homiletic style; his post-Shandian manner was very
+different, as we shall see. The preacher is discoursing upon the
+well-worn subject of the inconsistencies of human character:
+
+  "If such a contrast was only observable in the different stages of
+  a man's life, it would cease to be either a matter of wonder or of
+  just reproach. Age, experience, and much reflection may naturally
+  enough be supposed to alter a man's sense of things, and so entirely
+  to transform him that, not only in outward appearance but in the
+  very cast and turn of his mind, he may be as unlike and different
+  from the man he was twenty or thirty years ago as he ever was from
+  anything of his own species. This, I say, is naturally to be accounted
+  for, and in some cases might be praiseworthy too; but the observation
+  is to be made of men in the same period of their lives that in
+  the same day, sometimes on the very same action, they are utterly
+  inconsistent and irreconcilable with themselves. Look at the man in
+  one light, and he shall seem wise, penetrating, discreet, and brave;
+  behold him in another point of view, and you see a creature all over
+  folly and indiscretion, weak and timorous as cowardice and
+  indiscretion can make him. A man shall appear gentle, courteous,
+  and benevolent to all mankind; follow him into his own house,
+  maybe you see a tyrant morose and savage to all whose happiness
+  depends upon his kindness. A third, in his general behaviour,
+  is found to be generous, disinterested, humane, and friendly. Hear
+  but the sad story of the friendless orphans too credulously trusting
+  all their whole substance into his hands, and he shall appear more
+  sordid, more pitiless and unjust than the injured themselves have
+  bitterness to paint him. Another shall be charitable to the poor,
+  uncharitable in his censures and opinions of all the rest of the
+  world besides: temperate in his appetites, intemperate in his tongue;
+  shall have too much conscience and religion to cheat the man who
+  trusts him, and perhaps as far as the business of debtor and creditor
+  extends shall be just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite; yet in
+  matters of full or great concern, where he is to have the handling
+  of the party's reputation and good name, the dearest, the tenderest
+  property the man has, he will do him irreparable damage, and rob him
+  there without measure or pity."--Sermon XI.--_On Evil Speaking_.
+
+There is clearly nothing particularly striking in all that, even
+conveyed as it is in Sterne's effective, if loose and careless, style;
+and it is no unfair sample of the whole. The calculation, however, of
+the author and his shrewd publisher was that, whatever the intrinsic
+merits or demerits of these sermons, they would "take" on the strength
+of the author's name; nor, it would seem, was their calculation
+disappointed. The edition of this series of sermons now lying before
+me is numbered the sixth, and its date is 1764; which represents a
+demand for a new edition every nine months or so, over a space of
+four years. They may, perhaps, have succeeded, too, in partially
+reconciling a certain serious-minded portion of the public to the
+author. Sterne evidently hoped that they might; for we find him
+sending a copy to Warburton, in the month of June, immediately after
+the publication of the book, and receiving in return a letter of
+courteous thanks, and full of excellent advice as to the expediency
+of avoiding scandal by too hazardous a style of writing in the future.
+Sterne, in reply, protests that he would "willingly give no offence to
+mortal by anything which could look like the least violation of either
+decency or good manners;" but--and it is an important "but"--he cannot
+promise to "mutilate everything" in _Tristram_ "down to the prudish
+humour of every particular" (individual), though he will do his best;
+but, in any case, "laugh, my Lord, I will, and as loudly as I can."
+And laugh he did, and in such Rabelaisian fashion that the Bishop
+(somewhat inconsistently for a critic who had welcomed Sterne on
+the appearance of the first two volumes expressly as the "English
+Rabelais") remarked of him afterwards with characteristic vigour, in
+a letter to a friend, that he fears the fellow is an "irrevocable
+scoundrel."
+
+The volumes, however, which earned "the fellow" this Episcopal
+benediction were not given to the world till the next year. At the
+end of May or beginning of June, 1760, Sterne went to his new home
+at Coxwold, and his letters soon begin to show him to us at work upon
+further records of Mr. Shandy's philosophical theory-spinning and the
+simpler pursuits of his excellent brother. It is probable that this
+year, 1760, was, on the whole, the happiest year of Sterne's life.
+His health, though always feeble, had not yet finally given way;
+and though the "vile cough" which was to bring him more than once to
+death's door, and at last to force it open, was already troubling him,
+he had that within him which made it easy to bear up against all
+such physical ills. His spirits, in fact, were at their highest. His
+worldly affairs were going at least as smoothly as they ever went.
+He was basking in that sunshine of fame which was so delightful to a
+temperament differing from that of the average Englishman, as does the
+physique of the Southern races from that of the hardier children of
+the North; and lastly, he was exulting in a new-born sense of creative
+power which no doubt made the composition of the earlier volumes of
+_Tristram_ a veritable labour of love.
+
+But the witty division of literary spinners into silkworms and
+spiders--those who spin because they are full, and those who do so
+because they are empty--is not exhaustive. There are human silk-worms
+who become gradually transformed into spiders--men who begin writing
+in order to unburden a full imagination, and who, long after that
+process has been completely performed, continue writing in order to
+fill an empty belly; and though Sterne did not live long enough to
+"write himself out," there are certain indications that he would
+not have left off writing if and when he felt that this stage of
+exhaustion had arrived. His artistic impulses were curiously combined
+with a distinct admixture of the "potboiler" spirit; and it was with
+something of the complacency of an annuitant that he looked forward to
+giving the public a couple of volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ every year
+as long as they would stand it. In these early days, however, there
+was no necessity even to discuss the probable period either of the
+writer's inspiration or of the reader's appetite. At present the
+public were as eager to consume more Shandyism as Sterne was ready to
+produce it: the demand was as active as the supply was easy. By the
+end of the year Vols. III. and IV. were in the press, and on January
+27, 1761, they made their appearance. They had been disposed of in
+advance to Dodsley for 380_l._--no bad terms of remuneration in
+those days; but it is still likely enough that the publisher made
+a profitable bargain. The new volumes sold freely, and the public
+laughed at them as heartily as their two predecessors. Their author's
+vogue in London, whither he went in December, 1760, to superintend
+publication, was as great during the next spring as it had been in
+the last. The tide of visitors again set in all its former force and
+volume towards the "genteel lodgings." His dinner list was once more
+full, and he was feasted and flattered by wits, beaux, courtiers,
+politicians, and titled-lady lion-hunters as sedulously as ever. His
+letters, especially those to his friends the Crofts, of Stillington,
+abound, as before, in touches of the same amusing vanity. With how
+delicious a sense of self-importance must he have written these words:
+"You made me and my friends very merry with the accounts current at
+York of my being forbad the Court, but they do not consider what a
+considerable person they make of me when they suppose either my going
+or not going there is a point that ever enters the K.'s head; and
+for those about him, I have the honour either to stand so personally
+well-known to them, or to be so well represented by those of the first
+rank, as to fear no accident of the kind." Amusing, too, is it to note
+the familiarity, as of an old _habitué_ of Ministerial antechambers,
+with which this country parson discusses the political changes of
+that interesting year; though scarcely more amusing, perhaps, than the
+solemnity with which his daughter disguises the identity of the new
+Premier under the title B----e; and by a similar use of initials
+attempts to conceal the momentous state secret that the D. of R. had
+been removed from the place of Groom of the Chambers, and that Sir
+F.D. had succeeded T. as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Occasionally,
+however, the interest of his letters changes from personal to public,
+and we get a glimpse of scenes and personages that have become
+historical. He was present in the House of Commons at the first grand
+debate on the German war after the Great Commoner's retirement from
+office--"the pitched battle," as Sterne calls it, "wherein Mr. P.
+was to have entered and thrown down the gauntlet" in defence of his
+military policy. Thus he describes it:
+
+  "There never was so full a House--the gallery full to the top--I
+  was there all the day; when lo! a political fit of the gout seized the
+  great combatant--he entered not the lists. Beckford got up and
+  begged the House, as he saw not his right honourable friend there,
+  to put off the debate--it could not be done: so Beckford rose up
+  and made a most long, passionate, incoherent speech in defence of
+  the German war, but very severe upon the unfrugal manner it was
+  carried on, in which he addressed himself principally to the C[hancellor]
+  of the E[xchequer], and laid on him terribly.... Legge
+  answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord K. spoke long.
+  Sir F. D[ashwood] maintained the German war was most pernicious....
+  Lord B[arrington] at last got up and spoke half an hour
+  with great plainness and temper, explained many hidden things relating
+  to these accounts in favour of the late K., and told two or
+  three conversations which had passed between the K. and himself
+  relative to these expenses, which cast great honour upon the K.'s
+  character. This was with regard to the money the K. had secretly
+  furnished out of his own pocket to lessen the account of the
+  Hanover-score brought us to discharge. Beckford and Barrington
+  abused all who fought for peace and joined in the cry for it,
+  and Beckford added that the reasons of wishing a peace now were
+  the same as at the Peace of Utrecht--that the people behind the
+  curtain could not both maintain the war and their places too, so
+  were for making another sacrifice of the nation to their own interests.
+  After all, the cry for a peace is so general that it will certainly
+  end in one."
+
+And then the letter, recurring to personal matters towards the close,
+records the success of Vols. III. and IV.:
+
+"One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly as the other half cry
+it up to the skies--the best is they abuse and buy it, and at such a
+rate that we are going on with a second edition as fast as possible."
+This was written only in the first week of March, so that the edition
+must have been exhausted in little more than a month. It was, indeed,
+another triumph; and all through this spring up to midsummer did
+Sterne remain in London to enjoy it. But, with three distinct flocks
+awaiting a renewal of his pastoral ministrations in Yorkshire, it
+would scarcely have done for him, even in those easy-going days of
+the Establishment, to take up his permanent abode at the capital; and
+early in July he returned to Coxwold.
+
+From the middle of this year, 1761, the scene begins to darken, and
+from the beginning of the next year onward Sterne's life was little
+better than a truceless struggle with the disease to which he was
+destined, prematurely, to succumb. The wretched constitution which,
+in common with his short-lived brothers and sisters, he had inherited
+probably from his father, already began to show signs of breaking
+up. Invalid from the first, it had doubtless been weakened by the
+hardships of Sterne's early years, and yet further, perhaps, by the
+excitements and dissipations of his London life; nor was the change
+from the gaieties of the capital to hard literary labour in a country
+parsonage calculated to benefit him as much as it might others. Shandy
+Hall, as he christened his pretty parsonage at Coxwold, and as the
+house, still standing, is called to this day, soon became irksome
+to him. The very reaction begotten of unwonted quietude acted on his
+temperament with a dispiriting rather than a soothing effect. The
+change from his full and stimulating life in London to the dull
+round of clerical duties in a Yorkshire village might well have been
+depressing to a mind better balanced and ballasted than his. To him,
+with his light, pleasure-loving nature, it was as the return of the
+schoolboy from pantomimes and pony-riding to the more sober delights
+of Dr. Swishtail's; and, in a letter to Hall Stevenson, Sterne reveals
+his feelings with all the juvenile frankness of one of the Doctor's
+pupils:
+
+  "I rejoice you are in London--rest you there in peace; here 'tis the
+  devil. You were a good prophet. I wish myself back again, as you
+  told me I should, but not because a thin, death-doing, pestiferous
+  north-east wind blows in a line directly from Crazy Castle turret
+  fresh upon me in this cuckoldly retreat (for I value the north-east
+  wind and all its powers not a straw), but the transition from rapid
+  motion to absolute rest was too violent. I should have walked about
+  the streets of York ten days, as a proper medium to have passed
+  through before I entered upon my rest; I stayed but a moment, and
+  I have been here but a few, to satisfy me. I have not managed my
+  miseries like a wise man, and if God for my consolation had not
+  poured forth the spirit of Shandyism unto me, which will not suffer
+  me to think two moments upon any grave subject, I would else just
+  now lay down and die."
+
+It is true he adds, in the next sentence, that in half an hour's time
+"I'll lay a guinea I shall be as merry as a monkey, and forget it
+all," but such sudden revulsions of high spirits can hardly be allowed
+to count for much against the prevailing tone of discontented _ennui_
+which pervades this letter.
+
+Apart, moreover, from Sterne's regrets of London, his country home
+was becoming from other causes a less pleasant place of abode. His
+relations with his wife were getting less and less cordial every year.
+With a perversity sometimes noticeable in the wives of distinguished
+men, Mrs. Sterne had failed to accept with enthusiasm the _rôle_
+of distant and humbly admiring spectator of her brilliant husband's
+triumphs. Accept it, of course, she did, being unable, indeed, to help
+herself; but it is clear that when Sterne returned home after one of
+his six months' revels in the gaieties of London, his wife, who had
+been vegetating the while in the retirement of Yorkshire, was not in
+the habit of welcoming him with effusion. Perceiving so clearly that
+her husband preferred the world's society to hers, she naturally,
+perhaps, refused to disguise her preference of her own society to his.
+Their estrangement, in short, had grown apace, and had already
+brought them to that stage of mutual indifference which is at once so
+comfortable and so hopeless--secure alike against the risk of "scenes"
+and the hope of reconciliation, shut fast in its exemption from
+_amantium irae_ against all possibility of _redintegratio amoris._
+To such perfection, indeed, had the feeling been cultivated on both
+sides, that Sterne, in the letter above quoted, can write of his
+conjugal relations in this philosophic strain:
+
+  "As to matrimony I should be a beast to rail at it, for my wife is
+  easy, but the world is not, and had I stayed from her a second longer
+  it would have been a burning shame--else she declares herself
+  happier without me. But not in anger is this declaration made (the
+  most fatal point, of course, about it), but in pure, sober, good sense,
+  built on sound experience. She hopes you will be able to strike a
+  bargain for me before this twelvemonth to lead a bear round Europe,
+  and from this hope from you I verily believe it is that you are
+  so high in her favour at present. She swears you are a fellow of wit,
+  though humorous;[2] a funny, jolly soul, though somewhat splenetic,
+  and (hating the love of women) as honest as gold. How do you
+  like the simile?"
+
+There is, perhaps, a touch of affected cynicism in the suggestion that
+Mrs. Sterne's liking for one of her husband's friends was wholly based
+upon the expectation that he would rid her of her husband; but mutual
+indifference must, it is clear, have reached a pretty advanced stage
+before such a remark could, even half in jest, be possible. And with
+one more longing, lingering look at the scenes which he had quitted
+for a lot like that of the Duke of Buckingham's dog, upon whom his
+master pronounced the maledictory wish that "he were married and lived
+in the country," this characteristic letter concludes:
+
+  "Oh, Lord! now are you going to Ranelagh to-night, and I am sitting
+  sorrowful as the prophet was when the voice cried out to him
+  and said, 'What do'st thou here, Elijah?' 'Tis well that the spirit
+  does not make the same at Coxwold, for unless for the few sheep
+  left me to take care of in the wilderness, I might as well, nay, better,
+  be at Mecca. When we find we can, by a shifting of places, run
+  away from ourselves, what think you of a jaunt there before we
+  finally pay a visit to the Vale of Jehoshaphat? As ill a fame as we
+  have, I trust I shall one day or other see you face to face, so tell the
+  two colonels if they love good company to live righteously and soberly,
+  _as you do_, and then they will have no doubts or dangers within
+  or without them. Present my best and warmest wishes to them,
+  and advise the eldest to prop up his spirits, and get a rich dowager
+  before the conclusion of the peace. Why will not the advice suit
+  both, _par nobile fratrum?_"
+
+[Footnote 1: It is curious to note, as a point in the chronology of
+language, how exclusive is Sterne's employment of the words "humour,"
+"humourists," in their older sense of "whimsicality," "an eccentric."
+The later change in its meaning gives to the word "though" in the
+above passage an almost comic effect.]
+
+In conclusion, he tells his friend that the next morning, if Heaven
+permit, he begins the fifth volume of _Shandy_, and adds, defiantly,
+that he "cares not a curse for the critics," but "will load my vehicle
+with what goods He sends me, and they may take 'em off my hands or let
+'em alone."
+
+The allusions to foreign travel in this letter were made with,
+something more than a jesting intent. Sterne had already begun to be
+seriously alarmed, and not without reason, about the condition of his
+health. He shrank from facing another English winter, and meditated
+a southward flight so soon as he should have finished his fifth
+and sixth volumes, and seen them safe in the printer's hands. His
+publisher he had changed, for what reason is not known, and the firm
+of Becket & De Hondt had taken the place of Dodsley. Sterne hoped by
+the end of the year to be free to depart from England, and already he
+had made all arrangements with his ecclesiastical superiors for the
+necessary leave of absence. He seems to have been treated with all
+consideration in the matter. His Archbishop, on being applied to, at
+once excused him from parochial work for a year, and promised, if
+it should be necessary, to double that term. Fortified with this
+permission, Sterne bade farewell to his wife and daughter, and betook
+himself to London, with his now completed volumes, at the setting in
+of the winter. On the 21st of December they made their appearance, and
+in about three weeks from that date their author left England,
+with the intention of wintering in the South of France. There were
+difficulties, however, of more kinds than one which had first to be
+faced--a pecuniary difficulty, which Garrick met by a loan of 20£.,
+and a political difficulty, for the removal of which Sterne had to
+employ the good offices of new acquaintance later on. He reached Paris
+about the 17th of January, 1762, and there met with a reception
+which interposed, as might have been expected, the most effectual of
+obstacles to his further progress southward. He was received in Paris
+with open arms, and stepped at once within the charmed circle of the
+philosophic _salons_. Again was the old intoxicating cup presented to
+his lips--this time, too, with more dexterous than English hands--and
+again did he drink deeply of it. "My head is turned," he writes to
+Garrick, "with what I see, and the unexpected honour I have met with
+here. _Tristram_ was almost as much known here as in London, at least
+among your men of condition and learning, and has got me introduced
+into so many circles ('tis _comme à Londres_) I have just now a
+fortnight's dinners and suppers on my hands." We may venture to doubt
+whether French politeness had not been in one respect taken somewhat
+too seriously by the flattered Englishman, and whether it was much
+more than the name and general reputation of _Tristram_, which was
+"almost as much known" in Paris as in London. The dinners and suppers,
+however, were, at any rate, no figures of speech, but very liberal
+entertainments, at which Sterne appears to have disported himself with
+all his usual unclerical _abandon_. "I Shandy it away," he writes in
+his boyish fashion to Garrick, "fifty times more than I was ever wont,
+talk more nonsense than ever you heard me talk in all your days,
+and to all sorts of people. 'Qui le diable est cet homme-là?' said
+Choiseul, t'other day, 'ce Chevalier Shandy?'" [We might be listening
+to one of Thackeray's Irish heroes.] "You'll think me as vain as a
+devil was I to tell you the rest of the dialogue." But there were
+distinguished Frenchmen who were ready to render to the English author
+more important services than that of offering him hospitality and
+flattery. Peace had not been formally concluded between France and
+England, and the passport with which Sterne had been graciously
+furnished by Pitt was not of force enough to dispense him from making
+special application to the French Government for permission to remain
+in the country. In this request he was influentially backed. "My
+application," he writes, "to the Count de Choiseul goes on swimmingly,
+for not only M. Pelletière (who by-the-bye sends ten thousand
+civilities to you and Mrs. G.) has undertaken my affair, but the Count
+de Limbourg. The Baron d'Holbach has offered any security for the
+inoffensiveness of my behaviour in France--'tis more, you rogue! than
+you will do." And then the orthodox, or professedly orthodox, English
+divine, goes on to describe the character and habits of his strange
+new friend: "This Baron is one of the most learned noblemen here, the
+great protector of wits and of the _savans_ who are no wits; keeps
+open house three days a week--his house is now, as yours was to me, my
+own--he lives at great expense." Equally communicative is he as to his
+other great acquaintances. Among these were the Count de Bissie, whom
+by an "odd incident" (as it seemed to his unsuspecting vanity) "I
+found reading _Tristram_ when I was introduced to him, which I was,"
+he adds (without perceiving the connexion between this fact and the
+"incident"), "at his desire;" Mr. Fox and Mr. Macartney (afterwards
+the Lord Macartney of Chinese celebrity), and the Duke of Orleans (not
+yet Égalité) himself, "who has suffered my portrait to be added to the
+number of some odd men in his collection, and has had it taken most
+expressively at full length by a gentleman who lives with him." Nor
+was it only in the delights of society that Sterne was now revelling.
+He was passionately fond of the theatre, and his letters to
+Garrick are full of eager criticism of the great French performers,
+intermingled with flatteries, sometimes rather full-bodied than
+delicate, of their famous English rival. Of Clairon, in _Iphigénie_,
+he says "she is extremely great. Would to God you had one or two
+like her. What a luxury to see you with one of such power in the same
+interesting scene! But 'tis too much." Again he writes: "The French
+comedy I seldom visit; they act scarce anything but tragedies; and the
+Clairon is great, and Mdlle. Dumesmil in some parts still greater than
+her. Yet I cannot bear preaching--I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my
+younger days." And in a later letter:
+
+  "After a vile suspension of three weeks, we are beginning with
+  our comedies and operas. Yours I hear never flourished more; here
+  the comic actors were never so low; the tragedians hold up their
+  heads in all senses. I have known _one little man_ support the theatrical
+  world like a David Atlas upon his shoulders, but Préville can't
+  do half as much here, though Mad. Clairon stands by him and sets
+  her back to his. She is very great, however, and highly improved
+  since you saw her. She also supports her dignity at table, and has
+  her public day every Thursday, when she gives to eat (as they say
+  here) to all that are hungry and dry. You are much talked of here,
+  and much expected, as soon as the peace will let you. These two
+  last days you have happened to engross the whole conversation at
+  the great houses where I was at dinner. 'Tis the greatest problem
+  in nature in this meridian that one and the same man should possess
+  such tragic and comic powers, and in such an _equilibrio_ as to divide
+  the world for which of the two Nature intended him."
+
+And while on this subject of the stage let us pause for a moment
+to glance at an incident which connects Sterne with one of the most
+famous of his French contemporaries. He has been asked "by a lady of
+talent," he tells Garrick, "to read a tragedy, and conjecture if it
+would do for you. 'Tis from the plan of Diderot; and, possibly, half
+a translation of it: _The Natural Son, or the Triumph of Virtue_,
+in five acts. It has too much sentiment in it (at least for me); the
+speeches too long, and savour too much of preaching. This may be
+a second reason it is not to my taste--'tis all love, love, love
+throughout, without much separation in the characters. So I fear it
+would not do for your stage, and perhaps for the very reason which
+recommends it to a French one." It is curious to see the "adaptator
+cerebrosuga" at work in those days as in these; though not, in this
+instance, as it seems, with as successful results. _The Natural Son,
+or the Triumph of Virtue_, is not known to have reached either English
+readers or English theatrical audiences. The French original, as we
+know, fared scarcely better. "It was not until 1771," says Diderot's
+latest English biographer, "that the directors of the French Comedy
+could be induced to place _Le Fils Naturel_ on the stage. The actors
+detested their task, and, as we can well believe, went sulkily through
+parts which they had not taken the trouble to master. The public felt
+as little interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after one
+or two representations, it was put aside.[1]"
+
+[Footnote 1: Morley: _Diderot and the Encyclopaedists_, ii. 305.]
+
+Another, and it is to be guessed a too congenial, acquaintance formed
+by Sterne in Paris was that of Crébillon; and with him he concluded "a
+convention," unedifying enough, whether in jest or earnest: "As soon
+as I get to Toulouse he has agreed to write me an expostulatory
+letter upon the indecorums of _T. Shandy_, which is to be answered
+by recrimination upon the liberties in his own works. These are to
+be printed together--Crébillon against Sterne, Sterne against
+Crébillon--the copy to be sold, and the money equally divided. This
+is good Swiss-policy," he adds; and the idea (which was never carried
+out) had certainly the merit of ingenuity, if no other.
+
+The words "as soon as I get to Toulouse," in a letter written from
+Paris on the 10th of April, might well have reminded Sterne of the
+strange way in which he had carried out his intention of "wintering
+in the South." He insists, however, upon the curative effects of his
+winter of gaiety in Paris. "I am recovered greatly," he says; "and if
+I could spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I should be fortified in
+my inner man beyond all danger of relapsing." There was another, too,
+for whom this change of climate had become imperatively necessary.
+For three winters past his daughter Lydia, now fourteen years old,
+had been suffering severely from asthma, and needed to try "the last
+remedy of a warmer and softer air." Her father, therefore, was about
+to solicit passports for his wife and daughter, with a view to their
+joining him at once in Paris, whence, after a month's stay, they were
+to depart together for the South. This application for passports he
+intended, he said, to make "this week:" and it would seem that the
+intention was carried out; but, for reasons explained in a letter
+which Mr. Fitzgerald was the first to publish, it was not till the
+middle of the next month that he was able to make preparation for
+their joining him. From this letter--written to his Archbishop, to
+request an extension of his leave--we learn that while applying for
+the passports he was attacked with a fever, "which has ended the worst
+way it could for me, in a _défluxion (de) poitrine_, as the French
+physicians call it. It is generally fatal to weak lungs, so that I
+have lost in ten days all I have gained since I came here; and from
+a relaxation of my lungs have lost my voice entirely, that 'twill
+be much if I ever quite recover it. This evil sends me directly to
+Toulouse, for which I set out from this place directly my family
+arrives." Evidently there was no time to be lost, and a week after the
+date of this letter we find him in communication with Mrs. and
+Miss Sterne, and making arrangements for what was, in those days, a
+somewhat formidable undertaking--the journey of two ladies from the
+North of England to the centre of France. The correspondence which
+ensued may be said to give us the last pleasant glimpse of Sterne's
+relations with his wife. One can hardly help suspecting, of course,
+that it was his solicitude for the safety and comfort of his
+much-loved daughter that mainly inspired the affectionate anxiety
+which pervades these letters to Mrs. Sterne; but their writer is, at
+the very least, entitled to credit for allowing no difference of tone
+to reveal itself in the terms in which he speaks of wife and child.
+And, whichever of the two he was mainly thinking of, there is
+something very engaging in the thoughtful minuteness of his
+instructions to the two women travellers, the earnestness of his
+attempts to inspire them with courage for their enterprise, and
+the sincere fervour of his many commendations of them to the Divine
+keeping. The mixture of "canny" counsel and pious invocation
+has frequently a droll effect: as when the advice to "give the
+custom-house officers what I told you, and at Calais more, if you have
+much Scotch snuff;" and "to drink small Rhenish to keep you cool, that
+is, if you like it," is rounded off by the ejaculation, "So God in
+Heaven prosper and go along with you!" Letter after letter did he
+send them, full of such reminders as that "they have bad pins and vile
+needles here," that it would be advisable to bring with them a strong
+bottle-screw, and a good stout copper tea-kettle; till at last, in
+the final words of preparation, his language assumes something of the
+solemnity of a general addressing his army on the eve of a well-nigh
+desperate enterprise: "Pluck up your spirits--trust in God, in me,
+and yourselves; with this, was you put to it, you would encounter all
+these difficulties ten times told. Write instantly, and tell me you
+triumph over all fears--tell me Lydia is better, and a help-mate to
+you. You say she grows like me: let her show me she does so in her
+contempt of small dangers, and fighting against the apprehensions of
+them, which is better still."
+
+At last this anxiously awaited journey was taken; and, on Thursday,
+July 7, Mrs. Sterne and her daughter arrived in Paris. Their stay
+there was not long--not much extended, probably, beyond the proposed
+week. For Sterne's health had, some ten days before the arrival of his
+family, again given him warning to depart quickly. He had but a few
+weeks recovered from the fever of which he spoke in his letter to
+the Archbishop, when he again broke a blood-vessel in his lungs. It
+happened in the night, and "finding in the morning that I was likely
+to bleed to death, I sent immediately," he says, in a sentence which
+quaintly brings out the paradox of contemporary medical treatment,
+"for a surgeon to bleed me at both arms. This saved me"--_i.e._ did
+not kill me--"and, with lying speechless three days, I recovered upon
+my back in bed: the breach healed, and in a week after I got out."
+But the weakness which ensued, and the subsequent "hurrying about," no
+doubt as cicerone of Parisian sights to his wife and daughter, "made
+me think it high time to haste to Toulouse." Accordingly, about the
+20th of the month, and "in the midst of such heats that the oldest
+Frenchman never remembers the like," the party set off by way of Lyons
+and Montpellier for their Pyrenean destination. Their journey seems to
+have been a journey of many mischances, extraordinary discomfort, and
+incredible length; and it is not till the second week in August that
+we again take up the broken thread of his correspondence. Writing to
+Mr. Foley, his banker in Paris, on the 14th of that month, he speaks
+of its having taken him three weeks to reach Toulouse; and adds that
+"in our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain
+to remember it. I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as
+broad as a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted,
+grilled, stewed, carbonaded, on one side or other, all the way: and
+being all done through (_assez cuits_) in the day, we were eat up at
+night by bugs and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants, if
+length of possession give right, at every inn on the way." A few miles
+from Beaucaire he broke a hind wheel of his carriage, and was obliged
+in consequence "to sit five hours on a gravelly road without one
+drop of water, or possibility of getting any;" and here, to mend the
+matter, he was cursed with "two dough-hearted fools" for postilions,
+who "fell a-crying 'nothing was to be done!'" and could only be
+recalled to a worthier and more helpful mood by Sterne's "pulling off
+his coat and waistcoat," and "threatening to thrash them both within
+an inch of their lives."
+
+The longest journey, however, must come to an end; and the party found
+much to console them at Toulouse for the miseries of travel. They were
+fortunate enough to secure one of those large, old comfortable houses
+which were and, here and there, perhaps, still are to be hired on the
+outskirts of provincial towns, at a rent which would now be thought
+absurdly small; and Sterne writes in terms of high complacency of
+his temporary abode. "Excellent," "well furnished," "elegant beyond
+anything I ever looked for," are some of the expressions of praise
+which it draws from him. He observes with pride that the "very great
+_salle à compagnie_ is as large as Baron d'Holbach's;" and he records
+with great satisfaction--as well he might--that for the use of this
+and a country house two miles out of town, "besides the enjoyment of
+gardens, which the landlord engaged to keep in order," he was to pay
+no more than thirty pounds a year. "All things," he adds, "are cheap
+in proportion: so we shall live here for a very, very little."
+
+And this, no doubt, was to Sterne a matter of some moment at this
+time. The expenses of his long and tedious journey must have been
+heavy; and the gold-yielding vein of literary popularity, which he
+had for three years been working, had already begun to show signs of
+exhaustion. _Tristram Shandy_ had lost its first vogue; and the fifth
+and sixth volumes, the copyright of which he does not seem to have
+disposed of, were "going off" but slowly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+LIFE IN THE SOUTH.--RETURN TO ENGLAND.--VOLS. VII. AND VIII.--SECOND
+SET OF SERMONS.
+
+(1762-1765.)
+
+The diminished appetite of the public for the humours of Mr. Shandy
+and his brother is, perhaps, not very difficult to understand. Time
+was simply doing its usual wholesome work in sifting the false from
+the true--in ridding Sterne's audience of its contingent of sham
+admirers. This is not to say, of course, that there might not have
+been other and better grounds for a partial withdrawal of popular
+favour. A writer who systematically employs Sterne's peculiar methods
+must lay his account with undeserved loss as well as with unmerited
+gain. The fifth and sixth volumes deal quite largely enough in mere
+eccentricity to justify the distaste of any reader upon whom mere
+eccentricity had begun to pall. But if this were the sole explanation
+of the book's declining popularity, we should have to admit that the
+adverse judgment of the public had been delayed too long for justice,
+and had passed over the worst to light upon the less heinous offences.
+For the third volume, though its earlier pages contain some good
+touches, drifts away into mere dull, uncleanly equivoque in its
+concluding chapters; and the fifth and sixth volumes may, at any rate,
+quite safely challenge favourable comparison with the fourth--the
+poorest, I venture to think, of the whole series. There is nothing
+in these two later volumes to compare, for instance, with that most
+wearisome exercise in _double entendre_, Slawkenbergius's Tale;
+nothing to match that painfully elaborate piece of low comedy, the
+consultation of philosophers and its episode of Phutatorius's mishap
+with the hot chestnut; no such persistent resort, in short, to those
+mechanical methods of mirth-making upon which Sterne, throughout a
+great part of the fourth volume, almost exclusively relies. The humour
+of the fifth is, to a far larger extent, of the creative and dramatic
+order; the ever-delightful collision of intellectual incongruities in
+the persons of the two brothers Shandy gives animation to the volume
+almost from beginning to end. The arrival of the news of Bobby
+Shandy's death, and the contrast of its reception by the philosophic
+father and the simple-minded uncle, form a scene of inimitable
+absurdity, and the "Tristrapaedia," with its ingenious project for
+opening up innumerable "tracks of inquiry" before the mind of the
+pupil by sheer skill in the manipulation of the auxiliary verbs, is
+in the author's happiest vein. The sixth volume, again, which contains
+the irresistible dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Shandy on the great
+question of the "breeching of Tristram," and the much-admired, if not
+wholly admirable, episode of Le Fevre's death, is fully entitled to
+rank beside its predecessors. On the whole, therefore, it must be said
+that the colder reception accorded to this instalment of the novel,
+as compared with the previous one, can hardly be justified on sound
+critical grounds. But that literary shortcomings were not, in fact,
+the cause of _Tristram's_ declining popularity may be confidently
+inferred from the fact that the seventh volume, with its admirably
+vivid and spirited scenes of Continental travel, and the eighth and
+ninth, with their charming narrative of Captain Shandy's love affair,
+were but slightly more successful. The readers whom this, the third
+instalment of the novel, had begun to repel, were mainly, I imagine,
+those who had never felt any intelligent admiration for the former;
+who had been caught by the writer's eccentricity, without appreciating
+his insight into character and his graphic power, and who had seen no
+other aspects of his humour than those buffooneries and puerilities
+which, after first amusing, had begun, in the natural course of
+things, to weary them.
+
+Meanwhile, however, and with spirits restored by the Southern warmth
+to that buoyancy which never long deserted them, Sterne had begun to
+set to work upon a new volume. His letters show that this was not
+the seventh but the eighth; and Mr. Fitzgerald's conjecture, that
+the materials ultimately given to the world in the former volume were
+originally designed for another work, appears exceedingly probable.
+But for some time after his arrival at Toulouse he was unable, it
+would seem, to resume his literary labours in any form. Ever liable,
+through his weakly constitution, to whatever local maladies might
+anywhere prevail, he had fallen ill, he writes to Hall Stevenson, "of
+an epidemic vile fever which killed hundreds about me. The physicians
+here," he adds, "are the arrantest charlatans in Europe, or the most
+ignorant of all pretending fools. I withdrew what was left of me out
+of their hands, and recommended my affairs entirely to Dame Nature.
+She (dear goddess) has saved me in fifty different pinching bouts, and
+I begin to have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favour and my own, so
+that one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall leave you
+all at last by translation, and not by fair death." Having now become
+"stout and foolish again as a man can wish to be, I am," he says,
+"busy playing the fool with my Uncle Toby, whom I have got soused over
+head and ears in love." Now, it is not till the eighth volume that
+the Widow Wadman begins to weave her spells around Captain Shandy's
+ingenuous heart; while the seventh volume is mainly composed of that
+series of travel-pictures in which Sterne has manifestly recorded
+his own impressions of Northern France in the person of the youthful
+Tristram. It is scarcely doubtful, therefore, that it is these
+sketches, and the use which he then proposed to make of them, that
+he refers to, when speaking in this letter of "hints and projects
+for other works." Originally intended to form a part of the volume
+afterwards published as the _Sentimental Journey_, it was found
+necessary--under pressure, it is to be supposed, of insufficient
+matter--to work them up instead into an interpolated seventh volume
+of _Tristram Shandy_. At the moment, however, he no doubt as little
+foresaw this as he did the delay which was to take place before any
+continuation of the novel appeared. He clearly contemplated no very
+long absence from England. "When I have reaped the benefit of the
+winter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have anything more to do with it.
+Therefore, after having gone with my wife and girl to Bagnères, I
+shall return from whence I came." Already, however, one can perceive
+signs of his having too presumptuously marked out his future. "My
+wife wants to stay another year, to save money; and this opposition of
+wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 'twill not be as
+sweet as sugar." And again: "If the snows will suffer me, I propose to
+spend two or three months at Barége or Bagnères; but my dear wife is
+against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity
+(though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer--though,
+by-the-bye, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will go my own way,
+and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who
+can say so much in praise of his wife? Few, I trow." The tone of
+contemptuous amiability shows pretty clearly that the relations
+between husband and wife had in nowise improved. But wives do not
+always lose all their influence over husbands' wills along with the
+power over their affections; and it will be seen that Sterne did _not_
+make his projected winter trip to Bagnères, and that he did remain
+at Toulouse for a considerable part of the second year for which Mrs.
+Sterne desired to prolong their stay. The place, however, was not to
+his taste; and he was not the first traveller in France who, delighted
+with the gaiety of Paris, has been disappointed at finding that French
+provincial towns can be as dull as dulness itself could require. It is
+in the somewhat unjust mood which is commonly begotten of disillusion
+that Sterne discovers the cause of his _ennui_ in "the eternal
+platitude of the French character," with its "little variety and no
+originality at all." "They are very civil," he admits, "but civility
+itself so thus uniform wearies and bothers me to death. If I do
+not mind I shall grow most stupid and sententious." With such
+apprehensions it is not surprising that he should have eagerly
+welcomed any distraction that chance might offer, and in December we
+find him joyfully informing his chief correspondent of the period,
+Mr. Foley--who to his services as Sterne's banker seems to have added
+those of a most helpful and trusted friend--that "there are a company
+of English strollers arrived here who are to act comedies all the
+Christmas, and are now busy in making dresses and preparing some of
+our best comedies." These so-called strollers were, in fact, certain
+members of the English colony in Toulouse, and their performances were
+among the first of those "amateur theatrical" entertainments which
+now-a-days may be said to rival the famous "morning drum-beat" of
+Daniel Webster's oration, in marking the ubiquity of British boredom,
+as the _reveil_ does that of British power over all the terrestrial
+globe. "The next week," writes Sterne, "with a grand orchestra, we
+play _The Busybody_, and the _Journey to London_ the week after; but
+I have some thought of adapting it to our situation, and making it the
+_Journey to Toulouse_, which, with the change of half-a-dozen scenes,
+may be easily done. Thus, my dear Foley, for want of something better
+we have recourse to ourselves, and strike out the best amusements we
+can from such materials." "Recourse to ourselves," however, means,
+in strict accuracy, "recourse to each other;" and when the amateur
+players had played themselves out, and exhausted their powers of
+contributing to each others' amusement, it is probable that
+"recourse to ourselves," in the exact sense of the phrase, was found
+ineffective--in Sterne's case, at any rate--to stave off _ennui_.
+To him, with his copiously if somewhat oddly furnished mind, and his
+natural activity of imagination, one could hardly apply the line of
+Persius,
+
+  "Tecum habita et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex;"
+
+but it is yet evident enough that Sterne's was one of that numerous
+order of intellects which are the convivial associates, rather than
+the fireside companions, of their owners, and which, when deprived
+of the stimulus of external excitement, are apt to become very dull
+company indeed. Nor does he seem to have obtained much diversion of
+mind from his literary work--a form of intellectual enjoyment which,
+indeed, more often presupposes than begets good spirits in such
+temperaments as his. He declares, it is true, that he "sports much
+with my Uncle Toby" in the volume which he is now "fabricating for the
+laughing part of the world;" but if so he must have sported only after
+a very desultory and dilatory fashion. On the whole one cannot escape
+a very strong impression that Sterne was heartily bored by his sojourn
+in Toulouse, and that he eagerly longed for the day of his return to
+"the dalliance and the wit, the flattery and the strife," which he had
+left behind him in the two great capitals in which he had shone.
+
+His stay, however, was destined to be very prolonged. The winter of
+1762 went by, and the succeeding year had run nearly half its course,
+before he changed his quarters. "The first week in June," he writes in
+April to Mr. Foley, "I decamp like a patriarch, with all my household,
+to pitch our tents for three months at the foot of the Pyrenean hills
+at Bagnères, where I expect much health and much amusement from all
+corners of the earth." He talked too at this time of spending the
+winter at Florence, and, after a visit to Leghorn, returning home the
+following April by way of Paris; "but this," he adds, "is a sketch
+only," and it remained only a sketch. Toulouse, however, he was in
+any case resolved to quit. He should not, he said, be tempted to spend
+another winter there. It did not suit his health, as he had hoped: he
+complained that it was too moist, and that he could not keep clear of
+ague. In June, 1763, he quitted it finally for Bagnères; whence after
+a short, and, as we subsequently learn, a disappointed, sojourn, he
+passed on to Marseilles, and later to Aix, for both of which places
+he expressed dislike; and by October he had gone again into winter
+quarters at Montpellier, where "my wife and daughter," he writes,
+"purpose to stay at least a year behind me." His own intention was to
+set out in February for England, "where my heart has been fled these
+six months." Here again, however, there are traces of that periodic,
+or rather, perhaps, that chronic conflict of inclination between
+himself and Mrs. Sterne, of which he speaks with such a tell-tale
+affectation of philosophy. "My wife," he writes in January, "returns
+to Toulouse, and proposes to spend the summer at Bagnères. I, on the
+contrary, go to visit my wife the church in Yorkshire. We all live the
+longer, at least the happier, for having things our own way. This is
+my conjugal maxim. I own 'tis not the best of maxims, but I maintain
+'tis not the worst." It was natural enough that Sterne, at any rate,
+should wish to turn his back on Montpellier. Again had the unlucky
+invalid been attacked by a dangerous illness; the "sharp air" of the
+place disagreed with him, and his physicians, after having him under
+their hands more than a month, informed him coolly that if he stayed
+any longer in Montpellier it would be fatal to him. How soon after
+that somewhat late warning he took his departure there is no record
+to show; but it is not till the middle of May that we find him writing
+from Paris to his daughter. And since he there announces his intention
+of leaving for England in a few days, it is a probable conjecture that
+he had arrived at the French capital some fortnight or so before.
+
+His short stay in Paris was marked by two incidents--trifling in
+themselves, but too characteristic of the man to be omitted. Lord
+Hertford, the British Ambassador, had just taken a magnificent hotel
+in Paris, and Sterne was asked to preach the first sermon in its
+chapel. The message was brought him, he writes, "when I was playing
+a sober game of whist with Mr. Thornhill; and whether I was called
+abruptly from my afternoon amusement to prepare myself for the
+business on the next day, or from what other cause, I do not pretend
+to determine; but that unlucky kind of fit seized me which you know
+I am never able to resist, and a very unlucky text did come into my
+head." The text referred to was 2 Kings XX. 15--Hezekiah's admission
+of that ostentatious display of the treasures of his palace to the
+ambassadors of Babylon for which Isaiah rebuked him by prophesying the
+Babylonian captivity of Judah. Nothing, indeed, as Sterne protests,
+could have been more innocent than the discourse which he founded
+upon the _mal-à-propos_ text; but still it was unquestionably a fair
+subject for "chaff," and the preacher was rallied upon it by no less
+a person than David Hume. Gossip having magnified this into a dispute
+between the parson and the philosopher, Sterne disposes of the idle
+story in a passage deriving an additional interest from its tribute to
+that sweet disposition which had an equal charm for two men so utterly
+unlike as the author of _Tristram Shandy_ and the author of the
+_Wealth of Nations_. "I should," he writes, "be exceedingly surprised
+to hear that David ever had an unpleasant contention with any man; and
+if I should ever be made to believe that such an event had happened,
+nothing would persuade me that his opponent was not in the wrong, for
+in my life did I never meet with a being of a more placid and gentle
+nature; and it is this amiable turn of his character which has given
+more consequence and force to his scepticism than all the arguments of
+his sophistry." The real truth of the matter was that, meeting Sterne
+at Lord Hertford's table on the day when he had preached at the
+Embassy Chapel, "David was disposed to make a little merry with the
+parson, and in return the parson was equally disposed to make a little
+merry with the infidel. We laughed at one another, and the company
+laughed with us both." It would be absurd, of course, to identify
+Sterne's latitudinarian _bonhomie_ with the higher order of tolerance;
+but many a more confirmed and notorious Gallio than the clerical
+humourist would have assumed prudish airs of orthodoxy in such a
+presence, and the incident, if it does not raise one's estimate of
+Sterne's dignity, displays him to us as laudably free from hypocrisy.
+
+But the long holiday of somewhat dull travel, with its short last act
+of social gaiety, was drawing to a close. In the third or fourth week
+of May Sterne quitted Paris; and after a stay of a few weeks in London
+he returned to the Yorkshire parsonage, from which he had been absent
+some thirty months.
+
+Unusually long as was the interval which had elapsed since the
+publication of the last instalment of _Tristram Shandy_, the new one
+was far from ready; and even in the "sweet retirement" of Coxwold
+he seems to have made but slow progress with it. Indeed, the "sweet
+retirement" itself became soon a little tedious to him. The month of
+September found him already bored with work and solitude; and the fine
+autumn weather of 1764 set him longing for a few days' pleasure-making
+at what was even then the fashionable Yorkshire watering-place. "I
+do not think," he writes, with characteristic incoherence, to Hall
+Stevenson--"I do not think a week or ten days' playing the good fellow
+(at this very time) so abominable a thing; but if a man could get
+there cleverly, and every soul in his house in the mind to try what
+could be done in furtherance thereof, I have no one to consult in
+these affairs. Therefore, as a man may do worse things, the plain
+English of all which is, that I am going to leave a few poor sheep in
+the wilderness for fourteen days, and from pride and naughtiness
+of heart to go see what is doing at Scarborough, steadfully meaning
+afterwards to lead a new life and strengthen my faith. Now, some folks
+say there is much company there, and some say not; and I believe there
+is neither the one nor the other, but will be both if the world will
+have patience for a month or so." Of his work he has not much to say:
+"I go on not rapidly but well enough with my Uncle Toby's amours.
+There is no sitting and cudgelling one's brains whilst the sun shines
+bright. 'Twill be all over in six or seven weeks; and there are dismal
+weeks enow after to endure suffocation by a brimstone fireside." He
+was anxious that his boon companion should join him at Scarborough;
+but that additional pleasure was denied him, and he had to content
+himself with the usual gay society of the place. Three weeks, it
+seems, were passed by him in this most doubtfully judicious form of
+bodily and mental relaxation--weeks which he spent, he afterwards
+writes, in "drinking the waters, and receiving from them marvellous
+strength, had I not debilitated it as fast as I got it by playing
+the good fellow with Lord Granby and Co. too much." By the end of the
+month he was back again at Coxwold, "returned to my Philosophical Hut
+to finish _Tristram_, which I calculate will be ready for the
+world about Christmas, at which time I decamp from hence and fix
+my headquarters at London for the winter, unless my cough pushes me
+forward to your metropolis" (he is writing to Foley, in Paris), "or
+that I can persuade some _gros milord_ to make a trip to you."
+Again, too, in this letter we get another glimpse at that thoroughly
+desentimentalized "domestic interior" which the sentimentalist's
+household had long presented to the view. Writing to request a
+remittance of money to Mrs. Sterne at Montauban--a duty which, to do
+him justice, he seems to have very watchfully observed--Sterne adds
+his solicitation to Mr. Foley to "do something equally essential to
+rectify a mistake in the mind of your correspondent there, who, it
+seems, gave her a hint not long ago 'that she was separated from me
+for life.' Now, as this is not true, in the first place, and may fix a
+disadvantageous impression of her to those she lives amongst, 'twould
+be unmerciful to let her or my daughter suffer by it. So do be so good
+as to undeceive him; for in a year or two she purposes (and I expect
+it with impatience from her) to rejoin me."
+
+Early in November the two new volumes of _Shandy_ began to approach
+completion; for by this time Sterne had already made up his mind to
+interpolate these notes of his French travels, which now do duty as
+Vol. VII. "You will read," he tells Foley, "as odd a tour through
+France as was ever projected or executed by traveller or travel-writer
+since the world began. 'Tis a laughing, good-tempered satire upon
+travelling--as _puppies_ travel." By the 16th of the month he had
+"finished my two volumes of _Tristram_," and looked to be in London at
+Christmas, "whence I have some thoughts of going to Italy this year.
+At least I shall not defer it above another." On the 26th of January,
+1765, the two new volumes were given to the world.
+
+Shorter in length than any of the preceding instalments, and filled
+out as it was, even so, by a process of what would now be called
+"book-making," this issue will yet bear comparison, I think, with the
+best of its predecessors. Its sketches of travel, though destined
+to be surpassed in vigour and freedom of draftsmanship by the
+_Sentimental Journey_, are yet excellent, and their very obvious want
+of connexion with the story--if story it can be called--is so little
+felt that we almost resent the head-and-ears introduction of Mr.
+Shandy and his brother, and the Corporal, in apparent concession to
+the popular prejudice in favour of some sort of coherence between
+the various parts of a narrative. The first seventeen chapters are,
+perhaps, as freshly delightful reading as anything in Sterne. They are
+literally filled and brimming over with the exhilaration of travel:
+written, or at least prepared for writing, we can clearly see, under
+the full intoxicant effect which a bewildering succession of new
+sights and sounds will produce, in a certain measure, upon the coolest
+of us, and which would set a head like Sterne's in an absolute whirl.
+The contagion of his high spirits is, however, irresistible; and,
+putting aside all other and more solid qualities in them, these
+chapters are, for mere fun--for that kind of clever nonsense which
+only wins by perfect spontaneity, and which so promptly makes ashamed
+the moment spontaneity fails--unsurpassed by anything of the same kind
+from the same hand. How strange, then, that, with so keen an eye for
+the humorous, so sound and true a judgment in the highest qualities of
+humour, Sterne should think it possible for any one who has outgrown
+what may be called the dirty stage of boyhood to smile at the story
+which begins a few chapters afterwards--that of the Abbess and Novice
+of the Convent of Andouillets! The adult male person is not so much
+shocked at the coarseness of this story as astounded at the bathos of
+its introduction. It is as though some matchless connoisseur in wine,
+after having a hundred times demonstrated the unerring discrimination
+of his palate for the finest brands, should then produce some vile and
+loaded compound, and invite us to drink it with all the relish with
+which he seems to be swallowing it himself. This story of the Abbess
+and Novice almost impels us to turn back to certain earlier chapters,
+or former volumes, and re-examine some of the subtler passages of
+humour to be found there--in downright apprehension lest we should
+turn out to have read these "good things," not "in," but "into," our
+author. The bad wine is so very bad, that we catch ourselves wondering
+whether the finer brands were genuine, when we see the same palate
+equally satisfied with both. But one should, of course, add that it
+is only in respect of its supposed humour that this story shakes
+its readers' faith in the gifts of the narrator. As a mere piece of
+story-telling, and even as a study in landscape and figure-painting,
+it is quite perversely skilful. There is something almost irritating,
+as a waste of powers on unworthy material, in the prettiness of the
+picture which Sterne draws of the preparations for the departure
+of the two _religieuses_--the stir in the simple village, the
+co-operating labours of the gardener and the tailor, the carpenter and
+the smith, and all those other little details which bring the whole
+scene before the eye so vividly that Sterne may, perhaps, in
+all seriousness, and not merely as a piece of his characteristic
+persiflage, have thrown in the exclamation, "I declare I am interested
+in this story, and wish I had been there." Nothing, again, could be
+better done than the sketch of the little good-natured, "broad-set"
+gardener, who acted as the ladies' muleteer, and the recital of the
+indiscretions by which he was betrayed into temporary desertion of his
+duties. The whole scene is Chaucerian in its sharpness of outline
+and translucency of atmosphere: though there, unfortunately, the
+resemblance ends. Sterne's manner of saying what we now leave unsaid
+is as unlike Chaucer's, and as unlike for the worse, as it can
+possibly be.
+
+Still, a certain amount of this element of the _non nominandum_ must
+be compounded for, one regrets to say, in nearly every chapter that
+Sterne ever wrote; and there is certainly less than the average amount
+of it in the seventh volume. Then, again, this volume contains the
+famous scene with the ass--the live and genuinely touching, and not
+the dead and fictitiously pathetic, animal; and that perfect piece of
+comic dialogue--the interview between the puzzled English traveller
+and the French commissary of the posts. To have suggested this scene
+is, perhaps, the sole claim of the absurd fiscal system of the _Ancien
+régime_ upon the grateful remembrance of the world. A scheme of
+taxation which exacted posting-charges from a traveller who proposed
+to continue his journey by water, possesses a natural ingredient of
+drollery infused into its mere vexatiousness; but a whole volume of
+satire could hardly put its essential absurdity in a stronger
+light than is thrown upon it in the short conversation between the
+astonished Tristram and the officer of the fisc, who had just handed
+him a little bill for six livres four sous:
+
+  "'Upon what account?' said I.
+
+  "''Tis upon the part of the King,' said the commissary, heaving
+  up his shoulders.
+
+  "'My good friend,' quoth I, 'as sure as I am I, and you are you--'
+
+  "'And who are you?' he said.
+
+  "'Don't puzzle me,' said I. 'But it is an indubitable verity,' I
+  continued, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the
+  form of my asseveration,' that I owe the King of France nothing but
+  my good-will, for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all the health
+  and pastime in the world.'
+
+  "'Pardonnez-moi,' replied the commissary. 'You are indebted to
+  him six livres four sous for the next post from hence to St. Fons, on
+  your route to Avignon, which being a post royal, you pay double for
+  the horses and postilion, otherwise 'twould have amounted to no more
+  than three livres two sous.'
+
+  "'But I don't go by land,' said I.
+
+  "'You may if you please,' replied the commissary.
+
+  "'Your most obedient servant,' said I, making him a low bow.
+
+  "The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good-breeding,
+  made me one as low again. I never was more disconcerted by a bow
+  in my life. 'The devil take the serious character of these people,'
+  said I, aside; 'they understand no more of irony than this.' The
+  comparison was standing close by with her panniers, but something
+  sealed up my lips. I could not pronounce the name.
+
+  "'Sir,' said I, collecting myself, 'it is not my intention to take
+  post.'
+
+  "'But you may,' said he, persisting in his first reply. 'You may
+  if you choose.'
+
+  "'And I may take salt to my pickled herring if I choose.[1] But I
+  do not choose.'
+
+  "'But you must pay for it, whether you do or no.'
+
+  "'Ay, for the salt,' said I, 'I know.'
+
+  "'And for the post, too,' added he.
+
+  "'Defend me!' cried I. 'I travel by water. I am going down the
+  Rhone this very afternoon; my baggage is in the boat, and I have
+  actually paid nine livres for my passage.'
+
+  "'C'est tout égal--'tis all one,' said he.
+
+  "'Bon Dieu! What! pay for the way I go and for the way I do
+  not go?'
+
+  "'C'est tout égal,' replied the commissary.
+
+  "'The devil it is!' said I. 'But I will go to ten thousand Bastilles
+  first. O, England! England! thou land of liberty and climate of
+  good-sense! thou tenderest of mothers and gentlest of nurses!' cried
+  I, kneeling upon one knee as I was beginning my apostrophe--when
+  the director of Madame L. Blanc's conscience coming in at that instant,
+  and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at
+  his devotions, asked if I stood in want of the aids of the Church.
+
+  "'I go by water,' said I, 'and here's another will be for making
+  me pay for going by oil.'"
+
+[Footnote 1: It is the penalty--I suppose the just penalty--paid by
+habitually extravagant humourists, that _meaning_ not being always
+expected of them, it is not always sought by their readers with
+sufficient care. Anyhow, it may be suspected that this retort of
+Tristram's is too often passed over as a mere random absurdity
+designed for his interlocutor's mystification, and that its extremely
+felicitous pertinence to the question in dispute is thus overlooked.
+The point of it, of course, is that the business in which the
+commissary was then engaged was precisely analogous to that of
+exacting salt dues from perverse persons who were impoverishing the
+revenue by possessing herrings already pickled.]
+
+The commissary, of course, remains obdurate, and Tristram protests
+that the treatment to which he is being subjected is "contrary to the
+law of nature, contrary to reason, contrary to the Gospel:"
+
+  "'But not to this,' said he, putting a printed paper into my hand.
+
+  "'De par le Roi.' ''Tis a pithy prolegomenon,' quoth I, and so
+  read on.... 'By all which it appears,' quoth I, having read it over
+  a little too rapidly, 'that if a man sets out in a post-chaise for Paris,
+  he must go on travelling in one all the days of his life, or pay for it.'
+
+  "'Excuse me,' said the commissary, 'the spirit of the ordinance is
+  this, that if you set out with an intention of running post from Paris
+  to Avignon, &c., you shall not change that intention or mode of
+  travelling without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further
+  than the place you repent at; and 'tis founded,' continued he, 'upon
+  this, that the revenues are not to fall short through your fickleness.'
+
+  "'O, by heavens!' cried I, 'if fickleness is taxable in France, we
+  have nothing to do but to make the best peace we can.'
+
+  "And so the peace was made."
+
+
+And the volume ends with the dance of villagers on "the road between
+Nismes and Lunel, where is the best Muscatto wine in all France"--that
+charming little idyll which won the unwilling admiration of the least
+friendly of Sterne's critics.[1]
+
+With the close of this volume the shadowy Tristram disappears
+altogether from the scene; and even the clearly-sketched figures of
+Mr. and Mrs. Shandy recede somewhat into the background. The courtship
+of my Uncle Toby forms the whole _motif_ and indeed almost the entire
+substance, of the next volume. Of this famous episode in the novel a
+great deal has been said and written, and much of the praise
+bestowed upon it is certainly deserved. The artful coquetries of the
+fascinating widow, and the gradual capitulation of the Captain, are
+studied with admirable power of humorous insight, and described with
+infinite grace and skill. But there is, perhaps, no episode in the
+novel which brings out what may be called the perversity of Sterne's
+animalism in a more exasperating way. It is not so much the amount
+of this element as the time, place, and manner in which it makes its
+presence felt. The senses must, of course, play their part in all
+love affairs, except those of the angels--or the triangles; and such
+writers as Byron, for instance, are quite free from the charge of
+over-spiritualizing their description of the passion. Yet one might
+safely say that there is far less to repel a healthy mind in the
+poet's account of the amour of Juan and Haidee than is to be found in
+many a passage in this volume. It is not merely that one is the poetry
+and the other the prose of the sexual passion: the distinction goes
+deeper, and points to a fundamental difference of attitude towards
+their subject in the two writers' minds.
+
+The success of this instalment of _Tristram Shandy_ appears to have
+been slightly greater than that of the preceding one. Writing from
+London, where he was once more basking in the sunshine of social
+popularity, to Garrick, then in Paris, he says (March 16, 1765): "I
+have had a lucrative campaign here. _Shandy_ sells well," and "I am
+taxing the public with two more volumes of sermons, which will more
+than double the gains of _Shandy_. It goes into the world with a
+prancing list _de toute la noblesse_, which will bring me in three
+hundred pounds, exclusive of the sale of the copy." The list was,
+indeed, extensive and distinguished enough to justify the curious
+epithet which he applies to it; but the cavalcade of noble names
+continued to "prance" for some considerable time without advancing.
+Yet he had good reasons, according to his own account, for wishing to
+push on their publication. His parsonage-house at Button had just been
+burnt down through the carelessness of one of his curate's household,
+with a loss to Sterne of some 350_l._ "As soon as I can," he says, "I
+must rebuild it, but I lack the means at present." Nevertheless, the
+new sermons continued to hang fire. Again, in April he describes the
+subscription list as "the most splendid list which ever pranced before
+a book since subscription came into fashion;" but though the volumes
+which it was to usher into the world were then spoken of as about to
+be printed "very soon," he has again in July to write of them only
+as "forthcoming in September, though I fear not in time to bring them
+with me" to Paris. And, as a matter of fact, they do not seem to have
+made their appearance until after Sterne had quitted England on his
+second and last Continental journey. The full subscription list may
+have had the effect of relaxing his energies; but the subscribers had
+no reason to complain when, in 1766, the volumes at last appeared.
+
+The reception given to the first batch of sermons which Sterne had
+published was quite favourable enough to encourage a repetition of the
+experiment. He was shrewd enough, however, to perceive that on
+this second occasion a somewhat different sort of article would be
+required. In the first flush of _Tristram Shandy's_ success, and in
+the first piquancy of the contrast between the grave profession of the
+writer and the unbounded license of the book, he could safely reckon
+on as large and curious a public for _any_ sermons whatever from the
+pen of Mr. Yorick. There was no need that the humourist in his pulpit
+should at all resemble the humourist at his desk, or, indeed, that
+he should be in any way an impressive or commanding figure. The great
+desire of the world was to know what he _did_ resemble in this new
+and incongruous position. Men wished to see what the queer, sly face
+looked like over a velvet cushion, in the assurance that the sight
+would be a strange and interesting one, at any rate. Five years
+afterwards, however, the case was different. The public then had
+already had one set of sermons, and had discovered that the humorous
+Mr. Sterne was not a very different man in the pulpit from the dullest
+and most decorous of his brethren. Such discoveries as these are
+instructive to make, but not attractive to dwell upon; and Sterne was
+fully alive to the probability that there would be no great demand for
+a volume of sermons which should only illustrate for the second time
+the fact that he could be as commonplace as his neighbour. He saw that
+in future the Rev. Mr. Yorick must a little more resemble the author
+of _Tristram Shandy,_ and it is not improbable that from 1760 onwards
+he composed his parochial sermons with especial attention to this mode
+of qualifying them for republication. There is, at any rate, no slight
+critical difficulty in believing that the bulk of the sermons of 1766
+can be assigned to the same literary period as the sermons of 1761.
+The one set seems as manifestly to belong to the post-Shandian as
+the other does to the pre-Shandian era; and in some, indeed, of
+the apparently later productions the daring quaintness of style and
+illustration is carried so far that, except for the fact that Sterne
+had no time to spare for the composition of sermons not intended for
+professional use, one would have been disposed to believe that they
+neither were nor were meant to be delivered from the pulpit at all.[1]
+Throughout all of them, however, Sterne's new-found literary power
+displays itself in a vigour of expression and vivacity of illustration
+which at least serve to make the sermons of 1766 considerably more
+entertaining reading than those of 1761. In the first of the latter
+series, for instance--the sermon on Shimei--a discourse in which there
+are no very noticeable sallies of unclerical humour, the quality of
+liveliness is very conspicuously present. The preacher's view of the
+character of Shimei, and of his behaviour to David, is hardly that,
+perhaps, of a competent historical critic, and in treating of the
+Benjamite's insults to the King of Israel he appears to take no
+account of the blood-feud between the house of David and the clan
+to which the railer belonged; just as in commenting on Shimei's
+subsequent and most abject submission to the victorious monarch,
+Sterne lays altogether too much stress upon conduct which is
+indicative, not so much of any exceptional meanness of disposition,
+as of the ordinary suppleness of the Oriental put in fear of his life.
+However, it makes a more piquant and dramatic picture to represent
+Shimei as a type of the wretch of insolence and servility compact,
+with a tongue ever ready to be loosed against the unfortunate, and a
+knee ever ready to be bent to the strong. And thus he moralizes on his
+conception:
+
+[Footnote 1: Mr. Fitzgerald, indeed, asserts as a fact that some
+at least of these sermons were actually composed in the capacity
+of _littérateur_ and not of divine--for the press and not for the
+pulpit.]
+
+  "There is not a character in the world which has so bad an influence
+  upon it as this of Shimei. While power meets with honest
+  checks, and the evils of life with honest refuge, the world will never
+  be undone; but thou, Shimei, hast sapped it at both extremes: for
+  thou corruptest prosperity, and 'tis thou who hast broken the heart
+  of poverty. And so long as worthless spirits can be ambitious ones
+  'tis a character we never shall want. Oh! it infests the court, the
+  camp, the cabinet; it infests the Church. Go where you will, in
+  every quarter, in every profession, you see a Shimei following the
+  wheels of the fortunate through thick mire and clay. Haste, Shimei,
+  haste! or thou wilt be undone forever. Shimei girdeth up his loins
+  and speedeth after him. Behold the hand which governs everything
+  takes the wheel from his chariot, so that he who driveth, driveth on
+  heavily. Shimei doubles his speed; but 'tis the contrary way: he flies
+  like the wind over a sandy desert.... Stay, Shimei! 'tis your patron,
+  your friend, your benefactor, the man who has saved you from the
+  dunghill. 'Tis all one to Shimei. Shimei is the barometer of every
+  man's fortune; marks the rise and fall of it, with all the variations
+  from scorching hot to freezing cold upon his countenance that the
+  simile will admit of.[1] Is a cloud upon thy affairs? See, it hangs
+  over Shimei's brow! Hast thou been spoken for to the king or the
+  captain of the host without success? Look not into the Court Calendar,
+  the vacancy is filled in Shimei's face. Art thou in debt, though
+  not to Shimei? No matter. The worst officer of the law shall not
+  be more insolent. What, then, Shimei, is the fault of poverty so
+  black? is it of so general concern that thou and all thy family must
+  rise up as one man to reproach it? When it lost everything, did it
+  lose the right to pity too? Or did he who maketh poor as well as
+  maketh rich strip it of its natural powers to mollify the heart and
+  supple the temper of your race? Trust me you have much to answer
+  for. It is this treatment which it has ever met with from spirits
+  like yours which has gradually taught the world to look upon it
+  as the greatest of evils, and shun it as the worst disgrace. And what
+  is it, I beseech you--what is it that men will not do to keep clear of
+  so sore an imputation and punishment? Is it not to fly from this
+  that he rises early, late takes rest, and eats the bread of carefulness?
+  that he plots, contrives, swears, lies, shuffles, puts on all shapes,
+  tries all garments, wears them with this or that side outward, just as
+  it may favour his escape?"
+
+And though the sermon ends in orthodox fashion, with an assurance
+that, in spite of the Shimeis by whom we are surrounded, it is in
+our power to "lay the foundation of our peace (where it ought to be)
+within our own hearts," yet the preacher can, in the midst of his
+earlier reflections, permit himself the quaintly pessimistic outburst:
+"O Shimei! would to Heaven, when thou wast slain, that all thy family
+had been slain with thee, and not one of thy resemblance left! But
+ye have multiplied exceedingly, and replenished the earth; and if I
+prophesy rightly, ye will in the end subdue it."
+
+[Footnote 1: Which are not many in the case of a _barometer_.]
+
+Nowhere, however, does the man of the world reveal himself with more
+strangely comical effect under the gown of the divine than in the
+sermon on "The Prodigal Son." The repentant spendthrift has returned
+to his father's house, and is about to confess his follies. But--
+
+  "Alas! How shall he tell his story?
+
+  "Ye who have trod this round, tell me in what words he shall give
+  in to his father the sad items of his extravagance and folly: the
+  feasts and banquets which he gave to whole cities in the East; the
+  costs of Asiatic rarities, and of Asiatic cooks to dress them; the
+  expenses of singing men and singing women; the flute, the harp, the
+  sackbut, and all kinds of music; the dress of the Persian Court how
+  magnificent! their slaves how numerous! their chariots, their homes,
+  their pictures, their furniture, what immense sums they had devoured!
+  what expectations from strangers of condition! what exactions!
+  How shall the youth make his father comprehend that he was cheated
+  at Damascus by one of the best men in the world; that he had
+  lent a part of his substance to a friend at Nineveh, who had fled off
+  with it to the Ganges; that a whore of Babylon had swallowed his
+  best pearl, and anointed the whole city with his balm of Gilead; that
+  he had been sold by a man of honour for twenty shekels of silver to
+  a worker in graven images; that the images he had purchased produced
+  him nothing, that they could not be transported across the
+  wilderness, and had been burnt with fire at Shusan; that the apes
+  and peacocks which he had sent for from Tharsis lay dead upon his
+  hands; that the mummies had not been dead long enough which he
+  had brought from Egypt; that all had gone wrong from the day he
+  forsook his father's house?"
+
+All this, it must be admitted, is pretty lively for a sermon. But hear
+the reverend gentleman once more, in the same discourse, and observe
+the characteristic coolness with which he touches, only to drop, what
+may be called the "professional" moral of the parable, and glides
+off into a train of interesting, but thoroughly mundane, reflections,
+suggested--or rather, supposed in courtesy to have been suggested--by
+the text. "I know not," he says, "whether it would be a subject
+of much edification to convince you here that our Saviour, by the
+Prodigal Son, particularly pointed out those who were sinners of the
+Gentiles, and were recovered by divine grace to repentance; and that
+by the elder brother he intended manifestly the more forward of the
+Jews," &c. But, whether it would edify you or not, he goes on, in
+effect, to say, I do not propose to provide you with edification in
+that kind. "These uses have been so ably set forth in so many good
+sermons upon the Prodigal Son that I shall turn aside from them at
+present, and content myself with some reflections upon that fatal
+passion which led him--and so many thousands after the example--to
+gather all he had together and take his journey into a far country."
+In other words, "I propose to make the parable a peg whereon to hang
+a few observations on (what does the reader suppose?) the practice of
+sending young men upon the Grand Tour, accompanied by a 'bear-leader,'
+and herein of the various kinds of bear-leaders, and the services
+which they do, and do not, render to their charges; with a few words
+on society in Continental cities, and a true view of 'letters of
+introduction.'" That is literally the substance of the remainder
+of the sermon. And thus pleasantly does the preacher play with his
+curious subject:
+
+  "But you will send an able pilot with your son--a scholar. If
+  wisdom can speak in no other tongue but Greek or Latin, you do
+  well; or if mathematics will make a man a gentleman, or natural
+  philosophy but teach him to make a bow, he may be of some service
+  in introducing your son into good societies, and supporting him in
+  them when he had done. But the upshot will be generally this, that
+  on the most pressing occasions of addresses, if he is not a mere man
+  of reading, the unhappy youth will have the tutor to carry, and not
+  the tutor to carry him. But (let us say) you will avoid this extreme;
+  he shall be escorted by one who knows the world, not only from
+  books but from his own experience; a man who has been employed
+  on such services, and thrice 'made the tour of Europe with success'--that
+  is, without breaking his own or his pupil's neck; for if he is
+  such as my eyes have seen, some broken Swiss _valet de chambre_, some
+  general undertaker, who will perform the journey in so many months,
+  'if God permit,' much knowledge will not accrue. Some profit, at
+  least: he will learn the amount to a halfpenny of every stage from
+  Calais to Rome; he will be carried to the best inns, instructed where
+  there is the best wine, and sup a livre cheaper than if the youth had
+  been left to make the tour and the bargain himself. Look at our
+  governor, I beseech you! See, he is an inch taller as he relates the
+  advantages. And here endeth his pride, his knowledge, and his use.
+  But when your son gets abroad he will be taken out of his hand by
+  his society with men of rank and letters, with whom he will pass the
+  greatest part of his time."
+
+So much for the bear-leader; and now a remark or two on the young
+man's chances of getting into good foreign society; and then--the
+benediction:
+
+  "Let me observe, in the first place, that company which is really
+  good is very rare and very shy. But you have surmounted this difficulty,
+  and procured him the best letters of recommendation to the
+  most eminent and respectable in every capital. And I answer that
+  he will obtain all by them which courtesy strictly stands obliged to
+  pay on such occasions, but no more. There is nothing in which we
+  are so much deceived as in the advantages proposed from our connexions
+  and discourse with the literati, &c., in foreign parts, especially
+  if the experiment is made before we are matured by years or
+  study. Conversation is a traffic; and if you enter it without some
+  stock of knowledge to balance the account perpetually betwixt you,
+  the trade drops at once; and this is the reason, however it may be
+  boasted to the contrary, why travellers have so little (especially good)
+  conversation with the natives, owing to their suspicion, or perhaps
+  conviction, that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation
+  of young itinerants worth the trouble of their bad language, or
+  the interruption of their visits."
+
+Very true, no doubt, and excellently well put; but we seem to have got
+some distance, in spirit at any rate, from Luke xv. 13; and it is with
+somewhat too visible effect, perhaps, that Sterne forces his way
+back into the orthodox routes of pulpit disquisition. The youth,
+disappointed with his reception by "the literati," &c., seeks "an
+easier society; and as bad company is always ready, and ever lying in
+wait, the career is soon finished, and the poor prodigal returns--the
+same object of pity with the prodigal in the Gospel." Hardly a good
+enough "tag," perhaps, to reconcile the ear to the "And now to," &c.,
+as a fitting close to this pointed little essay in the style of the
+Chesterfield Letters. There is much internal evidence to show that
+this so-called sermon was written either after Sterne's visit to or
+during his stay in France; and there is strong reason, I think, to
+suppose that it was in reality neither intended for a sermon nor
+actually delivered from the pulpit.
+
+No other of his sermons has quite so much vivacity as this. But in
+the famous discourse upon an unlucky text--the sermon preached at
+the chapel of the English Embassy, in Paris--there are touches of
+unclerical raillery not a few. Thus: "What a noise," he exclaims,
+"among the simulants of the various virtues!... Behold Humility,
+become so out of mere pride; Chastity, never once in harm's way; and
+Courage, like a Spanish soldier upon an Italian stage--a bladder full
+of wind. Hush! the sound of that trumpet! Let not my soldier run!'
+tis some good Christian giving alms. O Pity, thou gentlest of human
+passions! soft and tender are thy notes, and ill accord they with so
+loud an instrument."
+
+Here, again, is a somewhat bold saying for a divine: "But, to avoid
+all commonplace cant as much as I can on this head, I will forbear to
+say, because I do not think, that 'tis a breach of Christian charity
+to think or speak ill of our neighbour. We cannot avoid it: our
+opinion must follow the evidence," &c. And a little later on,
+commenting on the insinuation conveyed in Satan's question, "Does Job
+serve God for nought?" he says: "It is a bad picture, and done by a
+terrible master; and yet we are always copying it. Does a man from
+real conviction of heart forsake his vices? The position is not to be
+allowed. No; his vices have forsaken him. Does a pure virgin fear God,
+and say her prayers? She is in her climacteric? Does humility clothe
+and educate the unknown orphan? Poverty, thou hast no genealogies.
+See! is he not the father of the child?" In another sermon he launches
+out into quaintly contemptuous criticism of a religious movement which
+he was certainly the last person in the world to understand--to wit,
+Methodism. He asks whether, "when a poor, disconsolated, drooping
+creature is terrified from all enjoyment, prays without ceasing till
+his imagination is heated, fasts and mortifies and mopes till his body
+is in as bad a plight as his mind, it is a wonder that the mechanical
+disturbances and conflicts of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty
+head, should be mistook for workings of a different kind from what
+they are?" Other sermons reflect the singularly bitter anti-Catholic
+feeling which was characteristic even of indifferentism in those
+days--at any rate amongst Whig divines. But in most of them one is
+liable to come at any moment across one of those strange sallies to
+which Gray alluded, when he said of the effect of Sterne's sermons
+upon a reader that "you often see him tottering on the verge of
+laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+FRANCE AND ITALY.--MEETING WITH WIFE AND DAUGHTER.--RETURN TO
+ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOL. IX.--"THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY."
+
+(1765-1768.)
+
+In the first week of October, 1765, or a few days later, Sterne
+set out on what was afterwards to become famous as the "Sentimental
+Journey through France and Italy." Not, of course, that all the
+materials for that celebrated piece of literary travel were collected
+on this occasion. From London as far as Lyons his way lay by a route
+which he had already traversed three years before, and there is
+reason to believe that at least some of the scenes in the _Sentimental
+Journey_ were drawn from observation made on his former visit. His
+stay in Paris was shorter this year than it had been on the previous
+occasion. A month after leaving England he was at Pont Beauvoisin,
+and by the middle of November he had reached Turin. From this city he
+writes, with his characteristic simplicity: "I am very happy, and
+have found my way into a dozen houses already. To-morrow I am to be
+presented to the King, and when that ceremony is over I shall have my
+hands full of engagements." From Turin he went on, by way of Milan,
+Parma, Piacenza, and Bologna, to Florence, where, after three days'
+stay, "to dine with our Plenipo," he continued his journey to
+Rome. Here, and at Naples, he passed the winter of 1765-'66,[1]
+and prolonged his stay in Italy until the ensuing spring was well
+advanced. In the month of May he was again on his way home, through
+France, and had had a meeting, after two years' separation from them,
+with his wife and daughter. His account of it to Hall Stevenson is
+curious: "Never man," he writes, "has been such a wild-goose chase
+after his wife as I have been. After having sought her in five or six
+different towns, I found her at last in Franche Comté. Poor woman!"
+he adds, "she was very cordial, &c." The &c. is charming. But
+her cordiality had evidently no tendency to deepen into any more
+impassioned sentiment, for she "begged to stay another year or so."
+As to "my Lydia"--the real cause, we must suspect, of Sterne's having
+turned out of his road--she, he says, "pleases me much. I found her
+greatly improved in everything I wished her." As to himself: "I am
+most unaccountably well, and most accountably nonsensical. 'Tis at
+least a proof of good spirits, which is a sign and token, in these
+latter days, that I must take up my pen. In faith, I think I shall
+die with it in my hand; but I shall live these ten years, my Antony,
+notwithstanding the fears of my wife, whom I left most melancholy
+on that account." The "fears" and the melancholy were, alas! to be
+justified, rather than the "good spirits;" and the shears of Atropos
+were to close, not in ten years, but in little more than twenty
+months, upon that fragile thread of life.
+
+[Footnote 1: It was on this tour that Sterne picked up the French
+valet Lafleur, whom he introduced as a character into the _Sentimental
+Journey_, but whose subsequently published recollections of the tour
+(if, indeed, the veritable Lafleur was the author of the notes from
+which Scott quotes so freely) appear, as Mr. Fitzgerald has pointed
+out, from internal evidence to be mostly fictitious.]
+
+By the end of June he was back again in his Yorkshire home, and very
+soon after had settled down to work upon the ninth and last volume of
+_Tristram Shandy_. He was writing, however, as it should seem,
+under something more than the usual distractions of a man with two
+establishments. Mrs. Sterne was just then ill at Marseilles, and her
+husband--who, to do him justice, was always properly solicitous for
+her material comfort--was busy making provision for her to change her
+quarters to Chalons. He writes to M. Panchaud, at Paris, sending fifty
+pounds, and begging him to make her all further advances that might be
+necessary. "I have," he says, "such entire confidence in my wife
+that she spends as little as she can, though she is confined to no
+particular sum ... and you may rely--in case she should draw for fifty
+or a hundred pounds extraordinary--that it and every demand shall
+be punctually paid, and with proper thanks; and for this the whole
+Shandian family are ready to stand security." Later on, too, he writes
+that "a young nobleman is now inaugurating a jaunt with me for six
+weeks, about Christmas, to the Faubourg St. Germain;" and he adds--in
+a tone the sincerity of which he would himself have probably found
+a difficulty in gauging--"if my wife should grow worse (having had a
+very poor account of her in my daughter's last), I cannot think of her
+being without me; and, however expensive the journey would be, I would
+fly to Avignon to administer consolation to her and my poor girl.[1]"
+
+[Footnote 1: There can be few admirers of Sterne's genius who
+would not gladly incline, whenever they find it possible, to Mr.
+Fitzgerald's very indulgent estimate of his disposition. But this
+is only one of many instances in which the charity of the
+biographer appears to me to be, if the expression may be permitted,
+unconscionable. I can, at any rate, find no warrant whatever in the
+above passage for the too kindly suggestion that "Sterne was actually
+negotiating a journey to Paris as 'bear-leader' to a young nobleman
+(an odious office, to which he had special aversion), _in order_ that
+he might with economy fly over to Avignon."]
+
+The necessity for this flight, however, did not arise. Better
+accounts of Mrs. Sterne arrived a few weeks later, and the husband's
+consolations were not required.
+
+Meanwhile the idyll of Captain Shandy's love-making was gradually
+approaching completion; and there are signs to be met with--in
+the author's correspondence, that is to say, and not in the work
+itself--that he was somewhat impatient to be done with it, at any rate
+for the time. "I shall publish," he says, "late in this year; and the
+next I shall begin a new work of four volumes, which, when finished,
+I shall continue _Tristram_ with fresh spirit." The new work in
+four volumes (not destined to get beyond one) was, of course, the
+_Sentimental Journey_. His ninth volume of _Tristram Shandy_ was
+finished by the end of the year, and at Christmas he came up to
+London, after his usual practice, to see to its publication and enjoy
+the honours of its reception. The book passed duly through the press,
+and in the last days of January was issued the announcement of its
+immediate appearance. Of the character of its welcome I can find no
+other evidence than that of Sterne himself, in a letter addressed to
+M. Panchaud some fortnight after the book appeared. "'Tis liked the
+best of all here;" but, with whatever accuracy this may have expressed
+the complimentary opinion of friends, or even the well-considered
+judgment of critics, one can hardly believe that it enjoyed anything
+like the vogue of the former volumes. Sterne, however, would be the
+less concerned for this, that his head was at the moment full of
+his new venture. "I am going," he writes, "to publish _A Sentimental
+Journey through France and Italy_. The undertaking is protected and
+highly encouraged by all our noblesse. 'Tis subscribed for at a great
+rate 'twill be an original, in large quarto, the subscription half a
+guinea. If you (Panchaud) can procure me the honour of a few names of
+men of science or fashion, I shall thank you: they will appear in good
+company, as all the nobility here have honoured me with their names."
+As was usual with him, however, he postponed commencing it until he
+should have returned to Coxwold; and, as was equally usual with
+him, he found it difficult to tear himself away from the delights
+of London. Moreover, there was in the present instance a special
+difficulty, arising out of an affair upon which, as it has relations
+with the history of Sterne's literary work, it would be impossible,
+even in the most strictly critical and least general of biographies,
+to observe complete silence. I refer, of course, to the famous and
+furious flirtation with Mrs. Draper--the Eliza of the Yorick and Eliza
+Letters. Of the affair itself but little need be said. I have already
+stated my own views on the general subject of Sterne's love affairs;
+and I feel no inducement to discuss the question of their innocence
+or otherwise in relation to this particular amourette. I will only
+say that were it technically as innocent as you please, the mean
+which must be found between Thackeray's somewhat too harsh and Mr.
+Fitzgerald's considerably too indulgent judgment on it will lie,
+it seems to me, decidedly nearer to the former than to the latter's
+extreme. This episode of violently sentimental philandering with an
+Indian "grass widow" was, in any case, an extremely unlovely passage
+in Sterne's life. On the best and most charitable view of it, the
+flirtation, pursued in the way it was, and to the lengths to which
+it was carried, must be held to convict the elderly lover of the most
+deplorable levity, vanity, indiscretion, and sickly sentimentalism. It
+was, to say the least of it, most unbecoming in a man of Sterne's age
+and profession; and when it is added that Yorick's attentions to Eliza
+were paid in so open a fashion as to be brought by gossip to the ears
+of his neglected wife, then living many hundred miles away from him,
+its highly reprehensible character seems manifest enough in all ways.
+
+No sooner, however, had the fascinating widow set sail, than the
+sentimental lover began to feel so strongly the need of a female
+consoler, that his heart seems to have softened, insensibly, even
+towards his wife. "I am unhappy," he writes plaintively to Lydia
+Sterne. "Thy mother and thyself at a distance from me--and what can
+compensate for such a destitution? For God's sake persuade her to come
+and fix in England! for life is too short to waste in separation;
+and while she lives in one country and I in another, many people will
+suppose it proceeds from choice"--a supposition, he seems to imply,
+which even my scrupulously discreet conduct in her absence scarcely
+suffices to refute. "Besides"--a word in which there is here almost
+as much virtue as in an "if"--"I want thee near me, thou child and
+darling of my heart. I am in a melancholy mood, and my Lydia's eyes
+will smart with weeping when I tell her the cause that just now
+affects me." And then his sensibilities brim over, and into his
+daughter's ear he pours forth his lamentations over the loss of her
+mother's rival. "I am apprehensive the dear friend I mentioned in my
+last letter is going into a decline. I was with her two days ago, and
+I never beheld a being so altered. She has a tender frame, and looks
+like a drooping lily, for the roses are fled from her cheeks. I can
+never see or talk to this incomparable woman without bursting into
+tears. I have a thousand obligations to her, and I love her more than
+her whole sex, if not all the world put together. She has a delicacy,"
+&c., &c. And after reciting a frigid epitaph which he had written,
+"expressive of her modest worth," he winds up with--"Say all that is
+kind of me to thy mother; and believe me, my Lydia, that I love
+thee most truly." My excuse for quoting thus fully from this most
+characteristic letter, and, indeed, for dwelling at all upon these
+closing incidents of the Yorick and Eliza episode, is, that in their
+striking illustration of the soft, weak, spiritually self-indulgent
+nature of the man, they assist us, far more than many pages of
+criticism would do, to understand one particular aspect of his
+literary idiosyncrasy. The sentimentalist of real life explains the
+sentimentalist in art.
+
+In the early days of May Sterne managed at last to tear himself away
+from London and its joys, and with painful slowness, for he was now in
+a wretched state of health, to make his way back to Yorkshire. "I have
+got conveyed," he says in a distressing letter from Newark to Hall
+Stevenson--"I have got conveyed thus far like a bale of cadaverous
+goods consigned to Pluto and Company, lying in the bottom of my chaise
+most of the route, upon a large pillow which I had the _prévoyance_ to
+purchase before I set out. I am worn out, but pass on to Barnby Moor
+to-night, and if possible to York the next. I know not what is the
+matter with me, but some derangement presses hard upon this machine.
+Still, I think it will not be overset this bout"--another of those
+utterances of a cheerful courage under the prostration of pain which
+reveal to us the manliest side of Sterne's nature. On reaching Coxwold
+his health appears to have temporarily mended, and in June we find him
+giving a far better account of himself to another of his friends. The
+fresh Yorkshire air seems to have temporarily revived him, and to his
+friend, Arthur Lee, a young American, he writes thus: "I am as happy
+as a prince at Coxwold, and I wish you could see in how princely a
+manner I live. 'Tis a land of plenty. I sit down alone to dinner--fish
+and wild-fowl, or a couple of fowls or ducks, with cream and all the
+simple plenty which a rich valley under Hamilton Hills can produce,
+with a clean cloth on my table, and a bottle of wine on my right hand
+to drink your health. I have a hundred hens and chickens about my
+yard; and not a parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout but
+he brings it as an offering to me." Another of his correspondents at
+this period was the Mrs. H. of his letters, whose identity I have been
+unable to trace, but who is addressed in a manner which seems to show
+Sterne's anxiety to expel the old flame of Eliza's kindling by a new
+one. There is little, indeed, of the sentimentalizing strain in which
+he was wont to sigh at the feet of Mrs. Draper, but in its place
+there is a freedom of a very prominent, and here and there of a highly
+unpleasant, kind. To his friends, Mr. and Mrs. James, too, he writes
+frequently during this year, chiefly to pour out his soul on the
+subject of Eliza; and Mrs. James, who is always addressed in company
+with her husband, enjoys the almost unique distinction of being the
+only woman outside his own family circle whom Sterne never approaches
+in the language of artificial gallantry, but always in that of simple
+friendship and respect.[1] Meanwhile, however, the _Sentimental
+Journey_ was advancing at a reasonable rate of speed towards
+completion. In July he writes of himself as "now beginning to be truly
+busy" on it, "the pain and sorrows of this life having retarded its
+progress."
+
+[Footnote 1: To this period of Sterne's life, it may here be remarked,
+is to be assigned the dog-Latin letter ("and very sad dog-Latin too")
+so justly animadverted upon by Thackeray, and containing a passage
+of which Madame de Medalle, it is to be charitably hoped, had no
+suspicion of the meaning. Mr. Fitzgerald, through an oversight in
+translation, and understanding Sterne to say that he himself, and
+not his correspondent, Hall Stevenson, was "quadraginta et plus annos
+natus," has referred it to an earlier date. The point, however, is of
+no great importance, as the untranslatable passage in the letter would
+be little less unseemly in 1754 or 1755 than in 1768, at the beginning
+of which year, since the letter is addressed from London to Hall
+Stevenson, then in Yorkshire, it must, in fact, have been written.]
+
+His wife and daughter were about to rejoin him in the autumn, and he
+looked forward to settling them at a hired house in York before going
+up to town to publish his new volumes. On the 1st of October the two
+ladies arrived at York, and the next day the reunited family went on
+to Coxwold. The meeting with the daughter gave Sterne one of the
+few quite innocent pleasures which he was capable of feeling; and
+he writes next day to Mr. and Mrs. James in terms of high pride
+and satisfaction of his recovered child. "My girl has returned,"
+he writes, in the language of playful affection, "an elegant,
+accomplished little slut. My wife--but I hate," he adds, with
+remarkable presence of mind, "to praise my wife. 'Tis as much as
+decency will allow to praise my daughter. I suppose," he concludes,
+"they will return next summer to France. They leave me in a month to
+reside at York for the winter, and I stay at Coxwold till the 1st
+of January." This seems to indicate a little longer delay in the
+publication of the _Sentimental Journey_ than he had at first
+intended; for it seems that the book was finished by the end of
+November. On the 28th of that month he writes to the Earl of ---- (as
+his daughter's foolish mysteriousness has headed the letter), to thank
+him for his letter of inquiry about Yorick, and to say that Yorick
+"has worn out both his spirits and body with the _Sentimental
+Journey_. 'Tis true that an author must feel himself, or his reader
+will not" (how mistaken a devotion Sterne showed to this Horatian
+canon will be noted hereafter), "but I have torn my whole frame into
+pieces by my feelings. I believe the brain stands as much in need of
+recruiting as the body; therefore I shall set out for town the 20th of
+next month, after having recruited myself at York." Then he adds the
+strange observation, "I might, indeed, solace myself with my wife (who
+is come from France), but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental
+being, whatever your Lordship may think to the contrary. The world
+has imagined because I wrote _Tristram Shandy_ that I was myself more
+Shandian than I really ever was. 'Tis a good-natured world we live
+in, and we are often painted in divers colours, according to the ideas
+each one frames in his head." It would, perhaps, have been scarcely
+possible for Sterne to state his essentially unhealthy philosophy of
+life so concisely as in this naïve passage. The connubial affections
+are here, in all seriousness and good faith apparently, opposed to
+the sentimental emotions--as the lower to the higher. To indulge the
+former is to be "Shandian," that is to say, coarse and carnal; to
+devote oneself to the latter, or, in other words, to spend one's
+days in semi-erotic languishings over the whole female sex
+indiscriminately, is to show spirituality and taste.
+
+Meanwhile, however, that fragile abode of sentimentalism--that frame
+which had just been "torn to pieces" by the feelings--was becoming
+weaker than its owner supposed. Much of the exhaustion which Sterne
+had attributed to the violence of his literary emotions was no doubt
+due to the rapid decline of bodily powers which, unknown to him, were
+already within a few months of their final collapse. He did not set
+out for London on the 20th of December, as he had promised himself,
+for on that day he was only just recovering from "an attack of fever
+and bleeding at the lungs," which had confined him to his room for
+nearly three weeks. "I am worn down to a shadow," he writes on the
+23rd, "but as my fever has left me, I set off the latter end of next
+week with my friend, Mr. Hall, for town." His home affairs had already
+been settled. Early in December it had been arranged that his wife
+and daughter should only remain at York during the winter, and should
+return to the Continent in the spring. "Mrs. Sterne's health," he
+writes, "is insupportable in England. She must return to France, and
+justice and humanity forbid me to oppose it." But separation from his
+wife meant separation from his daughter; it was this, of course, which
+was the really painful parting, and it is to the credit of Sterne's
+disinterestedness of affection for Lydia, that in his then state
+of health he brought himself to consent to her leaving him. But he
+recognized that it was for the advantage of her prospect of settling
+herself in life that she should go with her mother, who seemed
+"inclined to establish her in France, where she has had many
+advantageous offers." Nevertheless "his heart bled," as he wrote to
+Lee, when he thought of parting with his child. "'Twill be like the
+separation of soul and body, and equal to nothing but what passes at
+that tremendous moment; and like it in one respect, for she will be in
+one kingdom while I am in another." Thus was this matter settled, and
+by the 1st of January Sterne had arrived in London for the last time,
+with the two volumes of the _Sentimental Journey_. He took up his
+quarters at the lodgings in Bond Street (No. 41), which he had
+occupied during his stay in town the previous year, and entered at
+once upon the arrangements for publication. These occupied two full
+months, and on the 27th of February the last work, as it was destined
+to be, of the Rev. Mr. Yorick was issued to the world.
+
+Its success would seem to have been immediate, and was certainly great
+and lasting. In one sense, indeed, it was far greater than had been,
+or than has since been, attained by _Tristram Shandy_. The compliments
+which courteous Frenchmen had paid the author upon his former work,
+and which his simple vanity had swallowed whole and unseasoned,
+without the much-needed grain of salt, might, no doubt, have been
+repeated to him with far greater sincerity as regards the _Sentimental
+Journey_, had he lived to receive them. Had any Frenchman told him a
+year or two afterwards that the latter work was "almost as much known
+in Paris as in London, at least among men of condition and learning,"
+he would very likely have been telling him no more than the truth. The
+_Sentimental Journey_ certainly acquired what _Tristram Shandy_ never
+did--a European reputation. It has been translated into Italian,
+German, Dutch, and even Polish; and into French again and again.
+The French, indeed, have no doubt whatever of its being Sterne's
+_chef-d'oeuvre_; and one has only to compare a French translation of
+it with a rendering of _Tristram Shandy_ into the same language to
+understand, and from our neighbours' point of view even to admit, the
+justice of their preference. The charms of the _Journey_, its grace,
+wit, and urbanity, are thoroughly congenial to that most graceful of
+languages, and reproduce themselves readily enough therein; while,
+on the other hand, the fantastic digressions, the elaborate
+mystifications, the farcical interludes of the earlier work, appear
+intolerably awkward and _bizzare_ in their French dress; and, what
+is much more strange, even the point of the _double entendres_ is
+sometimes unaccountably lost. Were it not that the genuine humour of
+_Tristram Shandy_ in a great measure evaporates in translation, one
+would be forced to admit that the work which is the more catholic
+in its appeal to appreciation is the better of the two. But, having
+regard to this disappearance of genuine and unquestionable excellences
+in the process of translation, I see no good reason why those
+Englishmen--the great majority, I imagine--who prefer _Tristram
+Shandy_ to the _Sentimental Journey_ should feel any misgivings as to
+the soundness of their taste. The humour which goes the deepest
+down beneath the surface of things is the most likely to become
+inextricably interwoven with those deeper fibres of associations which
+lie at the roots of a language; and it may well happen, therefore,
+though from the cosmopolitan point of view it is a melancholy
+reflection, that the merit of a book, to those who use the language
+in which it is written, bears a direct ratio to the persistence of its
+refusal to yield up its charm to men of another tongue.
+
+The favour, however, with which the _Sentimental Journey_ was received
+abroad, and which it still enjoys (the last French translation is
+very recent), is, as Mr. Fitzgerald says, "worthily merited, if grace,
+nature, true sentiment, and exquisite dramatic power be qualities that
+are to find a welcome. And apart," he adds, "from these attractions
+it has a unique charm of its own, a flavour, so to speak, a fragrance
+that belongs to that one book alone. Never was there such a charming
+series of complete little pictures, which for delicacy seem like the
+series of medallions done on Sèvres china which we sometimes see in
+old French cabinets.... The figures stand out brightly, and in what
+number and variety! Old Calais, with its old inn; M. Dessein, the
+monk, one of the most artistic figures on literary canvas; the
+charming French lady whom M. Dessein shut into the carriage with the
+traveller; the _débonnaire_ French captain, and the English travellers
+returning, touched in with only a couple of strokes; La Fleur, the
+valet; the pretty French glove-seller, whose pulse the Sentimental one
+felt; her husband, who passed through the shop and pulled off his hat
+to Monsieur for the honour he was doing him; the little maid in the
+bookseller's shop, who put her little present _à part_; the charming
+Greuze 'grisset,' who sold him the ruffles; the reduced chevalier
+selling _patés_; the groups of beggars at Montreuil; the _fade_
+Count de Bissie, who read Shakespeare; and the crowd of minor
+_croquis_--postilions, landlords, notaries, soldiers, abbés,
+_précieuses_, maids--merely touched, but touched with wonderful art,
+make up a surprising collection of distinct and graphic characters."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+LAST DAYS AND DEATH.
+
+(1768.)
+
+The end was now fast approaching. Months before, Sterne had written
+doubtfully of his being able to stand another winter in England, and
+his doubts were to be fatally justified. One can easily see, however,
+how the unhappy experiment came to be tried. It is possible that he
+might have delayed the publication of his book for a while, and taken
+refuge abroad from the rigours of the two remaining winter months,
+had it not been in the nature of his malady to conceal its deadly
+approaches. Consumption sported with its victim in the cruel fashion
+that is its wont. "I continue to mend," Sterne writes from Bond Street
+on the first day of the new year, "and doubt not but this with all
+other evils and uncertainties of life will end for the best." And
+for the best perhaps it did end, in the sense in which the resigned
+Christian uses these pious words; but this, one fears, was not the
+sense intended by the dying man. All through January and February he
+was occupied not only with business, but as it would seem with a fair
+amount, though less, no doubt, than his usual share, of pleasure also.
+Vastly active was he, it seems, in the great undertaking of obtaining
+tickets for one of Mrs. Cornely's entertainments--the "thing" to go to
+at that particular time--for his friends the Jameses. He writes them
+on Monday that he has not been a moment at rest since writing the
+previous day about the Soho ticket. "I have been at a Secretary of
+State to get one, have been upon one knee to my friend Sir George
+Macartney, Mr. Lascelles, and Mr. Fitzmaurice, without mentioning
+five more. I believe I could as soon get you a place at Court, for
+everybody is going; but I will go out and try a new circle, and if
+you do not hear from me by a quarter to three, you may conclude I
+have been unfortunate in my supplications." Whether he was or was not
+unfortunate history does not record. A week or two later the old round
+of dissipation had apparently set in. "I am now tied down neck and
+heels by engagements every night this week, or most joyfully would
+have trod the old pleasing road from Bond to Gerrard Street. I am
+quite well, but exhausted with a roomful of company every morning till
+dinner." A little later, and this momentary flash of health had died
+out; and we find him writing what was his last letter to his daughter,
+full, evidently, of uneasy forebodings as to his approaching end. He
+speaks of "this vile influenza--be not alarmed. I think I shall get
+the better of it, and shall be with you both the 1st of May;"
+though, he adds, "if I escape, 'twill not be for a long period, my
+child--unless a quiet retreat and peace of mind can restore me." But
+the occasion of this letter was a curious one, and a little more must
+be extracted from it. Lydia Sterne's letter to her father had, he
+said, astonished him. "She (Mrs. Sterne) could know but little of my
+feelings to tell thee that under the supposition I should survive
+thy mother I should bequeath thee as a legacy to Mrs. Draper. No, my
+Lydia, 'tis a lady whose virtues I wish thee to imitate"--Mrs.
+James, in fact, whom he proceeds to praise with much and probably
+well-deserved warmth. "But," he adds, sadly, "I think, my Lydia,
+thy mother will survive me; do not deject her spirit with thy
+apprehensions on my account. I have sent you a necklace and buckles,
+and the same to your mother. My girl cannot form a wish that is in the
+power of her father that he will not gratify her in; and I cannot in
+justice be less kind to thy mother. I am never alone. The kindness of
+my friends is ever the same. I wish though I had thee to nurse me, but
+I am denied that. Write to me twice a week at least. God bless thee,
+my child, and believe me ever, ever, thy affectionate father."
+
+The despondent tone of this letter was to be only too soon justified.
+The "vile influenza" proved to be or became a pleurisy. On Thursday,
+March 10, he was bled three times, and blistered on the day after. And
+on the Tuesday following, in evident consciousness that his end was
+near, he penned that cry "for pity and pardon," as Thackeray calls
+it--the first as well as the last, and which sounds almost as strange
+as it does piteous from those mocking lips:
+
+  "The physician says I am better.... God knows, for I feel myself
+  sadly wrong, and shall, if I recover, be a long while of gaining
+  strength. Before I have gone through half the letter I must stop to
+  rest my weak hand a dozen times. Mr. James was so good as to call
+  upon me yesterday. I felt emotions not to be described at the sight
+  of him, and he overjoyed me by talking a great deal of you. Do,
+  dear Mrs. James, entreat him to come to-morrow or next day, for perhaps
+  I have not many days or hours to live. I want to ask a favour
+  of him, if I find myself worse, that I shall beg of you if in this
+  wrestling I come off conqueror. My spirits are fled. It is a bad omen;
+  do not weep, my dear lady. Your tears are too precious to be shed
+  for me. Bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. Dearest,
+  kindest, gentlest, and best of women! may health, peace, and happiness
+  prove your handmaids. If I die, cherish the remembrance of
+  me, and forget the follies which you so often condemned, which my
+  heart, not my head, betrayed me into. Should my child, my Lydia,
+  want a mother, may I hope you will (if she is left parentless) take her
+  to your bosom? You are the only woman on earth I can depend
+  upon for such a benevolent action. I wrote to her a fortnight ago,
+  and told her what, I trust, she will find in you. Mr. James will be a
+  father to her.... Commend me to him, as I now commend you to
+  that Being who takes under his care the good and kind part of the
+  world. Adieu, all grateful thanks to you and Mr. James.
+
+  "From your affectionate friend,                       L. STERNE."
+
+This pathetic death-bed letter is superscribed "Tuesday." It seems to
+have been written on Tuesday, the 15th of March, and three days later
+the writer breathed his last. But two persons, strangers both, were
+present at his deathbed, and it is by a singularly fortunate chance,
+therefore, that one of these--and he not belonging to the class of
+people who usually leave behind them published records of the events
+of their lives--should have preserved for us an account of the closing
+scene. This, however, is to be found in the Memoirs of John Macdonald,
+"a cadet of the house of Keppoch," at that time footman to Mr.
+Crawford, a fashionable friend of Sterne's. His master had taken a
+house in Clifford Street in the spring of 1768; and "about this time,"
+he writes, "Mr. Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the
+silk-bag shop in Old Bond Street. He was sometimes called Tristram
+Shandy and sometimes Yorick, a very great favourite of the gentlemen.
+One day"--namely, on the aforesaid 18th of March--"my master had
+company to dinner who were speaking about him--the Duke of Roxburghe,
+the Earl of March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr.
+Garrick, Mr. Hume, and a Mr. James." Many, if not most, of the party,
+therefore, were personal friends of the man who lay dying in the
+street hard by, and naturally enough the conversation turned on his
+condition. "'John,' said my master," the narrative continues, "'go and
+inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.'" Macdonald did so; and, in language
+which seems to bear the stamp of truth upon it, he thus records the
+grim story which he had to report to the assembled guests on his
+return: "I went to Mr. Sterne's lodgings; the mistress opened the
+door. I enquired how he did; she told me to go up to the nurse. I went
+into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but in
+five he said, 'Now it is come.' He put up his hand as if to stop a
+blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry, and
+lamented him very much."
+
+Thus, supported by a hired nurse, and under the curious eyes of a
+stranger, Sterne breathed his last. His wife and daughter were far
+away; the convivial associates "who were all very sorry and lamented
+him very much," were for the moment represented only by "John;" and
+the shocking tradition goes that the alien hands by which the "dying
+eyes were closed," and the "decent limbs composed," remunerated
+themselves for the pious office by abstracting the gold sleeve-links
+from the dead man's wrists. One may hope, indeed, that this last
+circumstance is to be rejected as sensational legend, but even without
+it the story of Sterne's death seems sad enough, no doubt. Yet it is,
+after all, only by contrast with the excited gaiety of his daily
+life in London that his end appears so forlorn. From many a "set of
+residential chambers," from many of the old and silent inns of the
+lawyers, departures as lonely, or lonelier, are being made around us
+in London every year: the departures of men not necessarily kinless or
+friendless, but living solitary lives, and dying before their friends
+or kindred can be summoned to their bedsides. Such deaths, no doubt,
+are often contrasted in conventional pathos with that of the husband
+and father surrounded by a weeping wife and children; but the more
+sensible among us construct no tragedy out of a mode of exit which
+must have many times entered as at least a possibility into the
+previous contemplation of the dying man. And except, as has been
+said, that Sterne associates himself in our minds with the perpetual
+excitements of lively companionship, there would be nothing
+particularly melancholy in his end. This is subject, of course, to
+the assumption that the story of his landlady having stolen the gold
+sleeve-links from his dead body may be treated as mythical; and,
+rejecting this story, there seems no good reason for making much ado
+about the manner of his death. Of friends, as distinguished from mere
+dinner-table acquaintances, he seems to have had but few in London:
+with the exception of the Jameses, one knows not with certainty
+of any; and the Jameses do not appear to have neglected him in the
+illness which neither they nor he suspected to be his last. Mr. James
+had paid him a visit but a day or two before the end came; and it may
+very likely have been upon his report of his friend's condition that
+the message of inquiry was sent from the dinner table at which he was
+a guest. No doubt Sterne's flourish in _Tristram Shandy_ about his
+preferring to die at an inn, untroubled by the spectacle of "the
+concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows
+and smoothing my pillow," was a mere piece of bravado; and the more
+probably so because the reflection is appropriated almost bodily from
+Bishop Burnet, who quotes it as a frequent observation of Archbishop
+Leighton. But, considering that Sterne was in the habit of passing
+nearly half of each year alone in London lodgings, the realization of
+his wish does not strike me, I confess, as so dramatically impressive
+a coincidence as it is sometimes represented.
+
+According, however, to one strange story the dramatic element gives
+place after Sterne's very burial to melodrama of the darkest kind. The
+funeral, which pointed, after all, a far sadder moral than the death,
+took place on Tuesday, March 22, attended by only two mourners, one of
+whom is said to have been his publisher Becket, and the other probably
+Mr. James; and, thus duly neglected by the whole crowd of boon
+companions, the remains of Yorick were consigned to the "new
+burying-ground near Tyburn" of the parish of St. George's, Hanover
+Square. In that now squalid and long-decayed grave-yard, within sight
+of the Marble Arch and over against the broad expanse of Hyde Park,
+is still to be found a tombstone inscribed with some inferior lines to
+the memory of the departed humourist, and with a statement, inaccurate
+by eight months, of the date of his death, and a year out as to his
+age. Dying, as has been seen, on the 18th of March, 1768, at the age
+of fifty-four, he is declared on this slab to have died on the 13th of
+November, aged fifty-three years. There is more excuse, however, for
+this want of veracity than sepulchral inscriptions can usually plead.
+The stone was erected by the pious hands of "two brother Masons," many
+years, it is said, after the event which it purports to record; and
+from the wording of the epitaph which commences, "Near this place
+lyes the body," &c., it obviously does not profess to indicate--what,
+doubtless, there was no longer any means of tracing--the exact spot in
+which Sterne's remains were laid. But, wherever the grave really was,
+the body interred in it, according to the strange story to which I
+have referred, is no longer there. That story goes: that two days
+after the burial, on the night of the 24th of March, the corpse was
+stolen by body-snatchers, and by them disposed of to M. Collignon,
+Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge; that the Professor invited a few
+scientific friends to witness a demonstration, and that among these
+was one who had been acquainted with Sterne, and who fainted with
+horror on recognizing in the already partially dissected "subject" the
+features of his friend. So, at least, this very gruesome and Poe-like
+legend runs; but it must be confessed that all the evidence which
+Mr. Fitzgerald has been able to collect in its favour is of the very
+loosest and vaguest description. On the other hand, it is, of course,
+only fair to recollect that, in days when respectable surgeons and
+grave scientific professors had to depend upon the assistance of
+law-breakers for the prosecution of their studies and teachings, every
+effort would naturally be made to hush up any such unfortunate affair.
+There is, moreover, independent evidence to the fact that similar
+desecrations of this grave-yard had of late been very common; and
+that at least one previous attempt to check the operations of the
+"resurrection-men" had been attended with peculiarly infelicitous
+results. In the _St. James's Chronicle_ for November 26, 1767, we find
+it recorded that "the Burying Ground in Oxford Road, belonging to the
+Parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, having been lately robbed of
+several dead bodies, a Watcher was placed there, attended by a
+large mastiff Dog; notwithstanding which, on Sunday night last, some
+Villains found means to steal out another dead Body, and carried off
+the very Dog." Body-snatchers so adroit and determined as to contrive
+to make additional profit out of the actual means taken to prevent
+their depredations, would certainly not have been deterred by any
+considerations of prudence from attempting the theft of Sterne's
+corpse. There was no such ceremony about his funeral as would lead
+them to suppose that the deceased was a person of any importance,
+or one whose body could not be stolen without a risk of creating
+undesirable excitement. On the whole, therefore, it is impossible
+to reject the body-snatching story as certainly fabulous, though
+its truth is far from being proved; and though I can scarcely myself
+subscribe to Mr. Fitzgerald's view, that there is a "grim and lurid
+Shandyism" about the scene of dissection, yet if others discover an
+appeal to their sense of humour in the idea of Sterne's body being
+dissected after death, I see nothing to prevent them from holding that
+hypothesis as a "pious opinion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR. FERRIAR'S
+"ILLUSTRATIONS."
+
+Everyday experience suffices to show that the qualities which win
+enduring fame for books and for their authors are not always those
+to which they owe their first popularity. It may with the utmost
+probability be affirmed that this was the case with _Tristram Shandy_
+and with Sterne. We cannot, it is true, altogether dissociate the
+permanent attractions of the novel from those characteristics of it
+which have long since ceased to attract at all; the two are united in
+a greater or less degree throughout the work; and this being so, it
+is, of course, impossible to prove to demonstration that it was the
+latter qualities, and not the former, which procured it its immediate
+vogue. But, as it happens, it is possible to show that what may be
+called its spurious attractions varied directly, and its real merits
+inversely, as its popularity with the public of its day. In the
+higher qualities of humour, in dramatic vigour, in skilful and subtle
+delineation of character, the novel showed no deterioration, but, in
+some instances, a marked improvement, as it proceeded; yet the second
+instalment was not more popular, and most of the succeeding ones
+were distinctly less popular, than the first. They had gained in many
+qualities, while they had lost in only the single one of novelty; and
+we may infer, therefore, with approximate certainty, that what "took
+the town" in the first instance was, that quality of the book which
+was strangest at its first appearance. The mass of the public read,
+and enjoyed, or thought they enjoyed, when they were really
+only puzzled and perplexed. The wild digressions, the audacious
+impertinences, the burlesque philosophizing, the broad jests, the
+air of recondite learning, all combined to make the book a nine
+days' wonder; and a majority of its readers would probably have been
+prepared to pronounce _Tristram Shandy_ a work as original in scheme
+and conception as it was eccentric. Some there were, no doubt, who
+perceived the influence of Rabelais in the incessant digressions and
+the burlesque of philosophy; others, it may be, found a reminder of
+Burton in the parade of learning; and yet a few others, the scattered
+students of French facetiae of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
+may have read the broad jests with a feeling that they had "seen
+something like it before." But no single reader, no single critic of
+the time, appears to have combined the knowledge necessary for tracing
+these three characteristics of the novel to their respective sources;
+and none certainly had any suspicion of the extent to which the
+books and authors from whom they were imitated had been laid under
+contribution. No one suspected that Sterne, not content with borrowing
+his trick of rambling from Rabelais, and his airs of erudition from
+Burton, and his fooleries from Bruscambille, had coolly transferred
+whole passages from the second of these writers, not only without
+acknowledgment, but with the intention, obviously indicated by his
+mode of procedure, of passing them off as his own. Nay, it was not
+till full fifty years afterwards that these daring robberies were
+detected, or, at any rate, revealed to the world; and, with an irony
+which Sterne himself would have appreciated, it was reserved for a
+sincere admirer of the humourist to play the part of detective. In
+1812 Dr. John Ferriar published his _Illustrations of Sterne_, and
+the prefatory sonnet, in which he solicits pardon for his too minute
+investigations, is sufficient proof of the curiously reverent spirit
+in which he set about his damaging task:
+
+  "Sterne, for whose sake I plod through miry ways
+  Of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear,
+  Let not thy shade malignant censure fear,
+  If aught of inward mirth my search betrays.
+  Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days,
+  Erewhile to Guise or wanton Valois dear," &c.
+
+Thus commences Dr. Ferriar's apology, which, however, can hardly
+be held to cover his offence; for, as a matter of fact, Sterne's
+borrowings extend to a good deal besides "mirth;" and some of the
+most unscrupulous of these forced loans are raised from passages of a
+perfectly serious import in the originals from which they are taken.
+
+Here, however, is the list of authors to whom Dr. Ferriar holds Sterne
+to have been more or less indebted: Rabelais, Beroalde de Verville,
+Bouchet, Bruscambille, Scarron, Swift, an author of the name or
+pseudonym of "Gabriel John," Burton, Bacon, Blount, Montaigne, Bishop
+Hall. The catalogue is a reasonably long one; but it is not, of
+course, to be supposed that Sterne helped himself equally freely from
+every author named in it. His obligations to some of them are, as Dr.
+Ferriar admits, but slight. From Rabelais, besides his vagaries of
+narrative, Sterne took, no doubt, the idea of the _Tristra-paedia_
+(by descent from the "education of Pantagruel," through "Martinus
+Scriblerus"); but though he has appropriated bodily the passage in
+which Friar John attributes the beauty of his nose to the pectoral
+conformation of his nurse, he may be said to have constructively
+acknowledged the debt in a reference to one of the characters in the
+Rabelaisian dialogue.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: "There is no cause but one," said my Uncle Toby, "why
+one man's nose is longer than another, but because that God pleases to
+have it so." "That is Grangousier's solution," said my father. "'Tis
+He," continued my Uncle Toby, "who makes us all, and frames and puts
+us together in such forms ... and for such ends as is agreeable to
+His infinite wisdom."--_Tristram Shandy_, vol. iii. c. 41. "Par ce,
+répondit Grangousier, qu'ainsi Dieu l'a voulu, lequel nous fait en
+cette forme et cette fin selon divin arbitre."--_Rabelais_, book i. c.
+41. In another place, however (vol. viii. c. 3), Sterne has borrowed a
+whole passage from this French humourist without any acknowledgment at
+all.]
+
+Upon Beroalde, again, upon D'Aubigné, and upon Bouchet he has made no
+direct and _verbatim_ depredations. From Bruscambille he seems to have
+taken little or nothing but the not very valuable idea of the tedious
+buffoonery of vol. iii. c. 30, _et sqq._; and to Scarron he, perhaps,
+owed the incident of the dwarf at the theatre in the _Sentimental
+Journey_, an incident which, it must be owned, he vastly improved in
+the taking. All this, however, does not amount to very much, and it
+is only when we come to Dr. Ferriar's collations of _Tristram Shandy_
+with the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ that we begin to understand what
+feats Sterne was capable of as a plagiarist. He must, to begin with,
+have relied with cynical confidence on the conviction that famous
+writers are talked about and not read, for he sets to work with the
+scissors upon Burton's first page:
+
+"Man, the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
+principal and mighty work of God; wonder of nature, as Zoroaster calls
+him; _audacis naturae miraculum_, the marvel of marvels, as Plato; the
+abridgment and epitome of the world, as Pliny," &c. Thus Burton; and,
+with a few additions of his own, and the substitution of Aristotle for
+Plato as the author of one of the descriptions, thus Sterne: "Who made
+MAN with powers which dart him from heaven to earth in a moment--that
+great, that most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
+miracle of nature, as Zoroaster, in his book [Greek: peri phuseos],
+called him--the Shekinah of the Divine Presence, as Chrysostom--the
+image of God, as Moses--the ray of Divinity, as Plato--the marvel
+of marvels, as Aristotle," &c.[1] And in the same chapter, in the
+"Fragment upon Whiskers," Sterne relates how a "decayed kinsman"
+of the Lady Baussiere "ran begging, bareheaded, on one side of her
+palfrey, conjuring her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance,
+consanguinity, &c.--cousin, aunt, sister, mother--for virtue's sake,
+for your own sake, for mine, for Christ's sake, remember me! pity me!"
+And again he tells how a "devout, venerable, hoary-headed man" thus
+beseeched her: "'I beg for the unfortunate. Good my lady, 'tis for
+a prison--for an hospital; 'tis for an old man--a poor man undone by
+shipwreck, by suretyship, by fire. I call God and all His angels to
+witness, 'tis to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry--'tis to comfort
+the sick and the brokenhearted.' The Lady Baussiere rode on.[2]"
+
+[Footnote 1: _Tristram Shandy_, vol. v.c. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]
+
+But now compare this passage from the _Anatomy of Melancholy_:
+
+  "A poor decayed kinsman of his sets upon him by the way, in all
+  his jollity, and runs begging, bareheaded, by him, conjuring him by
+  those former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c., 'uncle,
+  cousin, brother, father, show some pity for Christ's sake, pity a
+  sick man, an old man,' &c.; he cares not--ride on: pretend sickness,
+  inevitable loss of limbs, plead suretyship or shipwreck, fire,
+  common calamities, show thy wants and imperfections, take God
+  and all His angels to witness ... put up a supplication to him in
+  the name of a thousand orphans, an hospital, a spittle, a prison, as
+  he goes by  ... ride on."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Burton: _Anat. Mel._, p. 269.]
+
+Hardly a casual coincidence this. But it is yet more unpleasant to
+find that the mock philosophic reflections with which Mr. Shandy
+consoles himself on Bobby's death, in those delightful chapters on
+that event, are not taken, as they profess to be, direct from the
+sages of antiquity, but have been conveyed through, and "conveyed"
+from, Burton.
+
+"When Agrippina was told of her son's death," says Sterne, "Tacitus
+informs us that, not being able to moderate her passions, she abruptly
+broke off her work." Tacitus does, it is true, inform us of this. But
+it was undoubtedly Burton (_Anat. Mel._, p. 213) who informed Sterne
+of it. So, too, when Mr. Shandy goes on to remark upon death that
+"'Tis an inevitable chance--the first statute in Magna Charta--it is
+an everlasting Act of Parliament, my dear brother--all must die," the
+agreement of his views with those of Burton, who had himself said
+of death, "'Tis an inevitable chance--the first statute in Magna
+Charta--an everlasting Act of Parliament--all must die,[2]" is even
+textually exact.
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 215.]
+
+In the next passage, however, the humourist gets the better of the
+plagiarist, and we are ready to forgive the theft for the happily
+comic turn which he gives to it.
+
+Burton:
+
+  "Tully was much grieved for his daughter Tulliola's death at first,
+  until such time that he had confirmed his mind by philosophical precepts;
+  then he began to triumph over fortune and grief, and for her
+  reception into heaven to be much more joyed than before he was
+  troubled for her loss."
+
+Sterne:
+
+"When Tully was bereft of his daughter, at first he laid it to his
+heart, he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto
+it. O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!--Still, still, still--'twas O
+my Tullia, my Tullia! Me thinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I
+talk with my Tullia. But as soon as he began to look into the stores
+of philosophy, and _consider how many excellent things might be said
+upon the occasion_, nobody on earth can conceive, says the great
+orator, how happy, how joyful it made me."
+
+"Kingdoms and provinces, cities and towns," continues Burton, "have
+their periods, and are consumed." "Kingdoms and provinces, and towns
+and cities," exclaims Mr. Shandy, throwing the sentence, like
+the "born orator" his son considered him, into the rhetorical
+interrogative, "have they not their periods?" "Where," he proceeds,
+"is Troy, and Mycenae, and Thebes, and Delos, and Persepolis, and
+Agrigentum? What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of
+Cyzicum and Mytilene? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon"
+(and all, with the curious exception of Mytilene, enumerated by
+Burton) "are now no more." And then the famous consolatory letter
+from Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of Tullia is laid under
+contribution--Burton's rendering of the Latin being followed almost
+word for word. "Returning out of Asia," declaims Mr. Shandy, "when I
+sailed from Aegina towards Megara" (when can this have been? thought
+my Uncle Toby), "I began to view the country round about. Aegina
+was behind me, Megara before," &c., and so on, down to the final
+reflection of the philosopher, "Remember that thou art but a man;" at
+which point Sterne remarks coolly, "Now, my Uncle Toby knew not that
+this last paragraph was an extract of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory
+letter to Tully"--the thing to be really known being that the
+paragraph was, in fact, Servius Sulpicius filtered through Burton.
+Again, and still quoting from the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Mr. Shandy
+remarks how "the Thracians wept when a child was born, and feasted and
+made merry when a man went out of the world; and with reason." He then
+goes on to lay predatory hands on that fine, sad passage in Lucian,
+which Burton had quoted before him: "Is it not better not to hunger at
+all, than to eat? not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?"
+(why not "than to drink to satisfy thirst?" as Lucian wrote and Burton
+translated). "Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, love
+and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a
+galled traveller who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his
+journey afresh?" Then, closing his Burton and opening his Bacon at the
+_Essay on Death_; he adds: "There is no terror, brother Toby, in its
+(Death's) looks but what it borrows from groans and convulsions, and"
+(here parody forces its way in) "the blowing of noses, and the wiping
+away of tears with the bottoms of curtains in a sick man's bed-room;"
+and with one more theft from Burton, after Seneca: "Consider, brother
+Toby, when we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not," this
+extraordinary cento of plagiarisms concludes.
+
+Not that this is Sterne's only raid upon the quaint old writer of whom
+he has here made such free use. Several other instances of word
+for word appropriation might be quoted from this and the succeeding
+volumes of _Tristram Shandy_. The apostrophe to "blessed health,"
+in c. xxxiii. of vol. v. is taken direct from the _Anatomy of
+Melancholy_; so is the phrase, "He has a gourd for his head and a
+pippin for his heart," in c. ix.; so is the jest about Franciscus
+Ribera's computation of the amount of cubic space required by the
+souls of the lost; so is Hilarion the hermit's comparison of his body
+with its unruly passions to a kicking ass. And there is a passage in
+the _Sentimental Journey_, the "Fragment in the Abderitans," which
+shows, Dr. Ferriar thinks--though it does not seem to me to show
+conclusively--that Sterne was unaware that what he was taking from
+Burton had been previously taken by Burton from Lucian.
+
+There is more excuse, in the opinion of the author of the
+_Illustrations_, for the literary thefts of the preacher than for
+those of the novelist; since in sermons, Dr. Ferriar observes drily,
+"the principal matter must consist of repetitions."
+
+But it can hardly, I think, be admitted that the kind of "repetitions"
+to which Sterne had recourse in the pulpit--or, at any rate,
+in compositions ostensibly prepared for the pulpit--are quite
+justifiable. Professor Jebb has pointed out, in a recent volume of
+this series, that the description of the tortures of the Inquisition,
+which so deeply moved Corporal Trim in the famous Sermon on
+Conscience, was really the work of Bentley; but Sterne has pilfered
+more freely from a divine more famous as a preacher than the great
+scholar whose words he appropriated on that occasion. "Then shame and
+grief go with her," he exclaims in his singular sermon on "The Levite
+and his Concubine;" "and wherever she seeks a shelter may the hand of
+Justice shut the door against her!" an exclamation which is taken,
+as, no doubt, indeed, was the whole suggestion of the somewhat strange
+subject, from the _Contemplations_ of Bishop Hall. And so, again, we
+find in Sterne's sermon the following:
+
+  "Mercy well becomes the heart of all Thy creatures! but most of
+  Thy servant, a Levite, who offers up so many daily sacrifices to Thee
+  for the transgressions of Thy people. But to little purpose, he would
+  add, have I served at Thy altar, where my business was to sue for
+  mercy, had I not learned to practise it."
+
+And in Hall's _Contemplations_ the following:
+
+  "Mercy becomes well the heart of any man, but most of a Levite.
+  He that had helped to offer so many sacrifices to God for the multitude
+  of every Israelite's sins saw how proportionable it was that man
+  should not hold one sin unpardonable. He had served at the altar
+  to no purpose, if he (whose trade was to sue for mercy) had not at all
+  learned to practise it."
+
+Sterne's twelfth sermon, on the Forgiveness of Injuries, is merely
+a diluted commentary on the conclusion of Hall's "Contemplation of
+Joseph." In the sixteenth sermon, the one on Shimei, we find:
+
+  "There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season
+  to give a mark of enmity and ill will: a word, a look, which at
+  one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the
+  heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which,
+  with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object
+  aimed at."
+
+This, it is evident, is but slightly altered, and by no means for the
+better, from the more terse and vigorous language of the Bishop:
+
+  "There is no small cruelty in the picking out of a time for mischief:
+  that word would scarce gall at one season which at another
+  killeth. The same shaft flying with the wind pierces deep, which
+  against it can hardly find strength to stick upright."
+
+But enough of these _pièces de conviction_. Indictments for plagiarism
+are often too hastily laid; but there can be no doubt, I should
+imagine, in the mind of any reasonable being upon the evidence here
+cited, that the offence in this case is clearly proved. Nor, I
+think, can there be much question as to its moral complexion. For the
+pilferings from Bishop Hall, at any rate, no shadow of excuse can,
+so far as I can see, be alleged. Sterne could not possibly plead any
+better justification for borrowing Hall's thoughts and phrases and
+passing them off upon his hearers or readers as original, than
+he could plead for claiming the authorship of one of the Bishop's
+benevolent actions and representing himself to the world as the doer
+of the good deed. In the actual as in the hypothetical case there is
+a dishonest appropriation by one man of the credit--in the former
+case the intellectual, in the latter the moral credit--belonging to
+another: the offence in the actual case being aggravated by the fact
+that it involves a fraud upon the purchaser of the sermon, who pays
+money for what he may already have in his library. The plagiarisms
+from Burton stand upon a slightly different though not, I think, a
+much more defensible footing. For in this case it has been urged
+that Sterne, being desirous of satirizing pedantry, was justified in
+resorting to the actually existent writings of an antique pedant of
+real life; and that since Mr. Shandy could not be made to talk more
+like himself than Burton talked like _him_, it was artistically
+lawful to put Burton's exact words into Mr. Shandy's mouth. It makes
+a difference, it may be said, that Sterne is not here speaking in his
+own person, as he is in his _Sermons_, but in the person of one of his
+characters. This casuistry, however, does not seem to me to be sound.
+Even as regards the passages from ancient authors, which, while
+quoting them from Burton, he tacitly represents to his readers
+as taken from his own stores of knowledge, the excuse is hardly
+sufficient; while as regards the original reflections of the author of
+the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ it obviously fails to apply at all. And in
+any case there could be no necessity for the omission to acknowledge
+the debt. Even admitting that no more characteristic reflections could
+have been composed for Mr. Shandy than were actually to be found in
+Burton, art is not so exacting a mistress as to compel the artist
+to plagiarize against his will. A scrupulous writer, being also as
+ingenious as Sterne, could have found some means of indicating the
+source from which he was borrowing without destroying the dramatic
+illusion of the scene.
+
+But it seems clear enough that Sterne himself was troubled by no
+conscientious qualms on this subject. Perhaps the most extraordinary
+instance of literary effrontery which was ever met with is the passage
+in vol. v.c. 1, which even that seasoned detective Dr. Ferriar is
+startled into pronouncing "singular." Burton had complained that
+writers were like apothecaries, who "make new mixtures every day," by
+"pouring out of one vessel into another." "We weave," he said, "the
+same web still, twist the same rope again and again." And Sterne
+_incolumi gravitate_ asks: "Shall we forever make new books as
+apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into
+another? Are we forever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope,
+forever on the same track, forever at the same pace?" And this he
+writes with the scissors actually opened in his hand for the almost
+bodily abstraction of the passage beginning, "Man, the most excellent
+and noble creature of the world!" Surely this denunciation of
+plagiarism by a plagiarist on the point of setting to work could only
+have been written by a man who looked upon plagiarism as a good joke.
+
+Apart, however, from the moralities of the matter, it must in fairness
+be admitted that in most cases Sterne is no servile copyist. He
+appropriates other men's thoughts and phrases, and with them, of
+course, the credit for the wit, the truth, the vigour, or the learning
+which characterizes them; but he is seldom found, in _Tristram
+Shandy_, at any rate, to have transferred them to his own pages out
+of a mere indolent inclination to save himself the trouble of
+composition. He takes them less as substitutes than as groundwork for
+his own invention--as so much material for his own inventive powers
+to work upon; and those powers do generally work upon them with
+conspicuous skill of elaboration. The series of cuttings, for
+instance, which he makes from Burton, on the occasion of Bobby
+Shandy's death, are woven into the main tissue of the dialogue with
+remarkable ingenuity and naturalness; and the bright strands of his
+own unborrowed humour fly flashing across the fabric at every transit
+of the shuttle. Or, to change the metaphor, we may say that in almost
+every instance the jewels that so glitter in their stolen setting were
+cut and set by Sterne himself. Let us allow that the most expert of
+lapidaries is not justified in stealing his settings; but let us still
+not forget that the _jewels_ are his, or permit our disapproval of his
+laxity of principle to make us unjust to his consummate skill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--HUMOUR AND SENTIMENT.
+
+To talk of "the style" of Sterne is almost to play one of those tricks
+with language of which he himself was so fond. For there is hardly any
+definition of the word which can make it possible to describe him as
+having any style at all. It is not only that he manifestly recognized
+no external canons whereto to conform the expression of his thoughts,
+but he had, apparently, no inclination to invent and observe--except,
+indeed, in the most negative of senses--any style of his own. The
+"style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say "the form
+of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly
+irregular, and that was all. His digressions, his asides, and his
+fooleries in general would, of course, have in any case necessitated
+a certain general jerkiness of manner; but this need hardly have
+extended itself habitually to the structure of individual sentences,
+and as a matter of fact he can at times write, as he does for the most
+part in his _Sermons_, in a style which is not the less vigorous for
+being fairly correct. But as a rule his mode of expressing himself is
+destitute of any pretensions to precision; and in many instances it
+is a perfect marvel of literary slipshod. Nor is there any ground for
+believing that the slovenliness was invariably intentional. Sterne's
+truly hideous French--French at which even Stratford-atte-Bowe would
+have stood aghast--is in itself sufficient evidence of a natural
+insensibility to grammatical accuracy. Here there can be no suspicion
+of designed defiance of rules; and more than one solecism of rather
+a serious kind in his use of English words and phrases affords
+confirmatory testimony to the same point. His punctuation is fearful
+and wonderful, even for an age in which the _rationale_ of punctuation
+was more imperfectly understood than it is at present; and this,
+though an apparently slight matter, is not without value as an
+indication of ways of thought. But if we can hardly describe Sterne's
+style as being in the literary sense a style at all, it has a very
+distinct _colloquial_ character of its own, and as such it is nearly
+as much deserving of praise as from the literary point of view it is
+open to exception. Chaotic as it is in the syntactical sense, it is
+a perfectly clear vehicle for the conveyance of thought: we are as
+rarely at a loss for the meaning of one of Sterne's sentences as we
+are, for very different reasons, for the meaning of one of Macaulay's.
+And his language is so full of life and colour, his tone so animated
+and vivacious, that we forget we are reading and not _listening_, and
+we are as little disposed to be exacting in respect to form as though
+we were listeners in actual fact. Sterne's manner, in short, may
+be that of a bad and careless writer, but it is the manner of a
+first-rate talker; and this, of course, enhances rather than detracts
+from the unwearying charm of his wit and humour.
+
+To attempt a precise and final distinction between these two
+last-named qualities in Sterne or any one else would be no very
+hopeful task, perhaps; but those who have a keen perception of either
+find no great difficulty in discriminating, as a matter of feeling,
+between the two. And what is true of the qualities themselves is
+true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the men by whom they have been most
+conspicuously displayed. Some wits have been humourists also; nearly
+all humourists have been also wits; yet the two fall, on the whole,
+into tolerably well-marked classes, and the ordinary uncritical
+judgment would, probably, enable most men to state with sufficient
+certainty the class to which each famous name in the world's
+literature belongs. Aristophanes, Shakspeare, Cervantes, Molière,
+Swift, Fielding, Lamb, Richter, Carlyle: widely as these writers
+differ from each other in style and genius, the least skilled reader
+would hardly need to be told that the list which includes them all
+is a catalogue of humourists. And Cicero, Lucian, Pascal, Voltaire,
+Congreve, Pope, Sheridan, Courier, Sydney Smith--this, I suppose,
+would be recognized at once as an enumeration of wits. Some of these
+humourists, like Fielding, like Richter, like Carlyle, are always, or
+almost always, humourists alone. Some of these wits, like Pascal,
+like Pope, like Courier, are wits with no, or but slight, admixture
+of humour; and in the classification of these there is of course
+no difficulty at all. But even with the wits who very often give us
+humour also, and with the humourists who as often delight us with
+their wit, we seldom find ourselves in any doubt as to the real and
+more essential affinities of each. It is not by the wit which he has
+infused into his talk, so much as by the humour with which he has
+delineated the character, that Shakspeare has given his Falstaff an
+abiding place in our memories. It is not the repartees of Benedick and
+Beatrice, but the immortal fatuity of Dogberry, that the name of _Much
+Ado About Nothing_ recalls. None of the verbal quips of Touchstone
+tickle us like his exquisite patronage of William and the fascination
+which he exercises over the melancholy Jaques. And it is the same
+throughout all Shakspeare. It is of the humours of Bottom, and Launce,
+and Shallow, and Sly, and Aguecheek; it is of the laughter that treads
+upon the heels of horror and pity and awe, as we listen to the
+Porter in _Macbeth_, to the Grave-digger in _Hamlet_, to the Fool in
+_Lear_--it is of these that we think when we think of Shakspeare in
+any other but his purely poetic mood. Whenever, that is to say, we
+think of him as anything but a poet, we think of him, not as a wit,
+but as a humourist. So, too, it is not the dagger-thrusts of the
+_Drapier's Letters_, but the broad ridicule of the _Voyage to Laputa_,
+the savage irony of the _Voyage to the Houyhnhnms_, that we associate
+with the name of Swift. And, conversely, it is the cold, epigrammatic
+glitter of Congreve's dialogue, the fizz and crackle of the fireworks
+which Sheridan serves out with undiscriminating hand to the most
+insignificant of his characters--it is this which stamps the work of
+these dramatists with characteristics far more marked than any which
+belong to them in right of humorous portraiture of human foibles or
+ingenious invention of comic incident.
+
+The place of Sterne is unmistakably among writers of the former class.
+It is by his humour--his humour of character, his dramatic as distinct
+from his critical descriptive _personal_ humour--though, of course,
+he possesses this also, as all humourists must--that he lives and
+will live. In _Tristram Shandy_, as in the _Sermons_, there is a
+sufficiency of wit, and considerably more than a sufficiency of
+humorous reflection, innuendo, and persiflage; but it is the actors
+in his almost plotless drama who have established their creator in his
+niche in the Temple of Fame. We cannot, indeed, be sure that what has
+given him his hold upon posterity is what gave him his popularity with
+his contemporaries. On the contrary, it is, perhaps, more probable
+that he owed his first success with the public of his day to
+those eccentricities which are for us a little too consciously
+eccentric--those artifices which fail a little too conspicuously in
+the _ars celandi artem_. But however these tricks may have pleased in
+days when such tricks were new, they much more often weary than divert
+us now; and I suspect that many a man whose delight in the Corporal
+and his master, in Bridget and her mistress, is as fresh as ever,
+declines to accompany their creator in those perpetual digressions
+into nonsense or semi-nonsense the fashion of which Sterne borrowed
+from Rabelais, without Rabelais's excuse for adopting it. To us of
+this day the real charm and distinction of the book is due to the
+marvellous combination of vigour and subtlety in its portrayal of
+character, and in the purity and delicacy of its humour. Those last
+two apparently paradoxical substantives are chosen advisedly, and
+employed as the most convenient way of introducing that disagreeable
+question which no commentator on Sterne can possibly shirk, but which
+every admirer of Sterne must approach with reluctance. There is, of
+course, a sense in which Sterne's humour--if, indeed, we may bestow
+that name on the form of jocularity to which I refer--is the very
+reverse of pure and delicate: a sense in which it is impure and
+indelicate in the highest degree. On this it is necessary, however
+briefly, to touch; and to the weighty and many-counted indictment
+which may be framed against Sterne on this head there is, of course,
+but one possible plea--the plea of guilty. Nay, the plea must go
+further than a mere admission of the offence; it must include an
+admission of the worst motive, the worst spirit as animating the
+offender. It is not necessary to my purpose, nor doubtless congenial
+to the taste of the reader, that I should enter upon any critical
+analysis of this quality in the author's work, or compare him in this
+respect with the two other great humourists who have been the
+worst offenders in the same way. In one of those highly interesting
+criticisms of English literature which, even when they most
+conspicuously miss the mark, are so instructive to Englishmen, M.
+Taine has instituted an elaborate comparison--very much, I need hardly
+say, to the advantage of the latter--between the indecency of Swift
+and that of Rabelais--that "good giant," as his countryman calls him,
+"who rolls himself joyously about on his dunghill, thinking no evil."
+And no doubt the world of literary moralists will always be divided
+upon the question--one mainly of national temperament--whether mere
+animal spirits or serious satiric purpose is the best justification
+for offences against cleanliness. It is, of course, only the former
+theory, if either, which could possibly avail Sterne, and it would
+need an unpleasantly minute analysis of this characteristic in his
+writings to ascertain how far M. Taine's eloquent defence of Rabelais
+could be made applicable to his case. But the inquiry, one is glad
+to think, is as unnecessary as it would be disagreeable; for,
+unfortunately for Sterne, he must be condemned on a _quantitative_
+comparison of indecency, whatever may be his fate when compared
+with these other two great writers as regards the quality of their
+respective transgressions. There can be no denying, I mean, that
+Sterne is of all writers the most permeated and penetrated with
+impurity of thought and suggestion; that in no other writer is its
+latent presence more constantly felt, even if there be any in whom
+it is more often openly obtruded. The unclean spirit pursues him
+everywhere, disfiguring his scenes of humour, demoralizing his
+passages of serious reflection, debasing even his sentimental
+interludes. His coarseness is very often as great a blot on his art as
+on his morality--a thing which can very rarely be said of either Swift
+or Rabelais; and it is sometimes so distinctly fatal a blemish from
+the purely literary point of view, that one is amazed at the critical
+faculty which could have tolerated its presence.
+
+But when all this has been said of Sterne's humour it still remains
+true that, in another sense of the words "purity" and "delicacy,"
+he possesses humour more pure and delicate than, perhaps, any other
+writer in the world can show. For if that humour is the purest and
+most delicate which is the freest from any admixture of farce,
+and produces its effects with the lightest touch, and the least
+obligations to ridiculous incident, or what may be called the
+"physical grotesque," in any shape--then one can point to passages
+from Sterne's pen which, for fulfilment of these conditions, it would
+be difficult to match elsewhere. Strange as it may seem to say this
+of the literary Gilray who drew the portrait of Dr. Slop, and of the
+literary Grimaldi who tormented Phutatorius with the hot chestnut,
+it is nevertheless the fact that scene after scene may be cited from
+_Tristram Shandy_, and those the most delightful in the book, which
+are not only free from even the momentary intrusion of either the
+clown or the caricaturist, but even from the presence of "comic
+properties" (as actors would call them) of any kind: scenes of which
+the external setting is of the simplest possible character, while the
+humour is of that deepest and most penetrative kind which springs
+from the eternal incongruities of human nature, the ever-recurring
+cross-purposes of human lives.
+
+Carlyle classes Sterne with Cervantes among the great humourists of
+the world; and from one, and that the most important, point of view
+the praise is not extravagant. By no other writer besides Sterne,
+perhaps, since the days of the Spanish humourist, have the vast
+incongruities of human character been set forth with so masterly a
+hand. It is in virtue of the new insight which his humour opens to
+us of the immensity and variety of man's life that Cervantes makes
+us feel that he is _great_: not delightful merely--not even eternally
+delightful only, and secure of immortality through the perennial human
+need of joy--but _great_, but immortal, in right of that which makes
+Shakspeare and the Greek dramatists immortal, namely, the power, not
+alone over the pleasure-loving part of man's nature, but over that
+equally universal but more enduring element in it, his emotions of
+wonder and of awe. It is to this greater power--this control over a
+greater instinct than the human love of joy, that Cervantes owes his
+greatness; and it will be found, though it may seem at first a hard
+saying, that Sterne shares this power with Cervantes. To pass from
+Quixote and Sancho to Walter and Toby Shandy involves, of course, a
+startling change of dramatic key--a notable lowering of dramatic
+tone. It is almost like passing from poetry to prose: it is certainly
+passing from the poetic in spirit and surroundings to the profoundly
+prosaic in fundamental conception and in every individual detail.
+But those who do not allow accidental and external dissimilarities to
+obscure for them the inward and essential resemblances of things, must
+often, I think, have experienced from one of the Shandy dialogues the
+same _sort_ of impression that they derive from some of the most nobly
+humorous colloquies between the knight and his squire, and must have
+been conscious through all outward differences of key and tone of a
+common element in each. It is, of course, a resemblance of _relations_
+and not of personalities; for though there is something of the Knight
+of La Mancha in Mr. Shandy, there is nothing of Sancho about his
+brother. But the serio-comic game of cross-purposes is the same
+between both couples; and what one may call the irony of human
+intercourse is equally profound, and pointed with equal subtlety,
+in each. In the Spanish romance, of course, it is not likely to be
+missed. It is enough in itself that the deranged brain which takes
+windmills for giants, and carriers for knights, and Rosinante for a
+Bucephalus, has fixed upon Sancho Panza--the crowning proof of its
+mania--as the fitting squire of a knight-errant. To him--to this
+compound of somnolence, shrewdness, and good nature--to this creature
+with no more tincture of romantic idealism than a wine-skin, the
+knight addresses, without misgiving, his lofty dissertations on the
+glories and the duties of chivalry--the squire responding after
+his fashion. And thus these two hold converse, contentedly
+incomprehensible to each other, and with no suspicion that they are as
+incapable of interchanging ideas as the inhabitants of two different
+planets. With what heart-stirring mirth, and yet with what strangely
+deeper feeling of the infinite variety of human nature, do we follow
+their converse throughout! Yet Quixote and Sancho are not more
+life-like and human, nor nearer together at one point and farther
+apart at another, than are Walter Shandy and his brother. The squat
+little Spanish peasant is not more gloriously incapable of following
+the chivalric vagaries of his master than the simple soldier is of
+grasping the philosophic crotchets of his brother. Both couples are
+in sympathetic contact absolute and complete at one point; at another
+they are "poles asunder" both of them. And in both contrasts there
+is that sense of futility and failure, of alienation and
+misunderstanding--that element of underlying pathos, in short, which
+so strangely gives its keenest salt to humour. In both alike there is
+the same suggestion of the Infinite of disparity bounding the finite
+of resemblance--of the Incommensurable in man and nature, beside which
+all minor uniformities sink into insignificance.
+
+The pathetic element which underlies and deepens the humour is, of
+course, produced in the two cases in two exactly opposite ways. In
+both cases it is a picture of human simplicity--of a noble and artless
+nature out of harmony with its surroundings--which moves us;
+but whereas in the Spanish romance the simplicity is that of the
+_incompris_, in the English novel it is that of the man with whom
+the _incompris_ consorts. If there is pathos as well as humour, and
+deepening the humour, in the figure of the distraught knight-errant
+talking so hopelessly over the head of his attached squire's morality,
+so too there is pathos, giving depth to the humour of the eccentric
+philosopher, shooting so hopelessly wide of the intellectual
+appreciation of the most affectionate of brothers. One's sympathy,
+perhaps, is even more strongly appealed to in the latter than in the
+former case, because the effort of the good Captain to understand is
+far greater than that of the Don to make himself understood, and the
+concern of the former at his failure is proportionately more marked
+than that of the latter at _his_. And the general _rapport_ between
+one of the two ill-assorted pairs is much closer than that of
+the other. It is, indeed, the tantalizing approach to a mutual
+understanding which gives so much more subtle a zest to the humour
+of the relations between the two brothers Shandy than to that which
+arises out of the relations between the philosopher and his wife.
+The broad comedy of the dialogues between Mr. and Mrs. Shandy is
+irresistible in its way: but it _is_ broad comedy. The philosopher
+knows that his wife does not comprehend him: she knows that she never
+will; and neither of them much cares. The husband snubs her openly
+for her mental defects, and she with perfect placidity accepts his
+rebukes. "Master," as he once complains, "of one of the finest chains
+of reasoning in the world, he is unable for the soul of him to get a
+single link of it into the head of his wife;" but we never hear him
+lamenting in this serio-comic fashion over his brother's inability to
+follow his processes of reasoning. That is too serious a matter with
+both of them; their mutual desire to share each other's ideas and
+tastes is too strong; and each time that the philosopher shows his
+impatience with the soldier's fortification-hobby, or the soldier
+breaks his honest shins over one of the philosopher's crotchets, the
+regret and remorse on either side is equally acute and sincere. It
+must be admitted, however, that Captain Shandy is the one who the more
+frequently subjects himself to pangs of this sort, and who is the more
+innocent sufferer of the two.
+
+From the broad and deep humour of this central conception of contrast
+flow as from a head-water innumerable rills of comedy through many and
+many a page of dialogue; but not, of course, from this source alone.
+Uncle Toby is ever delightful, even when his brother is not near him
+as his foil; the faithful Corporal brings out another side of his
+character, upon which we linger with equal pleasure of contemplation;
+the allurements of the Widow Wadman reveal him to us in yet
+another--but always in a captivating aspect. There is, too, one need
+hardly say, an abundance of humour, of a high, though not the highest,
+order in the minor characters of the story--in Mrs. Shandy, in the
+fascinating widow, and even, under the coarse lines of the physical
+caricature, in the keen little Catholic, Slop himself. But it is in
+Toby Shandy alone that humour reaches that supreme level which it is
+only capable of attaining when the collision of contrasted qualities
+in a human character produces a corresponding conflict of the emotions
+of mirth and tenderness in the minds of those who contemplate it.
+
+This, however, belongs more rightfully to the consideration of the
+creative and dramatic element in Sterne's genius; and an earlier place
+in the analysis is claimed by that power over the emotion of pity upon
+which Sterne, beyond question, prided himself more highly than upon
+any other of his gifts. He preferred, we can plainly see, to think of
+himself, not as the great humourist, but as the great sentimentalist;
+and though the word "sentiment" had something even in _his_ day of the
+depreciatory meaning which distinguishes it nowadays from "pathos,"
+there can be little doubt that the thing appeared to Sterne to be, on
+the whole, and both in life and literature, rather admirable than the
+reverse.
+
+What, then, were his notions of true "sentiment" in literature?
+We have seen elsewhere that he repeats--it would appear
+unconsciously--and commends the canon which Horace propounds to the
+tragic poet in the words:
+
+  "Si vis me flere, dolendum
+  Primum ipsi tibi: tunc tua me infortunia laedent."
+
+And that canon is sound enough, no doubt, in the sense in which it was
+meant, and in its relation to the person to whom it was addressed. A
+tragic drama, peopled with heroes who set forth their woes in frigid
+and unimpassioned verse, will unquestionably leave its audience as
+cold as itself. Nor is this true of drama alone. All _poetry_, indeed,
+whether dramatic or other, presupposes a sympathetic unity of emotion
+between the poet and those whom he addresses; and to this extent it
+is obviously true that _he_ must feel before they can. Horace, who was
+(what every literary critic is not) a man of the world and an observer
+of human nature, did not, of course, mean that this capacity for
+feeling was all, or even the chief part, of the poetic faculty. He
+must have seen many an "intense" young Roman make that pathetic
+error of the young in all countries and of all periods--the error of
+mistaking the capacity of emotion for the gift of expression. He did,
+however, undoubtedly mean that a poet's power of affecting others
+presupposes passion in himself; and, as regards the poet, he was
+right. But his criticism takes no account whatever of one form of
+appeal to the emotions which has been brought by later art to a high
+pitch of perfection, but with which the personal feeling of the artist
+has not much more to do than the "passions" of an auctioneer's clerk
+have to do with the compilation of his inventory. A poet himself,
+Horace wrote for poets; to him the pathetic implied the ideal, the
+imaginative, the rhetorical; he lived before the age of Realism and
+the Realists, and would scarcely have comprehended either the men or
+the method if he could have come across them. Had he done so, however,
+he would have been astonished to find his canon reversed, and to have
+perceived that the primary condition of the realist's success, and
+the distinctive note of those writers who have pressed genius into
+the service of realism, is that they do _not_ share--that they are
+unalterably and ostentatiously free from--the emotions to which
+they appeal in their readers. A fortunate accident has enabled us to
+compare the treatment which the world's greatest tragic poet and its
+greatest master of realistic tragedy have respectively applied to
+virtually the same subject; and the two methods are never likely to
+be again so impressively contrasted as in _King Lear_ and _Le Père
+Goriot_. But, in truth, it must be impossible for any one who feels
+Balzac's power not to feel also how it is heightened by Balzac's
+absolute calm--a calm entirely different from that stern composure
+which was merely a point of style and not an attitude of the heart
+with the old Greek tragedians--a calm which, unlike theirs, insulates,
+so to speak, and is intended to insulate, the writer, to the end that
+his individuality, of which only the electric current of sympathy ever
+makes a reader conscious, may disappear, and the characters of the
+drama stand forth the more life-like from the complete concealment of
+the hand that moves them.
+
+Of this kind of art Horace, as has been said, knew nothing, and his
+canon only applies to it by the rule of contraries. Undoubtedly, and
+in spite of the marvels which one great genius has wrought with it, it
+is a form lower than the poetic--essentially a prosaic, and in many
+or most hands an unimaginative, form of art; but for this very reason,
+that it demands nothing of its average practitioner but a keen eye for
+facts, great and small, and a knack of graphically recording them, it
+has become a far more commonly and successfully cultivated form of
+art than any other. As to the question who _are_ its practitioners, it
+would, of course, be the merest dogmatism to commit one's self to any
+attempt at rigid classification in such a matter. There are few if any
+writers who can be described without qualification either as realists
+or as idealists. Nearly all of them, probably, are realists at one
+moment and in one mood, and idealists at other moments and in other
+moods. All that need be insisted on is that the methods of the two
+forms of art are essentially distinct, and that artistic failure must
+result from any attempt to combine them; for, whereas the primary
+condition of success in the one case is that the reader should feel
+the sympathetic presence of the writer, the primary condition of
+success in the other is that the writer should efface himself from the
+reader's consciousness altogether. And it is, I think, the defiance of
+these conditions which explains why so much of Sterne's deliberately
+pathetic writing is, from the artistic point of view, a failure. It is
+this which makes one feel so much of it to be strained and unnatural,
+and which brings it to pass that some of his most ambitious efforts
+leave the reader indifferent, or even now and then contemptuous. In
+those passages of pathos in which the effect is distinctly sought
+by realistic means Sterne is perpetually ignoring the "self-denying
+ordinance" of his adopted method--perpetually obtruding his own
+individuality, and begging us, as it were, to turn from the picture to
+the artist, to cease gazing for a moment at his touching creation, and
+to admire the fine feeling, the exquisitely sympathetic nature of the
+man who created it. No doubt, as we must in fairness remember, it was
+part of his "humour"--in Ancient Pistol's sense of the word--to do
+this; it is true, no doubt (and a truth which Sterne's most famous
+critic was too prone to ignore), that his sentiment is not always
+_meant_ for serious;[1] nay, the very word "sentimental" itself,
+though in Sterne's day, of course, it had acquired but a part of its
+present disparaging significance, is a sufficient proof of that. But
+there are, nevertheless, plenty of passages, both in _Tristram Shandy_
+and the _Sentimental Journey_, where the intention is wholly and
+unmixedly pathetic--where the smile is not for a moment meant to
+compete with the tear--which are, nevertheless, it must be owned,
+complete failures, and failures traceable with much certainty, or so
+it seems to me, to the artistic error above-mentioned.
+
+[Footnote 1: Surely it was not so meant, for instance, in the passage
+about the _desobligeante_, which had been "standing so many months
+unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessien's coach-yard. Much, indeed,
+was not to be said for it, but something might; and, when a few words
+will rescue Misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be
+a churl of them." "Does anybody," asks Thackeray in a strangely
+matter-of-fact fashion, "believe that this is a real sentiment? That
+this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery--out of an
+old cab--is genuine feeling?" Nobody, we should say. But, on the other
+hand, does anybody--or did anybody before Thackeray--suggest that it
+was meant to pass for genuine feeling? Is it not an obvious piece of
+mock pathetic?]
+
+In one famous case, indeed, the failure can hardly be described as
+other than ludicrous. The figure of the distraught Maria of Moulines
+is tenderly drawn; the accessories of the picture--her goat, her dog,
+her pipe, her song to the Virgin--though a little theatrical, perhaps,
+are skilfully touched in; and so long as the Sentimental Traveller
+keeps our attention fixed upon her and them the scene prospers well
+enough. But, after having bidden us duly note how "the tears trickled
+down her cheeks," the Traveller continues: "I sat down close by her,
+and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell with my handkerchief.
+I then steeped it in my own--and then in hers--and then in mine--and
+then I wiped hers again; and as I did it I felt such undescribable
+emotions within me as, I am sure, could not be accounted for from any
+combinations of matter and motion." The reader of this may well ask
+himself in wonderment whether he is really expected to make a third
+in the lachrymose group. We look at the passage again, and more
+carefully, to see if, after all, we may not be intended to laugh, and
+not to cry at it; but on finding, as clearly appears, that we actually
+_are_ intended to cry at it the temptation to laugh becomes almost
+irresistible. We proceed, however, to the account of Maria's
+wanderings to Rome and back, and we come to the pretty passage which
+follows:
+
+  "How she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could
+  not tell; but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.
+  Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I; and wast thou in my own
+  land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee;
+  thou shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup; I
+  would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings
+  I would seek after thee, and bring thee back. When the sun went
+  down I would say my prayers; and when I had done thou shouldst
+  play thy evening-song upon thy pipe; nor would the incense of my
+  sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a
+  broken heart."
+
+But then follows more whimpering:
+
+  "Nature melted within me [continues Sterne] as I said this; and
+  Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped
+  too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream.
+  And where will you dry it, Maria? said I. I'll dry it in my bosom,
+  said she; 'twill do me good. And is your heart still so warm, Maria?
+  said I. I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows.
+  She looked with wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then,
+  without saying anything, took her pipe and played her service to the
+  Virgin."
+
+Which are we meant to look at--the sorrows of Maria? or the
+sensibilities of the Sentimental Traveller? or the condition of the
+pocket-handkerchief? I think it doubtful whether any writer of the
+first rank has ever perpetrated so disastrous a literary failure
+as this scene; but the main cause of that failure appears to me not
+doubtful at all. The artist has no business within the frame of the
+picture, and his intrusion into it has spoilt it. The method adopted
+from the commencement is ostentatiously objective: we are taken
+straight into Maria's presence, and bidden to look at and to pity the
+unhappy maiden as _described_ by the Traveller who met her. No attempt
+is made to place us at the outset in sympathy with _him_; he, until he
+thrusts himself before us, with his streaming eyes, and his drenched
+pocket-handkerchief, is a mere reporter of the scene before him, and
+he and his tears are as much out of place as if he were the compositor
+who set up the type. It is not merely that we don't want to know how
+the scene affected him, and that we resent as an impertinence the
+elaborate account of his tender emotions; we don't wish to be reminded
+of his presence at all. For, as we can know nothing (effectively)
+of Maria's sorrows except as given in her appearance--the historical
+recital of them and their cause being too curt and bald to be able to
+move us--the best chance for moving our compassion for her is to
+make the illusion of her presence as dramatically real as possible;
+a chance which is, therefore, completely destroyed when the author of
+the illusion insists on thrusting himself between ourselves and the
+scene.
+
+But, in truth, this whole episode of Maria of Moulines was, like more
+than one of Sterne's efforts after the pathetic, condemned to failure
+from the very conditions of its birth. These abortive efforts are
+no natural growth of his artistic genius; they proceed rather from
+certain morbidly stimulated impulses of his moral nature which he
+forced his artistic genius to subserve. He had true pathetic power,
+simple yet subtle, at his command; but it visited him unsought, and by
+inspiration from without. It came when he was in the dramatic and
+not in the introspective mood; when he was thinking honestly of
+his characters, and not of himself. But he was, unfortunately, too
+prone--and a long course of moral self-indulgence had confirmed him in
+it--to the habit of caressing his own sensibilities; and the result of
+this was always to set him upon one of those attempts to be pathetic
+of _malice prepense_ of which Maria of Moulines is one example, and
+the too celebrated dead donkey of Nampont another. "It is agreeably
+and skilfully done, that dead jackass," writes Thackeray; "like M. de
+Soubise's cook on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up
+quite tender, and with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine
+feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and
+horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with
+a dead donkey inside! Psha! Mountebank! I'll not give thee one
+penny-piece for that trick, donkey and all." That is vigorous
+ridicule, and not wholly undeserved; but, on the other hand, not
+entirely deserved. There is less of artistic trick, it seems to me,
+and more of natural foible, about Sterne's literary sentiment than
+Thackeray was ever willing to believe; and I can find nothing worse,
+though nothing better, in the dead ass of Nampont than in Maria of
+Moulines. I do not think there is any conscious simulation of
+feeling in this Nampont scene; it is that the feeling itself is
+overstrained--that Sterne, hugging, as usual, his own sensibilities,
+mistook their value in expression for the purposes of art. The
+Sentimental Traveller does not obtrude himself to the same extent as
+in the scene at Moulines; but a little consideration of the scene will
+show how much Sterne relied on the mere presentment of the fact that
+here was an unfortunate peasant who had lost his dumb companion, and
+here a tender-hearted gentleman looking on and pitying him. As for
+any attempts to bring out, by objective dramatic touches, either the
+grievousness of the bereavement or the grief of the mourner, such
+attempts as are made to do this are either commonplace or "one step
+in advance" of the sublime. Take this, for instance: "The mourner was
+sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with his ass's pannel and its
+bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time, then laid them
+down, looked at them, and shook his head. He then took the crust of
+bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time
+in his hand, then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle--looked
+wistfully at the little arrangement he had made--and then gave a sigh.
+The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him," &c. Simplicity,
+indeed, of a marvellous sort which could show itself by so
+extraordinary a piece of acting as this! Is there any critic who
+candidly thinks it natural--I do not mean in the sense of mere
+every-day probability, but of conformity to the laws of human
+character? Is it true that in any country, among any people, however
+emotional, grief--real, unaffected, un-selfconscious grief--ever did
+or ever could display itself by such a trick as that of laying a piece
+of bread on the bit of a dead ass's bridle? Do we not feel that if we
+had been on the point of offering comfort or alms to the mourner, and
+saw him go through this extraordinary piece of pantomime, we should
+have buttoned up our hearts and pockets forthwith? Sentiment,
+again, sails very near the wind of the ludicrous in the reply to the
+Traveller's remark that the mourner had been a merciful master to the
+dead ass. "Alas!" the latter says, "I thought so when he was alive,
+but now that he is dead I think otherwise. I fear the weight of
+_myself and my afflictions_ have been too much for him." And the scene
+ends flatly enough with the scrap of morality: "'Shame on the world!'
+said I to myself. 'Did we love each other as this poor soul loved his
+ass, 'twould be something.'"
+
+The whole incident, in short, is one of those examples of the
+deliberate-pathetic with which Sterne's highly natural art had
+least, and his highly artificial nature most, to do. He is never so
+unsuccessful as when, after formally announcing, as it were, that he
+means to be touching, he proceeds to select his subject, to marshal
+his characters, to group his accessories, and with painful and
+painfully apparent elaboration to work up his scene to the weeping
+point. There is no obviousness of suggestion, no spontaneity of
+treatment about this "Dead Ass" episode; indeed, there is some reason
+to believe that it was one of those most hopeless of efforts--the
+attempt at the mechanical repetition of a former triumph. It is by no
+means improbable, at any rate, that the dead ass of Nampont owes its
+presence in the _Sentimental Journey_ to the reception met with by the
+live ass of Lyons in the seventh volume of _Tristram Shandy_. And yet
+what an astonishing difference between the two sketches!
+
+  "'Twas a poor ass, who had just turned in, with a couple of large
+  panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and
+  cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious with his two fore-feet on the
+  inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the
+  street, as not knowing very well whether he would go in or no.
+  Now, 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike.
+  There is a patient endurance of sufferings wrote so unaffectedly in
+  his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him that it
+  always disarms me, and to that degree that I do not like to speak
+  unkindly to him; on the contrary, meet him where I will, in town or
+  country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage,
+  I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and, as one
+  word begets another (if he has as little to do as I), I generally
+  fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination
+  so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his
+  countenance--and where those carry me not deep enough, in flying from
+  my own heart into his, and feeling what is natural for an ass to think,
+  as well as a man, upon the occasion.... Come, Honesty! said I, seeing
+  it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, art thou for
+  coming in or going out? The ass twisted his head round, to look up the
+  street. Well, replied I, we'll wait a minute for thy driver. He turned
+  his head thoughtfully about, and looked wistfully the opposite way. I
+  understand thee perfectly, answered I: if thou takest a wrong step
+  in this affair he will cudgel thee to death. Well, a minute is but a
+  minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be
+  set down as ill spent. He was eating the stem of an artichoke as
+  this discourse went on, and, in the little peevish contentions of nature
+  betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his
+  mouth half a dozen times, and picked it up again. God help thee,
+  Jack! said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter
+  blow, I fear, for its wages--'tis all, all bitterness to thee, whatever
+  life is to others. And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is
+  as bitter, I dare say, as soot (for he had cast aside the stem), and
+  thou hast not a friend, perhaps, in all this world that will give thee a
+  macaroon. In saying this I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had
+  just purchased, and gave him one; and, at this moment that I am
+  telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in
+  the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon, than of
+  benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. When the
+  ass had eaten his macaroon I pressed him to come in. The poor
+  beast was heavy loaded, his legs seemed to tremble under him, he
+  hung rather backwards, and as I pulled at his halter it broke short
+  in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face. 'Don't thrash me
+  with it; but if you will, you may.' 'If I do,' said I, 'I'll be d----d.'"
+
+Well might Thackeray say of this passage that, "the critic who refuses
+to see in it wit, humour, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real
+sentiment, must be hard indeed to move and to please." It is, in
+truth, excellent; and its excellence is due to its possessing nearly
+every one of those qualities, positive and negative, which the two
+other scenes above quoted are without. The author does not here
+obtrude himself, does not importune us to admire his exquisitely
+compassionate nature; on the contrary, he at once amuses us and
+enlists our sympathies by that subtly humorous piece of self-analysis,
+in which he shows how large an admixture of curiosity was contained
+in his benevolence. The incident, too, is well chosen. No forced
+concurrence of circumstances brings it about: it is such as any man
+might have met with anywhere in his travels, and it is handled in a
+simple and manly fashion. The reader is _with_ the writer throughout;
+and their common mood of half-humorous pity is sustained, unforced,
+but unbroken, from first to last.
+
+One can hardly say as much for another of the much-quoted pieces from
+the _Sentimental Journey_--the description of the caged starling.
+The passage is ingeniously worked into its context; and if we were
+to consider it as only intended to serve the purpose of a sudden
+and dramatic discomfiture of the Traveller's somewhat inconsiderate
+moralizings on captivity, it would be well enough. But, regarded as
+a substantive appeal to one's emotions, it is open to the criticisms
+which apply to most other of Sterne's too deliberate attempts at the
+pathetic. The details of the picture are too much insisted on, and
+there is too much of self-consciousness in the artist. Even at the
+very close of the story of Le Fevre's death--finely told though, as
+a whole, it is--there is a jarring note. Even while the dying man is
+breathing his last our sleeve is twitched as we stand at his bedside,
+and our attention forcibly diverted from the departing soldier to the
+literary ingenuities of the man who is describing his end:
+
+  "There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity,
+  but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul, and
+  showed you the goodness of his nature. To this there was something
+  in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned
+  to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that
+  before my Uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making
+  to the father had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees,
+  and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards
+  him. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing
+  cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel,
+  the heart, rallied back; the film forsook his eyes for a moment; he
+  looked up wishfully in my Uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon
+  his boy--and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken."
+
+How excellent all that is! and how perfectly would the scene have
+ended had it closed with the tender and poetic image which thus
+describes the dying soldier's commendation of his orphan boy to the
+care of his brother-in-arms! But what of this, which closes the scene,
+in fact?
+
+  "Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the
+  pulse fluttered--stopped--went on--throbbed--stopped again--moved,
+  stopped. Shall I go on? No."
+
+Let those admire this who can. To me I confess it seems to spoil a
+touching and simple death-bed scene by a piece of theatrical trickery.
+
+The sum, in fact, of the whole matter appears to be, that the
+sentiment on which Sterne so prided himself--the acute sensibilities
+which he regarded with such extraordinary complacency, were, as has
+been before observed, the weakness, and not the strength, of his
+pathetic style. When Sterne the artist is uppermost, when he is
+surveying his characters with that penetrating eye of his, and above
+all when he is allowing his subtle and tender humour to play upon them
+unrestrained, he can touch the springs of compassionate emotion in
+us with a potent and unerring hand. But when Sterne the man is
+uppermost--when he is looking inward and not outward, contemplating
+his own feelings instead of those of his personages, his cunning
+fails him altogether. He is at his best in pathos when he is most
+the humourist; or rather, we may almost say, his pathos is never good
+unless when it is closely interwoven with his humour. In this, of
+course, there is nothing at all surprising. The only marvel is, that a
+man who was such a master of the humorous, in its highest and deepest
+sense, should seem to have so little understood how near together
+lie the sources of tears and laughter on the very way-side of man's
+mysterious life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+CREATIVE AND DRAMATIC POWER.--PLACE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+Subtle as is Sterne's humour, and true as, in its proper moods, is
+his pathos, it is not to these but to the parent gift from which they
+sprang, and perhaps to only one special display of that gift, that he
+owes his immortality. We are accustomed to bestow so lightly this last
+hyperbolic honour--hyperbolic always, even when we are speaking of
+a Homer or a Shakspeare, if only we project the vision far enough
+forward through time--that the comparative ease with which it is to be
+earned has itself come to be exaggerated. There are so many "deathless
+ones" about--if I may put the matter familiarly--in conversation and
+in literature, that we get into the way of thinking that they are
+really a considerable body in actual fact, and that the works which
+have triumphed over death are far more numerous still. The real truth,
+however, is, that not only are "those who reach posterity a very
+select company indeed," but most of them have come much nearer missing
+their destiny than is popularly supposed. Of the dozen or score of
+writers in one century whom their own contemporaries fondly decree
+immortal, one-half, perhaps, may be remembered in the next; while of
+the creations which were honoured with the diploma of immortality a
+very much smaller proportion as a rule survive. Only some fifty per
+cent, of the prematurely laurel-crowned reach the goal; and often even
+upon _their_ brows there flutter but a few stray leaves of the bay.
+A single poem, a solitary drama--nay, perhaps one isolated figure,
+poetic or dramatic--avails, and but barely avails, to keep the
+immortal from putting on mortality. Hence we need think it no
+disparagement to Sterne to say that he lives not so much in virtue
+of his creative power as of one great individual creation. His
+imaginative insight into character in general was, no doubt,
+considerable; his draughtsmanship, whether as exhibited in the rough
+sketch or in the finished portrait, is unquestionably most vigorous;
+but an artist may put a hundred striking figures upon his canvas for
+one that will linger in the memory of those who have gazed upon it;
+and it is, after all, I think, the one figure of Captain Tobias Shandy
+which has graven itself indelibly on the memory of mankind. To have
+made this single addition to the imperishable types of human character
+embodied in the world's literature may seem, as has been said, but
+a light matter to those who talk with light exaggeration of the
+achievements of the literary artist; but if we exclude that one
+creative prodigy among men, who has peopled a whole gallery with
+imaginary beings more real than those of flesh and blood, we shall
+find that very few archetypal creations have sprung from any single
+hand. Now, My Uncle Toby is as much the archetype of guileless good
+nature, of affectionate simplicity, as Hamlet is of irresolution,
+or Iago of cunning, or Shylock of race-hatred; and he contrives to
+preserve all the characteristics of an ideal type amid surroundings of
+intensely prosaic realism, with which he himself, moreover, considered
+as an individual character in a specific story, is in complete,
+accord. If any one be disposed to underrate the creative and dramatic
+power to which this testifies, let him consider how it has commonly
+fared with those writers of prose fiction who have attempted to
+personify a virtue in a man. Take the work of another famous English
+humourist and sentimentalist, and compare Uncle Toby's manly and
+dignified gentleness of heart with the unreal "gush" of the Brothers
+Cheeryble, or the fatuous benevolence of Mr. Pickwick. We do not
+believe in the former, and we cannot but despise the latter. But
+Captain Shandy is reality itself, within and without; and though
+we smile at his naïveté, and may even laugh outright at his boyish
+enthusiasm for his military hobby, we never cease to respect him for a
+moment. There is no shirking or softening of the comic aspects of his
+character; there could not be, of course, for Sterne needed him
+more, and used him more, for his purposes as a humourist than for his
+purposes as a sentimentalist. Nay, it is on the rare occasions when he
+deliberately sentimentalizes with Captain Shandy that the Captain is
+the least delightful; it is then that the hand loses its cunning, and
+the stroke strays; it is then, and only then, that the benevolence
+of the good soldier seems to verge, though ever so little, upon
+affectation. It is a pity, for instance, that Sterne should, in
+illustration of Captain Shandy's kindness of heart, have plagiarized
+(as he is said to have done) the incident of the tormenting fly,
+caught and put out of the window with the words "Get thee gone, poor
+devil! Why should I harm thee? The world is surely large enough for
+thee and me." There is something too much of self-conscious virtue in
+the apostrophe. This, we feel, is not the real Uncle Toby of
+Sterne's objective mood; it is the Uncle Toby of the subjectifying
+sentimentalist, surveying his character through the false medium
+of his own hypertrophied sensibilities. These lapses, however, are,
+fortunately, rare. As a rule we see the worthy Captain only as he
+appeared to his creator's keen dramatic eye, and as he is set before
+us in a thousand exquisite touches of dialogue--the man of simple mind
+and soul, profoundly unimaginative and unphilosophical, but lacking
+not in a certain shrewd common-sense; exquisitely _naïf_, and
+delightfully _mal-à-propos_ in his observations, but always
+pardonably, never foolishly, so; inexhaustibly amiable, but with no
+weak amiability; homely in his ways, but a perfect gentleman withal;
+in a word, the most winning and lovable personality that is to be met
+with, surely, in the whole range of fiction.
+
+It is, in fact, with Sterne's general delineations of character as
+it is, I have attempted to show, with his particular passages of
+sentiment. He is never at his best and truest--as, indeed, no writer
+of fiction ever is or can be--save when he is allowing his dramatic
+imagination to play the most freely upon his characters, and thinking
+least about himself. This is curiously illustrated in his handling
+of what is, perhaps, the next most successful of the uncaricatured
+portraits in the Shandy gallery--the presentment of the Rev. Mr.
+Yorick. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the picture of the
+"lively, witty, sensitive, and heedless parson," in chapter x. of the
+first volume of _Tristram Shandy_. We seem to see the thin, melancholy
+figure on the rawboned horse--the apparition which could "never
+present itself in the village but it caught the attention of old and
+young," so that "labour stood still as he passed, the bucket hung
+suspended in the middle of the well, the spinning-wheel forgot its
+round; even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping
+till he was out of sight." Throughout this chapter Sterne, though
+describing himself, is projecting his personality to a distance, as it
+were, and contemplating it dramatically; and the result is excellent.
+When in the next chapter he becomes "lyrical," so to speak; when the
+reflection upon his (largely imaginary) wrongs impels him to look
+inward, the invariable consequence follows; and though Yorick's much
+bepraised death-scene, with Eugenius at his bed-side, is redeemed
+from entire failure by an admixture of the humorous with its attempted
+pathos, we ask ourselves with some wonder what the unhappiness--or the
+death itself, for that matter--is "all about." The wrongs which were
+supposed to have broken Yorick's heart are most imperfectly specified
+(a comic proof, by the way, of Sterne's entire absorption in himself,
+to the confusion of his own personal knowledge with that of the
+reader), and the first conditions of enlisting the reader's sympathies
+are left unfulfilled.
+
+But it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes
+itself upon the strictly narrative and dramatic parts of his work;
+and, next to the abiding charm and interest of his principal figure,
+it is by the admirable life and colour of his scenes that he exercises
+his strongest powers of fascination over a reader. Perpetual as
+are Sterne's affectations, and tiresome as is his eternal
+self-consciousness when he is speaking in his own person, yet when
+once the dramatic instinct fairly lays hold of him there is no writer
+who ever makes us more completely forget him in the presence of his
+characters--none who can bring them and their surroundings, their
+looks and words, before us with such convincing force of reality.
+One wonders sometimes whether Sterne himself was aware of the high
+dramatic excellence of many of what actors would call his "carpenter's
+scenes"--the mere interludes introduced to amuse us while the stage is
+being prepared for one of those more elaborate and deliberate displays
+of pathos or humour, which do not always turn out to be unmixed
+successes when they come. Sterne prided himself vastly upon the
+incident of Le Fevre's death; but I dare say that there is many a
+modern reader who would rather have lost this highly-wrought piece of
+domestic drama, than that other exquisite little scene in the kitchen
+of the inn, when Corporal Trim toasts the bread which the sick
+lieutenant's son is preparing for his father's posset, while "Mr.
+Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the fire, but said not a word,
+good or bad, to comfort the youth." The whole scene is absolute life;
+and the dialogue between the Corporal and the parson, as related by
+the former to his master, with Captain Shandy's comments thereon, is
+almost Shakspearian in its excellence. Says the Corporal:
+
+  "When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast he
+  felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen to let me
+  know that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would step
+  upstairs, I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers,
+  for there was a book laid on the chair by the bed-side, and as I
+  shut the door I saw him take up a cushion. I thought, said the curate,
+  that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim, never said your prayers
+  at all. I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night,
+  said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could
+  not have believed it. Are you sure of it? replied the curate. A
+  soldier, an' please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own
+  accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king, and for
+  his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray
+  to God of any one in the whole world. 'Twas well said of thee, Trim,
+  said my Uncle Toby. But when a soldier, said I, an' please your
+  reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches,
+  up to his knees in cold water--or engaged, said I, for months together
+  in long and dangerous marches; harassed, perhaps, in his rear today;
+  harassing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded
+  there; resting this night out upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the
+  next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to
+  kneel on, [he] must say his prayers how and when he can. I believe,
+  said I--for I was piqued, quoth the Corporal, for the reputation
+  of the army--I believe, an't please your reverence, said I, that when
+  a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson--though
+  not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. Thou shouldst not have said
+  that, Trim, said my Uncle Toby; for God only knows who is a hypocrite
+  and who is not. At the great and general review of us all,
+  corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen
+  who have done their duties in this world and who have not, and we
+  shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly. I hope we shall, said Trim.
+  It is in the Scripture, said my Uncle Toby, and I will show it thee in
+  the morning. In the meantime, we may depend upon it, Trim, for our
+  comfort, said my Uncle Toby, that God Almighty is so good and just
+  a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it
+  will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat
+  or a black one. I hope not, said the Corporal. But go on, said my
+  Uncle Toby, with thy story."
+
+We might almost fancy ourselves listening to that noble prose colloquy
+between the disguised king and his soldiers on the night before
+Agincourt, in _Henry V._ And though Sterne does not, of course, often
+reach this level of dramatic dignity, there are passages in abundance
+in which his dialogue assumes, through sheer force of individualized
+character, if not all the dignity, at any rate all the impressive
+force and simplicity, of the "grand style."
+
+Taken altogether, however, his place in English letters is hard to
+fix, and his tenure in human memory hard to determine. Hitherto he has
+held his own, with the great writers of his era, but it has been in
+virtue, as I have attempted to show, of a contribution to the literary
+possessions of mankind which is as uniquely limited in amount as it is
+exceptionally perfect in quality. One cannot but feel that, as regards
+the sum of his titles to recollection, his name stands far below
+either of those other two which in the course of the last century
+added themselves to the highest rank among the classics of English
+humour. Sterne has not the abounding life and the varied human
+interest of Fielding; and, to say nothing of his vast intellectual
+inferiority to Swift, he never so much as approaches those problems of
+everlasting concernment to man which Swift handles with so terrible
+a fascination. Certainly no enthusiastic Gibbon of the future is ever
+likely to say of Sterne's "pictures of human manners" that they will
+outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of the
+House of Austria. Assuredly no one will ever find in _this_ so-called
+English antitype of the Curé of Meudon any of the deeper qualities of
+that gloomy and commanding spirit which has been finely compared to
+the "soul of Rabelais _habitans in sicco_." Nay, to descend even to
+minor aptitudes, Sterne cannot tell a story as Swift and Fielding
+can tell one; and his work is not assured of life as _Tom Jones_ and
+_Gulliver's Travels_, considered as stories alone, would be assured
+of it, even if the one were stripped of its cheerful humour, and the
+other disarmed of its savage allegory. And hence it might be rash to
+predict that Sterne's days will be as long in the land of literary
+memory as the two great writers aforesaid. Banked, as he still is,
+among "English classics," he undergoes, I suspect, even more than an
+English classic's ordinary share of reverential neglect. Among those
+who talk about him he has, I should imagine, fewer readers than
+Fielding, and very much fewer than Swift. Nor is he likely to increase
+their number as time goes on, but rather, perhaps, the contrary.
+Indeed, the only question is whether with the lapse of years he will
+not, like other writers as famous in their day, become yet more of a
+mere name. For there is still, of course, a further stage to which he
+may decline. That object of so much empty mouth-honour, the English
+classic of the last and earlier centuries, presents himself for
+classification under three distinct categories. There is the class who
+are still read in a certain measure, though in a much smaller measure
+than is pretended, by the great body of ordinarily well-educated men.
+Of this class, the two authors whose names I have already cited, Swift
+and Fielding, are typical examples; and it may be taken to include
+Goldsmith also. Then comes the class of those whom the ordinarily
+well-educated public, whatever they may pretend, read really very
+little or not at all; and in this class we may couple Sterne with
+Addison, with Smollett, and, except, of course, as to _Robinson
+Crusoe_--unless, indeed, our _blasé_ boys have outgrown him among
+other pleasures of boyhood--with Defoe. But below this there is yet a
+third class of writers, who are not only read by none but the critic,
+the connoisseur, or the historian of literature, but are scarcely read
+even by them, except from curiosity, or "in the way of business." The
+type of this class is Richardson; and one cannot, I say, help asking
+whether he will hereafter have Sterne as a companion of his dusty
+solitude. Are _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_ destined
+to descend from the second class into the third--from the region of
+partial into that of total neglect, and to have their portion with
+_Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison?_ The unbounded vogue
+which they enjoyed in their time will not save them; for sane and
+sober critics compared Richardson in his day to Shakspeare, and
+Diderot broke forth into prophetic rhapsodies upon the immortality of
+his works which to us in these days have become absolutely pathetic
+in their felicity of falsified prediction. Seeing, too, that a good
+three-fourths of the attractions which won Sterne his contemporary
+popularity are now so much dead weight of dead matter, and that the
+vital residuum is in amount so small, the fate of Richardson might
+seem to be but too close behind him. Yet it is difficult to believe
+that this fate will ever quite overtake him. His sentiment may have
+mostly ceased--it probably has ceased--to stir any emotion at all in
+these days; but there is an imperishable element in his humour. And
+though the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one
+can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so
+keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have
+any power over a perfume which so wonderfully retains the pungent
+freshness of its fragrance after the lapse of a hundred years.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sterne, by H.D. Traill
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sterne, by H.D. Traill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sterne
+
+Author: H.D. Traill
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2004 [EBook #12142]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STERNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Bill Hershey and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+STERNE
+
+
+BY
+
+H.D. TRAILL
+
+
+1882
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+
+The materials for a biography of Sterne are by no means abundant.
+Of the earlier years of his life the only existing record is that
+preserved in the brief autobiographical memoir which, a few months
+before his death, he composed, in the usual quaint _staccato_ style of
+his familiar correspondence, for the benefit of his daughter. Of his
+childhood; of his school-days; of his life at Cambridge, and in his
+Yorkshire vicarage; of his whole history, in fact, up to the age of
+forty-six, we know nothing more than he has there jotted down. He
+attained that age in the year 1759; and at this date begins that
+series of his _Letters_, from which, for those who have the patience
+to sort them out of the chronological confusion in which his daughter
+and editress involved them, there is, no doubt, a good deal to be
+learnt. These letters, however, which extend down to 1768, the year
+of the writer's death, contain pretty nearly all the contemporary
+material that we have to depend on. Freely as Sterne mixed in the best
+literary society, there is singularly little to be gathered about him,
+even in the way of chance allusion and anecdote, from the memoirs and
+_ana_ of his time. Of the many friends who would have been competent
+to write his biography while the facts were yet fresh, but one, John
+Wilkes, ever entertained--if he did seriously entertain--the idea
+of performing this pious work; and he, in spite of the entreaties of
+Sterne's widow and daughter, then in straitened circumstances, left
+unredeemed his promise to do so. The brief memoir by Sir Walter Scott,
+which is prefixed to many popular editions of _Tristram Shandy_ and
+the _Sentimental Journey,_ sets out the so-called autobiography in
+full, but for the rest is mainly critical; Thackeray's well-known
+lecture essay is almost wholly so; and nothing, worthy to be dignified
+by the name of a _Life of Sterne_, seems ever to have been published,
+until the appearance of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's two stout volumes,
+under this title, some eighteen years ago. Of this work it is hardly
+too much to say that it contains (no doubt with the admixture of a
+good deal of superfluous matter) nearly all the information as to the
+facts of Sterne's life that is now ever likely to be recovered. The
+evidence for certain of its statements of fact is not as thoroughly
+sifted as it might have been; and with some of its criticism I, at
+least, am unable to agree. But no one interested in the subject of
+this memoir can be insensible of his obligations to Mr. Fitzgerald
+for the fruitful diligence with which he has laboured in a too long
+neglected field.
+
+H.D.T.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+(1713-1724.)
+
+BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+(1724-1733.)
+
+SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+(1738-1759.)
+
+LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+(1759-1760.)
+
+"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+(1760-1762.)
+
+
+LONDON TRIUMPHS.--FIRST SET OF SERMONS.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. III.
+AND IV.--COXWOLD.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. V. AND VI.--FIRST VISIT TO
+THE CONTINENT.--PARIS.--TOULOUSE.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+(1762-1765.)
+
+LIFE IN THE SOUTH.--RETURN TO ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. VII.
+AND VIII.--SECOND SET OF SERMONS
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+(1765-1768)
+
+FRANCE AND ITALY.--MEETING WITH WIFE AND DAUGHTER.--RETURN TO
+ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOL. IX.--"THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY"
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+(1768.)
+
+LAST DAYS AND DEATH
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR. FERRIAR'S
+"ILLUSTRATIONS"
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--HUMOUR AND SENTIMENT
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CREATIVE AND DRAMATIC POWER.--PLACE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+
+
+STERNE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.
+
+(1713-1724.)
+
+Towards the close of the month of November, 1713, one of the last of
+the English regiments which had been detained in Flanders to supervise
+the execution of the treaty of Utrecht arrived at Clonmel from
+Dunkirk. The day after its arrival the regiment was disbanded; and
+yet a few days later, on the 24th of the month, the wife of one of its
+subalterns gave birth to a son. The child who thus early displayed the
+perversity of his humour by so inopportune an appearance was Laurence
+Sterne. "My birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung
+notes by which he has been somewhat grandiloquently said to have
+"anticipated the labours" of the biographer--"my birthday was ominous
+to my poor father, who was the day after our arrival, with many other
+brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a wife
+and two children."
+
+Roger Sterne, however, now late ensign of the 34th, or Chudleigh's
+regiment of foot, was after all in less evil case than were many,
+probably, of his comrades. He had kinsmen to whom he could look for,
+at any rate, temporary assistance, and his mother was a wealthy widow.
+The Sternes, originally of a Suffolk stock, had passed from that
+county to Nottinghamshire, and thence into Yorkshire, and were at
+this time a family of position and substance in the last-named county.
+Roger's grandfather had been Archbishop of York, and a man of more
+note, if only through the accident of the times upon which he
+fell, than most of the incumbents of that see. He had played an
+exceptionally energetic part even for a Cavalier prelate in the great
+political struggle of the seventeenth century, and had suffered with
+fortitude and dignity in the royal cause. He had, moreover, a further
+claim to distinction in having been treated with common gratitude
+at the Restoration by the son of the monarch whom he had served. As
+Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, he had "been active in sending the
+University plate to his Majesty," and for this offence he was seized
+by Cromwell and carried in military custody to London, whence, after
+undergoing imprisonment in various goals, and experiencing other
+forms of hardship, he was at length permitted to retire to an obscure
+retreat in the country, there to commune with himself until that
+tyranny should be overpast. On the return of the exiled Stuarts
+Dr. Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and a few years later was
+translated to the see of York. He lived to the age of eighty-six, and
+so far justified Burnet's accusation against him of "minding chiefly
+enriching himself," that he seems to have divided no fewer than four
+landed estates among his children. One of these, Simon Sterne,
+a younger son of the Archbishop, himself married an heiress, the
+daughter of Sir Roger Jaques of Elvington; and Roger, the father of
+Laurence Sterne, was the seventh and youngest of the issue of this
+marriage. At the time when the double misfortune above recorded befell
+him at the hands of Lucina and the War Office, his father had been
+some years dead; but Simon Sterne's widow was still mistress of
+the property which she had brought with her at her marriage, and to
+Elvington, accordingly, "as soon," writes Sterne, "as I was able to be
+carried," the compulsorily retired ensign betook himself with his wife
+and his two children. He was not, however, compelled to remain long
+dependent on his mother. The ways of the military authorities were as
+inscrutable to the army of that day as they are in our day to our
+own. Before a year had passed the regiment was ordered to be
+re-established, and "our household decamped with bag and baggage for
+Dublin." This was in the autumn of 1714, and from that time onward,
+for some eleven years, the movements and fortunes of the Sterne
+family, as detailed in the narrative of its most famous member, form a
+history in which the ludicrous struggles strangely with the pathetic.
+
+A husband, condemned to be the Ulysses-like plaything of adverse gods
+at the War Office; an indefatigably prolific wife; a succession of
+weak and ailing children; misfortune in the seasons of journeying;
+misfortune in the moods of the weather by sea and land--under all this
+combination of hostile chances and conditions was the struggle to
+be carried on. The little household was perpetually "on the move"--a
+little household which was always becoming and never remaining
+bigger--continually increased by births, only to be again reduced by
+deaths--until the contest between the deadly hardships of travel and
+the fatal fecundity of Mrs. Sterne was brought by events to a natural
+close. Almost might the unfortunate lady have exclaimed, _Quae regio
+in terris nostri non plena laboris?_ She passes from Ireland to
+England, and from England to Ireland, from inland garrison to sea-port
+town and back again, incessantly bearing and incessantly burying
+children--until even her son in his narrative begins to speak of
+losing one infant at this place, and "leaving another behind" on that
+journey, almost as if they were so many overlooked or misdirected
+articles of luggage. The tragic side of the history, however,
+overshadows the grotesque. When we think how hard a business was
+travel even under the most favourable conditions in those days,
+and how serious even in our own times, when travel is easy, are the
+discomforts of the women and children of a regiment on the march--we
+may well pity these unresting followers of the drum. As to Mrs. Sterne
+herself, she seems to have been a woman of a pretty tough fibre, and
+she came moreover of a campaigning stock. Her father was a "noted
+suttler" of the name of Nuttle, and her first husband--for she was a
+widow when Roger Sterne married her--had been a soldier also. She
+had, therefore, served some years' apprenticeship to the military life
+before these wanderings began; and she herself was destined to live to
+a good old age. But somehow or other she failed to endow her offspring
+with her own robust constitution and powers of endurance. "My father's
+children were," as Laurence Sterne grimly puts it, "not made to last
+long;" but one cannot help suspecting that it was the hardships of
+those early years which carried them off in their infancy with such
+painful regularity and despatch, and that it was to the same cause
+that their surviving brother owed the beginnings of that fatal malady
+by which his own life was cut short.
+
+The diary of their travels--for the early part of Sterne's memoirs
+amounts to scarcely more--is the more effective for its very brevity
+and abruptness. Save for one interval of somewhat longer sojourn than
+usual at Dublin, the reader has throughout it all the feeling of
+the traveller who never finds time to unpack his portmanteau. On
+the re-enrolment of the regiment in 1714, "our household," says the
+narrative, "decamped from York with bag and baggage for Dublin. Within
+a month my father left us, being ordered to Exeter; where, in a sad
+winter, my mother and her two children followed him, travelling from
+Liverpool, by land, to Plymouth." At Plymouth Mrs. Sterne gave birth
+to a son, christened Joram; and, "in twelve months time we were all
+sent back to Dublin. My mother," with her three children, "took ship
+at Bristol for Ireland, and had a narrow escape from being cast away
+by a leak springing up in the vessel. At length, after many perils
+and struggles, we got to Dublin." Here intervenes the short
+breathing-space, of which mention has been made--an interval
+employed by Roger Sterne in "spending a great deal of money" on a
+"large house," which he hired and furnished; and then "in the year one
+thousand seven hundred and nineteen, all unhinged again." The regiment
+had been ordered off to the Isle of Wight, thence to embark for Spain,
+on "the Vigo Expedition," and "we," who accompanied it, "were driven
+into Milford Haven, but afterwards landed at Bristol, and thence by
+land to Plymouth again, and to the Isle of Wight;" losing on this
+expedition "poor Joram, a pretty boy, who died of the smallpox." In
+the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Sterne and her family remained till the Vigo
+Expedition returned home; and during her stay there "poor Joram's loss
+was supplied by the birth of a girl, Anne," a "pretty blossom," but
+destined to fall "at the age of three years." On the return of the
+regiment to Wicklow, Roger Sterne again sent to collect his family
+around him. "We embarked for Dublin, and had all been cast away by a
+most violent storm; but, through the intercession of my mother, the
+captain was prevailed upon to turn back into Wales, where we stayed
+a month, and at length got into Dublin, and travelled by land to
+Wicklow, where my father had, for some weeks, given us over for lost."
+Here a year passed, and another child, Devijeher--so called after the
+colonel of the regiment--was born. "From thence we decamped to stay
+half a year with Mr. Fetherston, a clergyman, about seven miles from
+Wicklow, who, being a relative of my mother's, invited us to his
+parsonage at Animo.[1]" From thence, again, "we followed the regiment
+to Dublin," where again "we lay in the barracks a year." In 1722 the
+regiment was ordered to Carrickfergus. "We all decamped, but got no
+further than Drogheda; thence ordered to Mullingar, forty miles west,
+where, by Providence, we stumbled upon a kind relation, a collateral
+descendant from Archbishop Sterne, who took us all to his castle, and
+kindly entertained us for a year." Thence, by "a most rueful journey,"
+to Carrickfergus, where "we arrived in six or seven days." Here, at
+the age of three, little Devijeher obtained a happy release from his
+name; and "another child, Susan, was sent to fill his place, who also
+left us behind in this weary journey." In the "autumn of this year, or
+the spring of the next"--Sterne's memory failing in exactitude at the
+very point where we should have expected it to be most precise--"my
+father obtained permission of his colonel to fix me at school;" and
+henceforth the boy's share in the family wanderings was at an end. But
+his father had yet to be ordered from Carrickfergus to Londonderry,
+where at last a permanent child, Catherine, was born; and thence to
+Gibraltar, to take part in the Defence of that famous Rock, where the
+much-enduring campaigner was run through the body in a duel, "about
+a goose" (a thoroughly Shandian catastrophe); and thence to Jamaica,
+where, "with a constitution impaired" by the sword-thrust earned in
+his anserine quarrel, he was defeated in a more deadly duel with the
+"country fever," and died. "His malady," writes his son, with a touch
+of feeling struggling through his dislocated grammar, "took away his
+senses first, and made a child of him; and then in a month or two
+walking about continually without complaining, till the moment he sat
+down in an arm-chair and breathed his last."
+
+[Footnote 1: "It was in this parish," says Sterne, "that I had that
+wonderful escape in falling through a mill race while the mill was
+going, and being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known
+to all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people
+flocked to seeme." More incredible still does it seem that Thoresby
+should relate the occurrence of an accident of precisely the same kind
+to Sterne's great-grandfather, the Archbishop. "Playing near a mill,
+he fell within a claw; there was but one board or bucket wanting in
+the whole wheel, but a gracious Providence so ordered it that the void
+place came down at that moment, else he had been crushed to death; but
+was reserved to be a grand benefactor afterwards." (Thoresby, ii. 15.)
+But what will probably strike the reader as more extraordinary even
+than this coincidence is that Sterne should have been either unaware
+of it, or should have omitted mention of it in the above passage.]
+
+There is, as has been observed, a certain mixture of the comic and the
+pathetic in the life-history of this obscure father of a famous
+son. His life was clearly not a fortunate one, so far as external
+circumstances go; but its misfortunes had no sort of consoling dignity
+about them. Roger Sterne's lot in the world was not so much an unhappy
+as an uncomfortable one; and discomfort earns little sympathy, and
+absolutely no admiration, for its sufferers. He somehow reminds us
+of one of those Irish heroes--good-natured, peppery, debt-loaded,
+light-hearted, shiftless--whose fortunes we follow with mirthful and
+half-contemptuous sympathy in the pages of Thackeray. He was obviously
+a typical specimen of that class of men who are destitute alike of the
+virtues and failings of the "respectable" and successful; whom many
+people love and no one respects; whom everybody pities in their
+struggles and difficulties, but whom few pity without a smile.
+
+It is evident, however, that he succeeded in winning the affection of
+one who had not too much affection of the deeper kind to spare for any
+one. The figure of Roger Sterne alone stands out with any clearness by
+the side of the ceaselessly flitting mother and phantasmal children of
+Laurence Sterne's Memoir; and it is touched in with strokes so vivid
+and characteristic that critics have been tempted to find in it
+the original of the most famous portrait in the Shandy gallery. "My
+father," says Sterne, "was a little, smart man, active to the last
+degree in all exercises, most patient of fatigue and disappointments,
+of which it pleased God to give him full measure. He was, in his
+temper, somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly, sweet disposition,
+void of all design, and so innocent in his own intentions, that he
+suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times a
+day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose." This is a
+captivating little picture; and it no doubt presents traits which may
+have impressed themselves early and deeply on the imagination which
+was afterwards to give birth to "My Uncle Toby." The simplicity of
+nature and the "kindly, sweet disposition" are common to both the
+ensign of real life and to the immortal Captain Shandy of fiction; but
+the criticism which professes to find traces of Roger Sterne's "rapid
+and hasty temper" in my Uncle Toby is compelled to strain itself
+considerably. And, on the whole, there seems no reason to believe that
+Sterne borrowed more from the character of his father than any
+writer must necessarily, and perhaps unconsciously, borrow from his
+observation of the moral and mental qualities of those with whom he
+has come into most frequent contact.
+
+That Laurence Sterne passed the first eleven years of his life with
+such an exemplar of these simple virtues of kindliness, guilelessness,
+and courage ever before him, is perhaps the best that can be said
+for the lot in which his early days were cast. In almost all other
+respects there could hardly have been--for a quick-witted, precocious,
+imitative boy--a worse bringing-up. No one, I should imagine, ever
+more needed discipline in his youth than Sterne; and the camp is a
+place of discipline for the soldier only. To all others whom necessity
+attaches to it, and to the young especially, it is rather a school of
+license and irregularity. It is fair to remember these disadvantages
+of Sterne's early training, in judging of the many defects as a man,
+and laxities as a writer, which marked his later life; though, on the
+other hand, there is no denying the reality and value of some of
+the countervailing advantages which came to him from his boyish
+surroundings. The conception of my Uncle Toby need not have been taken
+whole from Roger Sterne, or from any one actual captain of a marching
+regiment; but the constant sight of, and converse with, many captains
+and many corporals may undoubtedly have contributed much to the vigour
+and vitality of Toby Shandy and Corporal Trim. So far as the externals
+of portraiture were concerned, there can be no doubt that his art
+benefited much from his early military life. His soldiers have the
+true stamp of the soldier about them in air and language; and when
+his captain and corporal fight their Flemish battles over again we are
+thoroughly conscious that we are listening, under the dramatic form,
+to one who must himself have heard many a chapter of the same splendid
+story from the lips of the very men who had helped to break the pride
+of the Grand Monarque under Marlborough and Eugene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.
+
+(1723-1738.)
+
+It was not--as we have seen from the Memoir--till the autumn of 1723,
+"or the spring of the following year," that Roger Sterne obtained
+leave of his colonel to "fix" his son at school; and this would bring
+Laurence to the tolerably advanced age of ten before beginning his
+education in any systematic way. He records, under date of 1721, that
+"in this year I learned to write, &c.;" but it is not probable that
+the "&c."--that indolent symbol of which Sterne makes such irritating
+use in all his familiar writing--covers, in this case, any wide extent
+of educational advance. The boy, most likely, could just read and
+write, and no more, at the time when he was fixed at school, "near
+Halifax, with an able master:" a judicious selection, no doubt, both
+of place as well as teacher. Mr. Fitzgerald, to whose researches we
+owe as much light as is ever likely to be thrown upon this obscure and
+probably not very interesting period of Sterne's life, has pointed out
+that Richard Sterne, eldest son of the late Simon Sterne, and uncle,
+therefore, of Laurence, was one of the governors of Halifax Grammar
+School, and that he may have used his interest to obtain his nephew's
+admission to the foundation as the grandson of a Halifax man, and so,
+constructively, a child of the parish. But, be this as it may, it
+is more than probable that from the time when he was sent to Halifax
+School the whole care and cost of the boy's education was borne by his
+Yorkshire relatives. The Memoir says that, "by God's care of me, my
+cousin Sterne, of Elvington, became a father to me, and sent me to
+the University, &c., &c.;" and it is to be inferred from this that the
+benevolent guardianship of Sterne's uncle Richard (who died in 1732,
+the year before Laurence was admitted of Jesus College, Cambridge)
+must have been taken up by his son. Of his school course--though it
+lasted for over seven years--the autobiographer has little to say;
+nothing, indeed, except that he "cannot omit mentioning" that anecdote
+with which everybody, I suppose, who has ever come across the briefest
+notice of Sterne's life is familiar. The schoolmaster "had the ceiling
+of the schoolroom new-whitewashed, and the ladder remained there. I,
+one unlucky day, mounted it, and wrote with a brush, in large capital
+letters, LAU. STERNE for which the usher severely whipped me. My
+master was very much hurt at this, and said before me that never
+should that name be effaced, for I was a boy of genius, and he was
+sure I should come to preferment. This expression made me forget the
+blows I had received." It is hardly to be supposed, of course, that
+this story is pure romance; but it is difficult, on the other hand,
+to believe that the incident has been related by Sterne exactly as it
+happened. That the recorded prediction may have been made in jest--or
+even in earnest (for penetrating teachers have these prophetic moments
+sometimes)--is, of course, possible; but that Sterne's master was
+"very much hurt" at the boy's having been justly punished for an act
+of wanton mischief, or that he recognized it as the natural privilege
+of nascent genius to deface newly-whitewashed ceilings, must have been
+a delusion of the humourist's later years. The extreme fatuity which
+it would compel us to attribute to the schoolmaster seems inconsistent
+with the power of detecting intellectual capacity in any one else. On
+the whole, one inclines to suspect that the remark belonged to that
+order of half sardonic, half kindly jest which a certain sort
+of pedagogue sometimes throws off, for the consolation of a
+recently-caned boy; and that Sterne's vanity, either then or
+afterwards (for it remained juvenile all his life), translated it into
+a serious prophecy. In itself, however, the urchin's freak was only
+too unhappily characteristic of the man. The trick of befouling what
+was clean (and because it was clean) clung to him most tenaciously all
+his days; and many a fair white surface--of humour, of fancy, or of
+sentiment--was to be disfigured by him in after-years with stains
+and splotches in which we can all too plainly decipher the literary
+signature of Laurence Sterne.
+
+At Halifax School the boy, as has been said, remained for about eight
+years; that is, until he was nearly nineteen, and for some months
+after his father's death at Port Antonio, which occurred in March,
+1731. "In the year '32," says the Memoir, "my cousin sent me to the
+University, where I stayed some time." In the course of his first year
+he read for and obtained a sizarship, to which the college records
+show that he was duly admitted on the 6th of July, 1733. The selection
+of Jesus College was a natural one: Sterne's great-grandfather,
+the afterwards Archbishop, had been its Master, and had founded
+scholarships there, to one of which the young sizar was, a year after
+his admission, elected. No inference can, of course, be drawn from
+this as to Sterne's proficiency, or even industry, in his academical
+studies: it is scarcely more than a testimony to the fact of decent
+and regular behaviour. He was _bene natus_, in the sense of being
+related to the right man, the founder; and in those days he need
+be only very _modice doctus_ indeed in order to qualify himself for
+admission to the enjoyment of his kinsman's benefactions. Still he
+must have been orderly and well-conducted in his ways; and this he
+would also seem to have been, from the fact of his having passed
+through his University course without any apparent break or hitch, and
+having been admitted to his Bachelor's degree after no more than the
+normal period of residence. The only remark which, in the Memoir, he
+vouchsafes to bestow upon his academical career is, that "'twas there
+that I commenced a friendship with Mr. H----, which has been lasting
+on both sides;" and it may, perhaps, be said that this _was_, from one
+point of view, the most important event of his Cambridge life. For Mr.
+H---- was John Hall, afterwards John Hall Stevenson, the "Eugenius" of
+_Tristram Shandy_, the master of Skelton Castle, at which Sterne was,
+throughout life, to be a frequent and most familiar visitor; and,
+unfortunately, also a person whose later reputation, both as a man and
+a writer, became such as seriously to compromise the not very robust
+respectability of his clerical comrade. Sterne and Hall were distant
+cousins, and it may have been the tie of consanguinity which first
+drew them together. But there was evidently a thorough congeniality of
+the most unlucky sort between them; and from their first meeting, as
+undergraduates at Jesus, until the premature death of the elder, they
+continued to supply each other's minds with precisely that sort of
+occupation and stimulus of which each by the grace of nature stood
+least in need. That their close intimacy was ill-calculated to raise
+Sterne's reputation in later years may be inferred from the fact
+that Hall Stevenson afterwards obtained literary notoriety by the
+publication of _Crazy Tales_, a collection of comic but extremely
+broad ballads, in which his clerical friend was quite unjustly
+suspected of having had a hand. Mr. Hall was also reported,
+whether truly or falsely, to have been a member of Wilkes's famous
+confraternity of Medmenham Abbey; and from this it was an easy step
+for gossip to advance to the assertion that the Rev. Mr. Sterne had
+himself been admitted to that unholy order.
+
+Among acquaintances which the young sizar of Jesus might have more
+profitably made at Cambridge, but did not, was that of a student
+destined, like himself, to leave behind him a name famous in English
+letters. Gray, born three years later than Sterne, had entered a
+year after him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Peterhouse, and the two
+students went through their terms together, though the poet at the
+time took no degree. There was probably little enough in common
+between the shy, fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of
+Peterhouse, and a scholar of Jesus, whose chief friend and comrade was
+a man like Hall; and no close intimacy between the two men, if they
+had come across each other, would have been very likely to arise.
+But it does not appear that they could have ever met or heard of each
+other, for Gray writes of Sterne, after _Tristram Shandy_ had made
+him famous, in terms which clearly show that he did not recall his
+fellow-undergraduate.
+
+In January, 1736, Sterne took his B.A. degree, and quitted Cambridge
+for York, where another of his father's brothers now makes his
+appearance as his patron. Dr. Jacques Sterne was the second son of
+Simon Sterne, of Elvington, and a man apparently of more marked and
+vigorous character than any of his brothers. What induced him now to
+take notice of the nephew, whom in boyhood and early youth he had left
+to the unshared guardianship of his brother, and brother's son,
+does not appear; but the personal history of this energetic
+pluralist--Prebendary of Durham, Archdeacon of Cleveland, Canon
+Residentiary, Precentor, Prebendary, and Archdeacon of York, Rector of
+Rise, and Rector of Hornsey-cum-Riston--suggests the surmise that he
+detected qualities in the young Cambridge graduate which would
+make him useful. For Dr. Sterne was a typical specimen of the
+Churchman-politician, in days when both components of the compound
+word meant a good deal more than they do now. The Archdeacon was a
+devoted Whig, a Hanoverian to the backbone; and he held it his duty
+to support the Protestant succession, not only by the spiritual but by
+the secular arm. He was a great electioneerer, as befitted times when
+the claims of two rival dynasties virtually met upon the hustings, and
+he took a prominent part in the great Yorkshire contest of the year
+1734. His most vigorous display of energy, however, was made, as was
+natural, in "the '45." The Whig Archdeacon, not then Archdeacon of
+the East Riding, nor as yet quite buried under the mass of preferments
+which he afterwards accumulated, seems to have thought that this
+indeed was the crisis of his fortunes, and that, unless he was
+prepared to die a mere prebendary, canon, and rector of one or two
+benefices, now was the time to strike a blow for his advancement
+in the Church. His bustling activity at this trying time was indeed
+portentous, and at last took the form of arresting the unfortunate
+Dr. Burton (the original of Dr. Slop), on suspicion of holding
+communication with the invading army of the Pretender, then on its
+march southward from Edinburgh. The suspect, who was wholly innocent,
+was taken to London and kept in custody for nearly a year before
+being discharged, after which, by way of a slight redress, a letter
+of reprimand for his _trop de zele_ was sent by direction of
+Lord Carteret to the militant dignitary. But the desired end was
+nevertheless attained, and Dr. Sterne succeeded in crowning the
+edifice of his ecclesiastical honours.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: A once-familiar piece of humorous verse describes the
+upset of a coach containing a clerical pluralist:
+
+  "When struggling on the ground was seen
+  A Rector, Vicar, Canon, Dean;
+  You might have thought the coach was full,
+  But no! 'twas only Dr. Bull."
+
+Dr. Jacques Sterne, however, might have been thrown out of one of the
+more capacious vehicles of the London General Omnibus Company, with
+almost the same misleading effect upon those who only _heard_ of the
+mishap.]
+
+
+There can be little doubt that patronage extended by such an uncle to
+such a nephew received its full equivalent in some way or other, and
+indeed the Memoir gives us a clue to the mode in which payment was
+made. "My uncle," writes Sterne, describing their subsequent rupture,
+"quarrelled with me because I would not write paragraphs in the
+newspapers; though he was a party-man, I was not, and detested such
+dirty work, thinking it beneath me. From that time he became my
+bitterest enemy." The date of this quarrel cannot be precisely fixed;
+but we gather from an autograph letter (now in the British Museum)
+from Sterne to Archdeacon Blackburne that by the year 1750 the two men
+had for some time ceased to be on friendly terms. Probably, however,
+the breach occurred subsequently to the rebellion of '45, and it may
+be that it arose out of the excess of partisan zeal which Dr. Sterne
+developed in that year, and which his nephew very likely did not, in
+his opinion, sufficiently share. But this is quite consistent with the
+younger man's having up to that time assisted the elder in his party
+polemics. He certainly speaks in his "Letters" of his having "employed
+his brains for an ungrateful person," and the remark is made in a way
+and in a connexion which seems to imply that the services rendered
+to his uncle were mainly _literary_. If so, his declaration that he
+"would not write paragraphs in the newspapers" can only mean that
+he would not go on writing them. Be this as it may, however, it
+is certain that the Archdeacon for some time found his account in
+maintaining friendly relations with his nephew, and that during that
+period he undoubtedly did a good deal for his advancement. Sterne was
+ordained deacon by the Bishop of Lincoln in March, 1736, only three
+months after taking his B.A. degree, and took priest's orders in
+August, 1738, whereupon his uncle immediately obtained for him the
+living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, into which he was inducted a few days
+afterwards. Other preferments followed, to be noted hereafter; and
+it must be admitted that until the quarrel occurred about the "party
+paragraphs" the Archdeacon did his duty by his nephew after the
+peculiar fashion of that time. When that quarrel came, however, it
+seems to have snapped more ties than one, for in the Memoir Sterne
+speaks of his youngest sister Catherine as "still living, but most
+unhappily estranged from me by my uncle's wickedness and her own
+folly." Of his elder sister Mary, who was born at Lille a year before
+himself, he records that "she married one Weemans in Dublin, who used
+her most unmercifully, spent his substance, became a bankrupt, and
+left my poor sister to shift for herself, which she was able to do but
+for a few months, for she went to a friend's house in the country and
+died of a broken heart." Truly an unlucky family.[1] Only three to
+survive the hardships among which the years of their infancy were
+passed, and this to be the history of two out of the three survivors!
+
+[Footnote 1: The mother, Mrs. Sterne, makes her appearance once more
+for a moment in or about the year 1758. Horace Walpole, and after him
+Byron, accused Sterne of having "preferred whining over a dead ass to
+relieving a living mother," and the former went so far as to declare
+"on indubitable authority" that Mrs. Sterne, "who kept a school (in
+Ireland), having run in debt on account of an extravagant daughter,
+would have rotted in a gaol if the parents of her scholars had not
+raised a subscription for her." Even "the indubitable authority,"
+however, does not positively assert--whatever may be meant to be
+insinuated--that Sterne himself did nothing to assist his mother, and
+Mr. Fitzgerald justly points out that to pay the _whole_ debts of a
+bankrupt school might well have been beyond a Yorkshire clergyman's
+means. Anyhow there is evidence that Sterne at a later date than this
+was actively concerning himself about his mother's interests. She
+afterwards came to York, whither he went to meet her; and he then
+writes to a friend: "I trust my poor mother's affair is by this time
+ended to _our_ comfort and hers."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.
+
+(1738-1759.)
+
+Great writers who spring late and suddenly from obscurity into fame
+and yet die early, must always form more or less perplexing subjects
+of literary biography. The processes of their intellectual and
+artistic growth lie hidden in nameless years; their genius is not
+revealed to the world until it has reached its full maturity, and many
+aspects of it, which, perhaps, would have easily explained themselves
+if the gradual development had gone on before men's eyes, remain
+often unexplained to the last. By few, if any, of the more celebrated
+English men of letters is this observation so forcibly illustrated as
+it is in the case of Sterne: the obscure period of his life so greatly
+exceeded in duration the brief season of his fame, and its obscurity
+was so exceptionally profound. He was forty-seven years of age when,
+at a bound, he achieved celebrity; he was not five-and-fifty when he
+died. And though it might be too much to say that the artist sprang,
+like the reputation, full-grown into being, it is nevertheless true
+that there are no marks of positive immaturity to be detected even in
+the earliest public displays of his art. His work grows, indeed, most
+marvellously in vividness and symmetry as he proceeds, but there
+are no visible signs of growth in the workman's skill. Even when the
+highest point of finish is attained we cannot say that the hand is any
+more cunning than it was from the first. As well might we say that the
+last light touches of the sculptor's chisel upon the perfected statue
+are more skilful than its first vigorous strokes upon the shapeless
+block.
+
+It is certain, however, that Sterne must have been storing up his
+material of observation, secreting his reflections on life and
+character, and consciously or unconsciously maturing his powers of
+expression, during the whole of those silent twenty years which have
+now to be passed under brief review. With one exception, to be noted
+presently, the only known writings of his which belong to this
+period are sermons, and these--a mere "scratch" collection of pulpit
+discourses, which, as soon as he had gained the public ear, he
+hastened in characteristic fashion to rummage from his desk and carry
+to the book-market--throw no light upon the problem before us. There
+are sermons of Sterne which alike in manner and matter disclose the
+author of _Tristram Shandy_; but they are not among those which he
+preached or wrote before that work was given to the world. They
+are not its ancestors but its descendants. They belong to the
+post-Shandian period, and are in obvious imitation of the Shandian
+style; while in none of the earlier ones--not even in that famous
+homily on a Good Conscience, which did not succeed till Corporal Trim
+preached it before the brothers Shandy and Dr. Slop--can we trace
+either the trick of style or the turn of thought that give piquancy to
+the novel. Yet the peculiar qualities of mind, and the special faculty
+of workmanship of which this turn of thought and trick of style were
+the product, must of course have been potentially present from the
+beginning. Men do not blossom forth as wits, humourists, masterly
+delineators of character, and skilful performers on a highly-strung
+and carefully-tuned sentimental instrument all at once, after entering
+their "forties;" and the only wonder is that a possessor of these
+powers--some of them of the kind which, as a rule, and in most men,
+seeks almost as irresistibly for exercise as even the poetic instinct
+itself--should have been held so long unemployed. There is, however,
+one very common stimulus to literary exertions which in Sterne's case
+was undoubtedly wanting--a superabundance of unoccupied time. We
+have little reason, it is true, to suppose that this light-minded
+and valetudinarian Yorkshire parson was at any period of his life an
+industrious "parish priest;" but it is probable, nevertheless, that
+time never hung very heavily upon his hands. In addition to the
+favourite amusements which he enumerates in the Memoir, he was all
+his days addicted to one which is, perhaps, the most absorbing of
+all--flirtation. Philandering, and especially philandering of the
+Platonic and ultra-sentimental order, is almost the one human
+pastime of which its votaries never seem to tire; and its constant
+ministrations to human vanity may serve, perhaps, to account for their
+unwearied absorption in its pursuit. Sterne's first love affair--an
+affair of which, unfortunately, the consequences were more lasting
+than the passion--took place immediately upon his leaving Cambridge.
+To relate it as he relates it to his daughter: "At York I became
+acquainted with your mother, and courted her for two years. She owned
+she liked me, but thought herself not rich enough or me too poor to
+be joined together. She went to her sister's in Staffordshire, and I
+wrote to her often. I believe then she was partly determined to have
+me, but would not say so. At her return she fell into a consumption,
+and one evening that I was sitting by her, with an almost broken heart
+to see her so ill, she said: 'My dear Laury, I never can be yours, for
+I verily believe I have not long to live! But I have left you every
+shilling of my fortune.' Upon that she showed me her will. This
+generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and we
+were married in 1741." The name of this lady was Elizabeth Lumley, and
+it was to her that Sterne addressed those earliest letters which his
+daughter included in the collection published by her some eight years
+after her father's death. They were added, the preface tells us, "in
+justice to Mr. Sterne's delicate feelings;" and in our modern usage
+of the word "delicate," as equivalent to infirm of health and probably
+short of life, they no doubt do full justice to the passion which they
+are supposed to express. It would be unfair, of course, to judge any
+love-letters of that period by the standard of sincerity applied in
+our own less artificial age. All such compositions seem frigid and
+formal enough to us of to-day; yet in most cases of genuine attachment
+we usually find at least a sentence here and there in which the
+natural accents of the heart make themselves heard above the affected
+modulations of the style. But the letters of Sterne's courtship
+maintain the pseudo-poetic, shepherd-and-shepherdess strain
+throughout; or, if the lover ever abandons it, it is only to make
+somewhat maudlin record of those "tears" which flowed a little too
+easily at all times throughout his life. These letters, however, have
+a certain critical interest in their bearing upon those sensibilities
+which Sterne afterwards learned to cultivate in a forcing-frame, with
+a view to the application of their produce to the purposes of an
+art of pathetic writing which simulates nature with such admirable
+fidelity at its best, and descends to such singular bathos at its
+worst.
+
+The marriage preluded by this courtship did not take place till
+Sterne had already been three years Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, the
+benefice which had been procured for him by his uncle the Archdeacon;
+through whose interest also he was appointed successively to two
+prebends--preferments which were less valuable to him for their
+emolument than for the ecclesiastical status which they conferred upon
+him, for the excuse which they gave him for periodical visits to the
+cathedral city to fulfil the residential conditions of his offices,
+and for the opportunity thus afforded him of mixing in and studying
+the society of the Close. Upon his union with Miss Lumley, and, in a
+somewhat curious fashion, by her means, he obtained in addition the
+living of Stillington. "A friend of hers in the South had promised her
+that if she married a clergyman in Yorkshire, when the living became
+vacant he would make her a compliment of it;" and made accordingly
+this singular "compliment" was. At Sutton Sterne remained nearly
+twenty years, doing duty at both places, during which time
+"books, painting, fiddling, and shooting were," he says, "my chief
+amusements." With what success he shot, and with what skill he
+fiddled, we know not. His writings contain not a few musical
+metaphors and allusions to music, which seem to indicate a competent
+acquaintance with its technicalities; but the specimen of his
+powers as an artist, which Mr. Fitzgerald has reproduced from his
+illustrations of a volume of poems by Mr. Woodhull, does not dispose
+one to rate highly his proficiency in this accomplishment. We may
+expect that, after all, it was the first-mentioned of his amusements
+in which he took the greatest delight, and that neither the brush,
+the bow, nor the fowling-piece was nearly so often in his hand as
+the book. Within a few miles of Sutton, at Skelton Castle, an almost
+unique Roman stronghold, since modernized by Gothic hands, dwelt
+his college-friend John Hall Stevenson, whose well-stocked library
+contained a choice but heterogeneous collection of books--old French
+"ana," and the learning of mediaeval doctors--books intentionally and
+books unintentionally comic, the former of which Sterne read with an
+only too retentive a memory for their jests, and the latter with an
+acutely humorous appreciation of their solemn trifling. Later on it
+will be time to note the extent to which he utilized these results of
+his widely discursive reading, and to examine the legitimacy of the
+mode in which he used them: here it is enough to say generally that
+the materials for many a burlesque chapter of _Tristram Shandy_ must
+have been unconsciously storing themselves in his mind in many an
+amused hour passed by Sterne in the library of Skelton Castle.
+
+But before finally quitting this part of my subject it may be as well,
+perhaps, to deal somewhat at length with a matter which will doubtless
+have to be many times incidentally referred to in the course of this
+study, but which I now hope to relieve myself from the necessity of
+doing more than touch upon hereafter. I refer of course to Sterne's
+perpetually recurring flirtations. This is a matter almost as
+impossible to omit from any biography of Sterne as it would be to omit
+it from any biography of Goethe. The English humourist did not, it
+is true, engage in the pastime in the serious, not to say scientific,
+spirit of the German philosopher-poet; it was not deliberately made by
+the former as by the latter to contribute to his artistic development;
+but it is nevertheless hardly open to doubt that Sterne's philandering
+propensities did exercise an influence upon his literary character and
+work in more ways than one. That his marriage was an ill-assorted and
+unhappy union was hardly so much the cause of his inconstancy as its
+effect. It may well be, of course, that the "dear L.," whose moral and
+mental graces her lover had celebrated in such superfine, sentimental
+fashion, was a commonplace person enough. That she was really a woman
+of the exquisite stolidity of Mrs. Shandy, and that her exasperating
+feats as an _assentatrix_ did, as has been suggested, supply the model
+for the irresistibly ludicrous colloquies between the philosopher
+and his wife, there is no sufficient warrant for believing. But it
+is quite possible that the daily companion of one of the most
+indefatigable jesters that ever lived may have been unable to see
+a joke; that she regarded her husband's wilder drolleries as mere
+horse-collar grimacing, and that the point of his subtler humour
+escaped her altogether. But even if it were so, it is, to say the
+least of it, doubtful whether Sterne suffered at all on this ground
+from the wounded feelings of the _mari incompris_, while it is next to
+certain that it does not need the sting of any such disappointment
+to account for his alienation. He must have had plenty of time and
+opportunity to discover Miss Lumley's intellectual limitations during
+the two years of his courtship; and it is not likely that, even if
+they were as well marked as Mrs. Shandy's own, they would have
+done much of themselves to estrange the couple. Sympathy is not the
+necessity to the humourist which the poet finds, or imagines, it to be
+to himself: the humourist, indeed, will sometimes contrive to extract
+from the very absence of sympathy in those about him a keener relish
+for his reflections. With sentiment, indeed, and still more with
+sentimentalism, the case would of course be different; but as for Mr.
+Sterne's demands for sympathy in that department of his life and art,
+one may say without the least hesitation that they would have been
+beyond the power of any one woman, however distinguished a disciple of
+the "Laura Matilda" school, to satisfy. "I must ever," he frankly
+says in one of the "Yorick to Eliza" letters, "I must ever have some
+Dulcinea in my head: it harmonizes the soul;" and he might have added
+that he found it impossible to sustain the harmony without frequently
+changing the Dulcinea. One may suspect that Mrs. Sterne soon had cause
+for jealousy, and it is at least certain that several years before
+Sterne's emergence into notoriety their estrangement was complete. One
+daughter was born to them in 1745, but lived scarcely mare than long
+enough to be rescued from the _limbus infantium_ by the prompt
+rites of the Church. The child was christened Lydia, and died on the
+following day. Its place was filled in 1747 by a second daughter, also
+christened Lydia, who lived to become the wife of M. de Medalle, and
+the not very judicious editress of the posthumous "Letters." For
+her as she grew up Sterne conceived a genuine and truly fatherly
+affection, and it is in writing to her and of her that we see him at
+his best; or rather one might say it is almost only then that we can
+distinguish the true notes of the heart through that habitual falsetto
+of sentimentalism which distinguishes most of Sterne's communications
+with the other sex. There was no subsequent issue of the marriage,
+and, from one of the letters most indiscreetly included in Madame de
+Medalle's collection, it is to be ascertained that some four years or
+so after Lydia's birth the relations between Sterne and Mrs. Sterne
+ceased to be conjugal, and never again resumed that character.
+
+It is, however, probable, upon the husband's own confessions, that he
+had given his wife earlier cause for jealousy, and certainly from the
+time when he begins to reveal himself in correspondence there seems to
+be hardly a moment when some such cause was not in existence--in the
+person of this, that, or the other lackadaisical damsel or coquettish
+matron. From Miss Fourmantelle, the "dear, dear Kitty," to whom Sterne
+was making violent love in 1759, the year of the York publication
+of _Tristram Shandy_, down to Mrs. Draper, the heroine of the famous
+"Yorick to Eliza" letters, the list of ladies who seem to have kindled
+flames in that susceptible breast is almost as long and more real
+than the roll of mistresses immortalized by Horace. How Mrs. Sterne at
+first bore herself under her husband's ostentatious neglect there
+is no direct evidence to show. That she ultimately took refuge in
+indifference we can perceive, but it is to be feared that she was not
+always able to maintain the attitude of contemptuous composure. So, at
+least, we may suspect from the evidence of that Frenchman who met
+"le bon et agreable Tristram," and his wife, at Montpellier, and who,
+characteristically sympathizing with the inconstant husband, declared
+that his wife's incessant pursuit of him made him pass "d'assez
+mauvais moments," which he bore "with the patience of an angel."
+But, on the whole, Mrs. Sterne's conduct seems by her husband's own
+admissions to have been not wanting in dignity.
+
+As to the nature of Sterne's love-affairs I have come, though not
+without hesitation, to the conclusion that they were most, if not all
+of them, what is called, somewhat absurdly, Platonic. In saying this,
+however, I am by no means prepared to assert that they would all of
+them have passed muster before a prosaic and unsentimental British
+jury as mere indiscretions, and nothing worse. Sterne's relations
+with Miss Fourmantelle, for instance, assumed at last a profoundly
+compromising character, and it is far from improbable that the worst
+construction would have been put upon them by one of the plain-dealing
+tribunals aforesaid. Certainly a young woman who leaves her mother at
+York, and comes up to London to reside alone in lodgings, where she is
+constantly being visited by a lover who is himself living _en garcon_
+in the metropolis, can hardly complain if her imprudence is fatal to
+her reputation; neither can he if his own suffers in the same way.
+But, as I am not of those who hold that the conventionally "innocent"
+is the equivalent of the morally harmless in this matter, I cannot
+regard the question as worth any very minute investigation. I am
+not sure that the habitual male flirt, who neglects his wife to sit
+continually languishing at the feet of some other woman, gives much
+less pain and scandal to others, or does much less mischief to himself
+and the objects of his adoration, than the thorough-going profligate;
+and I even feel tempted to risk the apparent paradox that, from
+the artistic point of view, Sterne lost rather than gained by the
+generally Platonic character of his amours. For, as it was, the
+restraint of one instinct of his nature implied the over-indulgence
+of another which stood in at least as much need of chastenment. If his
+love-affairs stopped short of the gratification of the senses, they
+involved a perpetual fondling and caressing of those effeminate
+sensibilities of his into that condition of hyper-aesthesia which,
+though Sterne regarded it as the strength, was in reality the
+weakness, of his art.
+
+Injurious, however, as was the effect which Sterne's philanderings
+exercised upon his personal and literary character, it is not likely
+that, at least at this period of his life at Sutton, they had in any
+degree compromised his reputation. For this he had provided in
+other ways, and principally by his exceedingly injudicious choice
+of associates. "As to the squire of the parish," he remarks in the
+Memoir, "I cannot say we were on a very friendly footing, but at
+Stillington the family of the C[rofts] showed us every kindness: 'twas
+most agreeable to be within a mile and a half of an amiable family who
+were ever cordial friends;" and who, it may be added, appear to have
+been Sterne's only reputable acquaintances. For the satisfaction of
+all other social needs he seems to have resorted to a companionship
+which it was hardly possible for a clergyman to frequent without
+scandal--that, namely, of John Hall Stevenson and the kindred spirits
+whom he delighted to collect around him at Skelton--familiarly known
+as "Crazy" Castle. The club of the "Demoniacs," of which Sterne makes
+mention in his letters, may have had nothing very diabolical about it
+except the name; but, headed as it was by the suspected ex-comrade
+of Wilkes and his brother monks of Medmenham, and recruited by gay
+militaires like Colonels Hall and Lee, and "fast" parsons like the
+Rev. "Panty" Lascelles (mock godson of Pantagruel), it was certainly
+a society in which the Vicar of Sutton could not expect to enroll
+himself without offence. We may fairly suppose, therefore, that it
+was to his association with these somewhat too "jolly companions" that
+Sterne owed that disfavour among decorous country circles, of which
+he shows resentful consciousness in the earlier chapters of _Tristram
+Shandy._
+
+But before we finally cross the line which separates the life of the
+obscure country parson from the life of the famous author, a word or
+two must be said of that piece of writing which was alluded to a few
+pages back as the only known exception to the generally "professional"
+character of all Sterne's compositions of the pre-Shandian era. This
+was a piece in the allegoric-satirical style, which, though not very
+remarkable in itself, may not improbably have helped to determine its
+author's thoughts in the direction of more elaborate literary efforts.
+In the year 1758 a dispute had arisen between a certain Dr. Topham, an
+ecclesiastical lawyer in large local practice, and Dr. Fountayne, the
+then Dean of York. This dispute had originated in an attempt on the
+part of the learned civilian, who appears to have been a pluralist of
+an exceptionally insatiable order, to obtain the reversion of one of
+his numerous offices for his son, alleging a promise made to him on
+that behalf by the Archbishop. This promise--which had, in fact, been
+given--was legally impossible of performance, and upon the failure
+of his attempt the disappointed Topham turned upon the Dean, and
+maintained that by _him_, at any rate, he had been promised another
+place of the value of five guineas per annum, and appropriately known
+as the "Commissaryship of Pickering and Pocklington." This the Dean
+denied, and thereupon Dr. Topham fired off a pamphlet setting forth
+the circumstances of the alleged promise, and protesting against the
+wrong inflicted upon him by its non-performance. At this point Sterne
+came to Dr. Fountayne's assistance with a sarcastic apologue entitled
+the "History of a good Warm Watchcoat," which had "hung up many years
+in the parish vestry," and showing how this garment had so excited
+the cupidity of Trim, the sexton, that "nothing would serve him but
+he must take it home, to have it converted into a warm under-petticoat
+for his wife and a jerkin for himself against the winter." The
+symbolization of Dr. Topham's snug "patent place," which he wished
+to make hereditary, under the image of the good warm watchcoat, is of
+course plain enough; and there is some humour in the way in which the
+parson (the Archbishop) discovers that his incautious assent to Trim's
+request had been given _ultra vires._ Looking through the parish
+register, at the request of a labourer who wished to ascertain his
+age, the parson finds express words of bequest leaving the watch-coat
+"for the sole use of the sextons of the church for ever, to be worn by
+them respectively on winterly cold nights," and at the moment when he
+is exclaiming, "Just Heaven! what an escape have I had! Give this
+for a petticoat to Trim's wife!" he is interrupted by Trim himself
+entering the vestry with "the coat actually ript and cut out" ready
+for conversion into a petticoat for his wife. And we get a foretaste
+of the familiar Shandian impertinence in the remark which follows,
+that "there are many good similes subsisting in the world, but which I
+have neither time to recollect nor look for," which would give you an
+idea of the parson's astonishment at Trim's impudence. The emoluments
+of "Pickering and Pocklington" appear under the figure of a "pair of
+black velvet plush breeches" which ultimately "got into the possession
+of one Lorry Slim (Sterne himself, of course), an unlucky wight, by
+whom they are still worn: in truth, as you will guess, they are very
+thin by this time."
+
+The whole thing is the very slightest of "skits;" and the quarrel
+having been accommodated before it could be published, it was
+not given to the world until after its author's death. But it is
+interesting, as his first known attempt in this line of composition,
+and the grasping sexton deserves remembrance, if only as having handed
+down his name to a far more famous descendant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II.
+
+(1759-1760.)
+
+Hitherto we have had to construct our conception of Sterne out of
+materials of more or less plausible conjecture. We are now at last
+approaching the region of positive evidence, and henceforward, down
+almost to the last scene of all, Sterne's doings will be chronicled,
+and his character revealed, by one who happens, in this case, to be
+the best of all possible biographers--the man himself. Not that such
+records are by any means always the most trustworthy of evidence.
+There are some men whose real character is never more effectually
+concealed than in their correspondence. But it is not so with Sterne.
+The careless, slipshod letters which Madame de Medalle "pitchforked"
+into the book-market, rather than edited, are highly valuable as
+pieces of autobiography. They are easy, naive, and natural, rich in
+simple self-disclosure in almost every page; and if they have more
+to tell us about the man than the writer, they are yet not wanting
+in instructive hints as to Sterne's methods of composition and his
+theories of art.
+
+It was in the year 1759 that the Vicar of Sutton and Prebendary of
+York--already, no doubt, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence
+to many worthy people in the county--conceived the idea of astonishing
+and scandalizing them still further after a new and original fashion.
+His impulses to literary production were probably various, and not all
+of them, or perhaps the strongest of them, of the artistic order. The
+first and most urgent was, it may be suspected, the simplest and most
+common of all such motive forces. Sterne, in all likelihood, was in
+want of money. He was not, perhaps, under the actual instruction of
+that _magister artium_ whom the Roman satirist has celebrated; for he
+declared, indeed, afterwards, that "he wrote not to be fed, but to be
+famous." But the context of the passage shows that he only meant to
+deny any absolute compulsion to write for mere subsistence. Between
+this sort of constraint and that gentler form of pressure which arises
+from the wish to increase an income sufficient for one's needs, but
+inadequate to one's desires, there is a considerable difference; and
+to repudiate the one is not to disclaim the other. It is, at any
+rate, certain that Sterne engaged at one time of his life in a rather
+speculative sort of farming, and we have it from himself in a passage
+in one of his letters, which may be jest, but reads more like
+earnest, that it was his losses in this business that first turned his
+attention to literature.[1] His thoughts once set in that direction,
+his peculiar choice of subject and method of treatment are easily
+comprehensible. Pantagruelic burlesque came to him, if not naturally,
+at any rate by "second nature." He had a strong and sedulously
+cultivated taste for Rabelaisian humour; his head was crammed with all
+sorts of out-of-the-way learning constantly tickling his comic sense
+by its very uselessness; he relished more keenly than any man the
+solemn futilities of mediaeval doctors, and the pedantic indecencies
+of casuist fathers; and, along with all these temptations to an
+enterprise of the kind upon which he entered, he had been experiencing
+a steady relaxation of deterrent restraints. He had fallen out with
+his uncle some years since,[2] and the quarrel had freed him from at
+least one influence making for clerical propriety of behaviour. His
+incorrigible levities had probably lost him the countenance of most of
+his more serious acquaintances; his satirical humour had as probably
+gained him personal enemies not a few, and it may be that he had
+gradually contracted something of that "naughty-boy" temper, as we
+may call it, for which the deliberate and ostentatious repetition of
+offences has an inexplicable charm. It seems clear, too, that, growth
+for growth with this spirit of bravado, there had sprung up--in
+somewhat incongruous companionship, perhaps--a certain sense of wrong.
+Along with the impulse to give an additional shock to the prejudices
+he had already offended, Sterne felt impelled to vindicate what he
+considered the genuine moral worth underlying the indiscretions of the
+offender. What, then, could better suit him than to compose a novel
+in which he might give full play to his simious humour, startle more
+hideously than ever his straighter-laced neighbours, defiantly defend
+his own character, and caricature whatever eccentric figure in the
+society around him might offer the most tempting butt for ridicule?
+
+[Footnote 1: "I was once such a puppy myself," he writes to a certain
+baronet whom he is attempting to discourage from speculative farming
+of this sort, "and had my labour for my pains and two hundred pounds
+out of pocket. Curse on farming! (I said). Let us see if the pen will
+not succeed better than the spade."]
+
+[Footnote 2: He himself, indeed, makes a particular point of this in
+explaining his literary venture. "Now for your desire," he writes to
+a correspondent in 1759, "of knowing the reason of my turning author?
+why, truly I am tired of employing my brains for other people's
+advantage. 'Tis a foolish sacrifice I have made for some years for an
+ungrateful person."--_Letters_, i. 82.]
+
+All the world knows how far he ultimately advanced beyond the
+simplicity of the conception, and into what far higher regions of art
+its execution led him. But I find no convincing reason for believing
+that _Tristram Shandy_ had at the outset any more seriously artistic
+purpose than this; and much indirect evidence that this, in fact, it
+was.
+
+The humorous figure of Mr. Shandy is, of course, the Cervantic centre
+of the whole; and it was out of him and his crotchets that Sterne,
+no doubt, intended from the first to draw the materials of that often
+unsavoury fun which was to amuse the light-minded and scandalize the
+demure. But it can hardly escape notice that the two most elaborate
+portraits in Vol. I.--the admirable but very flatteringly idealized
+sketch of the author himself in Yorick, and the Gilrayesque caricature
+of Dr. Slop--are drawn with a distinctly polemical purpose, defensive
+in the former case and offensive in the latter. On the other hand,
+with the disappearance of Dr. Slop caricature of living persons
+disappears also; while, after the famous description of Yorick's
+death-bed, we meet with no more attempts at self-vindication. It
+seems probable, therefore, that long before the first two volumes
+were completed Sterne had discovered the artistic possibilities of
+"My Uncle Toby" and "Corporal Trim," and had realized the full
+potentialities of humour contained in the contrast between the
+two brothers Shandy. The very work of sharpening and deepening the
+outlines of this humorous antithesis, while it made the crack-brained
+philosopher more and more of a burlesque unreality, continually added
+new touches of life and nature to the lineaments of the simple-minded
+soldier; and it was by this curious and half-accidental process that
+there came to be added to the gallery of English fiction one of the
+most perfect and delightful portraits that it possesses.
+
+We know from internal evidence that _Tristram Shandy_ was begun in the
+early days of 1759; and the first two volumes were probably completed
+by about the middle of the year. "In the year 1760," writes Sterne, "I
+went up to London to publish my two first volumes of _Shandy_." And it
+is stated in a note to this passage, as cited in Scott's memoir, that
+the first edition was published "the year before" in York. There is,
+however, no direct proof that it was in the hands of the public before
+the beginning of 1760, though it is possible that the date of its
+publication may just have fallen within the year. But, at all
+events, on the 1st of January, 1760, an advertisement in the _Public
+Advertiser_ informed the world that "this day" was "published, printed
+on superfine writing-paper, &c., _The Life and Opinions of Tristram
+Shandy_. York. Printed for and sold by John Hinxham, Bookseller in
+Stonegate." The great London publisher, Dodslecy, to whom the book
+had been offered, and who had declined the venture, figures in the
+advertisement as the principal London bookseller from whom it was
+to be obtained. It seems that only a few copies were in the first
+instance sent up to the London market; but they fell into good hands,
+for there is evidence that _Tristram Shandy_ had attracted the notice
+of at least one competent critic in the capital before the month of
+January was out. But though the metropolitan success of the book
+was destined to be delayed for still a month or two, in York it had
+already created a _furore_ in more senses than one. For, in fact,
+and no wonder, it had in many quarters given the deepest offence. Its
+Rabelaisian license of incident and allusion was calculated to offend
+the proprieties--the provincial proprieties especially--even in that
+free-spoken age; and there was that in the book, moreover, which a
+provincial society may be counted on to abominate, with a keener
+if less disinterested abhorrence than any sins against decency. It
+contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature
+of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and
+covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed
+to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific
+world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this
+circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent,
+to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects as
+to be worth quoting. His correspondent was a Dr. * * * * * (asterisks
+for which it is now impossible to substitute letters); and the burden
+of what seem to have been several communications in speech and writing
+on the subject was the maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." With such
+seriousness and severity had his correspondent dwelt upon this adage,
+that "at length," writes Sterne, "you have made me as serious and as
+severe as yourself; but, that the humours you have stirred up might
+not work too potently within me, I have waited four days to cool
+myself before I could set pen to paper to answer you." And thus he
+sets forth the results of his four days' deliberation:
+
+"'De mortuis nil nisi bonum.' I declare I have considered the wisdom
+and foundation of it over and over again as dispassionately and
+charitably as a good Christian can, and, after all, I can find nothing
+in it, or make more of it than a nonsensical lullaby of some nurse,
+put into Latin by some pedant, to be chanted by some hypocrite to the
+end of the world for the consolation of departing lechers. 'Tis, I
+own, Latin, and I think that is all the weight it has, for, in plain
+English, 'tis a loose and futile position below a dispute. 'You are
+not to speak anything of the dead but what is good.' Why so? Who
+says so? Neither reason nor Scripture. Inspired authors have done
+otherwise, and reason and common sense tell me that, if the characters
+of past ages and men are to be drawn at all, they are to be drawn like
+themselves, that is, with their excellences and their foibles; and it
+as much a piece of justice to the world, and to virtue, too, to do the
+one as the other. The ruling passion, _et les egarements du coeur_,
+are the very things which mark and distinguish a man's character,
+in which I would as soon leave out a man's head as his hobby-horse.
+However, if, like the poor devil of a painter, we must conform to the
+pious canon, 'De mortuis,' &c., which I own has a spice of piety in
+the _sound_ of it, and be obliged to paint both our angels and our
+devils out of the same pot, I then infer that our Sydenhams and our
+Sangrados, our Lucretias and our Messalinas, our Somersets and our
+Bolingbrokes, are alike entitled to statues, and all the historians or
+satirists who have said otherwise since they departed this life,
+from Sallust to S----e, are guilty of the crimes you charge me with,
+'cowardice and injustice.' But why cowardice? 'Because 'tis not
+courage to attack a dead man who can't defend himself.' But why do you
+doctors attack such a one with your incision knife? Oh! for the good
+of the living. 'Tis my plea."
+
+And, having given this humorous twist to his argument, he glides off
+into extenuatory matter. He had not even, he protests, made as much as
+a surgical incision into his victim (Dr. Richard Mead, the friend of
+Bentley and of Newton, and a physician and physiologist of high repute
+in his day); he had but just scratched him, and that scarce skin-deep.
+As to the "droll foible" of Dr. Mead, which he had made merry with,
+"it was not first reported (even to the few who can understand the
+hint) by me, but known before by every chambermaid and footman within
+the bills of mortality"--a somewhat daring assertion, one would
+imagine, considering what the droll foible was; and Dr. Mead,
+continues Sterne, great man as he was, had, after all, not fared worse
+than "a man of twice his wisdom"--to wit Solomon, of whom the same
+remark had been made, that "they were both great men, and, like all
+mortal men, had each their ruling passion."
+
+The mixture of banter and sound reasoning in this reply is, no doubt,
+very skilful. But, unfortunately, neither the reasoning nor the
+banter happens to meet the case of this particular defiance of the
+"De mortuis" maxim, and as a serious defence against a serious charge
+(which was what the occasion required) Sterne's answer is altogether
+futile. For the plea of "the good of the living," upon which, after
+all, the whole defence, considered seriously, rests, was quite
+inapplicable as an excuse for the incriminated passage. The only
+living persons who could possibly be affected by it, for good or
+evil, were those surviving friends of the dead man, to whom Sterne's
+allusion to what he called Dr. Mead's "droll foible" was calculated to
+cause the deepest pain and shame.
+
+The other matter of offence to Sterne's Yorkshire readers was of a
+much more elaborate kind. In the person of Dr. Slop, the grotesque
+man-midwife, who was to have assisted, but missed assisting, at
+Tristram's entry into the world, the good people of York were not slow
+to recognize the physical peculiarities and professional antecedents
+of Dr. Burton, the local accoucheur, whom Archdeacon Sterne had
+arrested as a Jacobite. That the portrait was faithful to anything
+but the external traits of the original, or was intended to reproduce
+anything more than these, Sterne afterwards denied; and we have
+certainly no ground for thinking that Burton had invited ridicule on
+any other than the somewhat unworthy ground of the curious ugliness
+of his face and figure. It is most unlikely that his success as a
+practitioner in a branch of the medical art in which imposture is the
+most easily detected, could have been earned by mere quackery; and
+he seems, moreover, to have been a man of learning in more kinds than
+one. The probability is that the worst that could be alleged against
+him was a tendency to scientific pedantry in his published
+writings, which was pretty sure to tickle the fancy of Mr. Sterne.
+Unscrupulously, however, as he was caricatured, the sensation which
+appears to have been excited in the county by the burlesque portrait
+could hardly have been due to any strong public sympathy with the
+involuntary sitter. Dr. Burton seems, as a suspected Jacobite, to have
+been no special favourite with the Yorkshire squirearchy in general,
+but rather the reverse thereof. Ucalegon, however, does not need to be
+popular to arouse his neighbour's interest in his misfortunes; and the
+caricature of Burton was doubtless resented on the _proximus ardet_
+principle by many who feared that their turn was coming next.
+
+To all the complaints and protests which reached him on the subject
+Sterne would in any case, probably, have been indifferent; but he was
+soon to receive encouragement which would have more than repaid a
+man of his temper for twice the number of rebukes. For London cared
+nothing for Yorkshire susceptibilities and Yorkshire fears. Provincial
+notables might be libelled, and their friends might go in fear
+of similar treatment, but all that was nothing to "the town," and
+_Tristram Shandy_ had taken the town by storm. We gather from a
+passage in the letter above quoted that as early as January 30
+the book had "gained the very favourable opinion" of Mr. Garrick,
+afterwards to become the author's intimate friend; and it is certain
+that by the time of Sterne's arrival in London, in March, 1760,
+_Tristram Shandy_ had become the rage.
+
+To say of this extraordinary work that it defies analysis would be the
+merest inadequacy of commonplace. It was meant to defy analysis; it
+is of the very essence of its scheme and purpose that it should do so;
+and the mere attempt to subject it systematically to any such process
+would argue an altogether mistaken conception of the author's intent.
+Its full "official" style and title is _The Life and Opinions of
+Tristram Shandy, Gent.,_ and it is difficult to say which it contains
+the less about--the opinions of Tristram Shandy or the events of
+his life. As a matter of fact, its proper description would be "The
+Opinions of Tristram Shandy's Father, with some Passages from the Life
+of his Uncle." Its claim to be regarded as a biography of its nominal
+hero is best illustrated by the fact that Tristram is not born till
+the third volume, and not breeched till the sixth; that it is not till
+the seventh that he begins to play any active part in the narrative,
+appearing then only as a completely colourless and unindividualized
+figure, a mere vehicle for the conveyance of Sterne's own Continental
+_impressions de voyage_; and that in the last two volumes, which
+are entirely taken up with the incident of his uncle's courtship, he
+disappears from the story altogether. It is to be presumed, perhaps,
+though not very confidently, that the reader would have seen more
+of him if the tale had been continued; but how much or how little
+is quite uncertain. The real hero of the book is at the outset Mr.
+Shandy, senior, who is, later on, succeeded in this place of dignity
+by my Uncle Toby. It not only served Sterne's purpose to confine
+himself mainly to these two characters, as the best whereon to display
+his powers, but it was part of his studied eccentricity to do so. It
+was a "point" to give as little as possible about Tristram Shandy in
+a life of Tristram Shandy; just as it was a point to keep the reader
+waiting throughout the year 1760 for their hero to be so much as born.
+In the first volume, therefore, the author does literally everything
+but make the slightest progress with his story. Starting off abruptly
+with a mock physiologic disquisition upon the importance of a
+proper ordering of their mental states on the part of the intending
+progenitors of children, he philosophizes gravely on this theme for
+two or three chapters; and then wanders away into an account of the
+local midwife, upon whose sole services Mrs. Shandy, in opposition
+to her husband, was inclined to rely. From the midwife it is an easy
+transition to her patron and protector, the incumbent of the parish,
+and this, in its turn, suggests a long excursus on the character,
+habits, appearance, home, friends, enemies, and finally death, burial,
+and epitaph of the Rev. Mr. Yorick. Thence we return to Mr. and Mrs.
+Shandy, and are made acquainted, in absurdly minute detail, with an
+agreement entered into between them with reference to the place of
+sojourn to be selected for the lady's accouchement, the burlesque
+deed which records this compact being actually set out at full length.
+Thence, again, we are beckoned away by the jester to join him in
+elaborate and not very edifying ridicule of the Catholic doctrine
+of ante-natal baptism; and thence--but it would be useless to follow
+further the windings and doublings of this literary hare.
+
+Yet though the book, as one thus summarizes it, may appear a mere
+farrago of digressions, it nevertheless, after its peculiar fashion,
+advances. Such definite purpose as underlies the tricks and grimaces
+of its author is by degrees accomplished; and before we reach the end
+of the first volume the highly humorous, if extravagantly idealized,
+figure of Mr. Shandy takes bodily shape and consistency before our
+eyes. It is a mistake, I think, of Sir Walter Scott's to regard the
+portrait of this eccentric philosopher as intended for a satire upon
+perverted and deranged erudition--as the study of a man "whom too much
+and too miscellaneous learning had brought within a step or two of
+madness." Sterne's conception seems to me a little more subtle and
+less commonplace than that. Mr. Shandy, I imagine, is designed to
+personify not "crack-brained learning" so much as "theory run mad." He
+is possessed by a sort of Demon of the Deductive, ever impelling him
+to push his premises to new conclusions without ever allowing him time
+to compare them with the facts. No doubt we are meant to regard him as
+a learned man; but his son gives us to understand distinctly and very
+early in the book that his crotchets were by no means those of a weak
+receptive mind, overladen with more knowledge than it could digest,
+but rather those of an over-active intelligence, far more deeply and
+constantly concerned with its own processes than with the thoughts
+of others. Tristram, indeed, dwells pointedly on the fact that his
+father's dialectical skill was not the result of training, and that he
+owed nothing to the logic of the schools. "He was certainly," says his
+son, "irresistible both in his orations and disputations," but
+that was because "he was born an orator _([Greek: Theodidaktos])_.
+Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of logic and rhetoric
+were so blended in him, and withal he had so shrewd a guess at the
+weaknesses and passions of his respondent, that Nature might have
+stood up and said, 'This man is eloquent.' And yet," continues the
+filial panegyric,
+
+  "He had never read Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle,
+  nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor
+  Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing
+  he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty
+  struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or
+  Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as
+  in what the difference of an argument _ad ignorantiam_ and an argument
+  _ad hominem_ consisted; and when he went up along with me to
+  enter my name at Jesus College, in * * * *, it was a matter of just
+  wonder with my worthy tutor and two or three Fellows of that learned
+  society that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools
+  should be able to work after that fashion with them."
+
+Surely we all know men of this kind, and the
+consternation--comparable only to that of M. Jourdain under the
+impromptu carte-and-tierce of his servant-maid--which their sturdy
+if informal dialectic will often spread among many kinds of "learned
+societies." But such men are certainly not of the class which Scott
+supposed to have been ridiculed in the character of Walter Shandy.
+
+Among the crotchets of this born dialectician was a theory as to the
+importance of Christian names in determining the future behaviour
+and destiny of the children to whom they are given; and, whatever
+admixture of jest there might have been in some of his other fancies,
+in this his son affirms he was absolutely serious. He solemnly
+maintained the opinion "that there was a strange kind of magic bias
+which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed
+upon our character and conduct." How many Caesars and Pompeys, he
+would say, by mere inspiration of their names have been rendered
+worthy of them! And how many, he would add, are there who might have
+done exceeding well in the world had not their characters and spirits
+been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing! He was astonished
+at parents failing to perceive that "when once a vile name was
+wrongfully or injudiciously given, 'twas not like a case of a man's
+character, which, when wronged, might afterwards be cleared; and
+possibly some time or other, if not in the man's life, at least after
+his death, be somehow or other set to rights with the world." This
+name-giving injury, he would say, "could never be undone; nay, he
+doubted whether an Act of Parliament could reach it; he knew, as well
+as you, that the Legislature assumed a power over surnames; but for
+very strong reasons, which he could give, it had never yet adventured,
+he would say, to go a step further."
+
+With all this extravagance, however, there was combined an admirable
+affectation of sobriety. Mr. Shandy would have us believe that he
+was no blind slave to his theory. He was quite willing to admit the
+existence of names which could not affect the character either
+for good or evil--Jack, Dick, and Tom, for instance; and such the
+philosopher styled "neutral names," affirming of them, "without a
+satire, that there had been as many knaves and fools at least as wise
+and good men since the world began, who had indifferently borne them,
+so that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary
+directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other's
+effects; for which reason he would often declare he would not give a
+cherry-stone to choose among them. Bob, which was my brother's name,
+was another of these neutral kinds of Christian names which operated
+very little either way; and as my father happened to be at Epsom when
+it was given him, he would ofttimes thank Heaven it was no worse."
+Forewarned of this peculiarity of Mr.
+
+Shandy's, the reader is, of course, prepared to hear that of all
+the names in the universe the philosopher had the most unconquerable
+aversion for Tristram, "the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it
+of anything in the world." He would break off in the midst of one
+of his frequent disputes on the subject of names, and "in a spirited
+epiphonema, or rather erotesis," demand of his antagonist "whether he
+would take upon him to say he had ever remembered, whether he had
+ever read, or whether he had ever heard tell of a man called Tristram
+performing anything great or worth recording. No, he would say.
+Tristram! the thing is impossible." It only remained that he should
+have published a book in defence of the belief, and sure enough "in
+the year sixteen," two years before the birth of his second son, "he
+was at the pains of writing an express dissertation simply upon the
+word Tristram, showing the world with great candour and modesty the
+grounds of his great abhorrence to the name." And with this idea
+Sterne continues to amuse himself at intervals till the end of the
+chapter.
+
+That he does not so persistently amuse the reader it is, of course,
+scarcely necessary to say. The jest has not substance enough--few of
+Sterne's jests have--to stand the process of continual attrition to
+which he subjects it. But the mere historic gravity with which the
+various turns of this monomania are recorded--to say nothing of the
+seldom failing charm of the easy, gossiping style--prevents the thing
+from ever becoming utterly tiresome. On the whole, however, one begins
+to grow impatient for more of the same sort as the three admirable
+chapters on the Rev. Mr. Yorick, and is not sorry to get to the
+opening of the second volume, with its half-tender, half-humorous, and
+wholly delightful account of Uncle Toby's difficulties in describing
+the siege operations before Namur, and of the happy chance by which
+these difficulties made him ultimately the fortunate possessor of a
+"hobby."
+
+Throughout this volume there are manifest signs of Sterne's unceasing
+interest in his own creations, and of his increasing consciousness of
+creative power. Captain Toby Shandy is but just lightly sketched-in
+the first volume, while Corporal Trim has not made his appearance on
+the scene at all; but before the end of the second we know both of
+them thoroughly, within and without. Indeed, one might almost say
+that in the first half-dozen chapters which so excellently recount
+the origin of the corporal's fortification scheme, and the wounded
+officer's delighted acceptance of it, every trait in the simple
+characters--alike yet so different in their simplicity--of master and
+of man becomes definitely fixed in the reader's mind. And the total
+difference between the second and the first volume in point of
+fulness, variety, and colour is most marked. The artist, the inventor,
+the master of dialogue, the comic dramatist, in fact, as distinct from
+the humorous essayist, would almost seem to have started into being
+as we pass from the one volume to the other. There is nothing in the
+drolleries of the first volume--in the broad jests upon Mr. Shandy's
+crotchets, or even in the subtler humour of the intellectual collision
+between these crotchets and his brother's plain sense--to indicate the
+kind of power displayed in that remarkable colloquy _a quatre_, which
+begins with the arrival of Dr. Slop and ends with Corporal Trim's
+recital of the Sermon on Conscience. Wit, humour, irony, quaint
+learning, shrewd judgment of men and things, of these Sterne had
+displayed abundance already; but it is not in the earlier but in the
+later half of the first instalment of _Tristram Shandy_ that we first
+become conscious that he is something more than the possessor of all
+these things; that he is gifted with the genius of creation, and has
+sent forth new beings into that world of immortal shadows which to
+many of us is more real than our own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+LONDON TRIUMPHS.--FIRST SET OF SERMONS.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS.
+III. AND IV.--COXWOLD.--VOLS. V. AND VI.--FIRST VISIT TO THE
+CONTINENT.--PARIS.--TOULOUSE.
+
+(1760-1762.)
+
+Sterne alighted from the York mail, just as Byron "awoke one morning,"
+to "find himself famous." Seldom indeed has any lion so suddenly
+discovered been pursued so eagerly and by such a distinguished crowd
+of hunters. The chase was remarkable enough to have left a lasting
+impression on the spectators; for it was several years after (in 1773)
+that Dr. Johnson, by way of fortifying his very just remark that "any
+man who has a name or who has the power of pleasing will be generally
+invited in London," observed gruffly that "the man Sterne," he was
+told, "had had engagements for three months." And truly it would
+appear from abundant evidence that "the man Sterne" gained such a
+social triumph as might well have turned a stronger head than his.
+Within twenty-four hours after his arrival his lodgings in Pall Mall
+were besieged by a crowd of fashionable visitors; and in a few weeks
+he had probably made the acquaintance of "everybody who was anybody"
+in the London society of that day.
+
+How thoroughly he relished the delights of celebrity is revealed, with
+a simple vanity which almost disarms criticism, in many a passage
+of his correspondence. In one of his earliest letters to Miss
+Fourmantelle we find him proudly relating to her how already he "was
+engaged to ten noblemen and men of fashion." Of Garrick, who had
+warmly welcomed the humourist whose merits he had been the first to
+discover, Sterne says that he had "promised him at dinner to numbers
+of great people." Amongst these great people who sought him out for
+themselves was that discerning patron of ability in every shape, Lord
+Rockingham. In one of the many letters which Madame de Medalle flung
+dateless upon the world, but which from internal evidence we can
+assign to the early months of 1760, Sterne writes that he is about to
+"set off with a grand retinue of Lord Rockingham's (in whose suite I
+move) for Windsor" to witness, it should seem, an installation of
+a Knight of the Garter. It is in his letters to Miss Fourmantelle,
+however, that his almost boyish exultation at his London triumph
+discloses itself most frankly. "My rooms," he writes, "are filling
+every hour with great people of the first rank, who strive who shall
+most honour me." Never, he believes, had such homage been rendered to
+any man by devotees so distinguished. "The honours paid me were the
+greatest that were ever known from the great."
+
+The self-painted portrait is not, it must be confessed, altogether
+an attractive one. It is somewhat wanting in dignity, and its air of
+over-inflated complacency is at times slightly ridiculous. But we must
+not judge Sterne in this matter by too severe a standard. He was by
+nature neither a dignified nor a self-contained man: he had a head
+particularly unfitted to stand sudden elevation; and it must be
+allowed that few men's power of resisting giddiness at previously
+unexplored altitudes was ever so severely tried. It was not only "the
+great" in the sense of the high in rank and social distinction by
+whom he was courted; he was welcomed also by the eminent in genius and
+learning; and it would be no very difficult task for him to flatter
+himself that it was the latter form of recognition which, he really
+valued most. Much, at any rate, in the way of undue elation may be
+forgiven to a country clergyman who suddenly found himself the centre
+of a court, which was regularly attended by statesmen, wits, and
+leaders of fashion, and with whom even bishops condescended to open
+gracious diplomatic communication. "Even all the bishops," he writes,
+"have sent their compliments;" and though this can hardly have been
+true of the whole Episcopal Bench, it is certain that Sterne received
+something more than a compliment from one bishop, who was a host in
+himself. He was introduced by Garrick to Warburton, and received high
+encouragement from that formidable prelate.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: It is admitted, moreover, in the correspondence with Miss
+Fourmantelle that Sterne received something more substantial from the
+Bishop, in the shape of a purse of gold; and this strange present gave
+rise to a scandal on which something will be said hereafter.]
+
+The year 1760, however, was to bring to Sterne more solid gains than
+that of mere celebrity, or even than the somewhat precarious money
+profits which depend on literary vogue. Only a few weeks after his
+arrival in town he was presented by Lord Falconberg with the curacy of
+Coxwold, "a sweet retirement," as he describes it, "in comparison of
+Sutton," at which he was in future to pass most of the time spent
+by him in Yorkshire. What obtained him this piece of preferment is
+unknown. It may be that _Tristram Shandy_ drew the Yorkshire peer's
+attention to the fact that there was a Yorkshireman of genius living
+within a few miles of a then vacant benefice in his lordship's gift,
+and that this was enough for him. But Sterne himself says--in writing
+a year or so afterwards to a lady of his acquaintance--"I hope I have
+been of some service to his lordship, and he has sufficiently requited
+me;" and in the face of this plain assertion, confirmed as it is by
+the fact that Lord Falconberg was on terms of friendly intimacy with
+the Vicar of Coxwold at a much later date than this, we may dismiss
+idle tales about Sterne's having "black-mailed" the patron out of a
+presentation to a benefice worth no more, after all, than some 70L a
+year net.
+
+There is somewhat more substance, however, in the scandal which got
+abroad with reference to a certain alleged transaction between Sterne
+and Warburton. Before Sterne had been many days in London, and while
+yet his person and doings were the natural subjects of the newest
+gossip, a story found its way into currency to the effect that the
+new-made Bishop of Gloucester had found it advisable to protect
+himself against the satiric humour of the author of the _Tristram
+Shandy_ by a substantial present of money. Coming to Garrick's ears,
+it was repeated by him--whether seriously or in jest--to Sterne,
+from whom it evoked a curious letter, which in Madame de Medalle's
+collection has been studiously hidden away amongst the correspondence
+of seven years later. "'Twas for all the world," he began, "like a cut
+across my finger with a sharp pen-knife. I saw the blood--gave it a
+suck, wrapt it up, and thought no more about it.... The story you told
+me of Tristram's pretended tutor this morning"--(the scandal was, that
+Warburton had been threatened with caricature in the next volume of
+the novel, under the guise of the hero's tutor)--"this vile story, I
+say, though I then saw both how and where it wounded, I felt little
+from it at first, or, to speak more honestly (though it ruins my
+simile), I felt a great deal of pain from it, but affected an air,
+usual in such accidents, of feeling less than I had." And he goes on
+to repudiate, it will be observed, not so much the moral offence of
+corruption, in receiving money to spare Warburton, as the intellectual
+solecism of selecting him for ridicule. "What the devil!" he
+exclaims, "is there no one learned blockhead throughout the schools
+of misapplied science in the Christian world to make a tutor of for
+my Tristram--are we so run out of stock that there is no one
+lumber-headed, muddle-headed, mortar-headed, pudding-head chap amongst
+our doctors...but I must disable my judgment by choosing a Warburton?"
+Later on, in a letter to his friend, Mr. Croft, at Stillington, whom
+the scandal had reached through a "society journal" of the time, he
+asks whether people would suppose he would be "such a fool as to fall
+foul of Dr. Warburton, my best friend, by representing him so weak a
+man; or by telling such a lie of him as his giving me a purse to buy
+off the tutorship of Tristram--or that I should be fool enough to own
+that I had taken a purse for that purpose?" It will be remarked that
+Sterne does not here deny having received a purse from Warburton,
+but only his having received it by way of black-mail: and the most
+mysterious part of the affair is that Sterne did actually receive the
+strange present of a "purse of gold" from Warburton (whom at that time
+he did not know nor had ever seen); and that he admits as much in one
+of his letters to Miss Fourmantelle. "I had a purse of guineas given
+me yesterday by a Bishop," he writes, triumphantly, but without
+volunteering any explanation of this extraordinary gift. Sterne's
+letter to Garrick was forwarded, it would seem, to Warburton; and the
+Bishop thanks Garrick for having procured for him "the confutation of
+an impertinent story the first moment I heard of it." This, however,
+can hardly count for much. If Warburton had really wished Sterne to
+abstain from caricaturing him, he would be as anxious--and for much
+the same reasons--to conceal the fact as to suppress the caricature.
+He would naturally have the disclosure of it reported to Sterne
+for formal contradiction, as in fulfilment of a virtual term in the
+bargain between them. The epithet of "irrevocable scoundrel," which
+he afterwards applied to Sterne, is of less importance, as proceeding
+from Warburton, than it would have been had it come from any one not
+habitually employing Warburton's peculiar vocabulary; but it at least
+argues no very cordial feeling on the Bishop's side. And, on the
+whole, one regrets to feel, as I must honestly confess that I do feel,
+far less confident of the groundlessness of this rather unpleasant
+story than could be wished. It is impossible to forget, however, that
+while the ethics of this matter were undoubtedly less strict in those
+days than they are--or, at any rate, are recognized as being--in our
+own, there is nothing in Sterne's character to make us suppose him to
+have been at all in advance of the morality of his time.
+
+The incumbent-designate did not go down at once to take possession of
+his temporalities. His London triumph had not yet run its course. The
+first edition of Vols. I. and II. of _Tristram Shandy_ was exhausted
+in some three months. In April, Dodsley brought out a second; and,
+concurrently with the advertisement of its issue, there appeared--in
+somewhat incongruous companionship--the announcement, "Speedily will
+be published, The Sermons of Mr. Yorick." The judicious Dodsley, or
+possibly the judicious Sterne himself (acute enough in matters of
+this kind), had perceived that now was the time to publish a series of
+sermons by the very unclerical lion of the day. There would--they,
+no doubt, thought--be an undeniable piquancy, a distinct flavour of
+semi-scandalous incongruity in listening to the Word of Life from the
+lips of this loose-tongued droll; and the more staid and serious the
+sermon, the more effective the contrast. There need not have been
+much trouble in finding the kind of article required; and we may be
+tolerably sure that, even if Sterne did not perceive that fact for
+himself, his publisher hastened to inform him that "anything would
+do." Two of his pulpit discourses, the Assize Sermon and the Charity
+Sermon, had already been thought worthy of publication by their author
+in a separate form; and the latter of these found a place in the
+series; while the rest seem to have been simply the chance sweepings
+of the parson's sermon-drawer. The critics who find wit, eccentricity,
+flashes of Shandyism, and what not else of the same sort in these
+discourses, must be able--or so it seems to me--to discover these
+phenomena anywhere. To the best of my own judgment the Sermons
+are--with but few and partial exceptions--of the most commonplace
+character; platitudinous with the platitudes of a thousand pulpits,
+and insipid with the _crambe repetita_ of a hundred thousand homilies.
+A single extract will fully suffice for a specimen of Sterne's
+pre-Shandian homiletic style; his post-Shandian manner was very
+different, as we shall see. The preacher is discoursing upon the
+well-worn subject of the inconsistencies of human character:
+
+  "If such a contrast was only observable in the different stages of
+  a man's life, it would cease to be either a matter of wonder or of
+  just reproach. Age, experience, and much reflection may naturally
+  enough be supposed to alter a man's sense of things, and so entirely
+  to transform him that, not only in outward appearance but in the
+  very cast and turn of his mind, he may be as unlike and different
+  from the man he was twenty or thirty years ago as he ever was from
+  anything of his own species. This, I say, is naturally to be accounted
+  for, and in some cases might be praiseworthy too; but the observation
+  is to be made of men in the same period of their lives that in
+  the same day, sometimes on the very same action, they are utterly
+  inconsistent and irreconcilable with themselves. Look at the man in
+  one light, and he shall seem wise, penetrating, discreet, and brave;
+  behold him in another point of view, and you see a creature all over
+  folly and indiscretion, weak and timorous as cowardice and
+  indiscretion can make him. A man shall appear gentle, courteous,
+  and benevolent to all mankind; follow him into his own house,
+  maybe you see a tyrant morose and savage to all whose happiness
+  depends upon his kindness. A third, in his general behaviour,
+  is found to be generous, disinterested, humane, and friendly. Hear
+  but the sad story of the friendless orphans too credulously trusting
+  all their whole substance into his hands, and he shall appear more
+  sordid, more pitiless and unjust than the injured themselves have
+  bitterness to paint him. Another shall be charitable to the poor,
+  uncharitable in his censures and opinions of all the rest of the
+  world besides: temperate in his appetites, intemperate in his tongue;
+  shall have too much conscience and religion to cheat the man who
+  trusts him, and perhaps as far as the business of debtor and creditor
+  extends shall be just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite; yet in
+  matters of full or great concern, where he is to have the handling
+  of the party's reputation and good name, the dearest, the tenderest
+  property the man has, he will do him irreparable damage, and rob him
+  there without measure or pity."--Sermon XI.--_On Evil Speaking_.
+
+There is clearly nothing particularly striking in all that, even
+conveyed as it is in Sterne's effective, if loose and careless, style;
+and it is no unfair sample of the whole. The calculation, however, of
+the author and his shrewd publisher was that, whatever the intrinsic
+merits or demerits of these sermons, they would "take" on the strength
+of the author's name; nor, it would seem, was their calculation
+disappointed. The edition of this series of sermons now lying before
+me is numbered the sixth, and its date is 1764; which represents a
+demand for a new edition every nine months or so, over a space of
+four years. They may, perhaps, have succeeded, too, in partially
+reconciling a certain serious-minded portion of the public to the
+author. Sterne evidently hoped that they might; for we find him
+sending a copy to Warburton, in the month of June, immediately after
+the publication of the book, and receiving in return a letter of
+courteous thanks, and full of excellent advice as to the expediency
+of avoiding scandal by too hazardous a style of writing in the future.
+Sterne, in reply, protests that he would "willingly give no offence to
+mortal by anything which could look like the least violation of either
+decency or good manners;" but--and it is an important "but"--he cannot
+promise to "mutilate everything" in _Tristram_ "down to the prudish
+humour of every particular" (individual), though he will do his best;
+but, in any case, "laugh, my Lord, I will, and as loudly as I can."
+And laugh he did, and in such Rabelaisian fashion that the Bishop
+(somewhat inconsistently for a critic who had welcomed Sterne on
+the appearance of the first two volumes expressly as the "English
+Rabelais") remarked of him afterwards with characteristic vigour, in
+a letter to a friend, that he fears the fellow is an "irrevocable
+scoundrel."
+
+The volumes, however, which earned "the fellow" this Episcopal
+benediction were not given to the world till the next year. At the
+end of May or beginning of June, 1760, Sterne went to his new home
+at Coxwold, and his letters soon begin to show him to us at work upon
+further records of Mr. Shandy's philosophical theory-spinning and the
+simpler pursuits of his excellent brother. It is probable that this
+year, 1760, was, on the whole, the happiest year of Sterne's life.
+His health, though always feeble, had not yet finally given way;
+and though the "vile cough" which was to bring him more than once to
+death's door, and at last to force it open, was already troubling him,
+he had that within him which made it easy to bear up against all
+such physical ills. His spirits, in fact, were at their highest. His
+worldly affairs were going at least as smoothly as they ever went.
+He was basking in that sunshine of fame which was so delightful to a
+temperament differing from that of the average Englishman, as does the
+physique of the Southern races from that of the hardier children of
+the North; and lastly, he was exulting in a new-born sense of creative
+power which no doubt made the composition of the earlier volumes of
+_Tristram_ a veritable labour of love.
+
+But the witty division of literary spinners into silkworms and
+spiders--those who spin because they are full, and those who do so
+because they are empty--is not exhaustive. There are human silk-worms
+who become gradually transformed into spiders--men who begin writing
+in order to unburden a full imagination, and who, long after that
+process has been completely performed, continue writing in order to
+fill an empty belly; and though Sterne did not live long enough to
+"write himself out," there are certain indications that he would
+not have left off writing if and when he felt that this stage of
+exhaustion had arrived. His artistic impulses were curiously combined
+with a distinct admixture of the "potboiler" spirit; and it was with
+something of the complacency of an annuitant that he looked forward to
+giving the public a couple of volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ every year
+as long as they would stand it. In these early days, however, there
+was no necessity even to discuss the probable period either of the
+writer's inspiration or of the reader's appetite. At present the
+public were as eager to consume more Shandyism as Sterne was ready to
+produce it: the demand was as active as the supply was easy. By the
+end of the year Vols. III. and IV. were in the press, and on January
+27, 1761, they made their appearance. They had been disposed of in
+advance to Dodsley for 380_l._--no bad terms of remuneration in
+those days; but it is still likely enough that the publisher made
+a profitable bargain. The new volumes sold freely, and the public
+laughed at them as heartily as their two predecessors. Their author's
+vogue in London, whither he went in December, 1760, to superintend
+publication, was as great during the next spring as it had been in
+the last. The tide of visitors again set in all its former force and
+volume towards the "genteel lodgings." His dinner list was once more
+full, and he was feasted and flattered by wits, beaux, courtiers,
+politicians, and titled-lady lion-hunters as sedulously as ever. His
+letters, especially those to his friends the Crofts, of Stillington,
+abound, as before, in touches of the same amusing vanity. With how
+delicious a sense of self-importance must he have written these words:
+"You made me and my friends very merry with the accounts current at
+York of my being forbad the Court, but they do not consider what a
+considerable person they make of me when they suppose either my going
+or not going there is a point that ever enters the K.'s head; and
+for those about him, I have the honour either to stand so personally
+well-known to them, or to be so well represented by those of the first
+rank, as to fear no accident of the kind." Amusing, too, is it to note
+the familiarity, as of an old _habitue_ of Ministerial antechambers,
+with which this country parson discusses the political changes of
+that interesting year; though scarcely more amusing, perhaps, than the
+solemnity with which his daughter disguises the identity of the new
+Premier under the title B----e; and by a similar use of initials
+attempts to conceal the momentous state secret that the D. of R. had
+been removed from the place of Groom of the Chambers, and that Sir
+F.D. had succeeded T. as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Occasionally,
+however, the interest of his letters changes from personal to public,
+and we get a glimpse of scenes and personages that have become
+historical. He was present in the House of Commons at the first grand
+debate on the German war after the Great Commoner's retirement from
+office--"the pitched battle," as Sterne calls it, "wherein Mr. P.
+was to have entered and thrown down the gauntlet" in defence of his
+military policy. Thus he describes it:
+
+  "There never was so full a House--the gallery full to the top--I
+  was there all the day; when lo! a political fit of the gout seized the
+  great combatant--he entered not the lists. Beckford got up and
+  begged the House, as he saw not his right honourable friend there,
+  to put off the debate--it could not be done: so Beckford rose up
+  and made a most long, passionate, incoherent speech in defence of
+  the German war, but very severe upon the unfrugal manner it was
+  carried on, in which he addressed himself principally to the C[hancellor]
+  of the E[xchequer], and laid on him terribly.... Legge
+  answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord K. spoke long.
+  Sir F. D[ashwood] maintained the German war was most pernicious....
+  Lord B[arrington] at last got up and spoke half an hour
+  with great plainness and temper, explained many hidden things relating
+  to these accounts in favour of the late K., and told two or
+  three conversations which had passed between the K. and himself
+  relative to these expenses, which cast great honour upon the K.'s
+  character. This was with regard to the money the K. had secretly
+  furnished out of his own pocket to lessen the account of the
+  Hanover-score brought us to discharge. Beckford and Barrington
+  abused all who fought for peace and joined in the cry for it,
+  and Beckford added that the reasons of wishing a peace now were
+  the same as at the Peace of Utrecht--that the people behind the
+  curtain could not both maintain the war and their places too, so
+  were for making another sacrifice of the nation to their own interests.
+  After all, the cry for a peace is so general that it will certainly
+  end in one."
+
+And then the letter, recurring to personal matters towards the close,
+records the success of Vols. III. and IV.:
+
+"One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly as the other half cry
+it up to the skies--the best is they abuse and buy it, and at such a
+rate that we are going on with a second edition as fast as possible."
+This was written only in the first week of March, so that the edition
+must have been exhausted in little more than a month. It was, indeed,
+another triumph; and all through this spring up to midsummer did
+Sterne remain in London to enjoy it. But, with three distinct flocks
+awaiting a renewal of his pastoral ministrations in Yorkshire, it
+would scarcely have done for him, even in those easy-going days of
+the Establishment, to take up his permanent abode at the capital; and
+early in July he returned to Coxwold.
+
+From the middle of this year, 1761, the scene begins to darken, and
+from the beginning of the next year onward Sterne's life was little
+better than a truceless struggle with the disease to which he was
+destined, prematurely, to succumb. The wretched constitution which,
+in common with his short-lived brothers and sisters, he had inherited
+probably from his father, already began to show signs of breaking
+up. Invalid from the first, it had doubtless been weakened by the
+hardships of Sterne's early years, and yet further, perhaps, by the
+excitements and dissipations of his London life; nor was the change
+from the gaieties of the capital to hard literary labour in a country
+parsonage calculated to benefit him as much as it might others. Shandy
+Hall, as he christened his pretty parsonage at Coxwold, and as the
+house, still standing, is called to this day, soon became irksome
+to him. The very reaction begotten of unwonted quietude acted on his
+temperament with a dispiriting rather than a soothing effect. The
+change from his full and stimulating life in London to the dull
+round of clerical duties in a Yorkshire village might well have been
+depressing to a mind better balanced and ballasted than his. To him,
+with his light, pleasure-loving nature, it was as the return of the
+schoolboy from pantomimes and pony-riding to the more sober delights
+of Dr. Swishtail's; and, in a letter to Hall Stevenson, Sterne reveals
+his feelings with all the juvenile frankness of one of the Doctor's
+pupils:
+
+  "I rejoice you are in London--rest you there in peace; here 'tis the
+  devil. You were a good prophet. I wish myself back again, as you
+  told me I should, but not because a thin, death-doing, pestiferous
+  north-east wind blows in a line directly from Crazy Castle turret
+  fresh upon me in this cuckoldly retreat (for I value the north-east
+  wind and all its powers not a straw), but the transition from rapid
+  motion to absolute rest was too violent. I should have walked about
+  the streets of York ten days, as a proper medium to have passed
+  through before I entered upon my rest; I stayed but a moment, and
+  I have been here but a few, to satisfy me. I have not managed my
+  miseries like a wise man, and if God for my consolation had not
+  poured forth the spirit of Shandyism unto me, which will not suffer
+  me to think two moments upon any grave subject, I would else just
+  now lay down and die."
+
+It is true he adds, in the next sentence, that in half an hour's time
+"I'll lay a guinea I shall be as merry as a monkey, and forget it
+all," but such sudden revulsions of high spirits can hardly be allowed
+to count for much against the prevailing tone of discontented _ennui_
+which pervades this letter.
+
+Apart, moreover, from Sterne's regrets of London, his country home
+was becoming from other causes a less pleasant place of abode. His
+relations with his wife were getting less and less cordial every year.
+With a perversity sometimes noticeable in the wives of distinguished
+men, Mrs. Sterne had failed to accept with enthusiasm the _role_
+of distant and humbly admiring spectator of her brilliant husband's
+triumphs. Accept it, of course, she did, being unable, indeed, to help
+herself; but it is clear that when Sterne returned home after one of
+his six months' revels in the gaieties of London, his wife, who had
+been vegetating the while in the retirement of Yorkshire, was not in
+the habit of welcoming him with effusion. Perceiving so clearly that
+her husband preferred the world's society to hers, she naturally,
+perhaps, refused to disguise her preference of her own society to his.
+Their estrangement, in short, had grown apace, and had already
+brought them to that stage of mutual indifference which is at once so
+comfortable and so hopeless--secure alike against the risk of "scenes"
+and the hope of reconciliation, shut fast in its exemption from
+_amantium irae_ against all possibility of _redintegratio amoris._
+To such perfection, indeed, had the feeling been cultivated on both
+sides, that Sterne, in the letter above quoted, can write of his
+conjugal relations in this philosophic strain:
+
+  "As to matrimony I should be a beast to rail at it, for my wife is
+  easy, but the world is not, and had I stayed from her a second longer
+  it would have been a burning shame--else she declares herself
+  happier without me. But not in anger is this declaration made (the
+  most fatal point, of course, about it), but in pure, sober, good sense,
+  built on sound experience. She hopes you will be able to strike a
+  bargain for me before this twelvemonth to lead a bear round Europe,
+  and from this hope from you I verily believe it is that you are
+  so high in her favour at present. She swears you are a fellow of wit,
+  though humorous;[2] a funny, jolly soul, though somewhat splenetic,
+  and (hating the love of women) as honest as gold. How do you
+  like the simile?"
+
+There is, perhaps, a touch of affected cynicism in the suggestion that
+Mrs. Sterne's liking for one of her husband's friends was wholly based
+upon the expectation that he would rid her of her husband; but mutual
+indifference must, it is clear, have reached a pretty advanced stage
+before such a remark could, even half in jest, be possible. And with
+one more longing, lingering look at the scenes which he had quitted
+for a lot like that of the Duke of Buckingham's dog, upon whom his
+master pronounced the maledictory wish that "he were married and lived
+in the country," this characteristic letter concludes:
+
+  "Oh, Lord! now are you going to Ranelagh to-night, and I am sitting
+  sorrowful as the prophet was when the voice cried out to him
+  and said, 'What do'st thou here, Elijah?' 'Tis well that the spirit
+  does not make the same at Coxwold, for unless for the few sheep
+  left me to take care of in the wilderness, I might as well, nay, better,
+  be at Mecca. When we find we can, by a shifting of places, run
+  away from ourselves, what think you of a jaunt there before we
+  finally pay a visit to the Vale of Jehoshaphat? As ill a fame as we
+  have, I trust I shall one day or other see you face to face, so tell the
+  two colonels if they love good company to live righteously and soberly,
+  _as you do_, and then they will have no doubts or dangers within
+  or without them. Present my best and warmest wishes to them,
+  and advise the eldest to prop up his spirits, and get a rich dowager
+  before the conclusion of the peace. Why will not the advice suit
+  both, _par nobile fratrum?_"
+
+[Footnote 1: It is curious to note, as a point in the chronology of
+language, how exclusive is Sterne's employment of the words "humour,"
+"humourists," in their older sense of "whimsicality," "an eccentric."
+The later change in its meaning gives to the word "though" in the
+above passage an almost comic effect.]
+
+In conclusion, he tells his friend that the next morning, if Heaven
+permit, he begins the fifth volume of _Shandy_, and adds, defiantly,
+that he "cares not a curse for the critics," but "will load my vehicle
+with what goods He sends me, and they may take 'em off my hands or let
+'em alone."
+
+The allusions to foreign travel in this letter were made with,
+something more than a jesting intent. Sterne had already begun to be
+seriously alarmed, and not without reason, about the condition of his
+health. He shrank from facing another English winter, and meditated
+a southward flight so soon as he should have finished his fifth
+and sixth volumes, and seen them safe in the printer's hands. His
+publisher he had changed, for what reason is not known, and the firm
+of Becket & De Hondt had taken the place of Dodsley. Sterne hoped by
+the end of the year to be free to depart from England, and already he
+had made all arrangements with his ecclesiastical superiors for the
+necessary leave of absence. He seems to have been treated with all
+consideration in the matter. His Archbishop, on being applied to, at
+once excused him from parochial work for a year, and promised, if
+it should be necessary, to double that term. Fortified with this
+permission, Sterne bade farewell to his wife and daughter, and betook
+himself to London, with his now completed volumes, at the setting in
+of the winter. On the 21st of December they made their appearance, and
+in about three weeks from that date their author left England,
+with the intention of wintering in the South of France. There were
+difficulties, however, of more kinds than one which had first to be
+faced--a pecuniary difficulty, which Garrick met by a loan of 20L.,
+and a political difficulty, for the removal of which Sterne had to
+employ the good offices of new acquaintance later on. He reached Paris
+about the 17th of January, 1762, and there met with a reception
+which interposed, as might have been expected, the most effectual of
+obstacles to his further progress southward. He was received in Paris
+with open arms, and stepped at once within the charmed circle of the
+philosophic _salons_. Again was the old intoxicating cup presented to
+his lips--this time, too, with more dexterous than English hands--and
+again did he drink deeply of it. "My head is turned," he writes to
+Garrick, "with what I see, and the unexpected honour I have met with
+here. _Tristram_ was almost as much known here as in London, at least
+among your men of condition and learning, and has got me introduced
+into so many circles ('tis _comme a Londres_) I have just now a
+fortnight's dinners and suppers on my hands." We may venture to doubt
+whether French politeness had not been in one respect taken somewhat
+too seriously by the flattered Englishman, and whether it was much
+more than the name and general reputation of _Tristram_, which was
+"almost as much known" in Paris as in London. The dinners and suppers,
+however, were, at any rate, no figures of speech, but very liberal
+entertainments, at which Sterne appears to have disported himself with
+all his usual unclerical _abandon_. "I Shandy it away," he writes in
+his boyish fashion to Garrick, "fifty times more than I was ever wont,
+talk more nonsense than ever you heard me talk in all your days,
+and to all sorts of people. 'Qui le diable est cet homme-la?' said
+Choiseul, t'other day, 'ce Chevalier Shandy?'" [We might be listening
+to one of Thackeray's Irish heroes.] "You'll think me as vain as a
+devil was I to tell you the rest of the dialogue." But there were
+distinguished Frenchmen who were ready to render to the English author
+more important services than that of offering him hospitality and
+flattery. Peace had not been formally concluded between France and
+England, and the passport with which Sterne had been graciously
+furnished by Pitt was not of force enough to dispense him from making
+special application to the French Government for permission to remain
+in the country. In this request he was influentially backed. "My
+application," he writes, "to the Count de Choiseul goes on swimmingly,
+for not only M. Pelletiere (who by-the-bye sends ten thousand
+civilities to you and Mrs. G.) has undertaken my affair, but the Count
+de Limbourg. The Baron d'Holbach has offered any security for the
+inoffensiveness of my behaviour in France--'tis more, you rogue! than
+you will do." And then the orthodox, or professedly orthodox, English
+divine, goes on to describe the character and habits of his strange
+new friend: "This Baron is one of the most learned noblemen here, the
+great protector of wits and of the _savans_ who are no wits; keeps
+open house three days a week--his house is now, as yours was to me, my
+own--he lives at great expense." Equally communicative is he as to his
+other great acquaintances. Among these were the Count de Bissie, whom
+by an "odd incident" (as it seemed to his unsuspecting vanity) "I
+found reading _Tristram_ when I was introduced to him, which I was,"
+he adds (without perceiving the connexion between this fact and the
+"incident"), "at his desire;" Mr. Fox and Mr. Macartney (afterwards
+the Lord Macartney of Chinese celebrity), and the Duke of Orleans (not
+yet Egalite) himself, "who has suffered my portrait to be added to the
+number of some odd men in his collection, and has had it taken most
+expressively at full length by a gentleman who lives with him." Nor
+was it only in the delights of society that Sterne was now revelling.
+He was passionately fond of the theatre, and his letters to
+Garrick are full of eager criticism of the great French performers,
+intermingled with flatteries, sometimes rather full-bodied than
+delicate, of their famous English rival. Of Clairon, in _Iphigenie_,
+he says "she is extremely great. Would to God you had one or two
+like her. What a luxury to see you with one of such power in the same
+interesting scene! But 'tis too much." Again he writes: "The French
+comedy I seldom visit; they act scarce anything but tragedies; and the
+Clairon is great, and Mdlle. Dumesmil in some parts still greater than
+her. Yet I cannot bear preaching--I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my
+younger days." And in a later letter:
+
+  "After a vile suspension of three weeks, we are beginning with
+  our comedies and operas. Yours I hear never flourished more; here
+  the comic actors were never so low; the tragedians hold up their
+  heads in all senses. I have known _one little man_ support the theatrical
+  world like a David Atlas upon his shoulders, but Preville can't
+  do half as much here, though Mad. Clairon stands by him and sets
+  her back to his. She is very great, however, and highly improved
+  since you saw her. She also supports her dignity at table, and has
+  her public day every Thursday, when she gives to eat (as they say
+  here) to all that are hungry and dry. You are much talked of here,
+  and much expected, as soon as the peace will let you. These two
+  last days you have happened to engross the whole conversation at
+  the great houses where I was at dinner. 'Tis the greatest problem
+  in nature in this meridian that one and the same man should possess
+  such tragic and comic powers, and in such an _equilibrio_ as to divide
+  the world for which of the two Nature intended him."
+
+And while on this subject of the stage let us pause for a moment
+to glance at an incident which connects Sterne with one of the most
+famous of his French contemporaries. He has been asked "by a lady of
+talent," he tells Garrick, "to read a tragedy, and conjecture if it
+would do for you. 'Tis from the plan of Diderot; and, possibly, half
+a translation of it: _The Natural Son, or the Triumph of Virtue_,
+in five acts. It has too much sentiment in it (at least for me); the
+speeches too long, and savour too much of preaching. This may be
+a second reason it is not to my taste--'tis all love, love, love
+throughout, without much separation in the characters. So I fear it
+would not do for your stage, and perhaps for the very reason which
+recommends it to a French one." It is curious to see the "adaptator
+cerebrosuga" at work in those days as in these; though not, in this
+instance, as it seems, with as successful results. _The Natural Son,
+or the Triumph of Virtue_, is not known to have reached either English
+readers or English theatrical audiences. The French original, as we
+know, fared scarcely better. "It was not until 1771," says Diderot's
+latest English biographer, "that the directors of the French Comedy
+could be induced to place _Le Fils Naturel_ on the stage. The actors
+detested their task, and, as we can well believe, went sulkily through
+parts which they had not taken the trouble to master. The public felt
+as little interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after one
+or two representations, it was put aside.[1]"
+
+[Footnote 1: Morley: _Diderot and the Encyclopaedists_, ii. 305.]
+
+Another, and it is to be guessed a too congenial, acquaintance formed
+by Sterne in Paris was that of Crebillon; and with him he concluded "a
+convention," unedifying enough, whether in jest or earnest: "As soon
+as I get to Toulouse he has agreed to write me an expostulatory
+letter upon the indecorums of _T. Shandy_, which is to be answered
+by recrimination upon the liberties in his own works. These are to
+be printed together--Crebillon against Sterne, Sterne against
+Crebillon--the copy to be sold, and the money equally divided. This
+is good Swiss-policy," he adds; and the idea (which was never carried
+out) had certainly the merit of ingenuity, if no other.
+
+The words "as soon as I get to Toulouse," in a letter written from
+Paris on the 10th of April, might well have reminded Sterne of the
+strange way in which he had carried out his intention of "wintering
+in the South." He insists, however, upon the curative effects of his
+winter of gaiety in Paris. "I am recovered greatly," he says; "and if
+I could spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I should be fortified in
+my inner man beyond all danger of relapsing." There was another, too,
+for whom this change of climate had become imperatively necessary.
+For three winters past his daughter Lydia, now fourteen years old,
+had been suffering severely from asthma, and needed to try "the last
+remedy of a warmer and softer air." Her father, therefore, was about
+to solicit passports for his wife and daughter, with a view to their
+joining him at once in Paris, whence, after a month's stay, they were
+to depart together for the South. This application for passports he
+intended, he said, to make "this week:" and it would seem that the
+intention was carried out; but, for reasons explained in a letter
+which Mr. Fitzgerald was the first to publish, it was not till the
+middle of the next month that he was able to make preparation for
+their joining him. From this letter--written to his Archbishop, to
+request an extension of his leave--we learn that while applying for
+the passports he was attacked with a fever, "which has ended the worst
+way it could for me, in a _defluxion (de) poitrine_, as the French
+physicians call it. It is generally fatal to weak lungs, so that I
+have lost in ten days all I have gained since I came here; and from
+a relaxation of my lungs have lost my voice entirely, that 'twill
+be much if I ever quite recover it. This evil sends me directly to
+Toulouse, for which I set out from this place directly my family
+arrives." Evidently there was no time to be lost, and a week after the
+date of this letter we find him in communication with Mrs. and
+Miss Sterne, and making arrangements for what was, in those days, a
+somewhat formidable undertaking--the journey of two ladies from the
+North of England to the centre of France. The correspondence which
+ensued may be said to give us the last pleasant glimpse of Sterne's
+relations with his wife. One can hardly help suspecting, of course,
+that it was his solicitude for the safety and comfort of his
+much-loved daughter that mainly inspired the affectionate anxiety
+which pervades these letters to Mrs. Sterne; but their writer is, at
+the very least, entitled to credit for allowing no difference of tone
+to reveal itself in the terms in which he speaks of wife and child.
+And, whichever of the two he was mainly thinking of, there is
+something very engaging in the thoughtful minuteness of his
+instructions to the two women travellers, the earnestness of his
+attempts to inspire them with courage for their enterprise, and
+the sincere fervour of his many commendations of them to the Divine
+keeping. The mixture of "canny" counsel and pious invocation
+has frequently a droll effect: as when the advice to "give the
+custom-house officers what I told you, and at Calais more, if you have
+much Scotch snuff;" and "to drink small Rhenish to keep you cool, that
+is, if you like it," is rounded off by the ejaculation, "So God in
+Heaven prosper and go along with you!" Letter after letter did he
+send them, full of such reminders as that "they have bad pins and vile
+needles here," that it would be advisable to bring with them a strong
+bottle-screw, and a good stout copper tea-kettle; till at last, in
+the final words of preparation, his language assumes something of the
+solemnity of a general addressing his army on the eve of a well-nigh
+desperate enterprise: "Pluck up your spirits--trust in God, in me,
+and yourselves; with this, was you put to it, you would encounter all
+these difficulties ten times told. Write instantly, and tell me you
+triumph over all fears--tell me Lydia is better, and a help-mate to
+you. You say she grows like me: let her show me she does so in her
+contempt of small dangers, and fighting against the apprehensions of
+them, which is better still."
+
+At last this anxiously awaited journey was taken; and, on Thursday,
+July 7, Mrs. Sterne and her daughter arrived in Paris. Their stay
+there was not long--not much extended, probably, beyond the proposed
+week. For Sterne's health had, some ten days before the arrival of his
+family, again given him warning to depart quickly. He had but a few
+weeks recovered from the fever of which he spoke in his letter to
+the Archbishop, when he again broke a blood-vessel in his lungs. It
+happened in the night, and "finding in the morning that I was likely
+to bleed to death, I sent immediately," he says, in a sentence which
+quaintly brings out the paradox of contemporary medical treatment,
+"for a surgeon to bleed me at both arms. This saved me"--_i.e._ did
+not kill me--"and, with lying speechless three days, I recovered upon
+my back in bed: the breach healed, and in a week after I got out."
+But the weakness which ensued, and the subsequent "hurrying about," no
+doubt as cicerone of Parisian sights to his wife and daughter, "made
+me think it high time to haste to Toulouse." Accordingly, about the
+20th of the month, and "in the midst of such heats that the oldest
+Frenchman never remembers the like," the party set off by way of Lyons
+and Montpellier for their Pyrenean destination. Their journey seems to
+have been a journey of many mischances, extraordinary discomfort, and
+incredible length; and it is not till the second week in August that
+we again take up the broken thread of his correspondence. Writing to
+Mr. Foley, his banker in Paris, on the 14th of that month, he speaks
+of its having taken him three weeks to reach Toulouse; and adds that
+"in our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain
+to remember it. I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as
+broad as a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted,
+grilled, stewed, carbonaded, on one side or other, all the way: and
+being all done through (_assez cuits_) in the day, we were eat up at
+night by bugs and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants, if
+length of possession give right, at every inn on the way." A few miles
+from Beaucaire he broke a hind wheel of his carriage, and was obliged
+in consequence "to sit five hours on a gravelly road without one
+drop of water, or possibility of getting any;" and here, to mend the
+matter, he was cursed with "two dough-hearted fools" for postilions,
+who "fell a-crying 'nothing was to be done!'" and could only be
+recalled to a worthier and more helpful mood by Sterne's "pulling off
+his coat and waistcoat," and "threatening to thrash them both within
+an inch of their lives."
+
+The longest journey, however, must come to an end; and the party found
+much to console them at Toulouse for the miseries of travel. They were
+fortunate enough to secure one of those large, old comfortable houses
+which were and, here and there, perhaps, still are to be hired on the
+outskirts of provincial towns, at a rent which would now be thought
+absurdly small; and Sterne writes in terms of high complacency of
+his temporary abode. "Excellent," "well furnished," "elegant beyond
+anything I ever looked for," are some of the expressions of praise
+which it draws from him. He observes with pride that the "very great
+_salle a compagnie_ is as large as Baron d'Holbach's;" and he records
+with great satisfaction--as well he might--that for the use of this
+and a country house two miles out of town, "besides the enjoyment of
+gardens, which the landlord engaged to keep in order," he was to pay
+no more than thirty pounds a year. "All things," he adds, "are cheap
+in proportion: so we shall live here for a very, very little."
+
+And this, no doubt, was to Sterne a matter of some moment at this
+time. The expenses of his long and tedious journey must have been
+heavy; and the gold-yielding vein of literary popularity, which he
+had for three years been working, had already begun to show signs of
+exhaustion. _Tristram Shandy_ had lost its first vogue; and the fifth
+and sixth volumes, the copyright of which he does not seem to have
+disposed of, were "going off" but slowly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+LIFE IN THE SOUTH.--RETURN TO ENGLAND.--VOLS. VII. AND VIII.--SECOND
+SET OF SERMONS.
+
+(1762-1765.)
+
+The diminished appetite of the public for the humours of Mr. Shandy
+and his brother is, perhaps, not very difficult to understand. Time
+was simply doing its usual wholesome work in sifting the false from
+the true--in ridding Sterne's audience of its contingent of sham
+admirers. This is not to say, of course, that there might not have
+been other and better grounds for a partial withdrawal of popular
+favour. A writer who systematically employs Sterne's peculiar methods
+must lay his account with undeserved loss as well as with unmerited
+gain. The fifth and sixth volumes deal quite largely enough in mere
+eccentricity to justify the distaste of any reader upon whom mere
+eccentricity had begun to pall. But if this were the sole explanation
+of the book's declining popularity, we should have to admit that the
+adverse judgment of the public had been delayed too long for justice,
+and had passed over the worst to light upon the less heinous offences.
+For the third volume, though its earlier pages contain some good
+touches, drifts away into mere dull, uncleanly equivoque in its
+concluding chapters; and the fifth and sixth volumes may, at any rate,
+quite safely challenge favourable comparison with the fourth--the
+poorest, I venture to think, of the whole series. There is nothing
+in these two later volumes to compare, for instance, with that most
+wearisome exercise in _double entendre_, Slawkenbergius's Tale;
+nothing to match that painfully elaborate piece of low comedy, the
+consultation of philosophers and its episode of Phutatorius's mishap
+with the hot chestnut; no such persistent resort, in short, to those
+mechanical methods of mirth-making upon which Sterne, throughout a
+great part of the fourth volume, almost exclusively relies. The humour
+of the fifth is, to a far larger extent, of the creative and dramatic
+order; the ever-delightful collision of intellectual incongruities in
+the persons of the two brothers Shandy gives animation to the volume
+almost from beginning to end. The arrival of the news of Bobby
+Shandy's death, and the contrast of its reception by the philosophic
+father and the simple-minded uncle, form a scene of inimitable
+absurdity, and the "Tristrapaedia," with its ingenious project for
+opening up innumerable "tracks of inquiry" before the mind of the
+pupil by sheer skill in the manipulation of the auxiliary verbs, is
+in the author's happiest vein. The sixth volume, again, which contains
+the irresistible dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Shandy on the great
+question of the "breeching of Tristram," and the much-admired, if not
+wholly admirable, episode of Le Fevre's death, is fully entitled to
+rank beside its predecessors. On the whole, therefore, it must be said
+that the colder reception accorded to this instalment of the novel,
+as compared with the previous one, can hardly be justified on sound
+critical grounds. But that literary shortcomings were not, in fact,
+the cause of _Tristram's_ declining popularity may be confidently
+inferred from the fact that the seventh volume, with its admirably
+vivid and spirited scenes of Continental travel, and the eighth and
+ninth, with their charming narrative of Captain Shandy's love affair,
+were but slightly more successful. The readers whom this, the third
+instalment of the novel, had begun to repel, were mainly, I imagine,
+those who had never felt any intelligent admiration for the former;
+who had been caught by the writer's eccentricity, without appreciating
+his insight into character and his graphic power, and who had seen no
+other aspects of his humour than those buffooneries and puerilities
+which, after first amusing, had begun, in the natural course of
+things, to weary them.
+
+Meanwhile, however, and with spirits restored by the Southern warmth
+to that buoyancy which never long deserted them, Sterne had begun to
+set to work upon a new volume. His letters show that this was not
+the seventh but the eighth; and Mr. Fitzgerald's conjecture, that
+the materials ultimately given to the world in the former volume were
+originally designed for another work, appears exceedingly probable.
+But for some time after his arrival at Toulouse he was unable, it
+would seem, to resume his literary labours in any form. Ever liable,
+through his weakly constitution, to whatever local maladies might
+anywhere prevail, he had fallen ill, he writes to Hall Stevenson, "of
+an epidemic vile fever which killed hundreds about me. The physicians
+here," he adds, "are the arrantest charlatans in Europe, or the most
+ignorant of all pretending fools. I withdrew what was left of me out
+of their hands, and recommended my affairs entirely to Dame Nature.
+She (dear goddess) has saved me in fifty different pinching bouts, and
+I begin to have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favour and my own, so
+that one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall leave you
+all at last by translation, and not by fair death." Having now become
+"stout and foolish again as a man can wish to be, I am," he says,
+"busy playing the fool with my Uncle Toby, whom I have got soused over
+head and ears in love." Now, it is not till the eighth volume that
+the Widow Wadman begins to weave her spells around Captain Shandy's
+ingenuous heart; while the seventh volume is mainly composed of that
+series of travel-pictures in which Sterne has manifestly recorded
+his own impressions of Northern France in the person of the youthful
+Tristram. It is scarcely doubtful, therefore, that it is these
+sketches, and the use which he then proposed to make of them, that
+he refers to, when speaking in this letter of "hints and projects
+for other works." Originally intended to form a part of the volume
+afterwards published as the _Sentimental Journey_, it was found
+necessary--under pressure, it is to be supposed, of insufficient
+matter--to work them up instead into an interpolated seventh volume
+of _Tristram Shandy_. At the moment, however, he no doubt as little
+foresaw this as he did the delay which was to take place before any
+continuation of the novel appeared. He clearly contemplated no very
+long absence from England. "When I have reaped the benefit of the
+winter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have anything more to do with it.
+Therefore, after having gone with my wife and girl to Bagneres, I
+shall return from whence I came." Already, however, one can perceive
+signs of his having too presumptuously marked out his future. "My
+wife wants to stay another year, to save money; and this opposition of
+wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 'twill not be as
+sweet as sugar." And again: "If the snows will suffer me, I propose to
+spend two or three months at Barege or Bagneres; but my dear wife is
+against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity
+(though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer--though,
+by-the-bye, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will go my own way,
+and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who
+can say so much in praise of his wife? Few, I trow." The tone of
+contemptuous amiability shows pretty clearly that the relations
+between husband and wife had in nowise improved. But wives do not
+always lose all their influence over husbands' wills along with the
+power over their affections; and it will be seen that Sterne did _not_
+make his projected winter trip to Bagneres, and that he did remain
+at Toulouse for a considerable part of the second year for which Mrs.
+Sterne desired to prolong their stay. The place, however, was not to
+his taste; and he was not the first traveller in France who, delighted
+with the gaiety of Paris, has been disappointed at finding that French
+provincial towns can be as dull as dulness itself could require. It is
+in the somewhat unjust mood which is commonly begotten of disillusion
+that Sterne discovers the cause of his _ennui_ in "the eternal
+platitude of the French character," with its "little variety and no
+originality at all." "They are very civil," he admits, "but civility
+itself so thus uniform wearies and bothers me to death. If I do
+not mind I shall grow most stupid and sententious." With such
+apprehensions it is not surprising that he should have eagerly
+welcomed any distraction that chance might offer, and in December we
+find him joyfully informing his chief correspondent of the period,
+Mr. Foley--who to his services as Sterne's banker seems to have added
+those of a most helpful and trusted friend--that "there are a company
+of English strollers arrived here who are to act comedies all the
+Christmas, and are now busy in making dresses and preparing some of
+our best comedies." These so-called strollers were, in fact, certain
+members of the English colony in Toulouse, and their performances were
+among the first of those "amateur theatrical" entertainments which
+now-a-days may be said to rival the famous "morning drum-beat" of
+Daniel Webster's oration, in marking the ubiquity of British boredom,
+as the _reveil_ does that of British power over all the terrestrial
+globe. "The next week," writes Sterne, "with a grand orchestra, we
+play _The Busybody_, and the _Journey to London_ the week after; but
+I have some thought of adapting it to our situation, and making it the
+_Journey to Toulouse_, which, with the change of half-a-dozen scenes,
+may be easily done. Thus, my dear Foley, for want of something better
+we have recourse to ourselves, and strike out the best amusements we
+can from such materials." "Recourse to ourselves," however, means,
+in strict accuracy, "recourse to each other;" and when the amateur
+players had played themselves out, and exhausted their powers of
+contributing to each others' amusement, it is probable that
+"recourse to ourselves," in the exact sense of the phrase, was found
+ineffective--in Sterne's case, at any rate--to stave off _ennui_.
+To him, with his copiously if somewhat oddly furnished mind, and his
+natural activity of imagination, one could hardly apply the line of
+Persius,
+
+  "Tecum habita et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex;"
+
+but it is yet evident enough that Sterne's was one of that numerous
+order of intellects which are the convivial associates, rather than
+the fireside companions, of their owners, and which, when deprived
+of the stimulus of external excitement, are apt to become very dull
+company indeed. Nor does he seem to have obtained much diversion of
+mind from his literary work--a form of intellectual enjoyment which,
+indeed, more often presupposes than begets good spirits in such
+temperaments as his. He declares, it is true, that he "sports much
+with my Uncle Toby" in the volume which he is now "fabricating for the
+laughing part of the world;" but if so he must have sported only after
+a very desultory and dilatory fashion. On the whole one cannot escape
+a very strong impression that Sterne was heartily bored by his sojourn
+in Toulouse, and that he eagerly longed for the day of his return to
+"the dalliance and the wit, the flattery and the strife," which he had
+left behind him in the two great capitals in which he had shone.
+
+His stay, however, was destined to be very prolonged. The winter of
+1762 went by, and the succeeding year had run nearly half its course,
+before he changed his quarters. "The first week in June," he writes in
+April to Mr. Foley, "I decamp like a patriarch, with all my household,
+to pitch our tents for three months at the foot of the Pyrenean hills
+at Bagneres, where I expect much health and much amusement from all
+corners of the earth." He talked too at this time of spending the
+winter at Florence, and, after a visit to Leghorn, returning home the
+following April by way of Paris; "but this," he adds, "is a sketch
+only," and it remained only a sketch. Toulouse, however, he was in
+any case resolved to quit. He should not, he said, be tempted to spend
+another winter there. It did not suit his health, as he had hoped: he
+complained that it was too moist, and that he could not keep clear of
+ague. In June, 1763, he quitted it finally for Bagneres; whence after
+a short, and, as we subsequently learn, a disappointed, sojourn, he
+passed on to Marseilles, and later to Aix, for both of which places
+he expressed dislike; and by October he had gone again into winter
+quarters at Montpellier, where "my wife and daughter," he writes,
+"purpose to stay at least a year behind me." His own intention was to
+set out in February for England, "where my heart has been fled these
+six months." Here again, however, there are traces of that periodic,
+or rather, perhaps, that chronic conflict of inclination between
+himself and Mrs. Sterne, of which he speaks with such a tell-tale
+affectation of philosophy. "My wife," he writes in January, "returns
+to Toulouse, and proposes to spend the summer at Bagneres. I, on the
+contrary, go to visit my wife the church in Yorkshire. We all live the
+longer, at least the happier, for having things our own way. This is
+my conjugal maxim. I own 'tis not the best of maxims, but I maintain
+'tis not the worst." It was natural enough that Sterne, at any rate,
+should wish to turn his back on Montpellier. Again had the unlucky
+invalid been attacked by a dangerous illness; the "sharp air" of the
+place disagreed with him, and his physicians, after having him under
+their hands more than a month, informed him coolly that if he stayed
+any longer in Montpellier it would be fatal to him. How soon after
+that somewhat late warning he took his departure there is no record
+to show; but it is not till the middle of May that we find him writing
+from Paris to his daughter. And since he there announces his intention
+of leaving for England in a few days, it is a probable conjecture that
+he had arrived at the French capital some fortnight or so before.
+
+His short stay in Paris was marked by two incidents--trifling in
+themselves, but too characteristic of the man to be omitted. Lord
+Hertford, the British Ambassador, had just taken a magnificent hotel
+in Paris, and Sterne was asked to preach the first sermon in its
+chapel. The message was brought him, he writes, "when I was playing
+a sober game of whist with Mr. Thornhill; and whether I was called
+abruptly from my afternoon amusement to prepare myself for the
+business on the next day, or from what other cause, I do not pretend
+to determine; but that unlucky kind of fit seized me which you know
+I am never able to resist, and a very unlucky text did come into my
+head." The text referred to was 2 Kings XX. 15--Hezekiah's admission
+of that ostentatious display of the treasures of his palace to the
+ambassadors of Babylon for which Isaiah rebuked him by prophesying the
+Babylonian captivity of Judah. Nothing, indeed, as Sterne protests,
+could have been more innocent than the discourse which he founded
+upon the _mal-a-propos_ text; but still it was unquestionably a fair
+subject for "chaff," and the preacher was rallied upon it by no less
+a person than David Hume. Gossip having magnified this into a dispute
+between the parson and the philosopher, Sterne disposes of the idle
+story in a passage deriving an additional interest from its tribute to
+that sweet disposition which had an equal charm for two men so utterly
+unlike as the author of _Tristram Shandy_ and the author of the
+_Wealth of Nations_. "I should," he writes, "be exceedingly surprised
+to hear that David ever had an unpleasant contention with any man; and
+if I should ever be made to believe that such an event had happened,
+nothing would persuade me that his opponent was not in the wrong, for
+in my life did I never meet with a being of a more placid and gentle
+nature; and it is this amiable turn of his character which has given
+more consequence and force to his scepticism than all the arguments of
+his sophistry." The real truth of the matter was that, meeting Sterne
+at Lord Hertford's table on the day when he had preached at the
+Embassy Chapel, "David was disposed to make a little merry with the
+parson, and in return the parson was equally disposed to make a little
+merry with the infidel. We laughed at one another, and the company
+laughed with us both." It would be absurd, of course, to identify
+Sterne's latitudinarian _bonhomie_ with the higher order of tolerance;
+but many a more confirmed and notorious Gallio than the clerical
+humourist would have assumed prudish airs of orthodoxy in such a
+presence, and the incident, if it does not raise one's estimate of
+Sterne's dignity, displays him to us as laudably free from hypocrisy.
+
+But the long holiday of somewhat dull travel, with its short last act
+of social gaiety, was drawing to a close. In the third or fourth week
+of May Sterne quitted Paris; and after a stay of a few weeks in London
+he returned to the Yorkshire parsonage, from which he had been absent
+some thirty months.
+
+Unusually long as was the interval which had elapsed since the
+publication of the last instalment of _Tristram Shandy_, the new one
+was far from ready; and even in the "sweet retirement" of Coxwold
+he seems to have made but slow progress with it. Indeed, the "sweet
+retirement" itself became soon a little tedious to him. The month of
+September found him already bored with work and solitude; and the fine
+autumn weather of 1764 set him longing for a few days' pleasure-making
+at what was even then the fashionable Yorkshire watering-place. "I
+do not think," he writes, with characteristic incoherence, to Hall
+Stevenson--"I do not think a week or ten days' playing the good fellow
+(at this very time) so abominable a thing; but if a man could get
+there cleverly, and every soul in his house in the mind to try what
+could be done in furtherance thereof, I have no one to consult in
+these affairs. Therefore, as a man may do worse things, the plain
+English of all which is, that I am going to leave a few poor sheep in
+the wilderness for fourteen days, and from pride and naughtiness
+of heart to go see what is doing at Scarborough, steadfully meaning
+afterwards to lead a new life and strengthen my faith. Now, some folks
+say there is much company there, and some say not; and I believe there
+is neither the one nor the other, but will be both if the world will
+have patience for a month or so." Of his work he has not much to say:
+"I go on not rapidly but well enough with my Uncle Toby's amours.
+There is no sitting and cudgelling one's brains whilst the sun shines
+bright. 'Twill be all over in six or seven weeks; and there are dismal
+weeks enow after to endure suffocation by a brimstone fireside." He
+was anxious that his boon companion should join him at Scarborough;
+but that additional pleasure was denied him, and he had to content
+himself with the usual gay society of the place. Three weeks, it
+seems, were passed by him in this most doubtfully judicious form of
+bodily and mental relaxation--weeks which he spent, he afterwards
+writes, in "drinking the waters, and receiving from them marvellous
+strength, had I not debilitated it as fast as I got it by playing
+the good fellow with Lord Granby and Co. too much." By the end of the
+month he was back again at Coxwold, "returned to my Philosophical Hut
+to finish _Tristram_, which I calculate will be ready for the
+world about Christmas, at which time I decamp from hence and fix
+my headquarters at London for the winter, unless my cough pushes me
+forward to your metropolis" (he is writing to Foley, in Paris), "or
+that I can persuade some _gros milord_ to make a trip to you."
+Again, too, in this letter we get another glimpse at that thoroughly
+desentimentalized "domestic interior" which the sentimentalist's
+household had long presented to the view. Writing to request a
+remittance of money to Mrs. Sterne at Montauban--a duty which, to do
+him justice, he seems to have very watchfully observed--Sterne adds
+his solicitation to Mr. Foley to "do something equally essential to
+rectify a mistake in the mind of your correspondent there, who, it
+seems, gave her a hint not long ago 'that she was separated from me
+for life.' Now, as this is not true, in the first place, and may fix a
+disadvantageous impression of her to those she lives amongst, 'twould
+be unmerciful to let her or my daughter suffer by it. So do be so good
+as to undeceive him; for in a year or two she purposes (and I expect
+it with impatience from her) to rejoin me."
+
+Early in November the two new volumes of _Shandy_ began to approach
+completion; for by this time Sterne had already made up his mind to
+interpolate these notes of his French travels, which now do duty as
+Vol. VII. "You will read," he tells Foley, "as odd a tour through
+France as was ever projected or executed by traveller or travel-writer
+since the world began. 'Tis a laughing, good-tempered satire upon
+travelling--as _puppies_ travel." By the 16th of the month he had
+"finished my two volumes of _Tristram_," and looked to be in London at
+Christmas, "whence I have some thoughts of going to Italy this year.
+At least I shall not defer it above another." On the 26th of January,
+1765, the two new volumes were given to the world.
+
+Shorter in length than any of the preceding instalments, and filled
+out as it was, even so, by a process of what would now be called
+"book-making," this issue will yet bear comparison, I think, with the
+best of its predecessors. Its sketches of travel, though destined
+to be surpassed in vigour and freedom of draftsmanship by the
+_Sentimental Journey_, are yet excellent, and their very obvious want
+of connexion with the story--if story it can be called--is so little
+felt that we almost resent the head-and-ears introduction of Mr.
+Shandy and his brother, and the Corporal, in apparent concession to
+the popular prejudice in favour of some sort of coherence between
+the various parts of a narrative. The first seventeen chapters are,
+perhaps, as freshly delightful reading as anything in Sterne. They are
+literally filled and brimming over with the exhilaration of travel:
+written, or at least prepared for writing, we can clearly see, under
+the full intoxicant effect which a bewildering succession of new
+sights and sounds will produce, in a certain measure, upon the coolest
+of us, and which would set a head like Sterne's in an absolute whirl.
+The contagion of his high spirits is, however, irresistible; and,
+putting aside all other and more solid qualities in them, these
+chapters are, for mere fun--for that kind of clever nonsense which
+only wins by perfect spontaneity, and which so promptly makes ashamed
+the moment spontaneity fails--unsurpassed by anything of the same kind
+from the same hand. How strange, then, that, with so keen an eye for
+the humorous, so sound and true a judgment in the highest qualities of
+humour, Sterne should think it possible for any one who has outgrown
+what may be called the dirty stage of boyhood to smile at the story
+which begins a few chapters afterwards--that of the Abbess and Novice
+of the Convent of Andouillets! The adult male person is not so much
+shocked at the coarseness of this story as astounded at the bathos of
+its introduction. It is as though some matchless connoisseur in wine,
+after having a hundred times demonstrated the unerring discrimination
+of his palate for the finest brands, should then produce some vile and
+loaded compound, and invite us to drink it with all the relish with
+which he seems to be swallowing it himself. This story of the Abbess
+and Novice almost impels us to turn back to certain earlier chapters,
+or former volumes, and re-examine some of the subtler passages of
+humour to be found there--in downright apprehension lest we should
+turn out to have read these "good things," not "in," but "into," our
+author. The bad wine is so very bad, that we catch ourselves wondering
+whether the finer brands were genuine, when we see the same palate
+equally satisfied with both. But one should, of course, add that it
+is only in respect of its supposed humour that this story shakes
+its readers' faith in the gifts of the narrator. As a mere piece of
+story-telling, and even as a study in landscape and figure-painting,
+it is quite perversely skilful. There is something almost irritating,
+as a waste of powers on unworthy material, in the prettiness of the
+picture which Sterne draws of the preparations for the departure
+of the two _religieuses_--the stir in the simple village, the
+co-operating labours of the gardener and the tailor, the carpenter and
+the smith, and all those other little details which bring the whole
+scene before the eye so vividly that Sterne may, perhaps, in
+all seriousness, and not merely as a piece of his characteristic
+persiflage, have thrown in the exclamation, "I declare I am interested
+in this story, and wish I had been there." Nothing, again, could be
+better done than the sketch of the little good-natured, "broad-set"
+gardener, who acted as the ladies' muleteer, and the recital of the
+indiscretions by which he was betrayed into temporary desertion of his
+duties. The whole scene is Chaucerian in its sharpness of outline
+and translucency of atmosphere: though there, unfortunately, the
+resemblance ends. Sterne's manner of saying what we now leave unsaid
+is as unlike Chaucer's, and as unlike for the worse, as it can
+possibly be.
+
+Still, a certain amount of this element of the _non nominandum_ must
+be compounded for, one regrets to say, in nearly every chapter that
+Sterne ever wrote; and there is certainly less than the average amount
+of it in the seventh volume. Then, again, this volume contains the
+famous scene with the ass--the live and genuinely touching, and not
+the dead and fictitiously pathetic, animal; and that perfect piece of
+comic dialogue--the interview between the puzzled English traveller
+and the French commissary of the posts. To have suggested this scene
+is, perhaps, the sole claim of the absurd fiscal system of the _Ancien
+regime_ upon the grateful remembrance of the world. A scheme of
+taxation which exacted posting-charges from a traveller who proposed
+to continue his journey by water, possesses a natural ingredient of
+drollery infused into its mere vexatiousness; but a whole volume of
+satire could hardly put its essential absurdity in a stronger
+light than is thrown upon it in the short conversation between the
+astonished Tristram and the officer of the fisc, who had just handed
+him a little bill for six livres four sous:
+
+  "'Upon what account?' said I.
+
+  "''Tis upon the part of the King,' said the commissary, heaving
+  up his shoulders.
+
+  "'My good friend,' quoth I, 'as sure as I am I, and you are you--'
+
+  "'And who are you?' he said.
+
+  "'Don't puzzle me,' said I. 'But it is an indubitable verity,' I
+  continued, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the
+  form of my asseveration,' that I owe the King of France nothing but
+  my good-will, for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all the health
+  and pastime in the world.'
+
+  "'Pardonnez-moi,' replied the commissary. 'You are indebted to
+  him six livres four sous for the next post from hence to St. Fons, on
+  your route to Avignon, which being a post royal, you pay double for
+  the horses and postilion, otherwise 'twould have amounted to no more
+  than three livres two sous.'
+
+  "'But I don't go by land,' said I.
+
+  "'You may if you please,' replied the commissary.
+
+  "'Your most obedient servant,' said I, making him a low bow.
+
+  "The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good-breeding,
+  made me one as low again. I never was more disconcerted by a bow
+  in my life. 'The devil take the serious character of these people,'
+  said I, aside; 'they understand no more of irony than this.' The
+  comparison was standing close by with her panniers, but something
+  sealed up my lips. I could not pronounce the name.
+
+  "'Sir,' said I, collecting myself, 'it is not my intention to take
+  post.'
+
+  "'But you may,' said he, persisting in his first reply. 'You may
+  if you choose.'
+
+  "'And I may take salt to my pickled herring if I choose.[1] But I
+  do not choose.'
+
+  "'But you must pay for it, whether you do or no.'
+
+  "'Ay, for the salt,' said I, 'I know.'
+
+  "'And for the post, too,' added he.
+
+  "'Defend me!' cried I. 'I travel by water. I am going down the
+  Rhone this very afternoon; my baggage is in the boat, and I have
+  actually paid nine livres for my passage.'
+
+  "'C'est tout egal--'tis all one,' said he.
+
+  "'Bon Dieu! What! pay for the way I go and for the way I do
+  not go?'
+
+  "'C'est tout egal,' replied the commissary.
+
+  "'The devil it is!' said I. 'But I will go to ten thousand Bastilles
+  first. O, England! England! thou land of liberty and climate of
+  good-sense! thou tenderest of mothers and gentlest of nurses!' cried
+  I, kneeling upon one knee as I was beginning my apostrophe--when
+  the director of Madame L. Blanc's conscience coming in at that instant,
+  and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at
+  his devotions, asked if I stood in want of the aids of the Church.
+
+  "'I go by water,' said I, 'and here's another will be for making
+  me pay for going by oil.'"
+
+[Footnote 1: It is the penalty--I suppose the just penalty--paid by
+habitually extravagant humourists, that _meaning_ not being always
+expected of them, it is not always sought by their readers with
+sufficient care. Anyhow, it may be suspected that this retort of
+Tristram's is too often passed over as a mere random absurdity
+designed for his interlocutor's mystification, and that its extremely
+felicitous pertinence to the question in dispute is thus overlooked.
+The point of it, of course, is that the business in which the
+commissary was then engaged was precisely analogous to that of
+exacting salt dues from perverse persons who were impoverishing the
+revenue by possessing herrings already pickled.]
+
+The commissary, of course, remains obdurate, and Tristram protests
+that the treatment to which he is being subjected is "contrary to the
+law of nature, contrary to reason, contrary to the Gospel:"
+
+  "'But not to this,' said he, putting a printed paper into my hand.
+
+  "'De par le Roi.' ''Tis a pithy prolegomenon,' quoth I, and so
+  read on.... 'By all which it appears,' quoth I, having read it over
+  a little too rapidly, 'that if a man sets out in a post-chaise for Paris,
+  he must go on travelling in one all the days of his life, or pay for it.'
+
+  "'Excuse me,' said the commissary, 'the spirit of the ordinance is
+  this, that if you set out with an intention of running post from Paris
+  to Avignon, &c., you shall not change that intention or mode of
+  travelling without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further
+  than the place you repent at; and 'tis founded,' continued he, 'upon
+  this, that the revenues are not to fall short through your fickleness.'
+
+  "'O, by heavens!' cried I, 'if fickleness is taxable in France, we
+  have nothing to do but to make the best peace we can.'
+
+  "And so the peace was made."
+
+
+And the volume ends with the dance of villagers on "the road between
+Nismes and Lunel, where is the best Muscatto wine in all France"--that
+charming little idyll which won the unwilling admiration of the least
+friendly of Sterne's critics.[1]
+
+With the close of this volume the shadowy Tristram disappears
+altogether from the scene; and even the clearly-sketched figures of
+Mr. and Mrs. Shandy recede somewhat into the background. The courtship
+of my Uncle Toby forms the whole _motif_ and indeed almost the entire
+substance, of the next volume. Of this famous episode in the novel a
+great deal has been said and written, and much of the praise
+bestowed upon it is certainly deserved. The artful coquetries of the
+fascinating widow, and the gradual capitulation of the Captain, are
+studied with admirable power of humorous insight, and described with
+infinite grace and skill. But there is, perhaps, no episode in the
+novel which brings out what may be called the perversity of Sterne's
+animalism in a more exasperating way. It is not so much the amount
+of this element as the time, place, and manner in which it makes its
+presence felt. The senses must, of course, play their part in all
+love affairs, except those of the angels--or the triangles; and such
+writers as Byron, for instance, are quite free from the charge of
+over-spiritualizing their description of the passion. Yet one might
+safely say that there is far less to repel a healthy mind in the
+poet's account of the amour of Juan and Haidee than is to be found in
+many a passage in this volume. It is not merely that one is the poetry
+and the other the prose of the sexual passion: the distinction goes
+deeper, and points to a fundamental difference of attitude towards
+their subject in the two writers' minds.
+
+The success of this instalment of _Tristram Shandy_ appears to have
+been slightly greater than that of the preceding one. Writing from
+London, where he was once more basking in the sunshine of social
+popularity, to Garrick, then in Paris, he says (March 16, 1765): "I
+have had a lucrative campaign here. _Shandy_ sells well," and "I am
+taxing the public with two more volumes of sermons, which will more
+than double the gains of _Shandy_. It goes into the world with a
+prancing list _de toute la noblesse_, which will bring me in three
+hundred pounds, exclusive of the sale of the copy." The list was,
+indeed, extensive and distinguished enough to justify the curious
+epithet which he applies to it; but the cavalcade of noble names
+continued to "prance" for some considerable time without advancing.
+Yet he had good reasons, according to his own account, for wishing to
+push on their publication. His parsonage-house at Button had just been
+burnt down through the carelessness of one of his curate's household,
+with a loss to Sterne of some 350_l._ "As soon as I can," he says, "I
+must rebuild it, but I lack the means at present." Nevertheless, the
+new sermons continued to hang fire. Again, in April he describes the
+subscription list as "the most splendid list which ever pranced before
+a book since subscription came into fashion;" but though the volumes
+which it was to usher into the world were then spoken of as about to
+be printed "very soon," he has again in July to write of them only
+as "forthcoming in September, though I fear not in time to bring them
+with me" to Paris. And, as a matter of fact, they do not seem to have
+made their appearance until after Sterne had quitted England on his
+second and last Continental journey. The full subscription list may
+have had the effect of relaxing his energies; but the subscribers had
+no reason to complain when, in 1766, the volumes at last appeared.
+
+The reception given to the first batch of sermons which Sterne had
+published was quite favourable enough to encourage a repetition of the
+experiment. He was shrewd enough, however, to perceive that on
+this second occasion a somewhat different sort of article would be
+required. In the first flush of _Tristram Shandy's_ success, and in
+the first piquancy of the contrast between the grave profession of the
+writer and the unbounded license of the book, he could safely reckon
+on as large and curious a public for _any_ sermons whatever from the
+pen of Mr. Yorick. There was no need that the humourist in his pulpit
+should at all resemble the humourist at his desk, or, indeed, that
+he should be in any way an impressive or commanding figure. The great
+desire of the world was to know what he _did_ resemble in this new
+and incongruous position. Men wished to see what the queer, sly face
+looked like over a velvet cushion, in the assurance that the sight
+would be a strange and interesting one, at any rate. Five years
+afterwards, however, the case was different. The public then had
+already had one set of sermons, and had discovered that the humorous
+Mr. Sterne was not a very different man in the pulpit from the dullest
+and most decorous of his brethren. Such discoveries as these are
+instructive to make, but not attractive to dwell upon; and Sterne was
+fully alive to the probability that there would be no great demand for
+a volume of sermons which should only illustrate for the second time
+the fact that he could be as commonplace as his neighbour. He saw that
+in future the Rev. Mr. Yorick must a little more resemble the author
+of _Tristram Shandy,_ and it is not improbable that from 1760 onwards
+he composed his parochial sermons with especial attention to this mode
+of qualifying them for republication. There is, at any rate, no slight
+critical difficulty in believing that the bulk of the sermons of 1766
+can be assigned to the same literary period as the sermons of 1761.
+The one set seems as manifestly to belong to the post-Shandian as
+the other does to the pre-Shandian era; and in some, indeed, of
+the apparently later productions the daring quaintness of style and
+illustration is carried so far that, except for the fact that Sterne
+had no time to spare for the composition of sermons not intended for
+professional use, one would have been disposed to believe that they
+neither were nor were meant to be delivered from the pulpit at all.[1]
+Throughout all of them, however, Sterne's new-found literary power
+displays itself in a vigour of expression and vivacity of illustration
+which at least serve to make the sermons of 1766 considerably more
+entertaining reading than those of 1761. In the first of the latter
+series, for instance--the sermon on Shimei--a discourse in which there
+are no very noticeable sallies of unclerical humour, the quality of
+liveliness is very conspicuously present. The preacher's view of the
+character of Shimei, and of his behaviour to David, is hardly that,
+perhaps, of a competent historical critic, and in treating of the
+Benjamite's insults to the King of Israel he appears to take no
+account of the blood-feud between the house of David and the clan
+to which the railer belonged; just as in commenting on Shimei's
+subsequent and most abject submission to the victorious monarch,
+Sterne lays altogether too much stress upon conduct which is
+indicative, not so much of any exceptional meanness of disposition,
+as of the ordinary suppleness of the Oriental put in fear of his life.
+However, it makes a more piquant and dramatic picture to represent
+Shimei as a type of the wretch of insolence and servility compact,
+with a tongue ever ready to be loosed against the unfortunate, and a
+knee ever ready to be bent to the strong. And thus he moralizes on his
+conception:
+
+[Footnote 1: Mr. Fitzgerald, indeed, asserts as a fact that some
+at least of these sermons were actually composed in the capacity
+of _litterateur_ and not of divine--for the press and not for the
+pulpit.]
+
+  "There is not a character in the world which has so bad an influence
+  upon it as this of Shimei. While power meets with honest
+  checks, and the evils of life with honest refuge, the world will never
+  be undone; but thou, Shimei, hast sapped it at both extremes: for
+  thou corruptest prosperity, and 'tis thou who hast broken the heart
+  of poverty. And so long as worthless spirits can be ambitious ones
+  'tis a character we never shall want. Oh! it infests the court, the
+  camp, the cabinet; it infests the Church. Go where you will, in
+  every quarter, in every profession, you see a Shimei following the
+  wheels of the fortunate through thick mire and clay. Haste, Shimei,
+  haste! or thou wilt be undone forever. Shimei girdeth up his loins
+  and speedeth after him. Behold the hand which governs everything
+  takes the wheel from his chariot, so that he who driveth, driveth on
+  heavily. Shimei doubles his speed; but 'tis the contrary way: he flies
+  like the wind over a sandy desert.... Stay, Shimei! 'tis your patron,
+  your friend, your benefactor, the man who has saved you from the
+  dunghill. 'Tis all one to Shimei. Shimei is the barometer of every
+  man's fortune; marks the rise and fall of it, with all the variations
+  from scorching hot to freezing cold upon his countenance that the
+  simile will admit of.[1] Is a cloud upon thy affairs? See, it hangs
+  over Shimei's brow! Hast thou been spoken for to the king or the
+  captain of the host without success? Look not into the Court Calendar,
+  the vacancy is filled in Shimei's face. Art thou in debt, though
+  not to Shimei? No matter. The worst officer of the law shall not
+  be more insolent. What, then, Shimei, is the fault of poverty so
+  black? is it of so general concern that thou and all thy family must
+  rise up as one man to reproach it? When it lost everything, did it
+  lose the right to pity too? Or did he who maketh poor as well as
+  maketh rich strip it of its natural powers to mollify the heart and
+  supple the temper of your race? Trust me you have much to answer
+  for. It is this treatment which it has ever met with from spirits
+  like yours which has gradually taught the world to look upon it
+  as the greatest of evils, and shun it as the worst disgrace. And what
+  is it, I beseech you--what is it that men will not do to keep clear of
+  so sore an imputation and punishment? Is it not to fly from this
+  that he rises early, late takes rest, and eats the bread of carefulness?
+  that he plots, contrives, swears, lies, shuffles, puts on all shapes,
+  tries all garments, wears them with this or that side outward, just as
+  it may favour his escape?"
+
+And though the sermon ends in orthodox fashion, with an assurance
+that, in spite of the Shimeis by whom we are surrounded, it is in
+our power to "lay the foundation of our peace (where it ought to be)
+within our own hearts," yet the preacher can, in the midst of his
+earlier reflections, permit himself the quaintly pessimistic outburst:
+"O Shimei! would to Heaven, when thou wast slain, that all thy family
+had been slain with thee, and not one of thy resemblance left! But
+ye have multiplied exceedingly, and replenished the earth; and if I
+prophesy rightly, ye will in the end subdue it."
+
+[Footnote 1: Which are not many in the case of a _barometer_.]
+
+Nowhere, however, does the man of the world reveal himself with more
+strangely comical effect under the gown of the divine than in the
+sermon on "The Prodigal Son." The repentant spendthrift has returned
+to his father's house, and is about to confess his follies. But--
+
+  "Alas! How shall he tell his story?
+
+  "Ye who have trod this round, tell me in what words he shall give
+  in to his father the sad items of his extravagance and folly: the
+  feasts and banquets which he gave to whole cities in the East; the
+  costs of Asiatic rarities, and of Asiatic cooks to dress them; the
+  expenses of singing men and singing women; the flute, the harp, the
+  sackbut, and all kinds of music; the dress of the Persian Court how
+  magnificent! their slaves how numerous! their chariots, their homes,
+  their pictures, their furniture, what immense sums they had devoured!
+  what expectations from strangers of condition! what exactions!
+  How shall the youth make his father comprehend that he was cheated
+  at Damascus by one of the best men in the world; that he had
+  lent a part of his substance to a friend at Nineveh, who had fled off
+  with it to the Ganges; that a whore of Babylon had swallowed his
+  best pearl, and anointed the whole city with his balm of Gilead; that
+  he had been sold by a man of honour for twenty shekels of silver to
+  a worker in graven images; that the images he had purchased produced
+  him nothing, that they could not be transported across the
+  wilderness, and had been burnt with fire at Shusan; that the apes
+  and peacocks which he had sent for from Tharsis lay dead upon his
+  hands; that the mummies had not been dead long enough which he
+  had brought from Egypt; that all had gone wrong from the day he
+  forsook his father's house?"
+
+All this, it must be admitted, is pretty lively for a sermon. But hear
+the reverend gentleman once more, in the same discourse, and observe
+the characteristic coolness with which he touches, only to drop, what
+may be called the "professional" moral of the parable, and glides
+off into a train of interesting, but thoroughly mundane, reflections,
+suggested--or rather, supposed in courtesy to have been suggested--by
+the text. "I know not," he says, "whether it would be a subject
+of much edification to convince you here that our Saviour, by the
+Prodigal Son, particularly pointed out those who were sinners of the
+Gentiles, and were recovered by divine grace to repentance; and that
+by the elder brother he intended manifestly the more forward of the
+Jews," &c. But, whether it would edify you or not, he goes on, in
+effect, to say, I do not propose to provide you with edification in
+that kind. "These uses have been so ably set forth in so many good
+sermons upon the Prodigal Son that I shall turn aside from them at
+present, and content myself with some reflections upon that fatal
+passion which led him--and so many thousands after the example--to
+gather all he had together and take his journey into a far country."
+In other words, "I propose to make the parable a peg whereon to hang
+a few observations on (what does the reader suppose?) the practice of
+sending young men upon the Grand Tour, accompanied by a 'bear-leader,'
+and herein of the various kinds of bear-leaders, and the services
+which they do, and do not, render to their charges; with a few words
+on society in Continental cities, and a true view of 'letters of
+introduction.'" That is literally the substance of the remainder
+of the sermon. And thus pleasantly does the preacher play with his
+curious subject:
+
+  "But you will send an able pilot with your son--a scholar. If
+  wisdom can speak in no other tongue but Greek or Latin, you do
+  well; or if mathematics will make a man a gentleman, or natural
+  philosophy but teach him to make a bow, he may be of some service
+  in introducing your son into good societies, and supporting him in
+  them when he had done. But the upshot will be generally this, that
+  on the most pressing occasions of addresses, if he is not a mere man
+  of reading, the unhappy youth will have the tutor to carry, and not
+  the tutor to carry him. But (let us say) you will avoid this extreme;
+  he shall be escorted by one who knows the world, not only from
+  books but from his own experience; a man who has been employed
+  on such services, and thrice 'made the tour of Europe with success'--that
+  is, without breaking his own or his pupil's neck; for if he is
+  such as my eyes have seen, some broken Swiss _valet de chambre_, some
+  general undertaker, who will perform the journey in so many months,
+  'if God permit,' much knowledge will not accrue. Some profit, at
+  least: he will learn the amount to a halfpenny of every stage from
+  Calais to Rome; he will be carried to the best inns, instructed where
+  there is the best wine, and sup a livre cheaper than if the youth had
+  been left to make the tour and the bargain himself. Look at our
+  governor, I beseech you! See, he is an inch taller as he relates the
+  advantages. And here endeth his pride, his knowledge, and his use.
+  But when your son gets abroad he will be taken out of his hand by
+  his society with men of rank and letters, with whom he will pass the
+  greatest part of his time."
+
+So much for the bear-leader; and now a remark or two on the young
+man's chances of getting into good foreign society; and then--the
+benediction:
+
+  "Let me observe, in the first place, that company which is really
+  good is very rare and very shy. But you have surmounted this difficulty,
+  and procured him the best letters of recommendation to the
+  most eminent and respectable in every capital. And I answer that
+  he will obtain all by them which courtesy strictly stands obliged to
+  pay on such occasions, but no more. There is nothing in which we
+  are so much deceived as in the advantages proposed from our connexions
+  and discourse with the literati, &c., in foreign parts, especially
+  if the experiment is made before we are matured by years or
+  study. Conversation is a traffic; and if you enter it without some
+  stock of knowledge to balance the account perpetually betwixt you,
+  the trade drops at once; and this is the reason, however it may be
+  boasted to the contrary, why travellers have so little (especially good)
+  conversation with the natives, owing to their suspicion, or perhaps
+  conviction, that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation
+  of young itinerants worth the trouble of their bad language, or
+  the interruption of their visits."
+
+Very true, no doubt, and excellently well put; but we seem to have got
+some distance, in spirit at any rate, from Luke xv. 13; and it is with
+somewhat too visible effect, perhaps, that Sterne forces his way
+back into the orthodox routes of pulpit disquisition. The youth,
+disappointed with his reception by "the literati," &c., seeks "an
+easier society; and as bad company is always ready, and ever lying in
+wait, the career is soon finished, and the poor prodigal returns--the
+same object of pity with the prodigal in the Gospel." Hardly a good
+enough "tag," perhaps, to reconcile the ear to the "And now to," &c.,
+as a fitting close to this pointed little essay in the style of the
+Chesterfield Letters. There is much internal evidence to show that
+this so-called sermon was written either after Sterne's visit to or
+during his stay in France; and there is strong reason, I think, to
+suppose that it was in reality neither intended for a sermon nor
+actually delivered from the pulpit.
+
+No other of his sermons has quite so much vivacity as this. But in
+the famous discourse upon an unlucky text--the sermon preached at
+the chapel of the English Embassy, in Paris--there are touches of
+unclerical raillery not a few. Thus: "What a noise," he exclaims,
+"among the simulants of the various virtues!... Behold Humility,
+become so out of mere pride; Chastity, never once in harm's way; and
+Courage, like a Spanish soldier upon an Italian stage--a bladder full
+of wind. Hush! the sound of that trumpet! Let not my soldier run!'
+tis some good Christian giving alms. O Pity, thou gentlest of human
+passions! soft and tender are thy notes, and ill accord they with so
+loud an instrument."
+
+Here, again, is a somewhat bold saying for a divine: "But, to avoid
+all commonplace cant as much as I can on this head, I will forbear to
+say, because I do not think, that 'tis a breach of Christian charity
+to think or speak ill of our neighbour. We cannot avoid it: our
+opinion must follow the evidence," &c. And a little later on,
+commenting on the insinuation conveyed in Satan's question, "Does Job
+serve God for nought?" he says: "It is a bad picture, and done by a
+terrible master; and yet we are always copying it. Does a man from
+real conviction of heart forsake his vices? The position is not to be
+allowed. No; his vices have forsaken him. Does a pure virgin fear God,
+and say her prayers? She is in her climacteric? Does humility clothe
+and educate the unknown orphan? Poverty, thou hast no genealogies.
+See! is he not the father of the child?" In another sermon he launches
+out into quaintly contemptuous criticism of a religious movement which
+he was certainly the last person in the world to understand--to wit,
+Methodism. He asks whether, "when a poor, disconsolated, drooping
+creature is terrified from all enjoyment, prays without ceasing till
+his imagination is heated, fasts and mortifies and mopes till his body
+is in as bad a plight as his mind, it is a wonder that the mechanical
+disturbances and conflicts of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty
+head, should be mistook for workings of a different kind from what
+they are?" Other sermons reflect the singularly bitter anti-Catholic
+feeling which was characteristic even of indifferentism in those
+days--at any rate amongst Whig divines. But in most of them one is
+liable to come at any moment across one of those strange sallies to
+which Gray alluded, when he said of the effect of Sterne's sermons
+upon a reader that "you often see him tottering on the verge of
+laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+FRANCE AND ITALY.--MEETING WITH WIFE AND DAUGHTER.--RETURN TO
+ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOL. IX.--"THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY."
+
+(1765-1768.)
+
+In the first week of October, 1765, or a few days later, Sterne
+set out on what was afterwards to become famous as the "Sentimental
+Journey through France and Italy." Not, of course, that all the
+materials for that celebrated piece of literary travel were collected
+on this occasion. From London as far as Lyons his way lay by a route
+which he had already traversed three years before, and there is
+reason to believe that at least some of the scenes in the _Sentimental
+Journey_ were drawn from observation made on his former visit. His
+stay in Paris was shorter this year than it had been on the previous
+occasion. A month after leaving England he was at Pont Beauvoisin,
+and by the middle of November he had reached Turin. From this city he
+writes, with his characteristic simplicity: "I am very happy, and
+have found my way into a dozen houses already. To-morrow I am to be
+presented to the King, and when that ceremony is over I shall have my
+hands full of engagements." From Turin he went on, by way of Milan,
+Parma, Piacenza, and Bologna, to Florence, where, after three days'
+stay, "to dine with our Plenipo," he continued his journey to
+Rome. Here, and at Naples, he passed the winter of 1765-'66,[1]
+and prolonged his stay in Italy until the ensuing spring was well
+advanced. In the month of May he was again on his way home, through
+France, and had had a meeting, after two years' separation from them,
+with his wife and daughter. His account of it to Hall Stevenson is
+curious: "Never man," he writes, "has been such a wild-goose chase
+after his wife as I have been. After having sought her in five or six
+different towns, I found her at last in Franche Comte. Poor woman!"
+he adds, "she was very cordial, &c." The &c. is charming. But
+her cordiality had evidently no tendency to deepen into any more
+impassioned sentiment, for she "begged to stay another year or so."
+As to "my Lydia"--the real cause, we must suspect, of Sterne's having
+turned out of his road--she, he says, "pleases me much. I found her
+greatly improved in everything I wished her." As to himself: "I am
+most unaccountably well, and most accountably nonsensical. 'Tis at
+least a proof of good spirits, which is a sign and token, in these
+latter days, that I must take up my pen. In faith, I think I shall
+die with it in my hand; but I shall live these ten years, my Antony,
+notwithstanding the fears of my wife, whom I left most melancholy
+on that account." The "fears" and the melancholy were, alas! to be
+justified, rather than the "good spirits;" and the shears of Atropos
+were to close, not in ten years, but in little more than twenty
+months, upon that fragile thread of life.
+
+[Footnote 1: It was on this tour that Sterne picked up the French
+valet Lafleur, whom he introduced as a character into the _Sentimental
+Journey_, but whose subsequently published recollections of the tour
+(if, indeed, the veritable Lafleur was the author of the notes from
+which Scott quotes so freely) appear, as Mr. Fitzgerald has pointed
+out, from internal evidence to be mostly fictitious.]
+
+By the end of June he was back again in his Yorkshire home, and very
+soon after had settled down to work upon the ninth and last volume of
+_Tristram Shandy_. He was writing, however, as it should seem,
+under something more than the usual distractions of a man with two
+establishments. Mrs. Sterne was just then ill at Marseilles, and her
+husband--who, to do him justice, was always properly solicitous for
+her material comfort--was busy making provision for her to change her
+quarters to Chalons. He writes to M. Panchaud, at Paris, sending fifty
+pounds, and begging him to make her all further advances that might be
+necessary. "I have," he says, "such entire confidence in my wife
+that she spends as little as she can, though she is confined to no
+particular sum ... and you may rely--in case she should draw for fifty
+or a hundred pounds extraordinary--that it and every demand shall
+be punctually paid, and with proper thanks; and for this the whole
+Shandian family are ready to stand security." Later on, too, he writes
+that "a young nobleman is now inaugurating a jaunt with me for six
+weeks, about Christmas, to the Faubourg St. Germain;" and he adds--in
+a tone the sincerity of which he would himself have probably found
+a difficulty in gauging--"if my wife should grow worse (having had a
+very poor account of her in my daughter's last), I cannot think of her
+being without me; and, however expensive the journey would be, I would
+fly to Avignon to administer consolation to her and my poor girl.[1]"
+
+[Footnote 1: There can be few admirers of Sterne's genius who
+would not gladly incline, whenever they find it possible, to Mr.
+Fitzgerald's very indulgent estimate of his disposition. But this
+is only one of many instances in which the charity of the
+biographer appears to me to be, if the expression may be permitted,
+unconscionable. I can, at any rate, find no warrant whatever in the
+above passage for the too kindly suggestion that "Sterne was actually
+negotiating a journey to Paris as 'bear-leader' to a young nobleman
+(an odious office, to which he had special aversion), _in order_ that
+he might with economy fly over to Avignon."]
+
+The necessity for this flight, however, did not arise. Better
+accounts of Mrs. Sterne arrived a few weeks later, and the husband's
+consolations were not required.
+
+Meanwhile the idyll of Captain Shandy's love-making was gradually
+approaching completion; and there are signs to be met with--in
+the author's correspondence, that is to say, and not in the work
+itself--that he was somewhat impatient to be done with it, at any rate
+for the time. "I shall publish," he says, "late in this year; and the
+next I shall begin a new work of four volumes, which, when finished,
+I shall continue _Tristram_ with fresh spirit." The new work in
+four volumes (not destined to get beyond one) was, of course, the
+_Sentimental Journey_. His ninth volume of _Tristram Shandy_ was
+finished by the end of the year, and at Christmas he came up to
+London, after his usual practice, to see to its publication and enjoy
+the honours of its reception. The book passed duly through the press,
+and in the last days of January was issued the announcement of its
+immediate appearance. Of the character of its welcome I can find no
+other evidence than that of Sterne himself, in a letter addressed to
+M. Panchaud some fortnight after the book appeared. "'Tis liked the
+best of all here;" but, with whatever accuracy this may have expressed
+the complimentary opinion of friends, or even the well-considered
+judgment of critics, one can hardly believe that it enjoyed anything
+like the vogue of the former volumes. Sterne, however, would be the
+less concerned for this, that his head was at the moment full of
+his new venture. "I am going," he writes, "to publish _A Sentimental
+Journey through France and Italy_. The undertaking is protected and
+highly encouraged by all our noblesse. 'Tis subscribed for at a great
+rate 'twill be an original, in large quarto, the subscription half a
+guinea. If you (Panchaud) can procure me the honour of a few names of
+men of science or fashion, I shall thank you: they will appear in good
+company, as all the nobility here have honoured me with their names."
+As was usual with him, however, he postponed commencing it until he
+should have returned to Coxwold; and, as was equally usual with
+him, he found it difficult to tear himself away from the delights
+of London. Moreover, there was in the present instance a special
+difficulty, arising out of an affair upon which, as it has relations
+with the history of Sterne's literary work, it would be impossible,
+even in the most strictly critical and least general of biographies,
+to observe complete silence. I refer, of course, to the famous and
+furious flirtation with Mrs. Draper--the Eliza of the Yorick and Eliza
+Letters. Of the affair itself but little need be said. I have already
+stated my own views on the general subject of Sterne's love affairs;
+and I feel no inducement to discuss the question of their innocence
+or otherwise in relation to this particular amourette. I will only
+say that were it technically as innocent as you please, the mean
+which must be found between Thackeray's somewhat too harsh and Mr.
+Fitzgerald's considerably too indulgent judgment on it will lie,
+it seems to me, decidedly nearer to the former than to the latter's
+extreme. This episode of violently sentimental philandering with an
+Indian "grass widow" was, in any case, an extremely unlovely passage
+in Sterne's life. On the best and most charitable view of it, the
+flirtation, pursued in the way it was, and to the lengths to which
+it was carried, must be held to convict the elderly lover of the most
+deplorable levity, vanity, indiscretion, and sickly sentimentalism. It
+was, to say the least of it, most unbecoming in a man of Sterne's age
+and profession; and when it is added that Yorick's attentions to Eliza
+were paid in so open a fashion as to be brought by gossip to the ears
+of his neglected wife, then living many hundred miles away from him,
+its highly reprehensible character seems manifest enough in all ways.
+
+No sooner, however, had the fascinating widow set sail, than the
+sentimental lover began to feel so strongly the need of a female
+consoler, that his heart seems to have softened, insensibly, even
+towards his wife. "I am unhappy," he writes plaintively to Lydia
+Sterne. "Thy mother and thyself at a distance from me--and what can
+compensate for such a destitution? For God's sake persuade her to come
+and fix in England! for life is too short to waste in separation;
+and while she lives in one country and I in another, many people will
+suppose it proceeds from choice"--a supposition, he seems to imply,
+which even my scrupulously discreet conduct in her absence scarcely
+suffices to refute. "Besides"--a word in which there is here almost
+as much virtue as in an "if"--"I want thee near me, thou child and
+darling of my heart. I am in a melancholy mood, and my Lydia's eyes
+will smart with weeping when I tell her the cause that just now
+affects me." And then his sensibilities brim over, and into his
+daughter's ear he pours forth his lamentations over the loss of her
+mother's rival. "I am apprehensive the dear friend I mentioned in my
+last letter is going into a decline. I was with her two days ago, and
+I never beheld a being so altered. She has a tender frame, and looks
+like a drooping lily, for the roses are fled from her cheeks. I can
+never see or talk to this incomparable woman without bursting into
+tears. I have a thousand obligations to her, and I love her more than
+her whole sex, if not all the world put together. She has a delicacy,"
+&c., &c. And after reciting a frigid epitaph which he had written,
+"expressive of her modest worth," he winds up with--"Say all that is
+kind of me to thy mother; and believe me, my Lydia, that I love
+thee most truly." My excuse for quoting thus fully from this most
+characteristic letter, and, indeed, for dwelling at all upon these
+closing incidents of the Yorick and Eliza episode, is, that in their
+striking illustration of the soft, weak, spiritually self-indulgent
+nature of the man, they assist us, far more than many pages of
+criticism would do, to understand one particular aspect of his
+literary idiosyncrasy. The sentimentalist of real life explains the
+sentimentalist in art.
+
+In the early days of May Sterne managed at last to tear himself away
+from London and its joys, and with painful slowness, for he was now in
+a wretched state of health, to make his way back to Yorkshire. "I have
+got conveyed," he says in a distressing letter from Newark to Hall
+Stevenson--"I have got conveyed thus far like a bale of cadaverous
+goods consigned to Pluto and Company, lying in the bottom of my chaise
+most of the route, upon a large pillow which I had the _prevoyance_ to
+purchase before I set out. I am worn out, but pass on to Barnby Moor
+to-night, and if possible to York the next. I know not what is the
+matter with me, but some derangement presses hard upon this machine.
+Still, I think it will not be overset this bout"--another of those
+utterances of a cheerful courage under the prostration of pain which
+reveal to us the manliest side of Sterne's nature. On reaching Coxwold
+his health appears to have temporarily mended, and in June we find him
+giving a far better account of himself to another of his friends. The
+fresh Yorkshire air seems to have temporarily revived him, and to his
+friend, Arthur Lee, a young American, he writes thus: "I am as happy
+as a prince at Coxwold, and I wish you could see in how princely a
+manner I live. 'Tis a land of plenty. I sit down alone to dinner--fish
+and wild-fowl, or a couple of fowls or ducks, with cream and all the
+simple plenty which a rich valley under Hamilton Hills can produce,
+with a clean cloth on my table, and a bottle of wine on my right hand
+to drink your health. I have a hundred hens and chickens about my
+yard; and not a parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout but
+he brings it as an offering to me." Another of his correspondents at
+this period was the Mrs. H. of his letters, whose identity I have been
+unable to trace, but who is addressed in a manner which seems to show
+Sterne's anxiety to expel the old flame of Eliza's kindling by a new
+one. There is little, indeed, of the sentimentalizing strain in which
+he was wont to sigh at the feet of Mrs. Draper, but in its place
+there is a freedom of a very prominent, and here and there of a highly
+unpleasant, kind. To his friends, Mr. and Mrs. James, too, he writes
+frequently during this year, chiefly to pour out his soul on the
+subject of Eliza; and Mrs. James, who is always addressed in company
+with her husband, enjoys the almost unique distinction of being the
+only woman outside his own family circle whom Sterne never approaches
+in the language of artificial gallantry, but always in that of simple
+friendship and respect.[1] Meanwhile, however, the _Sentimental
+Journey_ was advancing at a reasonable rate of speed towards
+completion. In July he writes of himself as "now beginning to be truly
+busy" on it, "the pain and sorrows of this life having retarded its
+progress."
+
+[Footnote 1: To this period of Sterne's life, it may here be remarked,
+is to be assigned the dog-Latin letter ("and very sad dog-Latin too")
+so justly animadverted upon by Thackeray, and containing a passage
+of which Madame de Medalle, it is to be charitably hoped, had no
+suspicion of the meaning. Mr. Fitzgerald, through an oversight in
+translation, and understanding Sterne to say that he himself, and
+not his correspondent, Hall Stevenson, was "quadraginta et plus annos
+natus," has referred it to an earlier date. The point, however, is of
+no great importance, as the untranslatable passage in the letter would
+be little less unseemly in 1754 or 1755 than in 1768, at the beginning
+of which year, since the letter is addressed from London to Hall
+Stevenson, then in Yorkshire, it must, in fact, have been written.]
+
+His wife and daughter were about to rejoin him in the autumn, and he
+looked forward to settling them at a hired house in York before going
+up to town to publish his new volumes. On the 1st of October the two
+ladies arrived at York, and the next day the reunited family went on
+to Coxwold. The meeting with the daughter gave Sterne one of the
+few quite innocent pleasures which he was capable of feeling; and
+he writes next day to Mr. and Mrs. James in terms of high pride
+and satisfaction of his recovered child. "My girl has returned,"
+he writes, in the language of playful affection, "an elegant,
+accomplished little slut. My wife--but I hate," he adds, with
+remarkable presence of mind, "to praise my wife. 'Tis as much as
+decency will allow to praise my daughter. I suppose," he concludes,
+"they will return next summer to France. They leave me in a month to
+reside at York for the winter, and I stay at Coxwold till the 1st
+of January." This seems to indicate a little longer delay in the
+publication of the _Sentimental Journey_ than he had at first
+intended; for it seems that the book was finished by the end of
+November. On the 28th of that month he writes to the Earl of ---- (as
+his daughter's foolish mysteriousness has headed the letter), to thank
+him for his letter of inquiry about Yorick, and to say that Yorick
+"has worn out both his spirits and body with the _Sentimental
+Journey_. 'Tis true that an author must feel himself, or his reader
+will not" (how mistaken a devotion Sterne showed to this Horatian
+canon will be noted hereafter), "but I have torn my whole frame into
+pieces by my feelings. I believe the brain stands as much in need of
+recruiting as the body; therefore I shall set out for town the 20th of
+next month, after having recruited myself at York." Then he adds the
+strange observation, "I might, indeed, solace myself with my wife (who
+is come from France), but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental
+being, whatever your Lordship may think to the contrary. The world
+has imagined because I wrote _Tristram Shandy_ that I was myself more
+Shandian than I really ever was. 'Tis a good-natured world we live
+in, and we are often painted in divers colours, according to the ideas
+each one frames in his head." It would, perhaps, have been scarcely
+possible for Sterne to state his essentially unhealthy philosophy of
+life so concisely as in this naive passage. The connubial affections
+are here, in all seriousness and good faith apparently, opposed to
+the sentimental emotions--as the lower to the higher. To indulge the
+former is to be "Shandian," that is to say, coarse and carnal; to
+devote oneself to the latter, or, in other words, to spend one's
+days in semi-erotic languishings over the whole female sex
+indiscriminately, is to show spirituality and taste.
+
+Meanwhile, however, that fragile abode of sentimentalism--that frame
+which had just been "torn to pieces" by the feelings--was becoming
+weaker than its owner supposed. Much of the exhaustion which Sterne
+had attributed to the violence of his literary emotions was no doubt
+due to the rapid decline of bodily powers which, unknown to him, were
+already within a few months of their final collapse. He did not set
+out for London on the 20th of December, as he had promised himself,
+for on that day he was only just recovering from "an attack of fever
+and bleeding at the lungs," which had confined him to his room for
+nearly three weeks. "I am worn down to a shadow," he writes on the
+23rd, "but as my fever has left me, I set off the latter end of next
+week with my friend, Mr. Hall, for town." His home affairs had already
+been settled. Early in December it had been arranged that his wife
+and daughter should only remain at York during the winter, and should
+return to the Continent in the spring. "Mrs. Sterne's health," he
+writes, "is insupportable in England. She must return to France, and
+justice and humanity forbid me to oppose it." But separation from his
+wife meant separation from his daughter; it was this, of course, which
+was the really painful parting, and it is to the credit of Sterne's
+disinterestedness of affection for Lydia, that in his then state
+of health he brought himself to consent to her leaving him. But he
+recognized that it was for the advantage of her prospect of settling
+herself in life that she should go with her mother, who seemed
+"inclined to establish her in France, where she has had many
+advantageous offers." Nevertheless "his heart bled," as he wrote to
+Lee, when he thought of parting with his child. "'Twill be like the
+separation of soul and body, and equal to nothing but what passes at
+that tremendous moment; and like it in one respect, for she will be in
+one kingdom while I am in another." Thus was this matter settled, and
+by the 1st of January Sterne had arrived in London for the last time,
+with the two volumes of the _Sentimental Journey_. He took up his
+quarters at the lodgings in Bond Street (No. 41), which he had
+occupied during his stay in town the previous year, and entered at
+once upon the arrangements for publication. These occupied two full
+months, and on the 27th of February the last work, as it was destined
+to be, of the Rev. Mr. Yorick was issued to the world.
+
+Its success would seem to have been immediate, and was certainly great
+and lasting. In one sense, indeed, it was far greater than had been,
+or than has since been, attained by _Tristram Shandy_. The compliments
+which courteous Frenchmen had paid the author upon his former work,
+and which his simple vanity had swallowed whole and unseasoned,
+without the much-needed grain of salt, might, no doubt, have been
+repeated to him with far greater sincerity as regards the _Sentimental
+Journey_, had he lived to receive them. Had any Frenchman told him a
+year or two afterwards that the latter work was "almost as much known
+in Paris as in London, at least among men of condition and learning,"
+he would very likely have been telling him no more than the truth. The
+_Sentimental Journey_ certainly acquired what _Tristram Shandy_ never
+did--a European reputation. It has been translated into Italian,
+German, Dutch, and even Polish; and into French again and again.
+The French, indeed, have no doubt whatever of its being Sterne's
+_chef-d'oeuvre_; and one has only to compare a French translation of
+it with a rendering of _Tristram Shandy_ into the same language to
+understand, and from our neighbours' point of view even to admit, the
+justice of their preference. The charms of the _Journey_, its grace,
+wit, and urbanity, are thoroughly congenial to that most graceful of
+languages, and reproduce themselves readily enough therein; while,
+on the other hand, the fantastic digressions, the elaborate
+mystifications, the farcical interludes of the earlier work, appear
+intolerably awkward and _bizzare_ in their French dress; and, what
+is much more strange, even the point of the _double entendres_ is
+sometimes unaccountably lost. Were it not that the genuine humour of
+_Tristram Shandy_ in a great measure evaporates in translation, one
+would be forced to admit that the work which is the more catholic
+in its appeal to appreciation is the better of the two. But, having
+regard to this disappearance of genuine and unquestionable excellences
+in the process of translation, I see no good reason why those
+Englishmen--the great majority, I imagine--who prefer _Tristram
+Shandy_ to the _Sentimental Journey_ should feel any misgivings as to
+the soundness of their taste. The humour which goes the deepest
+down beneath the surface of things is the most likely to become
+inextricably interwoven with those deeper fibres of associations which
+lie at the roots of a language; and it may well happen, therefore,
+though from the cosmopolitan point of view it is a melancholy
+reflection, that the merit of a book, to those who use the language
+in which it is written, bears a direct ratio to the persistence of its
+refusal to yield up its charm to men of another tongue.
+
+The favour, however, with which the _Sentimental Journey_ was received
+abroad, and which it still enjoys (the last French translation is
+very recent), is, as Mr. Fitzgerald says, "worthily merited, if grace,
+nature, true sentiment, and exquisite dramatic power be qualities that
+are to find a welcome. And apart," he adds, "from these attractions
+it has a unique charm of its own, a flavour, so to speak, a fragrance
+that belongs to that one book alone. Never was there such a charming
+series of complete little pictures, which for delicacy seem like the
+series of medallions done on Sevres china which we sometimes see in
+old French cabinets.... The figures stand out brightly, and in what
+number and variety! Old Calais, with its old inn; M. Dessein, the
+monk, one of the most artistic figures on literary canvas; the
+charming French lady whom M. Dessein shut into the carriage with the
+traveller; the _debonnaire_ French captain, and the English travellers
+returning, touched in with only a couple of strokes; La Fleur, the
+valet; the pretty French glove-seller, whose pulse the Sentimental one
+felt; her husband, who passed through the shop and pulled off his hat
+to Monsieur for the honour he was doing him; the little maid in the
+bookseller's shop, who put her little present _a part_; the charming
+Greuze 'grisset,' who sold him the ruffles; the reduced chevalier
+selling _pates_; the groups of beggars at Montreuil; the _fade_
+Count de Bissie, who read Shakespeare; and the crowd of minor
+_croquis_--postilions, landlords, notaries, soldiers, abbes,
+_precieuses_, maids--merely touched, but touched with wonderful art,
+make up a surprising collection of distinct and graphic characters."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+LAST DAYS AND DEATH.
+
+(1768.)
+
+The end was now fast approaching. Months before, Sterne had written
+doubtfully of his being able to stand another winter in England, and
+his doubts were to be fatally justified. One can easily see, however,
+how the unhappy experiment came to be tried. It is possible that he
+might have delayed the publication of his book for a while, and taken
+refuge abroad from the rigours of the two remaining winter months,
+had it not been in the nature of his malady to conceal its deadly
+approaches. Consumption sported with its victim in the cruel fashion
+that is its wont. "I continue to mend," Sterne writes from Bond Street
+on the first day of the new year, "and doubt not but this with all
+other evils and uncertainties of life will end for the best." And
+for the best perhaps it did end, in the sense in which the resigned
+Christian uses these pious words; but this, one fears, was not the
+sense intended by the dying man. All through January and February he
+was occupied not only with business, but as it would seem with a fair
+amount, though less, no doubt, than his usual share, of pleasure also.
+Vastly active was he, it seems, in the great undertaking of obtaining
+tickets for one of Mrs. Cornely's entertainments--the "thing" to go to
+at that particular time--for his friends the Jameses. He writes them
+on Monday that he has not been a moment at rest since writing the
+previous day about the Soho ticket. "I have been at a Secretary of
+State to get one, have been upon one knee to my friend Sir George
+Macartney, Mr. Lascelles, and Mr. Fitzmaurice, without mentioning
+five more. I believe I could as soon get you a place at Court, for
+everybody is going; but I will go out and try a new circle, and if
+you do not hear from me by a quarter to three, you may conclude I
+have been unfortunate in my supplications." Whether he was or was not
+unfortunate history does not record. A week or two later the old round
+of dissipation had apparently set in. "I am now tied down neck and
+heels by engagements every night this week, or most joyfully would
+have trod the old pleasing road from Bond to Gerrard Street. I am
+quite well, but exhausted with a roomful of company every morning till
+dinner." A little later, and this momentary flash of health had died
+out; and we find him writing what was his last letter to his daughter,
+full, evidently, of uneasy forebodings as to his approaching end. He
+speaks of "this vile influenza--be not alarmed. I think I shall get
+the better of it, and shall be with you both the 1st of May;"
+though, he adds, "if I escape, 'twill not be for a long period, my
+child--unless a quiet retreat and peace of mind can restore me." But
+the occasion of this letter was a curious one, and a little more must
+be extracted from it. Lydia Sterne's letter to her father had, he
+said, astonished him. "She (Mrs. Sterne) could know but little of my
+feelings to tell thee that under the supposition I should survive
+thy mother I should bequeath thee as a legacy to Mrs. Draper. No, my
+Lydia, 'tis a lady whose virtues I wish thee to imitate"--Mrs.
+James, in fact, whom he proceeds to praise with much and probably
+well-deserved warmth. "But," he adds, sadly, "I think, my Lydia,
+thy mother will survive me; do not deject her spirit with thy
+apprehensions on my account. I have sent you a necklace and buckles,
+and the same to your mother. My girl cannot form a wish that is in the
+power of her father that he will not gratify her in; and I cannot in
+justice be less kind to thy mother. I am never alone. The kindness of
+my friends is ever the same. I wish though I had thee to nurse me, but
+I am denied that. Write to me twice a week at least. God bless thee,
+my child, and believe me ever, ever, thy affectionate father."
+
+The despondent tone of this letter was to be only too soon justified.
+The "vile influenza" proved to be or became a pleurisy. On Thursday,
+March 10, he was bled three times, and blistered on the day after. And
+on the Tuesday following, in evident consciousness that his end was
+near, he penned that cry "for pity and pardon," as Thackeray calls
+it--the first as well as the last, and which sounds almost as strange
+as it does piteous from those mocking lips:
+
+  "The physician says I am better.... God knows, for I feel myself
+  sadly wrong, and shall, if I recover, be a long while of gaining
+  strength. Before I have gone through half the letter I must stop to
+  rest my weak hand a dozen times. Mr. James was so good as to call
+  upon me yesterday. I felt emotions not to be described at the sight
+  of him, and he overjoyed me by talking a great deal of you. Do,
+  dear Mrs. James, entreat him to come to-morrow or next day, for perhaps
+  I have not many days or hours to live. I want to ask a favour
+  of him, if I find myself worse, that I shall beg of you if in this
+  wrestling I come off conqueror. My spirits are fled. It is a bad omen;
+  do not weep, my dear lady. Your tears are too precious to be shed
+  for me. Bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. Dearest,
+  kindest, gentlest, and best of women! may health, peace, and happiness
+  prove your handmaids. If I die, cherish the remembrance of
+  me, and forget the follies which you so often condemned, which my
+  heart, not my head, betrayed me into. Should my child, my Lydia,
+  want a mother, may I hope you will (if she is left parentless) take her
+  to your bosom? You are the only woman on earth I can depend
+  upon for such a benevolent action. I wrote to her a fortnight ago,
+  and told her what, I trust, she will find in you. Mr. James will be a
+  father to her.... Commend me to him, as I now commend you to
+  that Being who takes under his care the good and kind part of the
+  world. Adieu, all grateful thanks to you and Mr. James.
+
+  "From your affectionate friend,                       L. STERNE."
+
+This pathetic death-bed letter is superscribed "Tuesday." It seems to
+have been written on Tuesday, the 15th of March, and three days later
+the writer breathed his last. But two persons, strangers both, were
+present at his deathbed, and it is by a singularly fortunate chance,
+therefore, that one of these--and he not belonging to the class of
+people who usually leave behind them published records of the events
+of their lives--should have preserved for us an account of the closing
+scene. This, however, is to be found in the Memoirs of John Macdonald,
+"a cadet of the house of Keppoch," at that time footman to Mr.
+Crawford, a fashionable friend of Sterne's. His master had taken a
+house in Clifford Street in the spring of 1768; and "about this time,"
+he writes, "Mr. Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the
+silk-bag shop in Old Bond Street. He was sometimes called Tristram
+Shandy and sometimes Yorick, a very great favourite of the gentlemen.
+One day"--namely, on the aforesaid 18th of March--"my master had
+company to dinner who were speaking about him--the Duke of Roxburghe,
+the Earl of March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr.
+Garrick, Mr. Hume, and a Mr. James." Many, if not most, of the party,
+therefore, were personal friends of the man who lay dying in the
+street hard by, and naturally enough the conversation turned on his
+condition. "'John,' said my master," the narrative continues, "'go and
+inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.'" Macdonald did so; and, in language
+which seems to bear the stamp of truth upon it, he thus records the
+grim story which he had to report to the assembled guests on his
+return: "I went to Mr. Sterne's lodgings; the mistress opened the
+door. I enquired how he did; she told me to go up to the nurse. I went
+into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but in
+five he said, 'Now it is come.' He put up his hand as if to stop a
+blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry, and
+lamented him very much."
+
+Thus, supported by a hired nurse, and under the curious eyes of a
+stranger, Sterne breathed his last. His wife and daughter were far
+away; the convivial associates "who were all very sorry and lamented
+him very much," were for the moment represented only by "John;" and
+the shocking tradition goes that the alien hands by which the "dying
+eyes were closed," and the "decent limbs composed," remunerated
+themselves for the pious office by abstracting the gold sleeve-links
+from the dead man's wrists. One may hope, indeed, that this last
+circumstance is to be rejected as sensational legend, but even without
+it the story of Sterne's death seems sad enough, no doubt. Yet it is,
+after all, only by contrast with the excited gaiety of his daily
+life in London that his end appears so forlorn. From many a "set of
+residential chambers," from many of the old and silent inns of the
+lawyers, departures as lonely, or lonelier, are being made around us
+in London every year: the departures of men not necessarily kinless or
+friendless, but living solitary lives, and dying before their friends
+or kindred can be summoned to their bedsides. Such deaths, no doubt,
+are often contrasted in conventional pathos with that of the husband
+and father surrounded by a weeping wife and children; but the more
+sensible among us construct no tragedy out of a mode of exit which
+must have many times entered as at least a possibility into the
+previous contemplation of the dying man. And except, as has been
+said, that Sterne associates himself in our minds with the perpetual
+excitements of lively companionship, there would be nothing
+particularly melancholy in his end. This is subject, of course, to
+the assumption that the story of his landlady having stolen the gold
+sleeve-links from his dead body may be treated as mythical; and,
+rejecting this story, there seems no good reason for making much ado
+about the manner of his death. Of friends, as distinguished from mere
+dinner-table acquaintances, he seems to have had but few in London:
+with the exception of the Jameses, one knows not with certainty
+of any; and the Jameses do not appear to have neglected him in the
+illness which neither they nor he suspected to be his last. Mr. James
+had paid him a visit but a day or two before the end came; and it may
+very likely have been upon his report of his friend's condition that
+the message of inquiry was sent from the dinner table at which he was
+a guest. No doubt Sterne's flourish in _Tristram Shandy_ about his
+preferring to die at an inn, untroubled by the spectacle of "the
+concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows
+and smoothing my pillow," was a mere piece of bravado; and the more
+probably so because the reflection is appropriated almost bodily from
+Bishop Burnet, who quotes it as a frequent observation of Archbishop
+Leighton. But, considering that Sterne was in the habit of passing
+nearly half of each year alone in London lodgings, the realization of
+his wish does not strike me, I confess, as so dramatically impressive
+a coincidence as it is sometimes represented.
+
+According, however, to one strange story the dramatic element gives
+place after Sterne's very burial to melodrama of the darkest kind. The
+funeral, which pointed, after all, a far sadder moral than the death,
+took place on Tuesday, March 22, attended by only two mourners, one of
+whom is said to have been his publisher Becket, and the other probably
+Mr. James; and, thus duly neglected by the whole crowd of boon
+companions, the remains of Yorick were consigned to the "new
+burying-ground near Tyburn" of the parish of St. George's, Hanover
+Square. In that now squalid and long-decayed grave-yard, within sight
+of the Marble Arch and over against the broad expanse of Hyde Park,
+is still to be found a tombstone inscribed with some inferior lines to
+the memory of the departed humourist, and with a statement, inaccurate
+by eight months, of the date of his death, and a year out as to his
+age. Dying, as has been seen, on the 18th of March, 1768, at the age
+of fifty-four, he is declared on this slab to have died on the 13th of
+November, aged fifty-three years. There is more excuse, however, for
+this want of veracity than sepulchral inscriptions can usually plead.
+The stone was erected by the pious hands of "two brother Masons," many
+years, it is said, after the event which it purports to record; and
+from the wording of the epitaph which commences, "Near this place
+lyes the body," &c., it obviously does not profess to indicate--what,
+doubtless, there was no longer any means of tracing--the exact spot in
+which Sterne's remains were laid. But, wherever the grave really was,
+the body interred in it, according to the strange story to which I
+have referred, is no longer there. That story goes: that two days
+after the burial, on the night of the 24th of March, the corpse was
+stolen by body-snatchers, and by them disposed of to M. Collignon,
+Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge; that the Professor invited a few
+scientific friends to witness a demonstration, and that among these
+was one who had been acquainted with Sterne, and who fainted with
+horror on recognizing in the already partially dissected "subject" the
+features of his friend. So, at least, this very gruesome and Poe-like
+legend runs; but it must be confessed that all the evidence which
+Mr. Fitzgerald has been able to collect in its favour is of the very
+loosest and vaguest description. On the other hand, it is, of course,
+only fair to recollect that, in days when respectable surgeons and
+grave scientific professors had to depend upon the assistance of
+law-breakers for the prosecution of their studies and teachings, every
+effort would naturally be made to hush up any such unfortunate affair.
+There is, moreover, independent evidence to the fact that similar
+desecrations of this grave-yard had of late been very common; and
+that at least one previous attempt to check the operations of the
+"resurrection-men" had been attended with peculiarly infelicitous
+results. In the _St. James's Chronicle_ for November 26, 1767, we find
+it recorded that "the Burying Ground in Oxford Road, belonging to the
+Parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, having been lately robbed of
+several dead bodies, a Watcher was placed there, attended by a
+large mastiff Dog; notwithstanding which, on Sunday night last, some
+Villains found means to steal out another dead Body, and carried off
+the very Dog." Body-snatchers so adroit and determined as to contrive
+to make additional profit out of the actual means taken to prevent
+their depredations, would certainly not have been deterred by any
+considerations of prudence from attempting the theft of Sterne's
+corpse. There was no such ceremony about his funeral as would lead
+them to suppose that the deceased was a person of any importance,
+or one whose body could not be stolen without a risk of creating
+undesirable excitement. On the whole, therefore, it is impossible
+to reject the body-snatching story as certainly fabulous, though
+its truth is far from being proved; and though I can scarcely myself
+subscribe to Mr. Fitzgerald's view, that there is a "grim and lurid
+Shandyism" about the scene of dissection, yet if others discover an
+appeal to their sense of humour in the idea of Sterne's body being
+dissected after death, I see nothing to prevent them from holding that
+hypothesis as a "pious opinion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR. FERRIAR'S
+"ILLUSTRATIONS."
+
+Everyday experience suffices to show that the qualities which win
+enduring fame for books and for their authors are not always those
+to which they owe their first popularity. It may with the utmost
+probability be affirmed that this was the case with _Tristram Shandy_
+and with Sterne. We cannot, it is true, altogether dissociate the
+permanent attractions of the novel from those characteristics of it
+which have long since ceased to attract at all; the two are united in
+a greater or less degree throughout the work; and this being so, it
+is, of course, impossible to prove to demonstration that it was the
+latter qualities, and not the former, which procured it its immediate
+vogue. But, as it happens, it is possible to show that what may be
+called its spurious attractions varied directly, and its real merits
+inversely, as its popularity with the public of its day. In the
+higher qualities of humour, in dramatic vigour, in skilful and subtle
+delineation of character, the novel showed no deterioration, but, in
+some instances, a marked improvement, as it proceeded; yet the second
+instalment was not more popular, and most of the succeeding ones
+were distinctly less popular, than the first. They had gained in many
+qualities, while they had lost in only the single one of novelty; and
+we may infer, therefore, with approximate certainty, that what "took
+the town" in the first instance was, that quality of the book which
+was strangest at its first appearance. The mass of the public read,
+and enjoyed, or thought they enjoyed, when they were really
+only puzzled and perplexed. The wild digressions, the audacious
+impertinences, the burlesque philosophizing, the broad jests, the
+air of recondite learning, all combined to make the book a nine
+days' wonder; and a majority of its readers would probably have been
+prepared to pronounce _Tristram Shandy_ a work as original in scheme
+and conception as it was eccentric. Some there were, no doubt, who
+perceived the influence of Rabelais in the incessant digressions and
+the burlesque of philosophy; others, it may be, found a reminder of
+Burton in the parade of learning; and yet a few others, the scattered
+students of French facetiae of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
+may have read the broad jests with a feeling that they had "seen
+something like it before." But no single reader, no single critic of
+the time, appears to have combined the knowledge necessary for tracing
+these three characteristics of the novel to their respective sources;
+and none certainly had any suspicion of the extent to which the
+books and authors from whom they were imitated had been laid under
+contribution. No one suspected that Sterne, not content with borrowing
+his trick of rambling from Rabelais, and his airs of erudition from
+Burton, and his fooleries from Bruscambille, had coolly transferred
+whole passages from the second of these writers, not only without
+acknowledgment, but with the intention, obviously indicated by his
+mode of procedure, of passing them off as his own. Nay, it was not
+till full fifty years afterwards that these daring robberies were
+detected, or, at any rate, revealed to the world; and, with an irony
+which Sterne himself would have appreciated, it was reserved for a
+sincere admirer of the humourist to play the part of detective. In
+1812 Dr. John Ferriar published his _Illustrations of Sterne_, and
+the prefatory sonnet, in which he solicits pardon for his too minute
+investigations, is sufficient proof of the curiously reverent spirit
+in which he set about his damaging task:
+
+  "Sterne, for whose sake I plod through miry ways
+  Of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear,
+  Let not thy shade malignant censure fear,
+  If aught of inward mirth my search betrays.
+  Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days,
+  Erewhile to Guise or wanton Valois dear," &c.
+
+Thus commences Dr. Ferriar's apology, which, however, can hardly
+be held to cover his offence; for, as a matter of fact, Sterne's
+borrowings extend to a good deal besides "mirth;" and some of the
+most unscrupulous of these forced loans are raised from passages of a
+perfectly serious import in the originals from which they are taken.
+
+Here, however, is the list of authors to whom Dr. Ferriar holds Sterne
+to have been more or less indebted: Rabelais, Beroalde de Verville,
+Bouchet, Bruscambille, Scarron, Swift, an author of the name or
+pseudonym of "Gabriel John," Burton, Bacon, Blount, Montaigne, Bishop
+Hall. The catalogue is a reasonably long one; but it is not, of
+course, to be supposed that Sterne helped himself equally freely from
+every author named in it. His obligations to some of them are, as Dr.
+Ferriar admits, but slight. From Rabelais, besides his vagaries of
+narrative, Sterne took, no doubt, the idea of the _Tristra-paedia_
+(by descent from the "education of Pantagruel," through "Martinus
+Scriblerus"); but though he has appropriated bodily the passage in
+which Friar John attributes the beauty of his nose to the pectoral
+conformation of his nurse, he may be said to have constructively
+acknowledged the debt in a reference to one of the characters in the
+Rabelaisian dialogue.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: "There is no cause but one," said my Uncle Toby, "why
+one man's nose is longer than another, but because that God pleases to
+have it so." "That is Grangousier's solution," said my father. "'Tis
+He," continued my Uncle Toby, "who makes us all, and frames and puts
+us together in such forms ... and for such ends as is agreeable to
+His infinite wisdom."--_Tristram Shandy_, vol. iii. c. 41. "Par ce,
+repondit Grangousier, qu'ainsi Dieu l'a voulu, lequel nous fait en
+cette forme et cette fin selon divin arbitre."--_Rabelais_, book i. c.
+41. In another place, however (vol. viii. c. 3), Sterne has borrowed a
+whole passage from this French humourist without any acknowledgment at
+all.]
+
+Upon Beroalde, again, upon D'Aubigne, and upon Bouchet he has made no
+direct and _verbatim_ depredations. From Bruscambille he seems to have
+taken little or nothing but the not very valuable idea of the tedious
+buffoonery of vol. iii. c. 30, _et sqq._; and to Scarron he, perhaps,
+owed the incident of the dwarf at the theatre in the _Sentimental
+Journey_, an incident which, it must be owned, he vastly improved in
+the taking. All this, however, does not amount to very much, and it
+is only when we come to Dr. Ferriar's collations of _Tristram Shandy_
+with the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ that we begin to understand what
+feats Sterne was capable of as a plagiarist. He must, to begin with,
+have relied with cynical confidence on the conviction that famous
+writers are talked about and not read, for he sets to work with the
+scissors upon Burton's first page:
+
+"Man, the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
+principal and mighty work of God; wonder of nature, as Zoroaster calls
+him; _audacis naturae miraculum_, the marvel of marvels, as Plato; the
+abridgment and epitome of the world, as Pliny," &c. Thus Burton; and,
+with a few additions of his own, and the substitution of Aristotle for
+Plato as the author of one of the descriptions, thus Sterne: "Who made
+MAN with powers which dart him from heaven to earth in a moment--that
+great, that most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
+miracle of nature, as Zoroaster, in his book [Greek: peri phuseos],
+called him--the Shekinah of the Divine Presence, as Chrysostom--the
+image of God, as Moses--the ray of Divinity, as Plato--the marvel
+of marvels, as Aristotle," &c.[1] And in the same chapter, in the
+"Fragment upon Whiskers," Sterne relates how a "decayed kinsman"
+of the Lady Baussiere "ran begging, bareheaded, on one side of her
+palfrey, conjuring her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance,
+consanguinity, &c.--cousin, aunt, sister, mother--for virtue's sake,
+for your own sake, for mine, for Christ's sake, remember me! pity me!"
+And again he tells how a "devout, venerable, hoary-headed man" thus
+beseeched her: "'I beg for the unfortunate. Good my lady, 'tis for
+a prison--for an hospital; 'tis for an old man--a poor man undone by
+shipwreck, by suretyship, by fire. I call God and all His angels to
+witness, 'tis to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry--'tis to comfort
+the sick and the brokenhearted.' The Lady Baussiere rode on.[2]"
+
+[Footnote 1: _Tristram Shandy_, vol. v.c. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]
+
+But now compare this passage from the _Anatomy of Melancholy_:
+
+  "A poor decayed kinsman of his sets upon him by the way, in all
+  his jollity, and runs begging, bareheaded, by him, conjuring him by
+  those former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c., 'uncle,
+  cousin, brother, father, show some pity for Christ's sake, pity a
+  sick man, an old man,' &c.; he cares not--ride on: pretend sickness,
+  inevitable loss of limbs, plead suretyship or shipwreck, fire,
+  common calamities, show thy wants and imperfections, take God
+  and all His angels to witness ... put up a supplication to him in
+  the name of a thousand orphans, an hospital, a spittle, a prison, as
+  he goes by  ... ride on."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Burton: _Anat. Mel._, p. 269.]
+
+Hardly a casual coincidence this. But it is yet more unpleasant to
+find that the mock philosophic reflections with which Mr. Shandy
+consoles himself on Bobby's death, in those delightful chapters on
+that event, are not taken, as they profess to be, direct from the
+sages of antiquity, but have been conveyed through, and "conveyed"
+from, Burton.
+
+"When Agrippina was told of her son's death," says Sterne, "Tacitus
+informs us that, not being able to moderate her passions, she abruptly
+broke off her work." Tacitus does, it is true, inform us of this. But
+it was undoubtedly Burton (_Anat. Mel._, p. 213) who informed Sterne
+of it. So, too, when Mr. Shandy goes on to remark upon death that
+"'Tis an inevitable chance--the first statute in Magna Charta--it is
+an everlasting Act of Parliament, my dear brother--all must die," the
+agreement of his views with those of Burton, who had himself said
+of death, "'Tis an inevitable chance--the first statute in Magna
+Charta--an everlasting Act of Parliament--all must die,[2]" is even
+textually exact.
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 215.]
+
+In the next passage, however, the humourist gets the better of the
+plagiarist, and we are ready to forgive the theft for the happily
+comic turn which he gives to it.
+
+Burton:
+
+  "Tully was much grieved for his daughter Tulliola's death at first,
+  until such time that he had confirmed his mind by philosophical precepts;
+  then he began to triumph over fortune and grief, and for her
+  reception into heaven to be much more joyed than before he was
+  troubled for her loss."
+
+Sterne:
+
+"When Tully was bereft of his daughter, at first he laid it to his
+heart, he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto
+it. O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!--Still, still, still--'twas O
+my Tullia, my Tullia! Me thinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I
+talk with my Tullia. But as soon as he began to look into the stores
+of philosophy, and _consider how many excellent things might be said
+upon the occasion_, nobody on earth can conceive, says the great
+orator, how happy, how joyful it made me."
+
+"Kingdoms and provinces, cities and towns," continues Burton, "have
+their periods, and are consumed." "Kingdoms and provinces, and towns
+and cities," exclaims Mr. Shandy, throwing the sentence, like
+the "born orator" his son considered him, into the rhetorical
+interrogative, "have they not their periods?" "Where," he proceeds,
+"is Troy, and Mycenae, and Thebes, and Delos, and Persepolis, and
+Agrigentum? What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of
+Cyzicum and Mytilene? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon"
+(and all, with the curious exception of Mytilene, enumerated by
+Burton) "are now no more." And then the famous consolatory letter
+from Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of Tullia is laid under
+contribution--Burton's rendering of the Latin being followed almost
+word for word. "Returning out of Asia," declaims Mr. Shandy, "when I
+sailed from Aegina towards Megara" (when can this have been? thought
+my Uncle Toby), "I began to view the country round about. Aegina
+was behind me, Megara before," &c., and so on, down to the final
+reflection of the philosopher, "Remember that thou art but a man;" at
+which point Sterne remarks coolly, "Now, my Uncle Toby knew not that
+this last paragraph was an extract of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory
+letter to Tully"--the thing to be really known being that the
+paragraph was, in fact, Servius Sulpicius filtered through Burton.
+Again, and still quoting from the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Mr. Shandy
+remarks how "the Thracians wept when a child was born, and feasted and
+made merry when a man went out of the world; and with reason." He then
+goes on to lay predatory hands on that fine, sad passage in Lucian,
+which Burton had quoted before him: "Is it not better not to hunger at
+all, than to eat? not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?"
+(why not "than to drink to satisfy thirst?" as Lucian wrote and Burton
+translated). "Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, love
+and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a
+galled traveller who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his
+journey afresh?" Then, closing his Burton and opening his Bacon at the
+_Essay on Death_; he adds: "There is no terror, brother Toby, in its
+(Death's) looks but what it borrows from groans and convulsions, and"
+(here parody forces its way in) "the blowing of noses, and the wiping
+away of tears with the bottoms of curtains in a sick man's bed-room;"
+and with one more theft from Burton, after Seneca: "Consider, brother
+Toby, when we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not," this
+extraordinary cento of plagiarisms concludes.
+
+Not that this is Sterne's only raid upon the quaint old writer of whom
+he has here made such free use. Several other instances of word
+for word appropriation might be quoted from this and the succeeding
+volumes of _Tristram Shandy_. The apostrophe to "blessed health,"
+in c. xxxiii. of vol. v. is taken direct from the _Anatomy of
+Melancholy_; so is the phrase, "He has a gourd for his head and a
+pippin for his heart," in c. ix.; so is the jest about Franciscus
+Ribera's computation of the amount of cubic space required by the
+souls of the lost; so is Hilarion the hermit's comparison of his body
+with its unruly passions to a kicking ass. And there is a passage in
+the _Sentimental Journey_, the "Fragment in the Abderitans," which
+shows, Dr. Ferriar thinks--though it does not seem to me to show
+conclusively--that Sterne was unaware that what he was taking from
+Burton had been previously taken by Burton from Lucian.
+
+There is more excuse, in the opinion of the author of the
+_Illustrations_, for the literary thefts of the preacher than for
+those of the novelist; since in sermons, Dr. Ferriar observes drily,
+"the principal matter must consist of repetitions."
+
+But it can hardly, I think, be admitted that the kind of "repetitions"
+to which Sterne had recourse in the pulpit--or, at any rate,
+in compositions ostensibly prepared for the pulpit--are quite
+justifiable. Professor Jebb has pointed out, in a recent volume of
+this series, that the description of the tortures of the Inquisition,
+which so deeply moved Corporal Trim in the famous Sermon on
+Conscience, was really the work of Bentley; but Sterne has pilfered
+more freely from a divine more famous as a preacher than the great
+scholar whose words he appropriated on that occasion. "Then shame and
+grief go with her," he exclaims in his singular sermon on "The Levite
+and his Concubine;" "and wherever she seeks a shelter may the hand of
+Justice shut the door against her!" an exclamation which is taken,
+as, no doubt, indeed, was the whole suggestion of the somewhat strange
+subject, from the _Contemplations_ of Bishop Hall. And so, again, we
+find in Sterne's sermon the following:
+
+  "Mercy well becomes the heart of all Thy creatures! but most of
+  Thy servant, a Levite, who offers up so many daily sacrifices to Thee
+  for the transgressions of Thy people. But to little purpose, he would
+  add, have I served at Thy altar, where my business was to sue for
+  mercy, had I not learned to practise it."
+
+And in Hall's _Contemplations_ the following:
+
+  "Mercy becomes well the heart of any man, but most of a Levite.
+  He that had helped to offer so many sacrifices to God for the multitude
+  of every Israelite's sins saw how proportionable it was that man
+  should not hold one sin unpardonable. He had served at the altar
+  to no purpose, if he (whose trade was to sue for mercy) had not at all
+  learned to practise it."
+
+Sterne's twelfth sermon, on the Forgiveness of Injuries, is merely
+a diluted commentary on the conclusion of Hall's "Contemplation of
+Joseph." In the sixteenth sermon, the one on Shimei, we find:
+
+  "There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season
+  to give a mark of enmity and ill will: a word, a look, which at
+  one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the
+  heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which,
+  with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object
+  aimed at."
+
+This, it is evident, is but slightly altered, and by no means for the
+better, from the more terse and vigorous language of the Bishop:
+
+  "There is no small cruelty in the picking out of a time for mischief:
+  that word would scarce gall at one season which at another
+  killeth. The same shaft flying with the wind pierces deep, which
+  against it can hardly find strength to stick upright."
+
+But enough of these _pieces de conviction_. Indictments for plagiarism
+are often too hastily laid; but there can be no doubt, I should
+imagine, in the mind of any reasonable being upon the evidence here
+cited, that the offence in this case is clearly proved. Nor, I
+think, can there be much question as to its moral complexion. For the
+pilferings from Bishop Hall, at any rate, no shadow of excuse can,
+so far as I can see, be alleged. Sterne could not possibly plead any
+better justification for borrowing Hall's thoughts and phrases and
+passing them off upon his hearers or readers as original, than
+he could plead for claiming the authorship of one of the Bishop's
+benevolent actions and representing himself to the world as the doer
+of the good deed. In the actual as in the hypothetical case there is
+a dishonest appropriation by one man of the credit--in the former
+case the intellectual, in the latter the moral credit--belonging to
+another: the offence in the actual case being aggravated by the fact
+that it involves a fraud upon the purchaser of the sermon, who pays
+money for what he may already have in his library. The plagiarisms
+from Burton stand upon a slightly different though not, I think, a
+much more defensible footing. For in this case it has been urged
+that Sterne, being desirous of satirizing pedantry, was justified in
+resorting to the actually existent writings of an antique pedant of
+real life; and that since Mr. Shandy could not be made to talk more
+like himself than Burton talked like _him_, it was artistically
+lawful to put Burton's exact words into Mr. Shandy's mouth. It makes
+a difference, it may be said, that Sterne is not here speaking in his
+own person, as he is in his _Sermons_, but in the person of one of his
+characters. This casuistry, however, does not seem to me to be sound.
+Even as regards the passages from ancient authors, which, while
+quoting them from Burton, he tacitly represents to his readers
+as taken from his own stores of knowledge, the excuse is hardly
+sufficient; while as regards the original reflections of the author of
+the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ it obviously fails to apply at all. And in
+any case there could be no necessity for the omission to acknowledge
+the debt. Even admitting that no more characteristic reflections could
+have been composed for Mr. Shandy than were actually to be found in
+Burton, art is not so exacting a mistress as to compel the artist
+to plagiarize against his will. A scrupulous writer, being also as
+ingenious as Sterne, could have found some means of indicating the
+source from which he was borrowing without destroying the dramatic
+illusion of the scene.
+
+But it seems clear enough that Sterne himself was troubled by no
+conscientious qualms on this subject. Perhaps the most extraordinary
+instance of literary effrontery which was ever met with is the passage
+in vol. v.c. 1, which even that seasoned detective Dr. Ferriar is
+startled into pronouncing "singular." Burton had complained that
+writers were like apothecaries, who "make new mixtures every day," by
+"pouring out of one vessel into another." "We weave," he said, "the
+same web still, twist the same rope again and again." And Sterne
+_incolumi gravitate_ asks: "Shall we forever make new books as
+apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into
+another? Are we forever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope,
+forever on the same track, forever at the same pace?" And this he
+writes with the scissors actually opened in his hand for the almost
+bodily abstraction of the passage beginning, "Man, the most excellent
+and noble creature of the world!" Surely this denunciation of
+plagiarism by a plagiarist on the point of setting to work could only
+have been written by a man who looked upon plagiarism as a good joke.
+
+Apart, however, from the moralities of the matter, it must in fairness
+be admitted that in most cases Sterne is no servile copyist. He
+appropriates other men's thoughts and phrases, and with them, of
+course, the credit for the wit, the truth, the vigour, or the learning
+which characterizes them; but he is seldom found, in _Tristram
+Shandy_, at any rate, to have transferred them to his own pages out
+of a mere indolent inclination to save himself the trouble of
+composition. He takes them less as substitutes than as groundwork for
+his own invention--as so much material for his own inventive powers
+to work upon; and those powers do generally work upon them with
+conspicuous skill of elaboration. The series of cuttings, for
+instance, which he makes from Burton, on the occasion of Bobby
+Shandy's death, are woven into the main tissue of the dialogue with
+remarkable ingenuity and naturalness; and the bright strands of his
+own unborrowed humour fly flashing across the fabric at every transit
+of the shuttle. Or, to change the metaphor, we may say that in almost
+every instance the jewels that so glitter in their stolen setting were
+cut and set by Sterne himself. Let us allow that the most expert of
+lapidaries is not justified in stealing his settings; but let us still
+not forget that the _jewels_ are his, or permit our disapproval of his
+laxity of principle to make us unjust to his consummate skill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--HUMOUR AND SENTIMENT.
+
+To talk of "the style" of Sterne is almost to play one of those tricks
+with language of which he himself was so fond. For there is hardly any
+definition of the word which can make it possible to describe him as
+having any style at all. It is not only that he manifestly recognized
+no external canons whereto to conform the expression of his thoughts,
+but he had, apparently, no inclination to invent and observe--except,
+indeed, in the most negative of senses--any style of his own. The
+"style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say "the form
+of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly
+irregular, and that was all. His digressions, his asides, and his
+fooleries in general would, of course, have in any case necessitated
+a certain general jerkiness of manner; but this need hardly have
+extended itself habitually to the structure of individual sentences,
+and as a matter of fact he can at times write, as he does for the most
+part in his _Sermons_, in a style which is not the less vigorous for
+being fairly correct. But as a rule his mode of expressing himself is
+destitute of any pretensions to precision; and in many instances it
+is a perfect marvel of literary slipshod. Nor is there any ground for
+believing that the slovenliness was invariably intentional. Sterne's
+truly hideous French--French at which even Stratford-atte-Bowe would
+have stood aghast--is in itself sufficient evidence of a natural
+insensibility to grammatical accuracy. Here there can be no suspicion
+of designed defiance of rules; and more than one solecism of rather
+a serious kind in his use of English words and phrases affords
+confirmatory testimony to the same point. His punctuation is fearful
+and wonderful, even for an age in which the _rationale_ of punctuation
+was more imperfectly understood than it is at present; and this,
+though an apparently slight matter, is not without value as an
+indication of ways of thought. But if we can hardly describe Sterne's
+style as being in the literary sense a style at all, it has a very
+distinct _colloquial_ character of its own, and as such it is nearly
+as much deserving of praise as from the literary point of view it is
+open to exception. Chaotic as it is in the syntactical sense, it is
+a perfectly clear vehicle for the conveyance of thought: we are as
+rarely at a loss for the meaning of one of Sterne's sentences as we
+are, for very different reasons, for the meaning of one of Macaulay's.
+And his language is so full of life and colour, his tone so animated
+and vivacious, that we forget we are reading and not _listening_, and
+we are as little disposed to be exacting in respect to form as though
+we were listeners in actual fact. Sterne's manner, in short, may
+be that of a bad and careless writer, but it is the manner of a
+first-rate talker; and this, of course, enhances rather than detracts
+from the unwearying charm of his wit and humour.
+
+To attempt a precise and final distinction between these two
+last-named qualities in Sterne or any one else would be no very
+hopeful task, perhaps; but those who have a keen perception of either
+find no great difficulty in discriminating, as a matter of feeling,
+between the two. And what is true of the qualities themselves is
+true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the men by whom they have been most
+conspicuously displayed. Some wits have been humourists also; nearly
+all humourists have been also wits; yet the two fall, on the whole,
+into tolerably well-marked classes, and the ordinary uncritical
+judgment would, probably, enable most men to state with sufficient
+certainty the class to which each famous name in the world's
+literature belongs. Aristophanes, Shakspeare, Cervantes, Moliere,
+Swift, Fielding, Lamb, Richter, Carlyle: widely as these writers
+differ from each other in style and genius, the least skilled reader
+would hardly need to be told that the list which includes them all
+is a catalogue of humourists. And Cicero, Lucian, Pascal, Voltaire,
+Congreve, Pope, Sheridan, Courier, Sydney Smith--this, I suppose,
+would be recognized at once as an enumeration of wits. Some of these
+humourists, like Fielding, like Richter, like Carlyle, are always, or
+almost always, humourists alone. Some of these wits, like Pascal,
+like Pope, like Courier, are wits with no, or but slight, admixture
+of humour; and in the classification of these there is of course
+no difficulty at all. But even with the wits who very often give us
+humour also, and with the humourists who as often delight us with
+their wit, we seldom find ourselves in any doubt as to the real and
+more essential affinities of each. It is not by the wit which he has
+infused into his talk, so much as by the humour with which he has
+delineated the character, that Shakspeare has given his Falstaff an
+abiding place in our memories. It is not the repartees of Benedick and
+Beatrice, but the immortal fatuity of Dogberry, that the name of _Much
+Ado About Nothing_ recalls. None of the verbal quips of Touchstone
+tickle us like his exquisite patronage of William and the fascination
+which he exercises over the melancholy Jaques. And it is the same
+throughout all Shakspeare. It is of the humours of Bottom, and Launce,
+and Shallow, and Sly, and Aguecheek; it is of the laughter that treads
+upon the heels of horror and pity and awe, as we listen to the
+Porter in _Macbeth_, to the Grave-digger in _Hamlet_, to the Fool in
+_Lear_--it is of these that we think when we think of Shakspeare in
+any other but his purely poetic mood. Whenever, that is to say, we
+think of him as anything but a poet, we think of him, not as a wit,
+but as a humourist. So, too, it is not the dagger-thrusts of the
+_Drapier's Letters_, but the broad ridicule of the _Voyage to Laputa_,
+the savage irony of the _Voyage to the Houyhnhnms_, that we associate
+with the name of Swift. And, conversely, it is the cold, epigrammatic
+glitter of Congreve's dialogue, the fizz and crackle of the fireworks
+which Sheridan serves out with undiscriminating hand to the most
+insignificant of his characters--it is this which stamps the work of
+these dramatists with characteristics far more marked than any which
+belong to them in right of humorous portraiture of human foibles or
+ingenious invention of comic incident.
+
+The place of Sterne is unmistakably among writers of the former class.
+It is by his humour--his humour of character, his dramatic as distinct
+from his critical descriptive _personal_ humour--though, of course,
+he possesses this also, as all humourists must--that he lives and
+will live. In _Tristram Shandy_, as in the _Sermons_, there is a
+sufficiency of wit, and considerably more than a sufficiency of
+humorous reflection, innuendo, and persiflage; but it is the actors
+in his almost plotless drama who have established their creator in his
+niche in the Temple of Fame. We cannot, indeed, be sure that what has
+given him his hold upon posterity is what gave him his popularity with
+his contemporaries. On the contrary, it is, perhaps, more probable
+that he owed his first success with the public of his day to
+those eccentricities which are for us a little too consciously
+eccentric--those artifices which fail a little too conspicuously in
+the _ars celandi artem_. But however these tricks may have pleased in
+days when such tricks were new, they much more often weary than divert
+us now; and I suspect that many a man whose delight in the Corporal
+and his master, in Bridget and her mistress, is as fresh as ever,
+declines to accompany their creator in those perpetual digressions
+into nonsense or semi-nonsense the fashion of which Sterne borrowed
+from Rabelais, without Rabelais's excuse for adopting it. To us of
+this day the real charm and distinction of the book is due to the
+marvellous combination of vigour and subtlety in its portrayal of
+character, and in the purity and delicacy of its humour. Those last
+two apparently paradoxical substantives are chosen advisedly, and
+employed as the most convenient way of introducing that disagreeable
+question which no commentator on Sterne can possibly shirk, but which
+every admirer of Sterne must approach with reluctance. There is, of
+course, a sense in which Sterne's humour--if, indeed, we may bestow
+that name on the form of jocularity to which I refer--is the very
+reverse of pure and delicate: a sense in which it is impure and
+indelicate in the highest degree. On this it is necessary, however
+briefly, to touch; and to the weighty and many-counted indictment
+which may be framed against Sterne on this head there is, of course,
+but one possible plea--the plea of guilty. Nay, the plea must go
+further than a mere admission of the offence; it must include an
+admission of the worst motive, the worst spirit as animating the
+offender. It is not necessary to my purpose, nor doubtless congenial
+to the taste of the reader, that I should enter upon any critical
+analysis of this quality in the author's work, or compare him in this
+respect with the two other great humourists who have been the
+worst offenders in the same way. In one of those highly interesting
+criticisms of English literature which, even when they most
+conspicuously miss the mark, are so instructive to Englishmen, M.
+Taine has instituted an elaborate comparison--very much, I need hardly
+say, to the advantage of the latter--between the indecency of Swift
+and that of Rabelais--that "good giant," as his countryman calls him,
+"who rolls himself joyously about on his dunghill, thinking no evil."
+And no doubt the world of literary moralists will always be divided
+upon the question--one mainly of national temperament--whether mere
+animal spirits or serious satiric purpose is the best justification
+for offences against cleanliness. It is, of course, only the former
+theory, if either, which could possibly avail Sterne, and it would
+need an unpleasantly minute analysis of this characteristic in his
+writings to ascertain how far M. Taine's eloquent defence of Rabelais
+could be made applicable to his case. But the inquiry, one is glad
+to think, is as unnecessary as it would be disagreeable; for,
+unfortunately for Sterne, he must be condemned on a _quantitative_
+comparison of indecency, whatever may be his fate when compared
+with these other two great writers as regards the quality of their
+respective transgressions. There can be no denying, I mean, that
+Sterne is of all writers the most permeated and penetrated with
+impurity of thought and suggestion; that in no other writer is its
+latent presence more constantly felt, even if there be any in whom
+it is more often openly obtruded. The unclean spirit pursues him
+everywhere, disfiguring his scenes of humour, demoralizing his
+passages of serious reflection, debasing even his sentimental
+interludes. His coarseness is very often as great a blot on his art as
+on his morality--a thing which can very rarely be said of either Swift
+or Rabelais; and it is sometimes so distinctly fatal a blemish from
+the purely literary point of view, that one is amazed at the critical
+faculty which could have tolerated its presence.
+
+But when all this has been said of Sterne's humour it still remains
+true that, in another sense of the words "purity" and "delicacy,"
+he possesses humour more pure and delicate than, perhaps, any other
+writer in the world can show. For if that humour is the purest and
+most delicate which is the freest from any admixture of farce,
+and produces its effects with the lightest touch, and the least
+obligations to ridiculous incident, or what may be called the
+"physical grotesque," in any shape--then one can point to passages
+from Sterne's pen which, for fulfilment of these conditions, it would
+be difficult to match elsewhere. Strange as it may seem to say this
+of the literary Gilray who drew the portrait of Dr. Slop, and of the
+literary Grimaldi who tormented Phutatorius with the hot chestnut,
+it is nevertheless the fact that scene after scene may be cited from
+_Tristram Shandy_, and those the most delightful in the book, which
+are not only free from even the momentary intrusion of either the
+clown or the caricaturist, but even from the presence of "comic
+properties" (as actors would call them) of any kind: scenes of which
+the external setting is of the simplest possible character, while the
+humour is of that deepest and most penetrative kind which springs
+from the eternal incongruities of human nature, the ever-recurring
+cross-purposes of human lives.
+
+Carlyle classes Sterne with Cervantes among the great humourists of
+the world; and from one, and that the most important, point of view
+the praise is not extravagant. By no other writer besides Sterne,
+perhaps, since the days of the Spanish humourist, have the vast
+incongruities of human character been set forth with so masterly a
+hand. It is in virtue of the new insight which his humour opens to
+us of the immensity and variety of man's life that Cervantes makes
+us feel that he is _great_: not delightful merely--not even eternally
+delightful only, and secure of immortality through the perennial human
+need of joy--but _great_, but immortal, in right of that which makes
+Shakspeare and the Greek dramatists immortal, namely, the power, not
+alone over the pleasure-loving part of man's nature, but over that
+equally universal but more enduring element in it, his emotions of
+wonder and of awe. It is to this greater power--this control over a
+greater instinct than the human love of joy, that Cervantes owes his
+greatness; and it will be found, though it may seem at first a hard
+saying, that Sterne shares this power with Cervantes. To pass from
+Quixote and Sancho to Walter and Toby Shandy involves, of course, a
+startling change of dramatic key--a notable lowering of dramatic
+tone. It is almost like passing from poetry to prose: it is certainly
+passing from the poetic in spirit and surroundings to the profoundly
+prosaic in fundamental conception and in every individual detail.
+But those who do not allow accidental and external dissimilarities to
+obscure for them the inward and essential resemblances of things, must
+often, I think, have experienced from one of the Shandy dialogues the
+same _sort_ of impression that they derive from some of the most nobly
+humorous colloquies between the knight and his squire, and must have
+been conscious through all outward differences of key and tone of a
+common element in each. It is, of course, a resemblance of _relations_
+and not of personalities; for though there is something of the Knight
+of La Mancha in Mr. Shandy, there is nothing of Sancho about his
+brother. But the serio-comic game of cross-purposes is the same
+between both couples; and what one may call the irony of human
+intercourse is equally profound, and pointed with equal subtlety,
+in each. In the Spanish romance, of course, it is not likely to be
+missed. It is enough in itself that the deranged brain which takes
+windmills for giants, and carriers for knights, and Rosinante for a
+Bucephalus, has fixed upon Sancho Panza--the crowning proof of its
+mania--as the fitting squire of a knight-errant. To him--to this
+compound of somnolence, shrewdness, and good nature--to this creature
+with no more tincture of romantic idealism than a wine-skin, the
+knight addresses, without misgiving, his lofty dissertations on the
+glories and the duties of chivalry--the squire responding after
+his fashion. And thus these two hold converse, contentedly
+incomprehensible to each other, and with no suspicion that they are as
+incapable of interchanging ideas as the inhabitants of two different
+planets. With what heart-stirring mirth, and yet with what strangely
+deeper feeling of the infinite variety of human nature, do we follow
+their converse throughout! Yet Quixote and Sancho are not more
+life-like and human, nor nearer together at one point and farther
+apart at another, than are Walter Shandy and his brother. The squat
+little Spanish peasant is not more gloriously incapable of following
+the chivalric vagaries of his master than the simple soldier is of
+grasping the philosophic crotchets of his brother. Both couples are
+in sympathetic contact absolute and complete at one point; at another
+they are "poles asunder" both of them. And in both contrasts there
+is that sense of futility and failure, of alienation and
+misunderstanding--that element of underlying pathos, in short, which
+so strangely gives its keenest salt to humour. In both alike there is
+the same suggestion of the Infinite of disparity bounding the finite
+of resemblance--of the Incommensurable in man and nature, beside which
+all minor uniformities sink into insignificance.
+
+The pathetic element which underlies and deepens the humour is, of
+course, produced in the two cases in two exactly opposite ways. In
+both cases it is a picture of human simplicity--of a noble and artless
+nature out of harmony with its surroundings--which moves us;
+but whereas in the Spanish romance the simplicity is that of the
+_incompris_, in the English novel it is that of the man with whom
+the _incompris_ consorts. If there is pathos as well as humour, and
+deepening the humour, in the figure of the distraught knight-errant
+talking so hopelessly over the head of his attached squire's morality,
+so too there is pathos, giving depth to the humour of the eccentric
+philosopher, shooting so hopelessly wide of the intellectual
+appreciation of the most affectionate of brothers. One's sympathy,
+perhaps, is even more strongly appealed to in the latter than in the
+former case, because the effort of the good Captain to understand is
+far greater than that of the Don to make himself understood, and the
+concern of the former at his failure is proportionately more marked
+than that of the latter at _his_. And the general _rapport_ between
+one of the two ill-assorted pairs is much closer than that of
+the other. It is, indeed, the tantalizing approach to a mutual
+understanding which gives so much more subtle a zest to the humour
+of the relations between the two brothers Shandy than to that which
+arises out of the relations between the philosopher and his wife.
+The broad comedy of the dialogues between Mr. and Mrs. Shandy is
+irresistible in its way: but it _is_ broad comedy. The philosopher
+knows that his wife does not comprehend him: she knows that she never
+will; and neither of them much cares. The husband snubs her openly
+for her mental defects, and she with perfect placidity accepts his
+rebukes. "Master," as he once complains, "of one of the finest chains
+of reasoning in the world, he is unable for the soul of him to get a
+single link of it into the head of his wife;" but we never hear him
+lamenting in this serio-comic fashion over his brother's inability to
+follow his processes of reasoning. That is too serious a matter with
+both of them; their mutual desire to share each other's ideas and
+tastes is too strong; and each time that the philosopher shows his
+impatience with the soldier's fortification-hobby, or the soldier
+breaks his honest shins over one of the philosopher's crotchets, the
+regret and remorse on either side is equally acute and sincere. It
+must be admitted, however, that Captain Shandy is the one who the more
+frequently subjects himself to pangs of this sort, and who is the more
+innocent sufferer of the two.
+
+From the broad and deep humour of this central conception of contrast
+flow as from a head-water innumerable rills of comedy through many and
+many a page of dialogue; but not, of course, from this source alone.
+Uncle Toby is ever delightful, even when his brother is not near him
+as his foil; the faithful Corporal brings out another side of his
+character, upon which we linger with equal pleasure of contemplation;
+the allurements of the Widow Wadman reveal him to us in yet
+another--but always in a captivating aspect. There is, too, one need
+hardly say, an abundance of humour, of a high, though not the highest,
+order in the minor characters of the story--in Mrs. Shandy, in the
+fascinating widow, and even, under the coarse lines of the physical
+caricature, in the keen little Catholic, Slop himself. But it is in
+Toby Shandy alone that humour reaches that supreme level which it is
+only capable of attaining when the collision of contrasted qualities
+in a human character produces a corresponding conflict of the emotions
+of mirth and tenderness in the minds of those who contemplate it.
+
+This, however, belongs more rightfully to the consideration of the
+creative and dramatic element in Sterne's genius; and an earlier place
+in the analysis is claimed by that power over the emotion of pity upon
+which Sterne, beyond question, prided himself more highly than upon
+any other of his gifts. He preferred, we can plainly see, to think of
+himself, not as the great humourist, but as the great sentimentalist;
+and though the word "sentiment" had something even in _his_ day of the
+depreciatory meaning which distinguishes it nowadays from "pathos,"
+there can be little doubt that the thing appeared to Sterne to be, on
+the whole, and both in life and literature, rather admirable than the
+reverse.
+
+What, then, were his notions of true "sentiment" in literature?
+We have seen elsewhere that he repeats--it would appear
+unconsciously--and commends the canon which Horace propounds to the
+tragic poet in the words:
+
+  "Si vis me flere, dolendum
+  Primum ipsi tibi: tunc tua me infortunia laedent."
+
+And that canon is sound enough, no doubt, in the sense in which it was
+meant, and in its relation to the person to whom it was addressed. A
+tragic drama, peopled with heroes who set forth their woes in frigid
+and unimpassioned verse, will unquestionably leave its audience as
+cold as itself. Nor is this true of drama alone. All _poetry_, indeed,
+whether dramatic or other, presupposes a sympathetic unity of emotion
+between the poet and those whom he addresses; and to this extent it
+is obviously true that _he_ must feel before they can. Horace, who was
+(what every literary critic is not) a man of the world and an observer
+of human nature, did not, of course, mean that this capacity for
+feeling was all, or even the chief part, of the poetic faculty. He
+must have seen many an "intense" young Roman make that pathetic
+error of the young in all countries and of all periods--the error of
+mistaking the capacity of emotion for the gift of expression. He did,
+however, undoubtedly mean that a poet's power of affecting others
+presupposes passion in himself; and, as regards the poet, he was
+right. But his criticism takes no account whatever of one form of
+appeal to the emotions which has been brought by later art to a high
+pitch of perfection, but with which the personal feeling of the artist
+has not much more to do than the "passions" of an auctioneer's clerk
+have to do with the compilation of his inventory. A poet himself,
+Horace wrote for poets; to him the pathetic implied the ideal, the
+imaginative, the rhetorical; he lived before the age of Realism and
+the Realists, and would scarcely have comprehended either the men or
+the method if he could have come across them. Had he done so, however,
+he would have been astonished to find his canon reversed, and to have
+perceived that the primary condition of the realist's success, and
+the distinctive note of those writers who have pressed genius into
+the service of realism, is that they do _not_ share--that they are
+unalterably and ostentatiously free from--the emotions to which
+they appeal in their readers. A fortunate accident has enabled us to
+compare the treatment which the world's greatest tragic poet and its
+greatest master of realistic tragedy have respectively applied to
+virtually the same subject; and the two methods are never likely to
+be again so impressively contrasted as in _King Lear_ and _Le Pere
+Goriot_. But, in truth, it must be impossible for any one who feels
+Balzac's power not to feel also how it is heightened by Balzac's
+absolute calm--a calm entirely different from that stern composure
+which was merely a point of style and not an attitude of the heart
+with the old Greek tragedians--a calm which, unlike theirs, insulates,
+so to speak, and is intended to insulate, the writer, to the end that
+his individuality, of which only the electric current of sympathy ever
+makes a reader conscious, may disappear, and the characters of the
+drama stand forth the more life-like from the complete concealment of
+the hand that moves them.
+
+Of this kind of art Horace, as has been said, knew nothing, and his
+canon only applies to it by the rule of contraries. Undoubtedly, and
+in spite of the marvels which one great genius has wrought with it, it
+is a form lower than the poetic--essentially a prosaic, and in many
+or most hands an unimaginative, form of art; but for this very reason,
+that it demands nothing of its average practitioner but a keen eye for
+facts, great and small, and a knack of graphically recording them, it
+has become a far more commonly and successfully cultivated form of
+art than any other. As to the question who _are_ its practitioners, it
+would, of course, be the merest dogmatism to commit one's self to any
+attempt at rigid classification in such a matter. There are few if any
+writers who can be described without qualification either as realists
+or as idealists. Nearly all of them, probably, are realists at one
+moment and in one mood, and idealists at other moments and in other
+moods. All that need be insisted on is that the methods of the two
+forms of art are essentially distinct, and that artistic failure must
+result from any attempt to combine them; for, whereas the primary
+condition of success in the one case is that the reader should feel
+the sympathetic presence of the writer, the primary condition of
+success in the other is that the writer should efface himself from the
+reader's consciousness altogether. And it is, I think, the defiance of
+these conditions which explains why so much of Sterne's deliberately
+pathetic writing is, from the artistic point of view, a failure. It is
+this which makes one feel so much of it to be strained and unnatural,
+and which brings it to pass that some of his most ambitious efforts
+leave the reader indifferent, or even now and then contemptuous. In
+those passages of pathos in which the effect is distinctly sought
+by realistic means Sterne is perpetually ignoring the "self-denying
+ordinance" of his adopted method--perpetually obtruding his own
+individuality, and begging us, as it were, to turn from the picture to
+the artist, to cease gazing for a moment at his touching creation, and
+to admire the fine feeling, the exquisitely sympathetic nature of the
+man who created it. No doubt, as we must in fairness remember, it was
+part of his "humour"--in Ancient Pistol's sense of the word--to do
+this; it is true, no doubt (and a truth which Sterne's most famous
+critic was too prone to ignore), that his sentiment is not always
+_meant_ for serious;[1] nay, the very word "sentimental" itself,
+though in Sterne's day, of course, it had acquired but a part of its
+present disparaging significance, is a sufficient proof of that. But
+there are, nevertheless, plenty of passages, both in _Tristram Shandy_
+and the _Sentimental Journey_, where the intention is wholly and
+unmixedly pathetic--where the smile is not for a moment meant to
+compete with the tear--which are, nevertheless, it must be owned,
+complete failures, and failures traceable with much certainty, or so
+it seems to me, to the artistic error above-mentioned.
+
+[Footnote 1: Surely it was not so meant, for instance, in the passage
+about the _desobligeante_, which had been "standing so many months
+unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessien's coach-yard. Much, indeed,
+was not to be said for it, but something might; and, when a few words
+will rescue Misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be
+a churl of them." "Does anybody," asks Thackeray in a strangely
+matter-of-fact fashion, "believe that this is a real sentiment? That
+this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery--out of an
+old cab--is genuine feeling?" Nobody, we should say. But, on the other
+hand, does anybody--or did anybody before Thackeray--suggest that it
+was meant to pass for genuine feeling? Is it not an obvious piece of
+mock pathetic?]
+
+In one famous case, indeed, the failure can hardly be described as
+other than ludicrous. The figure of the distraught Maria of Moulines
+is tenderly drawn; the accessories of the picture--her goat, her dog,
+her pipe, her song to the Virgin--though a little theatrical, perhaps,
+are skilfully touched in; and so long as the Sentimental Traveller
+keeps our attention fixed upon her and them the scene prospers well
+enough. But, after having bidden us duly note how "the tears trickled
+down her cheeks," the Traveller continues: "I sat down close by her,
+and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell with my handkerchief.
+I then steeped it in my own--and then in hers--and then in mine--and
+then I wiped hers again; and as I did it I felt such undescribable
+emotions within me as, I am sure, could not be accounted for from any
+combinations of matter and motion." The reader of this may well ask
+himself in wonderment whether he is really expected to make a third
+in the lachrymose group. We look at the passage again, and more
+carefully, to see if, after all, we may not be intended to laugh, and
+not to cry at it; but on finding, as clearly appears, that we actually
+_are_ intended to cry at it the temptation to laugh becomes almost
+irresistible. We proceed, however, to the account of Maria's
+wanderings to Rome and back, and we come to the pretty passage which
+follows:
+
+  "How she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could
+  not tell; but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.
+  Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I; and wast thou in my own
+  land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee;
+  thou shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup; I
+  would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings
+  I would seek after thee, and bring thee back. When the sun went
+  down I would say my prayers; and when I had done thou shouldst
+  play thy evening-song upon thy pipe; nor would the incense of my
+  sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a
+  broken heart."
+
+But then follows more whimpering:
+
+  "Nature melted within me [continues Sterne] as I said this; and
+  Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped
+  too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream.
+  And where will you dry it, Maria? said I. I'll dry it in my bosom,
+  said she; 'twill do me good. And is your heart still so warm, Maria?
+  said I. I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows.
+  She looked with wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then,
+  without saying anything, took her pipe and played her service to the
+  Virgin."
+
+Which are we meant to look at--the sorrows of Maria? or the
+sensibilities of the Sentimental Traveller? or the condition of the
+pocket-handkerchief? I think it doubtful whether any writer of the
+first rank has ever perpetrated so disastrous a literary failure
+as this scene; but the main cause of that failure appears to me not
+doubtful at all. The artist has no business within the frame of the
+picture, and his intrusion into it has spoilt it. The method adopted
+from the commencement is ostentatiously objective: we are taken
+straight into Maria's presence, and bidden to look at and to pity the
+unhappy maiden as _described_ by the Traveller who met her. No attempt
+is made to place us at the outset in sympathy with _him_; he, until he
+thrusts himself before us, with his streaming eyes, and his drenched
+pocket-handkerchief, is a mere reporter of the scene before him, and
+he and his tears are as much out of place as if he were the compositor
+who set up the type. It is not merely that we don't want to know how
+the scene affected him, and that we resent as an impertinence the
+elaborate account of his tender emotions; we don't wish to be reminded
+of his presence at all. For, as we can know nothing (effectively)
+of Maria's sorrows except as given in her appearance--the historical
+recital of them and their cause being too curt and bald to be able to
+move us--the best chance for moving our compassion for her is to
+make the illusion of her presence as dramatically real as possible;
+a chance which is, therefore, completely destroyed when the author of
+the illusion insists on thrusting himself between ourselves and the
+scene.
+
+But, in truth, this whole episode of Maria of Moulines was, like more
+than one of Sterne's efforts after the pathetic, condemned to failure
+from the very conditions of its birth. These abortive efforts are
+no natural growth of his artistic genius; they proceed rather from
+certain morbidly stimulated impulses of his moral nature which he
+forced his artistic genius to subserve. He had true pathetic power,
+simple yet subtle, at his command; but it visited him unsought, and by
+inspiration from without. It came when he was in the dramatic and
+not in the introspective mood; when he was thinking honestly of
+his characters, and not of himself. But he was, unfortunately, too
+prone--and a long course of moral self-indulgence had confirmed him in
+it--to the habit of caressing his own sensibilities; and the result of
+this was always to set him upon one of those attempts to be pathetic
+of _malice prepense_ of which Maria of Moulines is one example, and
+the too celebrated dead donkey of Nampont another. "It is agreeably
+and skilfully done, that dead jackass," writes Thackeray; "like M. de
+Soubise's cook on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up
+quite tender, and with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine
+feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and
+horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with
+a dead donkey inside! Psha! Mountebank! I'll not give thee one
+penny-piece for that trick, donkey and all." That is vigorous
+ridicule, and not wholly undeserved; but, on the other hand, not
+entirely deserved. There is less of artistic trick, it seems to me,
+and more of natural foible, about Sterne's literary sentiment than
+Thackeray was ever willing to believe; and I can find nothing worse,
+though nothing better, in the dead ass of Nampont than in Maria of
+Moulines. I do not think there is any conscious simulation of
+feeling in this Nampont scene; it is that the feeling itself is
+overstrained--that Sterne, hugging, as usual, his own sensibilities,
+mistook their value in expression for the purposes of art. The
+Sentimental Traveller does not obtrude himself to the same extent as
+in the scene at Moulines; but a little consideration of the scene will
+show how much Sterne relied on the mere presentment of the fact that
+here was an unfortunate peasant who had lost his dumb companion, and
+here a tender-hearted gentleman looking on and pitying him. As for
+any attempts to bring out, by objective dramatic touches, either the
+grievousness of the bereavement or the grief of the mourner, such
+attempts as are made to do this are either commonplace or "one step
+in advance" of the sublime. Take this, for instance: "The mourner was
+sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with his ass's pannel and its
+bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time, then laid them
+down, looked at them, and shook his head. He then took the crust of
+bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time
+in his hand, then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle--looked
+wistfully at the little arrangement he had made--and then gave a sigh.
+The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him," &c. Simplicity,
+indeed, of a marvellous sort which could show itself by so
+extraordinary a piece of acting as this! Is there any critic who
+candidly thinks it natural--I do not mean in the sense of mere
+every-day probability, but of conformity to the laws of human
+character? Is it true that in any country, among any people, however
+emotional, grief--real, unaffected, un-selfconscious grief--ever did
+or ever could display itself by such a trick as that of laying a piece
+of bread on the bit of a dead ass's bridle? Do we not feel that if we
+had been on the point of offering comfort or alms to the mourner, and
+saw him go through this extraordinary piece of pantomime, we should
+have buttoned up our hearts and pockets forthwith? Sentiment,
+again, sails very near the wind of the ludicrous in the reply to the
+Traveller's remark that the mourner had been a merciful master to the
+dead ass. "Alas!" the latter says, "I thought so when he was alive,
+but now that he is dead I think otherwise. I fear the weight of
+_myself and my afflictions_ have been too much for him." And the scene
+ends flatly enough with the scrap of morality: "'Shame on the world!'
+said I to myself. 'Did we love each other as this poor soul loved his
+ass, 'twould be something.'"
+
+The whole incident, in short, is one of those examples of the
+deliberate-pathetic with which Sterne's highly natural art had
+least, and his highly artificial nature most, to do. He is never so
+unsuccessful as when, after formally announcing, as it were, that he
+means to be touching, he proceeds to select his subject, to marshal
+his characters, to group his accessories, and with painful and
+painfully apparent elaboration to work up his scene to the weeping
+point. There is no obviousness of suggestion, no spontaneity of
+treatment about this "Dead Ass" episode; indeed, there is some reason
+to believe that it was one of those most hopeless of efforts--the
+attempt at the mechanical repetition of a former triumph. It is by no
+means improbable, at any rate, that the dead ass of Nampont owes its
+presence in the _Sentimental Journey_ to the reception met with by the
+live ass of Lyons in the seventh volume of _Tristram Shandy_. And yet
+what an astonishing difference between the two sketches!
+
+  "'Twas a poor ass, who had just turned in, with a couple of large
+  panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and
+  cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious with his two fore-feet on the
+  inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the
+  street, as not knowing very well whether he would go in or no.
+  Now, 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike.
+  There is a patient endurance of sufferings wrote so unaffectedly in
+  his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him that it
+  always disarms me, and to that degree that I do not like to speak
+  unkindly to him; on the contrary, meet him where I will, in town or
+  country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage,
+  I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and, as one
+  word begets another (if he has as little to do as I), I generally
+  fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination
+  so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his
+  countenance--and where those carry me not deep enough, in flying from
+  my own heart into his, and feeling what is natural for an ass to think,
+  as well as a man, upon the occasion.... Come, Honesty! said I, seeing
+  it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, art thou for
+  coming in or going out? The ass twisted his head round, to look up the
+  street. Well, replied I, we'll wait a minute for thy driver. He turned
+  his head thoughtfully about, and looked wistfully the opposite way. I
+  understand thee perfectly, answered I: if thou takest a wrong step
+  in this affair he will cudgel thee to death. Well, a minute is but a
+  minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be
+  set down as ill spent. He was eating the stem of an artichoke as
+  this discourse went on, and, in the little peevish contentions of nature
+  betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his
+  mouth half a dozen times, and picked it up again. God help thee,
+  Jack! said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter
+  blow, I fear, for its wages--'tis all, all bitterness to thee, whatever
+  life is to others. And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is
+  as bitter, I dare say, as soot (for he had cast aside the stem), and
+  thou hast not a friend, perhaps, in all this world that will give thee a
+  macaroon. In saying this I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had
+  just purchased, and gave him one; and, at this moment that I am
+  telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in
+  the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon, than of
+  benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. When the
+  ass had eaten his macaroon I pressed him to come in. The poor
+  beast was heavy loaded, his legs seemed to tremble under him, he
+  hung rather backwards, and as I pulled at his halter it broke short
+  in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face. 'Don't thrash me
+  with it; but if you will, you may.' 'If I do,' said I, 'I'll be d----d.'"
+
+Well might Thackeray say of this passage that, "the critic who refuses
+to see in it wit, humour, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real
+sentiment, must be hard indeed to move and to please." It is, in
+truth, excellent; and its excellence is due to its possessing nearly
+every one of those qualities, positive and negative, which the two
+other scenes above quoted are without. The author does not here
+obtrude himself, does not importune us to admire his exquisitely
+compassionate nature; on the contrary, he at once amuses us and
+enlists our sympathies by that subtly humorous piece of self-analysis,
+in which he shows how large an admixture of curiosity was contained
+in his benevolence. The incident, too, is well chosen. No forced
+concurrence of circumstances brings it about: it is such as any man
+might have met with anywhere in his travels, and it is handled in a
+simple and manly fashion. The reader is _with_ the writer throughout;
+and their common mood of half-humorous pity is sustained, unforced,
+but unbroken, from first to last.
+
+One can hardly say as much for another of the much-quoted pieces from
+the _Sentimental Journey_--the description of the caged starling.
+The passage is ingeniously worked into its context; and if we were
+to consider it as only intended to serve the purpose of a sudden
+and dramatic discomfiture of the Traveller's somewhat inconsiderate
+moralizings on captivity, it would be well enough. But, regarded as
+a substantive appeal to one's emotions, it is open to the criticisms
+which apply to most other of Sterne's too deliberate attempts at the
+pathetic. The details of the picture are too much insisted on, and
+there is too much of self-consciousness in the artist. Even at the
+very close of the story of Le Fevre's death--finely told though, as
+a whole, it is--there is a jarring note. Even while the dying man is
+breathing his last our sleeve is twitched as we stand at his bedside,
+and our attention forcibly diverted from the departing soldier to the
+literary ingenuities of the man who is describing his end:
+
+  "There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity,
+  but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul, and
+  showed you the goodness of his nature. To this there was something
+  in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned
+  to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that
+  before my Uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making
+  to the father had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees,
+  and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards
+  him. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing
+  cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel,
+  the heart, rallied back; the film forsook his eyes for a moment; he
+  looked up wishfully in my Uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon
+  his boy--and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken."
+
+How excellent all that is! and how perfectly would the scene have
+ended had it closed with the tender and poetic image which thus
+describes the dying soldier's commendation of his orphan boy to the
+care of his brother-in-arms! But what of this, which closes the scene,
+in fact?
+
+  "Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the
+  pulse fluttered--stopped--went on--throbbed--stopped again--moved,
+  stopped. Shall I go on? No."
+
+Let those admire this who can. To me I confess it seems to spoil a
+touching and simple death-bed scene by a piece of theatrical trickery.
+
+The sum, in fact, of the whole matter appears to be, that the
+sentiment on which Sterne so prided himself--the acute sensibilities
+which he regarded with such extraordinary complacency, were, as has
+been before observed, the weakness, and not the strength, of his
+pathetic style. When Sterne the artist is uppermost, when he is
+surveying his characters with that penetrating eye of his, and above
+all when he is allowing his subtle and tender humour to play upon them
+unrestrained, he can touch the springs of compassionate emotion in
+us with a potent and unerring hand. But when Sterne the man is
+uppermost--when he is looking inward and not outward, contemplating
+his own feelings instead of those of his personages, his cunning
+fails him altogether. He is at his best in pathos when he is most
+the humourist; or rather, we may almost say, his pathos is never good
+unless when it is closely interwoven with his humour. In this, of
+course, there is nothing at all surprising. The only marvel is, that a
+man who was such a master of the humorous, in its highest and deepest
+sense, should seem to have so little understood how near together
+lie the sources of tears and laughter on the very way-side of man's
+mysterious life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+CREATIVE AND DRAMATIC POWER.--PLACE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+Subtle as is Sterne's humour, and true as, in its proper moods, is
+his pathos, it is not to these but to the parent gift from which they
+sprang, and perhaps to only one special display of that gift, that he
+owes his immortality. We are accustomed to bestow so lightly this last
+hyperbolic honour--hyperbolic always, even when we are speaking of
+a Homer or a Shakspeare, if only we project the vision far enough
+forward through time--that the comparative ease with which it is to be
+earned has itself come to be exaggerated. There are so many "deathless
+ones" about--if I may put the matter familiarly--in conversation and
+in literature, that we get into the way of thinking that they are
+really a considerable body in actual fact, and that the works which
+have triumphed over death are far more numerous still. The real truth,
+however, is, that not only are "those who reach posterity a very
+select company indeed," but most of them have come much nearer missing
+their destiny than is popularly supposed. Of the dozen or score of
+writers in one century whom their own contemporaries fondly decree
+immortal, one-half, perhaps, may be remembered in the next; while of
+the creations which were honoured with the diploma of immortality a
+very much smaller proportion as a rule survive. Only some fifty per
+cent, of the prematurely laurel-crowned reach the goal; and often even
+upon _their_ brows there flutter but a few stray leaves of the bay.
+A single poem, a solitary drama--nay, perhaps one isolated figure,
+poetic or dramatic--avails, and but barely avails, to keep the
+immortal from putting on mortality. Hence we need think it no
+disparagement to Sterne to say that he lives not so much in virtue
+of his creative power as of one great individual creation. His
+imaginative insight into character in general was, no doubt,
+considerable; his draughtsmanship, whether as exhibited in the rough
+sketch or in the finished portrait, is unquestionably most vigorous;
+but an artist may put a hundred striking figures upon his canvas for
+one that will linger in the memory of those who have gazed upon it;
+and it is, after all, I think, the one figure of Captain Tobias Shandy
+which has graven itself indelibly on the memory of mankind. To have
+made this single addition to the imperishable types of human character
+embodied in the world's literature may seem, as has been said, but
+a light matter to those who talk with light exaggeration of the
+achievements of the literary artist; but if we exclude that one
+creative prodigy among men, who has peopled a whole gallery with
+imaginary beings more real than those of flesh and blood, we shall
+find that very few archetypal creations have sprung from any single
+hand. Now, My Uncle Toby is as much the archetype of guileless good
+nature, of affectionate simplicity, as Hamlet is of irresolution,
+or Iago of cunning, or Shylock of race-hatred; and he contrives to
+preserve all the characteristics of an ideal type amid surroundings of
+intensely prosaic realism, with which he himself, moreover, considered
+as an individual character in a specific story, is in complete,
+accord. If any one be disposed to underrate the creative and dramatic
+power to which this testifies, let him consider how it has commonly
+fared with those writers of prose fiction who have attempted to
+personify a virtue in a man. Take the work of another famous English
+humourist and sentimentalist, and compare Uncle Toby's manly and
+dignified gentleness of heart with the unreal "gush" of the Brothers
+Cheeryble, or the fatuous benevolence of Mr. Pickwick. We do not
+believe in the former, and we cannot but despise the latter. But
+Captain Shandy is reality itself, within and without; and though
+we smile at his naivete, and may even laugh outright at his boyish
+enthusiasm for his military hobby, we never cease to respect him for a
+moment. There is no shirking or softening of the comic aspects of his
+character; there could not be, of course, for Sterne needed him
+more, and used him more, for his purposes as a humourist than for his
+purposes as a sentimentalist. Nay, it is on the rare occasions when he
+deliberately sentimentalizes with Captain Shandy that the Captain is
+the least delightful; it is then that the hand loses its cunning, and
+the stroke strays; it is then, and only then, that the benevolence
+of the good soldier seems to verge, though ever so little, upon
+affectation. It is a pity, for instance, that Sterne should, in
+illustration of Captain Shandy's kindness of heart, have plagiarized
+(as he is said to have done) the incident of the tormenting fly,
+caught and put out of the window with the words "Get thee gone, poor
+devil! Why should I harm thee? The world is surely large enough for
+thee and me." There is something too much of self-conscious virtue in
+the apostrophe. This, we feel, is not the real Uncle Toby of
+Sterne's objective mood; it is the Uncle Toby of the subjectifying
+sentimentalist, surveying his character through the false medium
+of his own hypertrophied sensibilities. These lapses, however, are,
+fortunately, rare. As a rule we see the worthy Captain only as he
+appeared to his creator's keen dramatic eye, and as he is set before
+us in a thousand exquisite touches of dialogue--the man of simple mind
+and soul, profoundly unimaginative and unphilosophical, but lacking
+not in a certain shrewd common-sense; exquisitely _naif_, and
+delightfully _mal-a-propos_ in his observations, but always
+pardonably, never foolishly, so; inexhaustibly amiable, but with no
+weak amiability; homely in his ways, but a perfect gentleman withal;
+in a word, the most winning and lovable personality that is to be met
+with, surely, in the whole range of fiction.
+
+It is, in fact, with Sterne's general delineations of character as
+it is, I have attempted to show, with his particular passages of
+sentiment. He is never at his best and truest--as, indeed, no writer
+of fiction ever is or can be--save when he is allowing his dramatic
+imagination to play the most freely upon his characters, and thinking
+least about himself. This is curiously illustrated in his handling
+of what is, perhaps, the next most successful of the uncaricatured
+portraits in the Shandy gallery--the presentment of the Rev. Mr.
+Yorick. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the picture of the
+"lively, witty, sensitive, and heedless parson," in chapter x. of the
+first volume of _Tristram Shandy_. We seem to see the thin, melancholy
+figure on the rawboned horse--the apparition which could "never
+present itself in the village but it caught the attention of old and
+young," so that "labour stood still as he passed, the bucket hung
+suspended in the middle of the well, the spinning-wheel forgot its
+round; even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping
+till he was out of sight." Throughout this chapter Sterne, though
+describing himself, is projecting his personality to a distance, as it
+were, and contemplating it dramatically; and the result is excellent.
+When in the next chapter he becomes "lyrical," so to speak; when the
+reflection upon his (largely imaginary) wrongs impels him to look
+inward, the invariable consequence follows; and though Yorick's much
+bepraised death-scene, with Eugenius at his bed-side, is redeemed
+from entire failure by an admixture of the humorous with its attempted
+pathos, we ask ourselves with some wonder what the unhappiness--or the
+death itself, for that matter--is "all about." The wrongs which were
+supposed to have broken Yorick's heart are most imperfectly specified
+(a comic proof, by the way, of Sterne's entire absorption in himself,
+to the confusion of his own personal knowledge with that of the
+reader), and the first conditions of enlisting the reader's sympathies
+are left unfulfilled.
+
+But it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes
+itself upon the strictly narrative and dramatic parts of his work;
+and, next to the abiding charm and interest of his principal figure,
+it is by the admirable life and colour of his scenes that he exercises
+his strongest powers of fascination over a reader. Perpetual as
+are Sterne's affectations, and tiresome as is his eternal
+self-consciousness when he is speaking in his own person, yet when
+once the dramatic instinct fairly lays hold of him there is no writer
+who ever makes us more completely forget him in the presence of his
+characters--none who can bring them and their surroundings, their
+looks and words, before us with such convincing force of reality.
+One wonders sometimes whether Sterne himself was aware of the high
+dramatic excellence of many of what actors would call his "carpenter's
+scenes"--the mere interludes introduced to amuse us while the stage is
+being prepared for one of those more elaborate and deliberate displays
+of pathos or humour, which do not always turn out to be unmixed
+successes when they come. Sterne prided himself vastly upon the
+incident of Le Fevre's death; but I dare say that there is many a
+modern reader who would rather have lost this highly-wrought piece of
+domestic drama, than that other exquisite little scene in the kitchen
+of the inn, when Corporal Trim toasts the bread which the sick
+lieutenant's son is preparing for his father's posset, while "Mr.
+Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the fire, but said not a word,
+good or bad, to comfort the youth." The whole scene is absolute life;
+and the dialogue between the Corporal and the parson, as related by
+the former to his master, with Captain Shandy's comments thereon, is
+almost Shakspearian in its excellence. Says the Corporal:
+
+  "When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast he
+  felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen to let me
+  know that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would step
+  upstairs, I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers,
+  for there was a book laid on the chair by the bed-side, and as I
+  shut the door I saw him take up a cushion. I thought, said the curate,
+  that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim, never said your prayers
+  at all. I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night,
+  said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could
+  not have believed it. Are you sure of it? replied the curate. A
+  soldier, an' please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own
+  accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king, and for
+  his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray
+  to God of any one in the whole world. 'Twas well said of thee, Trim,
+  said my Uncle Toby. But when a soldier, said I, an' please your
+  reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches,
+  up to his knees in cold water--or engaged, said I, for months together
+  in long and dangerous marches; harassed, perhaps, in his rear today;
+  harassing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded
+  there; resting this night out upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the
+  next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to
+  kneel on, [he] must say his prayers how and when he can. I believe,
+  said I--for I was piqued, quoth the Corporal, for the reputation
+  of the army--I believe, an't please your reverence, said I, that when
+  a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson--though
+  not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. Thou shouldst not have said
+  that, Trim, said my Uncle Toby; for God only knows who is a hypocrite
+  and who is not. At the great and general review of us all,
+  corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen
+  who have done their duties in this world and who have not, and we
+  shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly. I hope we shall, said Trim.
+  It is in the Scripture, said my Uncle Toby, and I will show it thee in
+  the morning. In the meantime, we may depend upon it, Trim, for our
+  comfort, said my Uncle Toby, that God Almighty is so good and just
+  a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it
+  will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat
+  or a black one. I hope not, said the Corporal. But go on, said my
+  Uncle Toby, with thy story."
+
+We might almost fancy ourselves listening to that noble prose colloquy
+between the disguised king and his soldiers on the night before
+Agincourt, in _Henry V._ And though Sterne does not, of course, often
+reach this level of dramatic dignity, there are passages in abundance
+in which his dialogue assumes, through sheer force of individualized
+character, if not all the dignity, at any rate all the impressive
+force and simplicity, of the "grand style."
+
+Taken altogether, however, his place in English letters is hard to
+fix, and his tenure in human memory hard to determine. Hitherto he has
+held his own, with the great writers of his era, but it has been in
+virtue, as I have attempted to show, of a contribution to the literary
+possessions of mankind which is as uniquely limited in amount as it is
+exceptionally perfect in quality. One cannot but feel that, as regards
+the sum of his titles to recollection, his name stands far below
+either of those other two which in the course of the last century
+added themselves to the highest rank among the classics of English
+humour. Sterne has not the abounding life and the varied human
+interest of Fielding; and, to say nothing of his vast intellectual
+inferiority to Swift, he never so much as approaches those problems of
+everlasting concernment to man which Swift handles with so terrible
+a fascination. Certainly no enthusiastic Gibbon of the future is ever
+likely to say of Sterne's "pictures of human manners" that they will
+outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of the
+House of Austria. Assuredly no one will ever find in _this_ so-called
+English antitype of the Cure of Meudon any of the deeper qualities of
+that gloomy and commanding spirit which has been finely compared to
+the "soul of Rabelais _habitans in sicco_." Nay, to descend even to
+minor aptitudes, Sterne cannot tell a story as Swift and Fielding
+can tell one; and his work is not assured of life as _Tom Jones_ and
+_Gulliver's Travels_, considered as stories alone, would be assured
+of it, even if the one were stripped of its cheerful humour, and the
+other disarmed of its savage allegory. And hence it might be rash to
+predict that Sterne's days will be as long in the land of literary
+memory as the two great writers aforesaid. Banked, as he still is,
+among "English classics," he undergoes, I suspect, even more than an
+English classic's ordinary share of reverential neglect. Among those
+who talk about him he has, I should imagine, fewer readers than
+Fielding, and very much fewer than Swift. Nor is he likely to increase
+their number as time goes on, but rather, perhaps, the contrary.
+Indeed, the only question is whether with the lapse of years he will
+not, like other writers as famous in their day, become yet more of a
+mere name. For there is still, of course, a further stage to which he
+may decline. That object of so much empty mouth-honour, the English
+classic of the last and earlier centuries, presents himself for
+classification under three distinct categories. There is the class who
+are still read in a certain measure, though in a much smaller measure
+than is pretended, by the great body of ordinarily well-educated men.
+Of this class, the two authors whose names I have already cited, Swift
+and Fielding, are typical examples; and it may be taken to include
+Goldsmith also. Then comes the class of those whom the ordinarily
+well-educated public, whatever they may pretend, read really very
+little or not at all; and in this class we may couple Sterne with
+Addison, with Smollett, and, except, of course, as to _Robinson
+Crusoe_--unless, indeed, our _blase_ boys have outgrown him among
+other pleasures of boyhood--with Defoe. But below this there is yet a
+third class of writers, who are not only read by none but the critic,
+the connoisseur, or the historian of literature, but are scarcely read
+even by them, except from curiosity, or "in the way of business." The
+type of this class is Richardson; and one cannot, I say, help asking
+whether he will hereafter have Sterne as a companion of his dusty
+solitude. Are _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_ destined
+to descend from the second class into the third--from the region of
+partial into that of total neglect, and to have their portion with
+_Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison?_ The unbounded vogue
+which they enjoyed in their time will not save them; for sane and
+sober critics compared Richardson in his day to Shakspeare, and
+Diderot broke forth into prophetic rhapsodies upon the immortality of
+his works which to us in these days have become absolutely pathetic
+in their felicity of falsified prediction. Seeing, too, that a good
+three-fourths of the attractions which won Sterne his contemporary
+popularity are now so much dead weight of dead matter, and that the
+vital residuum is in amount so small, the fate of Richardson might
+seem to be but too close behind him. Yet it is difficult to believe
+that this fate will ever quite overtake him. His sentiment may have
+mostly ceased--it probably has ceased--to stir any emotion at all in
+these days; but there is an imperishable element in his humour. And
+though the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one
+can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so
+keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have
+any power over a perfume which so wonderfully retains the pungent
+freshness of its fragrance after the lapse of a hundred years.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sterne, by H.D. Traill
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