The story of my uncle Toby, &c., newly arranged
Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768
H -tv >- i ^ ^ ^ *,»|1‘ oV s S * * r '*'- s * o , > *9 „ s <r *i>, 'D y o * \ "* vi r T rvV-0NC4' ^ ^ *©_. ,-0v > _ % i o y 0 * X ‘X \ © 0 $ * O V ^ » *. v >^J^s s A <2*, y 0 * x * A . N c ^ 7 * * s .A *'■ 1 * * O .-0V 0 c 4 ^ ^ A — -* ^ Ao Ko. .A ^Jf © Z^_ -V !H - 4 > ^ 1 w t + * - r A ^ -1 ? ©<> * THE STORY OF MY UNCLE TOBY. o-Or^OO- “ I think highly of Sterne — that is, the first part of Tristram Shandy ; * * the characters of Trim and the two Shandies are delightful.” — Coleridge’s Table-Talk. THE STORY OF MY UNCLE TOBY \ &c„ NEWLY ARRANGED. BY PERCY FITZGERALD, M.A, AUTHOR OP “A LIFE OF STERNE,” “BELLA DONNA,” ETC., ETC. NEW YORK SCRIBNER, WELFORD AND CO. 1871. t£3 486565 N.4,‘36 C ( l 1 c ( v < LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. HE life of one who was a clergyman and prebendary in a cathedral town, a writer of sermons and odd romances, and a student of old books, would not seem to promise much that was exciting or adventurous. Yet, the life of Laurence Sterne has an unexpected flavour of romance and incident ; which, from his cradle literally to his grave, dashes his life with an oddity and eccentricity, that . only too faithfully reflects the extravagance of his Tristram. When a child he fell into a mill race, and was carried under the wheel, his life being saved by almost a miracle ; and when he died his remains were snatched from the grave by resurrection men and sold for dissection. An Archbishop of York, after being sorely perse- cuted in the days of Cromwell, left behind him a large family ; the eldest of whom, Simon Sterne, was established at Elvington, in Yorkshire. Roger Sterne, youngest son of this squire, and father of the famous Laurence, was put into the army, and, like my uncle Toby, had nothing in the world but his commission to start him in life. His regiment, the thirty-fourth, took its share in Marlborough’s wars; and in 1711, during the campaign, the young officer married a Mrs. Agnes Herbert, A ii LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. widow of a captain of good family, and daughter besides of a notorious army contractor and money lender, in whose debt the officer was. This poor lady was destined to have an unhappy time of it, following her husband from quarter to quarter, encumbered with her young children. On coming home to her father’s father, at Clonmell, his famous son Laurence was born, on November 24th, 1713. And as if to mark the occasion in the most dismal fashion, the regiment was “broke” on that very day, and the officers cast adrift upon the world. Later it was re-established under Colonel Chudleigh ; and then commenced for the family, steadily increasing up to seven, a series of disastrous wanderings all over England and Ireland, with peril, shipwreck, and many hardships on the long journeys ; the young family was much thinned by death. About the year 1724, Laurence was taken by his father to the Free School, at Halifax, where, under the care of an able master, Mr. Lister, he remained till he was nineteen ; being all but adopted by the officer’s elder brother, Squire Richard Sterne, of Elvington. Three years later, his father and the regiment embarked for the siege of Gibraltar. When quarrelling with a Captain Philips, (more probably Philpotts, as an officer of that name was in his corps), he was run through the body, and died in consequence at Jamaica, in the year 1731. A goose was the cause of this fatal difference. Though he survived the immediate effects of the wound, it wore away his health ; “and when he was sent to Jamaica,” says his son in an affectionate passage, which shows that he had heart, and tenderly recalled the father from whom, with boyish delight, he had heard the story of the Flanders wars — “he soon fell by the country fever, which 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.” — LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. iii At that time Laurence Sterne was still at school, and, on being soundly flogged for perpetrating the favourite boy’s prank, of writing his name on the ceiling, was comforted by his master with the pro- phecy that he was a lad of genius who would come to preferment. No doubt, he was a clever, eccentric boy ; and Colonel Ord, of Longridge, near Berwick- on-Tweed, who came to the school shortly after Sterne left, saw the name still upon the ceiling, and found the tradition of his humour still preserved, and instances of his wit quoted. When he grew famous, a morning paper recorded, that it was his way to learn when he pleased, and not oftener than once a fortnight. After leaving school, his cousin, of Elvington, who treated him like a son, sent him to Jesus College, Cambridge, where, in July, 1733, he obtained a sizar- ship. There he read a good deal, and established an unfortunate friendship with the loose and witty John Hall Stevenson, author of “ Crazy Tales,” whose com- panionship must be accountable for much of Sterne’s outrages against decency. Mr. Cole, the antiquary, re- membered Hall as “an ingenious young gentleman, and very handsome.” In March, 1735, Laurence ma- triculated, and, in January, 1736, took his Bachelor degree. In the March of the same year, he was ordained deacon, and in August, 1738, priest. No man was ever more unsuited to wearing the gown. He now came to York, where his uncle, Dr. Jaques Sterne, precentor of the cathedral, a noisy _ ecclesias- tical politician, had obtained for him the vicarage of Sutton ; and in the meanwhile courted his first love, Miss Lumley, of Staffordshire. This was to be the weak part in Mr. Sterne’s life— an unrestrained and incurable tendre for the fair sex. This he excused by the indulgent names of flirtation, innocent passion, and the like. But such fickleness is evidence of a certain untrueness of heart— a want of manliness and honour. The whole course of his life was to be iv LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. dotted with these “ affairs of the heart,” which at last grew indispensable to his spirits and comfort ; as he rather absurdly proclaimed that, in one of these fits, he never could be guilty of a dirty action, and that it kept his moral sense healthy. It might be objected that the desertion of one of the objects of his evanes- cent passions, was something like a dirty action ; but it must be allowed that the Rev. Mr. Sterne was as it were privileged, and “wrote so beautifully” on love, and was so devoted to the sex, that his ways and manners were well known. His courting of Miss Lumley was- romantic enough. He wrote her passionate die-away letters ; but some fantastic misconception as to money matters prevented them coming to an understanding. At last, she fell into a consumption, and then showed her lover her will, in which he had been left every- thing. “ This generosity overpowered me,” says Mr. Sterne ; and on the 30th March, 1741, they were married at the cathedral. They were quite un suited to each other, though few ladies would have suited the agreeable and mercurial clergyman ; but she had a homely, matter-of-fact mind. There can be no question but that she sat for Mrs. Shandy, and there are various traits of her in her hus- band’s letters, which almost prove this likeness. She must have been plain also, if we can trust a curious pen- and-ink etching of her, which M. Stapfer has published in his monograph. The late Mr. Hawthorne saw a pair of crayon portraits of both husband and wife, and was struck by her unpleasant expression. With books, painting, fiddling, and shooting, Sterne spent his time at Sutton — so he tells his daughter — leaving out some love-making, which he pursued at York, and much merry-making, at Skelton Castle with Hall Stevenson, where lie paid frequent visits, met some of the abandoned “ Monks of Medmenham,” and pored over the curious old books in the library. Here it was that he was captivated by the piquant oddities of such writers as Bishop Hall, LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. Sir Thomas Browne, Brascambille, and the author of the “ Moyen de Parvenir,” who helped him so much in his Tristram. “ Crazy Castle,” (Skelton) was a most congenial, quaint old place, and its old halls and towers saw many a wild prank. In the meantime his first child Lydia was born, in the year 1745, who only lived one day. The following year he obtained a prebend in the Cathedral, worth about £50 a-year, through the interest of his wife’s family. He now figured as a “ wit ” in the cathedral society, and preached a series of strangely dramatic sermons, wholly unsuited to a country congregation, but which were modelled on the fantastic efforts of some eccentric mediaeval preachers. Under his uncle’s patronage, he plunged into the virulent politics of the day, but soon quar- relled with him, because he could not bring himself to write party paragraphs in the newspapers, though it was suspected he did so a good deal on his own account. In 1747, his second daughter was born, and christened Lydia. In the same year he preached a charity sermon in York, and in 1752, another, before the Judges of Assize, in the cathedral. This was an honour. But he was to have other, more congenial, matters on his hands, and in 1759 was to fall in love with a Miss Catherine de Fourmantelle, a young Huguenot girl, who had come to York from France. This lady he pursued after his favourite fashion, half- paternal, half -pious, or wholly sentimental, and it must be said that his letters are very charming love- letters. After some cathedral wranglings, in which he took part with his pen, and wrote a strange squib, called “The History of a Warm Watch Coat,” he began to set to work on his great book, “ Tristram Shandy.” This was originally quite a local satire, but owing to the publisher’s advice, he struck out many of the allusions and made it more general. It was offered to the London publishers for £50, which was thought too great a risk, so he resolved to print it at his own expense. vi LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. There was great excitement in York attendant on its comingout, for it was known to contain muchpersonality. It was published in December, 1759, and in two days, Hinxham, the York bookseller, had sold more than 200 copies at five shillings each. It contained many local portraits and sketches,— among others, that of Dr. Burton, an accoucheur of repute, as Dr. Slop, Dr. Mead as Dr. Kunastrokius, himself as Yorick, his father as Uncle Toby, Mrs. Sterne, and Miss Fourmantelle, with all sorts of stray allusions. The shire was in a storm. He was abused, remon- strated with, and exhorted to excise largely for his second edition. Prudent friends warned him that he was sacrificing his chances of preferment. He was told from London that his book could not be put into the hands of any woman of character. He replied that he only wrote to be famous, and that he scorned to kneel in the dust to any patron. In this independ- ence he certainly was genuine. The following year he went up to London for the season, where, as Mr. Forster says, no one was so talked of and admired as “the tall, thin, hectic-looking Yorkshire parson.” He put up in Pall Mall, and his rooms were besieged with fine company. Within twenty-four hours he was engaged to ten noblemen and men of fashion. Lord Chesterfield, Lord Kockingham, Fox, Garrick, Lords Lyttleton, Spencer, and Edgcumbe were all eager for his company. But what was strange, all the bishops came to call on him. Warburton, the Bishop of Gloucester, was enchanted with him, and gave him a purse of gold. Such episcopal patronage to the author of a clever but indecent book was surely encour- agement to go on. Lord Falconberg gave him the perpetual curacy of Stillington, worth about £70 a-year. Then he was taken to Court, supped with Prince Edward, and, in short, received attention enough to overset the head and sense of any poor country parson. He had quite forgotten the Huguenot LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. vi lady, wlio wished him to advance her interest among his great friends, and who at last followed him to town. He could not spare her a day, or even an hour, though he had solemnly assured her she was to succeed his wife, and that he would cling to her in death. A strange finale to the adventure is endorsed on the packet which contains her letters, by a Mrs. Weston. That lady states that Sterne courted the girl five years, had then deserted her, and married Mrs. Sterne : that the young lady in consequence had lost her wits, and that she was the original of Maria of Moulins. Dates dispose of Mrs. Sterne’s part in the matter ; but there is no doubt of his promise to marry the young Frenchwoman, as well as of his desertion, and the rest is not unlikely. Flattery and self-indulgence, and above all, the indulgence in false sentiment, in which the world encouraged him, blinded him to the suffer- ings of others. Warburton’s odd present had now got noised abroad, and Dr. Hill put a very natural construction on it. Tristram, when he grew up, was to have a travelling tutor, and Warburton, he insinuated, was to have been pitched on as a model. It seems probable that the proud and unscrupulous man would try to buy off so dangerous a satirist. When we think how he denounced Wilkes’s indecency, it was not likely that he would favour one who followed at a humble distance, so he tried to make the object of liis episcopal patronage more decent and respectable, by friendly warnings. When these were not attended to he complacently began to fear that “ the man was an irrevocable scoundrel.” Meanwhile Sterne was pelted from “ cellar to garret,” in the newspapers and reviews, pursued with rhymes and squibs of the most ribald kind. I have seen a unique little caricature, representing him as standing in his robes in front of the Venus de Medici, with this inscrip- tion— viii LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. “ Behold the learned prebend, wise and grave, To tawdry wit become a selfish slave.” But these attacks only added to his popularity. He dressed up his old Sutton sermons— from the specimen in Tristram the public were eager to have more— and for them, and a second edition of Tristram (exhausted in three weeks), he received <£480. At last he returned to Yorkshire, after a three months’ brilliant campaign in Town, where he had made his name both in letters and socially. He moved to Coxwould, his new living, leaving his curate to look after Sutton and Stillington, and established himself at a quaint old house still standing, and which he christened “ Shandy Hall.” It is known by that name to this day. But he could not rest long there. Before the winter he had his two fresh Shandys ready, and by Christmas was in town again. This time he was more than six months away, “ cantering it along on his haunches,” and enjoying himself. By Christ- mas he had again two of his little volumes ready, and, as usual, came up with them himself. But this winter he had a second chest attack— he had broken a vessel in his lungs at Cambridge — and was disordered. Tristram was beginning to flag ; an account of his tra- vels, done in a Shandean fashion, would stimulate a languid public, and in 1762 he started for Paris. — There he made nearly as great “ a success ” as in Lon- don. D’Holbach’s and other noted salons were thrown open to him. Choiseul was curious as to this odd “ Chevalier Shandy,” about whose eccentricity he heard so much, and the Duke of Orleans paid him the ques- tionable compliment of adding his portrait to a gallery of eccentric men that he had formed. Two of his Sham dyisms were retailed about Paris ; one his compact with the licentious Crebilon, that they should write books against each other’s proceedings, and divide the profits ; the other, his pretending to know and taking off a certain diplomatist, at a dinner party, without being LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. IX aware that the diplomatist was sitting next to him. He now sent for his wife and daughter, with whom he set off for Toulouse, where they were to pass the winter. A number of English families were settled there, the Hodges’, He wefts’, and others ; and Mr. Sterne set on foot theatricals and all kinds of amuse- ment. After the winter was over, the family migrated to Bagnieres, and thence to Montpellier, where the French were vastly amused with Mrs. Sterne’s per- tinacious pursuit of her lord, who bore it “with the patience of an angel,” until he caught a fever, and was almost at the point of death, under the barba- rous treatment of the Montpellier doctors, who gave him “cocks flayed alive,” and other strange nos- trums. He fled from them to Paris, where he got well at once, and preached in the Ambassador’s chapel, be- fore a strange collection of individuals — libertines and beaux esprits of all kinds. There is something very profane and disagreeable in this notion; but the scene would make a dramatic subject for a painter. He was then smitten with the tenderest pains that human wight ever underwent. “ I wish thou couldst conceive how deliciously I cantered away with it the first month — two up, two down — always upon my haunches along the street, from my hotel to here ; at first once, then twice, then three times a day ; until I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse within her stable for good and all ; I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have blas- phemed thereon.” In this light and profane fashion did the Rev. Laurence regard his attachments. In August, 1764, he was back again at York, on the whole, scarcely improved by his travels. His wife, tired of his vagaries, had determined to stay* in France, and fixed herself at Montauban with her daughter, where, as far as money went, they could not complain of his neglecting them. The gay Laurence LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. was utterly unfitted for the hum-drum duties of hus- band or father ; society was grown to be indispensable. He found time to “ knock off” a couple of very lean Shandys, which appeared in January, 1765. But he was now merely trying to fill out his yearly contribu- tion, and swelled his chapters with bits of fooling that seemed almost an affront to his readers. He proposed taxing the public regularly for many years to come, and making his Tristram a sort of annual. He spent some time in London ; — went to Bath,— - fell in love with Lady Percy, and then, finding his health growing worse, and his “plaguy cough” fasten- ing on him, determined to fly to the continent. About the middle of October he set off on his famous Senti- mental Journey, — met those adventures at Calais which have made Dessein’s Hotel famous, — had a fresh success at Paris, and set off for Italy. He passed by Home, Milan, Turin ; was everywhere received into the best society, and lived a dissipated rackety life. * Coming home, he went out of his way to hunt up his wife and daughter, and then returned home, prophesy- ing that he should live these ten years. With the Christmas .of 1766, he had flown to town with his wares, a single volume of Tristram — the last, as it proved to be, — two new volumes of Sermons, and his “Sentimental Journey,” nearly complete, which he intended should run to four volumes. His lodgings were at 41, Old Bond Street, at a bag- wig maker’s, and the house is still to be seen. The subscription list for his Sermons sparkled with famous names, English and foreign ; but, by this time he had grown so infatuated with the pleasures of town- life, and so reckless as to appearance, that the public were every day growing more and more scandalized. A memorial was sent in to his Archbishop, calling attention to the discredit brought on the Church by such a minister going uncensured, and, it might be fairly added, to his long desertion of his cure. But LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. xi there were only too many of his cloth to keep him in countenance, and the excuse of his miserable health was a genuine one. His Archbishop, too, was easy. The worst feature was his “Tristram,57 which was grow- ing less witty only to become more indecent. And soon he was to raise fresh scandal among his friends by the notorious “ Draper 57 episode. This was with an Indian lady who had come over an invalid, leaving her husband and family at Bombay. He met her at his friends the J ames7 — people whose affectionate sym- pathy and interest ought to disprove much that has been said about Sterne’s falsity of heart and sham sentiment. They were kind sensible friends, who knew his faults and warned him about his follies. Mrs.’Draper was more interesting than handsome, and was quite flattered by the extravagant admiration of so fashionable and celebrated a professor of the Ars Ainoris. But this adoration began to be talked of, and was only interrupted by the recall of the lady to India ; not, however, before some oflicious friend had reported it to his wife and daughter in France. The father had to defend himself, after a lame fashion, to his child Lydia ; and must have at that moment felt how degrading and childish, even in one of his age, were such passions — for he was now not very far from sixty. When Eliza had gone down to Deal, where the Indiaman was lying, he began to write her those celebrated letters, “ Yorick to Eliza,75 which must be placed on the shelf with the Sorrows of Werther, and other records of blighted love. He also sent her portions of a most curious journal of his daily life, which he kept for her benefit. Half of this history is now in possession of Mr. Gibbs, of Bath, the rest has been lost. A very minute and curious narrative, and which seemed to me, from the glimpses and extracts with which I have been favoured, to be of singular value, as a picture of town life and manner a century ago, and certainly a most genuine and un- LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. xii affected specimen of Sterne’s writing. Tliis journal was submitted to the late Mr. Thackeray, when he was preparing his well known Lecture on Sterne, but was returned as being of no assistance. This seems incomprehensible, unless it be explained by the well known story of theAbb6Vertot, who, when offered some valuable documents for his History of the Knights of Malta, declined them, on the plea that “ his siege was over ” and he could not alter it. Scattered through it are many good stories, accounts of dinners and suppers with men of fashion, and some rather coarse anecdotes. The letters of Yorick to Eliza are a strange jumble of love, piety, and artful argument, and full of vehement protestations of eternal fidelity. As it was through the vanity of the lady they came to be published, it seems highly probable that there were interpolations as well as omissions, and there are several passages which support such a view. On the 3rd of April, the East Indiaman, Earl of Chat- ham, sailed away. “ Eliza ” must have been a woman of extraordinary powers of fascination ; and Baynal has left in his History of the Indies, an almost frantic panegyric on her charms. — She came back to England about four years after Sterne’s death. But in one of these prodigious “ ship letters,” — which are indeed treatises, and which she sent from India — she gives us a real prosaic conclusion to the Yorick and Eliza romance. She there says that Mr. Sterne had treated her badly, that she had discovered him to be heartless and selfish. She herself died, in 1778, was buried at Bombay, but has a monument in Bristol Cathedral, which proclaims that— “ in her genius and benevolence were united.” She adds another to the list of ordinary women, like Burns’ Clarinda, whom the admiration of men of genius has made immortal. After her departure, a sort of depression seemed to come over the lover— a kind of rueful dissatisfaction with himself, and hate of the life he was leading, which LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. xm might be set down to the kindly admonitions of Mrs. J ames. His health was growing worse every hour, and he had to change the air and get to the country. This restored him; but he wrote to his old friend, Stevenson, “that his heart ought to be merry, as he never felt so well since he left college, and should be a marvellous happy man, but for some reflections which bow down my spirits. But if I live but even three or four years, I will acquit myself with honour and — no matter . . .” These are remarkable words, considering the man to whom they are addressed. His wife and daughter at last returned to him, in obedience to his pressing entreaties. At this time there may be noticed a more subdued and gentle tone in him ; he was having compunction and forebodings — and perhaps, with a more judicious partner than Mrs. Sterne was, helping a daughter whom he lo ved extravagantly, some radical change might have been effected. Here was the re- deeming point : — on this daughter he doted ; and for her sake, with all his extravagance and pleasures, he kept his Lydia and her mother well supplied with means. He now left them in York in the season, and a few days after Christmas in 1767, started on his last ex- pedition to town. — “Now, I take Heaven,” he wrote solemnly to a friend, “ my heart is innocent, and the sport of my pen is just equal to what I did in my boyish days wnen I sat astride of a stick and galloped away.” This may be the apology for his speech and manners : not for his Sentimental Journey, which was now ready to be published ; his only excuse for which deliberate defiance to decency, is the encouragement of friends and the tacit approval of really good people, like the James’. Double entendre , if it was but ingenious and elegant, became a polite accomplish- ment. It did seem strange that just about the week in which came out this book, from which so much was expected, he himself should be seized with the short last illness which swept him from the world. That xiv LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. extraordinary book, so picturesque, so full of colour — but so corrupt in its tone, was actually to begin to make a new reputation for him, and make him a classic in France. But he was not to know of this success. At the beginning of March his old enemy came to attack him again ; though it was nightly balls and his rackety life that invited 'the attack. He was worn out by the illness, and his treatment wasted him yet more. There was no one but his friend Mr. J ames to look after him. “ I wish I had thee to nurse me,” he piteously wrote to his daughter, “ but I am denied that.” This denial may have been occasioned by his own faults, or by his wife’s peculiar temper ; in either case it is hard not to pity the dying humourist, for such he was. He was little more than a week ill. His last letters from his deathbed show a warmth and tenderness that went deeper than that sham sentiment with which he was charged. To Mrs. James, when he was first seized, he wrote a little note, which, as it has never been published, may be given here — “Mr. Sterne’s kindest and most friendly compli- ments to Mrs. Janies, with his most sentimental thanks for her obliging enquiry after his health. He fell ill the moment he got to his lodgings, and has been attended by a physician ever since— die says ’tis owing to Mr. Sterne’s taking James’s powder, and venturing out on so cold a day ; but Mr. Sterne could give a truer account. He is almost dead, yet still hopes to glide like a shadow to Gerard Street in a few days, to thank his good friend for her good will. All compli- ments to Mr. James — and all comfort to his good lady.” One later from his death-bed, commending his daughter to that lady’s charge, is piteous and almost despairing beyond description. He seems to have been completely deserted, and it stands to the dis- credit of Mrs. Sterne, whatever her causes of com- LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. xv plaint, that neither she nor his. daughter were by his bedside. On the Friday following, which was March 13th, 1768, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, the end came on. He complained of cold in his feet and limbs, and the woman who attended him, began to rub. But he felt the cold mounting higher. A footman sent to enquire after him from a merry party, where Garrick, Hume, and Lord March were dining, came up stairs just as he was expiring, saw the wasted arm lifted suddenly, as if to ward off a blow, caught the words, “now it is come !” and saw him then fall back in death. This was the report he brought to the gentlemen who were dining, and who “ were very sorry.” In a burst of affectation in his Tristram, he wished to die thus deserted : and must have felt how cruelly his wish had been gratified. We may wonder too, did the thought of the legacy of mischief he had bequeathed to the world in the shape of licentious writing further distract his last moments ; or when the woman was rubbing his knee, did he think of Trim’s story of the Beguine, and of the coarse satyr-like colour he there imparted to such an office of charity. There were ghastly circumstances following his death. He was buried in the new burying-ground at Bayswater. His publisher, Becket, and Mr. Salt, of the India House — Elia’s Sam Salt — being his only mourners. Only two nights after, the resurrection- men took his body, sent it down to Cambridge, where, as a Mr. Collignon, the Professor, was anatomizing it, it was recognized by a friend. This was all on the grim side of Shandeism, as he would have called it, and certainly from the beginning to the end, his life is evidence of the genuine character of his work. The design of Tristram Shandy, Sterne’s great work, is not original, and is founded, in the main, on Rabelais, and Martinus Scriberus, and in its details is an imitation of the old humour of some two or three centuries before. The inditing a sort of xvi LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. grotesque biography : — a grave, solemn account of the birth, education, and bringing tip of a child, was a favourite way of laughing at the follies and hobbies of the times. The library of his friend. Hall Steven- son, overflowed with strange books of this descrip- tion, written with a serious earnestness and gravity, on trifling and odd subjects, and which, indeed, is the secret of the Shandean humour. This solemnity is found in the works of Bruscambille, Montaigne, Bishop Hall, Kabelais, and many more ; in the curious Latin squibs in which men of letters of the sixteenth century delighted — in Erasmus’ dialogues — in pas- sages of Swift and Fielding. “Jonathan Wild,” “ Gulliver,” and Essays like the “ Modest Proposal,” are all in this key. This gravity is utterly absent in modern attempts at humour, and is perhaps the cause of the general decay of wit. Sterne has been detected in abundant instances of plagiarism in this direction, but the charge has been made too much of. The truth is, these are the weakest portions of Tristram. They are affectations and excrescences, drawn in as it were by head and shoulders to fill up the measure. For he reckoned on his work as a steady income, and proposed to tax the public every year. Gradu- ally he found his resources failing him, and the un- dertaking a drudgery : and to stimulate public inte- rest, had recourse to these borrowings, which soon took the shape of familiarities and freedoms that amounted almost to effrontery. Such were the blank and marbled pages, wrong headings of chapters, “ the careless squirtings” of his ink, resources to fill up his stipulated two volumes. Further proof of this is found in his inartistic and abrupt dragging of his Uncle Toby and Mr. Shandy abroad, which was no more than the insertion of his own travelling diary, merely to fill in a volume. But his real strength was in character — the admirable touchings — the knowledge of human springs of action. Where he was LIFE, OF LAURENCE STERNE. xvii dealing with my uncle Toby or Yorick or Mr. and Mrs. Shandy, he was on firm ground. As may, perhaps, be found in reading the present little volume, his bits of grotesque, his freedoms and familiarities, may be dispensed with, and with little loss of effect. For the first time, these characters of the very first rank, with all the domestic scenes, in which they figure, may be now laid on the drawing-room table and read with delight. To the French nation at large, Tristram has always been unintelligible, although it has been translated several times. But the Sentimental Journey enjoys a high popularity. It is a unique book, amazing for its perfect flavour, and picturesque tone — but it is dis- figured by meaningless “ grossieret&s,” indelicacies that are as inartistic as they are scandalous. The merited retribution has been an abridgment of at least one half its popularity. Sterne’s sermons are strangely theatrical, and utterly inappropriate in a church. And though they have obtained the imma- ture approbation of Mr. Gladstone, in his “ Essay on Church and State,” they have nothing genuine about them. They are full, too, of indecorous Shandeisms, modelled on stock jests and stories relating to mediaeval preachers. His letters are admirable, genuine, free, graphic, and entertaining in the highest degree. A new essay of his was lately published by M. Stapfer, an acute French writer, which is admittedly his writing, and which I have no hesitation in pronouncing genuine, from internal evidence which seems to have escaped M. Stapfer, viz., that the description of the garden and orchard corresponds to Sterne’s own. It might have been expected that a Life of Sterne, published a few years ago, would have brought out some worthy English criticism on the works of such a writer. But it was reserved for the French to contribute to literature a true appre- ciation of so great a writer. M. de Mont6gut, in xviii LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. one of those admirable and exhaustive articles in the Revue des deux Mondes, furnished a speci- men of fine yet deep French criticism, which will hold a permanent place ; while M. Stapfer, in his “ Monograph,” founded on _ “ The Life,” has ex- hibited a finesse and delicacy in the appreciation of an English writer, marvellous in a foreigner. Mr. Elwin, in the “ Quarterly” had, many years before, given a discriminating view of Sterne’s life and writings, while the late Mr. Thackeray’s shallow esti- mate of Sterne’s character was merely the sensation of the hour. There was something almost ludicrous in the venomous way in which he assailed the great writer, fastening especially on what he thought the hypocritical side of his character : the sham sentiment, the “leering” Tartuffeism, and mock humanity. It has always seemed that there could be but one solu- tion : a consciousness of the same unreality in the modern writer’s own satire against social vices. Without pursuing this comparison further, it may be pointed out into what gross blunders his rage against Sterne betrayed him. The whole tone of the lecture in which he criticised Sterne is unbe- coming ; as where he calls him “ a mountebank,” and jeers at some of his most famous passages, on the ground of their insincerity. This tone seems to amount to an utter insensibility to fine poetic colour; as, for instance, in those charming little series of sketches which have made Dessein’s Court-yard at Calais famous — like the desobligeant, which has been painted again and again. He could cavil at this pretty etching — “Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein’s court-yard, and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up business at first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on Mount Sennis Much, indeed, was not to be said for it, but some- thing might, and when a few words will rescue Life of Laurence stfrnf. xix misery out of her distress, I liate the man who can be a churl of them.” This, said Mr. Thackeray, was only more of the mountebank — “ Does anyone believe that this is a real sentiment — that this luxury of generosity — this gallant rescue out of misery of an old cab is genuine feeling 1 ” Such lack of fine sense is inconceivable. Sterne, as anyone can see, never dreamed of such a view; it is a pleasant bit of trifling — persiflage almost : just as one would say — “ I took pity on the thing.” But it is impossible to argue on such nuances — they make their own appeal. In worse taste was his sneer at the description of the dead ass — famous all the world over — “ Tears and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse, with a dead donkey inside. Pshaw, mountebank !” Here, again, is an utter mis- conception, as the whole pathos centres in the mourner for the dead ass. But his mistakes as to facts are more serious : such a collection of blunders was rarely collected into a few pages. He says that Richard Sterne was Arch- bishop of York in the time of James II. ; but that prelate died in the reign of Charles II. “Roger Sterne was a lieutenant in Handiside’s regiments,” but Roger never served in that corps. “ He married the daughter of a noted sutler ” — she was the sutler’s daughter-in-law. “ One relative of his mother’s took her and her family under shelter for ten months at Mullingar ; another descendant of the Archbishop’s housed them for a year at his castle near Carrickfergus.” This is all confused. The ten months were spent at Elvington, not at Mullingar ; and it was a relative of his father, not of his mother, that so entetrained them. The mother’s relative, too, lived in Wicklow, not in Mullingar, and kept them six months. Finally, to make the shuffle complete, the collateral descendant of the Archbishop’s had no XX LIFE OF LAURENCE STERNE. 