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D. Tkaill SH'IFT. By Lksliu Stkimien HUME. By T. II. IIl-.vley FACULTE DES ARTS COLLEGE UNIVERSITAIRE SHERBROQK^ GEORIIE N. MOliANd & COMPANY (l,imit <- IV. liKNTI.KV. < 'llWl'IJi. Landou, V. Ktrkk. MaOAI'I.A V. l''£i:i,iiiN(i. HnliiVAN. VII. Siuym. DlOkKNS. ISl-ICN.SKR. VIII S'IKIINR. Sw IIT. IICMH. IX. < 'llAIOI.lt. 1l\ Ml). K (^ri.NOKY. ;■; •^ -s >■ ;-xHi. Keats. IIawtiioiink. X. ('oi.miiiKiK. ^Vl)ll|lsw()llTll. Hi H.Ns. XI. I.Ki'Ki:. (i(>l.l».MlTll, (iltAV. XII. TllACKKIIAV. AliDlhdN. SlIMilliAN. '''ABI.YMt. Copyriglit, 1894. bv Hakpku .V nuoTii Kns. I S T E E N E BY II. D. TRAILL rEEFATORY XOTE. The materials for a biography of Sterne arc by no mean- abundant. Of the earlier years of his life tlic only exist- ing record is that preserved in tlie brief autobiographical memoir which, a few months before liis death, he com- posed, iu tlic usual (juaint staccato style of his familiar cor- respondence, for the benefit of his (Laughter. Of his child- hood; of his school-days; of his life at Cambridge, and in his Yorkshire vicarage; of his wliole history, in fact, up to the age of forty-six, we know nothing more than he has there jotted down, lie attained that age in the year iToO ; and at tliis date begins that >eries of his Letters, from which, for those who have the patience to sort them out of the chronological confusion in which las daugliter and editress involved them, there is, no doubt, a good deal to be learnt. These lettei's, 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 liim, even i.a 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 perfonning this pious work; and he, in spite of the entreaties of Sterne's widow VI rnKFATOUY XOTK. ;iiifl)nen((fl Jnuruci/, scif>. out the so-oalled aiitobiou;raphy in fc'l, but for the rest is main- ly critical ; Thackeray's well-known lecture-essay is almost wholly so; and nothing, worthy to bo digniOed by the name of a Life of Sterne, seems ever to have been ]»nb- Jished, until the appearance of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's two stout volumes, under this title, some eighteen years ago. Of this work it is liardly too much to say that it contains (no doubt with the a(bni.\ture of a good deal of supertlu- ons matter) nearly all the information as to thu facts of Sterne's life that is now ever likely to l)e recovered. The evidence for certain of its statements of fact is not as thor- oughly sifted as it might liave been ; and with some of its criticism T, at least, am unable to agree. But no one inter- ested in tlie subject of this memoir can be insensible of his obligations to Mr. Fitzgerald for the fruitful diligence with whicli he has laboured in a too long neglected field. U. D. T. CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. (1T13-1724.) IJiuTir, Parexta(;e, and Eauly Years PAfil-. CITAPTEPv TI. (1724-1739.) Sf'lKl!)!, AND UmVEHSITY.— IIaMI AX A?'D CAMliUIDOE . 11 '1 CHAPTER III. (1738-1769.) Life at Sutton.— Mauiuaoe.— The Pauisii Pkiest . '.30 CHAPTER IV. (17.50-17(50.) TniSTiiAM Siianpv," Vols. I. and II. 38 CHAPTER V. (1 700-1 7(V2.) London TnTiMPii^i.— Fiust .^kt of Seumonp.— "Tuis- nJAM Shandy," Vols. HI. and IV. — Coxwold. — "Tristham Shandy,"' Vols. V. and VI.— First Visit TO THE Continent.— Paris. — Toulouse .... 49 Vlll CONTf]\TS. CHAPTER VI. (17C2-1TC5.) PACK Life i\ the Soitu.— Ketckn to Enolaxd.— " Tms- TKAM SlIANDY," V0L8. VII. AND VIII.— SECOND SeT OF Sehmoxs 75 CIL\.PTER VII. (lT65-17Ci3.) Fkance and Italy.— ^Ieetixo with Wife and DAUfin- TEH.— Retuun to England.— "Tuistuam Shandy," Vol. IX.— -'The Sentimental Joukney" .... 10;5 CHAPTER VIII. (ITCS.) Last Day.s and Death 117 CHAPTER IX. Stkhne as a ■\Vuitek.— The Ciiaiuje of Plaoiarisji. —Dh. Feruiak's "Illustrations" 130 CHAPTER X. Style and Geneual Characteristics.— Humour and Sentiment J39 CHAPTER XI. Creative and Dramatic Power.—Place in English Literature 1(54 I 117 120 STERNE. CILVPTER I. BiiiTii, pahextaoe, and early years. (1713-1724.) Towards the close of tlic month of November, 1713, one of the last of the English regiments which had been de- tained in Flanders to supervise the execution of the treaty of Utrecht arrived at Clonmcl from Dunkirk. The day after its arrival the regiment was disl)anded ; and yet a few days later, on the 2-lth of the month, the wife of one of its subalterns gave birth to a son. The child who thu3 early displayed the perversity of his humour by so inop- portune 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 birth- day 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 ;Vlth, or Chudlcigh's regiment of foot, was after all in less evil case than were many, probably, of his comrades. He had kins- 1* STERXE. [chap. men to whom he conl.l look for, at any rate, temporary assistance, ami Ins mother was a woaltliy widow. The Stcrnos, 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 tlio last-named countv. Roger's grandfather had been Arch- bishop of York, and a man of more note, if only through the accident of the times upon which he fell, than most ot the incumbents of that see. He had played an exception- ally energetic part even for a Cavalier prelate in the great political struggle of the seventeenth century, and had suf- fered with foi'titude and dignity in the royal cause. He liad, moreover, a further claim to distinction in having been treated with common gratitude at the Restoration by the son of the monarch wliom he had served. As Master ot Jesus Colleo-e, Cambridge, he had " been active in sending the Tniversltv 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 va- rious gaols, and experiencing other forms of hardship, he was at length permitted to retire to an obscure retreat in the countn-, there to commune with himself until that tvrannv should be overpast. On the return of the exiled Stuarts Pr. Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and a few years later wns translated to the see of York. He lived to tlie age of cio-htv-six, and so far justified Burnet's accu- sation ac^ainst 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 youno-er son of the Archbishop, himself married an heir- ess, the\]auohter of Sir Roger Jaques of Elvington ; and Roo-er,the father of Laurence Sterne, was the seventh and vouuo-est of the issue of this marriage. At the time when >•] IJIUTII, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS. tlie double misfortune above recorded befell him at the liands of Lucina and tlie War Office, his father liad been some years dead ; but Simon Sterne's widow was still mis- tress of the property which she had brouf^ht with lier at her marriage, and to Elvington, accordingly, "as soon," writes Sterne, " as I was able to be carried," the compul- Korilv retired ensign betook himself with his wife and his two children, lie was not, however, compelled to remain long dependent on his mother. Tlie ways of the military authorities were as inscrutable to the army of that day as they arc 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 on- ward, 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 ludi- crous struggles strangely with the pathetic. A husband, condemned to be the Ulysses-likc plaything of adverse gods at the War Office ; an indefatigably pro- lific wife ; a succession of weak and ailing children ; mis- fortune 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 per- petually "on the move" — a little household which was always becoming and never remaining bigger — contin\ial- ly increased by births, only to be again reduced by deaths — until the contest between the deadly hardships of trav- el and the fatal fecundity of Mrs. Sterne was brought by events to a natu'-al close. Almost might the unfortunate lady have exclaimed, Quce re^io in tcrris nostri non j)lena laboris? She passes from Ireland to England, and from STERXE. [chap. Enolaiul to Trolantl, from inland garrison to sea-port town and back a2,'ain, incessantly bearing and incessantly bury- ing children — until even her son in his narrative begins to speak of losing one infant at this place, and " leaving an- other behind " on that journey, almost as if they were so many overlooked ov misdirected articles of luggage. The tragic side of the history, however, overshadows the gro- tesque. 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 cas)', are the discomforts of the women and children of a regiment on the march — we may well pity these unrest- ing followers of the drnm. As to Mrs. Sterne herself, she seems to liavc been a woman of a pretty t(Migh fibre, and she came moreover of a campaigning stock, ller father was a "noted suttler" of the name of Xuttle, and her first husband — for she was a widow when Iloo-er Sterne married her — liad 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 St':>rne grimly puts it, " not made to last long ;'' but one cannot help suspecting that it was the hardshi[)s of those early years which carried them off in their infan- cy 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 m 4 -i. I] BIRTH, rAREXTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS. as fif Romewliat lon2;cr sojourn tlian usual at Dublin, the read- er lias tlirougliout it all the feelinif of the traveller who never finds time to unpack his portmanteau. On the re- enrolment of the regiment in 1714, " our h tusehold," says the narrative, "dccamj)ed from York with bag and bag- gage for ])ublin. AVitliin a month my father left us, be- ing ordered to Exeter; where, in a sad winter, my mother and her two children followed him, travelling from Liver- pool, by land, to riymouth." At I'lymouth Mrs. Sterne gave birth to a son, christened Joram ; and, "in twelve months' time we were all sent back to Dublin. My moth- er," with Jier three children, " took ship at Bristol for Ire- land, 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 liundred and nineteen, all unhinged again." The regiment had been ordered off to the Isle of W''>'ht, thence to cm- bark for Spain, on " the Vigo Expedition," and " we," who accompanied it, " were driven into Milford Haven, but af- terwards landed at Bristol, and thence by land to riymouth again, and to the Isle of Wight ;"" losing on this expedi- tion "poor Jorau), a pretty boy, who died of the small- pox." In the Isle of "Wight, Mrs. Sterne and lier family remained till the Vigo P^xpedition returned home; and during her stay there "poor Joram's loss was supplied by the birth of a girl, Anne," a " pretty blossom," but stincd 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 STEllXE. [ciur. had all been cast away by a most violent storm; but, tliroiij^h the intercession of my mother, tlic captain was ]M'evailea npon 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, oiven us over for lost." Hero a year passed, and another child, Devijehcr — so called after the colonel of the regi- ,„(.nt_was born. "From thence we decamped to stay half a year with Mr. PY'therston, a clergyman, about seven miles from AVicklow, who, being a relative of my mother's, invited us to his parsonage at Animo.' 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. " \Ve all decamped, but got no further than Drogheda; thence ordered to Mullin- gar, forty niiles west, where, by I'rovidence, we stumbled upon a kind relation, a collateral descendant from xVrch- bishop Sterne, who took us all to his castle, and kindly en- tertained us for a year." Thence, by " a most rueful jour- ney," to Carrickfergus, where " we arrived in six or seven 1 "It wiis in this paii.4i," says Storne, "tliat I liad that wonderful escape in falling through a mill race while the mill was going, and Ijcing taken up unhurt ; the story is incredible, but known to all that part°of Ireland, wliere hundreds of the common people flocked to see me." More Inereilible 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 with- in a ebw ; there was but one board or buck t wanting in tlie whole wheel, but a gracious Trovidence so ordered it tliat 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 passtige. )rm ; but, iptiiin was \vc stayed avclled by ine weeks, id another f the regi- id to fetay bout seven y mother's, )m thence, ■lierc again c rcginient limped, but to MuUin- e stumbled from xVrch- i Idndly en- rueful jour- iix or seven iiat wonderful as going, and iwn to all that flocked to see should relatL' nd to Stcrne'.s 11, he fell with- T in the whole the void place to death ; but lioresby, ii.l.").) lofdluary even nther unaware e passage. i.J lURTlF, rAUENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS. 7 day.s" Here, at the ago of three, little Devijeher obtained a happy release from his name; and "another child, Su- san, was sent to till his place, who also left us behind in this weary journey." In the " autumn of this year, or the spring of the ne.vt " — Sterne's memory failing in exacti- tude at the very point where we should have expected it ti) be most pri;cise — "my father obtained permission of his colonel to fix me at school ;" and henceforth the boy's sliiire in the family wanderings was at an end. l>ut his father had yet to be ordered from C.irrickfergus to Lon- donderry, 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 inuch-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 impaiicd" by the sword-thrust earned in his anserine quarrel, he was defeated in a more i1( adly 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." There is, as lias 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 fortu- nate one, so far as external circumstances go ; but its mis- fortunes had no sort of consoling dignity about them. Roger Sterne's lot in the world was not so much an un- happy as an uncomfortable one; and discomfort earns lit- tle sympathy, and absolutely no admiration, for its suffer- ers. He somehow reminds us of one of those Irish heroes STEltXE. [ciup. — good-natured, peppery, dobt-loadod, liylit-lieartcd, sliift- Icss — whosi' fortunes wc follow with mirtliful and lialf- contcinptuous synipatliy in the pages of Thackeray, llo wa^ obviously a typical specimen of that class of men who are destitute alike of the virtues and failings of the "re- spectable" and successful; whom many people love ar.d no one respects ; whom everybody pities in their struggles tind difiiculties, but whom few pity without a smile. It is evident, however, that he succeeded in winning the affection of one wno liad 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 fatlier," says Sterne, " was a little, smart man, active to the hist 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 mioht have cheated him ten times a da}', if nine had not been sufHcient 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 disposi- tion " are common to both the ensign of real life and to the immortal Captain Shandy of fiction ; but the criticism whicli professes to find traces of Roger Sterne's " rapid and hasty temper" in my Uncle Toby is eumpelled to strain [chap. xrtctl, sliift- I ami half- laruy. lie )f lucn who 3f the " 10- Ic h)Vo aiwl ir striiijijlt's nilo. .imiiiii^ tho tioii of tlio ; of Rogor the sklo of children of 'ith strokes n tempted portrait in le, " was a 1 exercises, )f wliich it *vas, ill his ully, sweet ill his own j-oii might 1 not been iitiiig little may have n agination cloTcby." ct disposi- ife and to c criticism rapid and to strain ,.] BIRTH, TARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS. 9 itself considerably. And, on the wliolo, there socms no reason to believe that Sterne borrowed more from the character of his father than any writer must necessarily, ,nd perhaps unconsciously, borrow from his observation I of the moral and mental qualities of those with whom he has come into most freq leiit contact. That Laurence Stcrno 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— f>/, tlie 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 respectabil- ity of his clerical comrade. Sterne and Hall were distant cousins, and it may have been the tie of consanguinity which first drew them togethe.'. 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 contin- ued 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 ^ i [chap. II.] HALIFAX AXD CAMBRIDGE. 16 ras bene natus, , tlie founder ; lice doff'/a in- ion to the en- lio must have I ; and this he of his liaving ; any apparent liis Bachelor's I of residence, vouchsafes to " 'twas there — , which has rliaps, be said ost important — was Jolin Eugenius" of stle, at which ■nt mid most persc.iii whose became such st respectabil- I were distant :;pnsan2;uiiiity was evidently sort between rgraduates at I they contin- sely that sort the grace of intimacy was ;er years may >n afterwards obtained literary notoriety by the publication of Crazi/ Talcs, a collection of comic but extremely broad ballads, in which his clerical friend was quite unjustly suspected of having had a hand. Mr. llall 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 wliich the young sizar of Jesus miglit 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 throe years later than Sterne, had entered a year after him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Pcterhouse, and the two students went through their terms together, though the poet at the time took no degree. There Avas probably lit- tle enough in common between the shy, fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of Pcterhouse, and a scholar of Jesus, wliose 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 liave 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 Tris- tram Shandtf had made him famous, in terms whicli clear- ly show that he did not recall liis fellow-undergraduate. In January, 1730, Sterne took his B.A. degree, and quit- ted Cambridge for York, where another of his father's brothers now makes liis appearance as his patron. Dr. Jacques Sterne was the second son of Simon Sterne, of Elvington, and a man apparently of more marked and vig- orous character than any of his brothers. What induced him now to take notice of the nephew, whom in boyliood 16 STERNE. [chap. and early youtli ho had left to the unshared guardianship of his brother, and brother's son, does not appear; but the personal history of this energetic pluralist — Prebcndarv of Durham, Archdeacon of Cleveland, Canon Residentiary, Precentor, Prebendary, and Archdeacon of York, Rector of Rise, and Rector of lIornsey-cum-Riston — suggests the sur- mise that he detected qualities in the young CambriJge 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 Arch- deacon was a devoted "Whig, a Hanoverian to the back- bone ; and he held it his duty to support the Protestant succession, not only by the spiritual but by the secular arm. lie was a great clectioneerer, as befitted times when the claims of two rival dynasties virtually met upon the hust- ings, 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 prefer- ments which lie afterwards accumulated, seems to have thought that this indeed was the crisis of his fortunes, and that, imles.s 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. Ills bustling activity at this trying time was indeed i)or- tentous, and at last took the form of arresting the unfort- unate Dr, Burton (the original of Dr. Slop), on suspicion of holding conimunication with the invading army of the Pretender, then on its march southward from Edinburgh, The suspect, who was wholly innocent, was taken to Lon- don and kept in custody for nearly a year before bein(»- [chap. guardianship pear; but tlio .^rebendarv of Ilcsidentiarv, )rk, Rector of jgests the sur- ig CanibriJjre or Dr. Sterne ■poHtic'iaii, in ipound word . The Arch- to tlic back- lie Protestant 3 secuhir arm. les when the pon the hust- cut Yorkshire us disphiy of in "the '45." 11 of the East ass of prcfer- )cms to have fortunes, and ! prebendary, now was the » the Church. * indeed por- ig the unfort- on suspicion : army of the II Edinburgh, aken to Lon- n.] HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE. lY discharged, after wliich, 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.' There can be little doubt that patronage extended by such an uncle to such a nephew received its full equiva- lent in some way or other, pud indeed the Memoir gives us a chic to the mode in wliich payment was made. " My uncle," writes Sterne, describing their subsequent rupture, "quarrelled with me because I would '-"ot 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; bat we gather from an autograph letter (now in the British Mu- seum) 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 ' A once-familiar piece of humorous verse describes t':e 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 Com- pany, with almost the same misleading effect upon those who only heard of the mishap. 2 18 STERNE. [til. VI'. did not, in liis opinion, sufficiently sliarc. ]5iit this is quite consistent with the younger man's liaving up to that time assisted the eUler in his party polemics, lie certainly speaks in his " Letters" of liis 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 literarj/. If so, his declaration that he " would not write paragraphs in the newspapers" can only mean that he would not go on writ- ing them. Be tliis as it may, however, it is certain that the Archdeacon for some time found his account in main- taining friendly relations with his nephew, and that during that period he undoubtedly did a good deal for his ad- vancement. Sterne \vas ordained deacon by the Bishop of Lincoln in March, 173G, only three months after taking his B.A. degree, and took priest's orders in August, 173R; where- upon his uncle immediately obtained for him the living of Sutton-on-the-Forcst, into whicli 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. ^Vhcn that quarrei came, however, it seems to have snapped more tics 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 wicked- ness 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 10 [('ii.vr. J>iit tliis is ng up to that lie certainly yed his brains is made in a nply that the crary. If so, igraphs in tlic 3t go on writ- s certain tliat onnt in niain- d that during \\ for his ad- tlie Bishop of ter taking his , 1738, wlierc- i the living of ducted a few J, to be noted ;il the quarrel e Archdeacon iar fashion of Dr, it seems to lemoir Sterne till livinix, but ncle's wicked- er Mary, who ! records that used her most bankrupt, and 1 she was able to a friend's leart." Truly u.] HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE. 19 an unlucky family.' 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! ' Tlie niotlior, Mr.s. Sterne, makes lier appearance once more for a moment in or about the yea: 1758. Horace Walpole, aiul after liim llyroi), accu^^ed Sterne of having "preferred \vl ining over a dead ass to relieviii'.; a living mother," and the former went so far as to de- fl ire " on in(liil)itahle autliority " that Mrs. Sterne, " who kept a school (in Ireland), having run in debt on account of an extravagant daugh- ter, would have rotted in a gaol if the parents of her scholars had not rai.-ed 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. FitZLa-rald justly points out that to pay the whole debts of a bankrupt school might well have been beyond a Yorkshire clergy- man's means. x\.nyhow there is evidence that Sterne at a later date than this was actively concerning himself about his mother's inter- ests. Slie afterwards came to York, whither he went to meet her; and he tlien writes to a friend : " I trust my poor mother's affair is bv this time ended to our comfort and hers." CHAPTER III. H'' LIFE AT SUTTON. MAUKIAGE. — THE PARISH PRIEST. (1738-1759.) Great writers who spring lato and suddenly from obscu- rity into fame and yet die early, must always form more or less perplexing subjc is of literary biography. The proc- esses of their intellectual and artistic growth lie hidden in nameless years ; their genius is not revealed to tlie 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 ^^^ne 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 observa- tion 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 ex- ceptionally 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 arc 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 arc no visible signs of growth in the workman's skill. a&.v CHAP. III.] LIFE AT SUTTON. 21 II PRIEST. from obscu- :orm more or . The proc- lie hidden in to the world ly aspects of d themselves c men's eyes, w, if any, of this observa- F Sterne : the I in duration V was so ex- years of age was not five- be too ninch n, full-grown ive no marks 1 the earliest indeed, most proceeds, but kman's skill. I Even when the highest point of finish is attained we can- not say that the hand is any more cunning than it was from the first. As well might we sav 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 matur- ing his powers of expression, during the whole of those si- lent 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 ho had gained the pub- lic 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 arc sermons of Sterne which alike in manner and matter disclose the au- thor of Tristram S hand if ; 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 obvi- ous 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 quali- ties of mind, and the special faculty of workmanship of which this turn of thought and tr of stylo were the product, must of course have been potentially ]>resent from the beginning. Men do not blossom forth as wits, hu- f STEUXE. [CUAP. mourists, masterly delineators of cliaracter, and skilful per- formers on a liiglily-strnng 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, socks almost as irresistibly for exorcise 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. Wc have little reason, it is true, to sup{)ose th.at this light-minded and valetudinarian Yorkshire parson was at any period of his life an industrious "parish priest;" but it is })robable, nevertheless, that time never hung \ery 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 absorl'ing of all — flirtation, riiilandering, and especially philandcrhig of the I'latonic and ultra-sentimental order, is almost the one human pas- time of which its votaries never seem to tire ; and its con- stant 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 i.iorc 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 ac- quainted with your mother, and courted her for two years. She owned she liked me, but thoughi herself not rich enough or me too poor to be joined together. She went to her sister's in S[taffordshire], 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 con- sumption, and one evening that I was sitting by her, with iiii ".1 [CUAP. lu.l mauuia(;e. 28 1(1 skilful per- tl soiitiiiK'iital forties;" and towers — some n iiiDst men, on the poetic uncmi)loyed. his to literary teJly wanting V"c have little t-minJed and period of his is j)robable, vily u{)on his cnts w hich ho •s addicted to ill — flirtation. the I'latonic c human pas- ; and its con- orve, perhaps, in its i)ursuit. unfortunately, passion — took n'c. To relate L I became ac- for two years. I'self not rich er. She went to lier often. have me, but II into a con- 5 by her, with n an almost broken heart to see her so ill, sIk ■- i: 'My dear Laurv, 1 never can be yours, for I veril\ leve I have not lonuj to live ! but I have left yon every >liil- liiii,' of my fortune.' Upon that she showed mo her will. This generosity overpowered me. Tt 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 dauixhtcr included in the collection ])ublished bv 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 bo 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 atl'ected modulations of the style. But the letters of Sterne's courtship maintain the pseudo-poetic, shepherd- und-shepherdes-s 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 liis life. These letters, however, have a certain critical interest in their bearing upon those sensi- bilities which Sterne afterwards learned to cultivate in a forcing-frame, with a view to the application of their prod- uce 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. 34 STERNE. [ritAP. The marnjin;c preluded by this courtship did not take place till Sterne had already been three years Vicar of Sut- ton-on-the-Korest, the benetice which had been procured for him by his uncle the Archdeacon; through whose in- terest also he was appointed successively to two prebends — preferments which were less valuable lo 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 resi- dential conditions of his otKces, and for the opportunity thus afforded him of mixing in and studying the society of the C'lose. Upon his union with Miss Luinlcy, and, in a somewhat curious fashion, by her im^ans, he obtained in addition the living of Stillington. "A friend of hers in the South liad promised her that if she married a clergy- man 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 wliat success ho shot, and with what skill he fiddled, wc know not. llis writin"s contain not a few musical metaphors and allu- sions music, which seem to indicate a competent ac- (juaintance with its technicalities; but the specimen of his powers as an artist, which Mr. Fitzgerald has repro- duced from his illustrations of a volume of poems by Mr. Woodhull, does not dispose one to rate highly liis pro- ficiency in this accomplishment. We niay expect that, after all, it was the first-mentioned of his amusements in which he took the greatest delight, and that neither the brush, tlic bow, nor the fowling-piece was nearly so often in his hand as the book. Within a few miles of Sutton, [chap. did not take Vicar of Siit- }cn procured gli wlioso in- iwo prchcnds iiu for tlieir I wliifh tlicy cy gave him iiltil the rcsi- opportiinity f the society miey, and, in ! obtained in d of liers in led a cleruy- ant lie would ordinu;]y this i-ne remained laces, dnrinp: )0tinif were," at success he )w nut. His jrs and allii- Dmpetent ac- specimen of 1 has ropro- loeins by Mr. fhly his pro- expect that, uisements in t neither the arly so often 2s of Sutton, III. MAUUIAGE. 25 at Skelton ('astlo, an almost unique Koinan stronghold, since modernized by Gothic hand-*, dwelt his college-friend John Hull Stevenson, whose well-stocked library contained at'linict.' l)ut hcterogi'i , collection of books — old Krench "ana," ami the learning of mediaeval doctors — books in- tentionally and books unintentionally comic, the former of which Sfcrtio read with an only too retentive a memory for their jests, and the latter with an acutely humorous appre- ciation of their solemn trilling. Latcjr on it will be time to note the extent to which ho utilized these results of his widely discursive reading, and to examine the legitimacy of the mode in which he used theuj : here it is enough to say generally that the materials for maiiy a burlesque chap- ter of Tristram Shamhi must have been unconsciouslv storing themselves in his mind in many an amused hour passed bv Sterne in the librarv of Skelton Castle. But before finally quitting this part of my subject it may be as well, ])erhaps, to deal somewhat at length with a matter which will doubtless have to be many times inci- dentally referred to in the conrse of this study, but which I now hope to relieve myself from the necessity of doing more than touch npon hereafter. I refer of course to Sterne's perpetually recurring Hirtations. This is a mat- ter almost as impossible to omit from any biography of Sterne as it would be to omit it from any biography of Cloethe. The English humonrist did not, it is true, engage in the }>astimc in the scriou.s, 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 in- fluence upon his literary character and work in more ways than one. That his marriage was an ill-assorted and un' C 2* ^ i ^ i i ix »»> .Mrt i; ^ 26 STERNE. [chap. happy union was liardly so much the cause of his incon- stancy 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 cnouoh. That she was really a wom- an of the exquisite stolidity of Mrs. Shandy, and that her exasperating feats as an asscntatrix did, as has been sug- gested, supply the model for the irresistibly ludicrous col- loquies between the philosopher and his wife, there is no sufficient warrant for believing. ]>ut 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. IJut 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 f(;elings 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, lie must have had plenty of time and op- portunity 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 humour- ist 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 sentimentalisra, the case would of course be different; but as for Mr. Sterne's demands for sympa- thy in that department of his life and art, one may say without the least hesitation that they would have been be- •fa- ^ -M [C'lIAP. of his incon- urso, that the her lover had ishion, was a really a wom- and that her las hccu suo-- hidicrous col- 0, there is no quite possible indefatigable to sec a joke ; leries as mere af liis snbtler ' it were so, it :erne suffered clings of the it it does not o account for time and op- lal limitations t, is not likelv \h's. Shandy's es to estrange > the humour- >o to himself: ve to extract about him a mcnt, indeed, :)uld of course Is for sympa- one may say have been be- m.] MARRIAGE. 27 yond 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 fre- quently changing the Didcinea. 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 complotc. One daughter was born to them in 1745, but lived scarcely more than long enough to be rescued from the limhiis infantium by the prompt rites of the Church. The child was christened Lydia, and died on the following day. Its place was tilled in 1V47 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 sec 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 mar- riage, and, from one of the letters most indiscreetly in- cluded in Madame de Medalle's collection, it is to be as- certained that some four years or so after Lydia's birth the relations between Sterne and Mrs. Sterne ceased to be con- jugal, and never again resumed that character. It is, however, probable, upon the husband's own con- fessions, that he had given his wife earlier cause for jeal- ousy, and certaiidy from the time when lie begins to re- veal himself in correspondence there seems to bo hardly 28 STERNE. [chap. a moment when some such cause was not in existence — in the person of this, that, or tlie other lackadaisical damsel or cociuettish matron. From Miss Fourmantelle, the " dear, dear Kitty," to whom Sterne was makino- vio- lent 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 neixlect there is no direct evidence to show. That she ultimately took refuge in indifference we can perceive, but it is to be fear- ed tliat 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 agroable Tristram," and his wife, at Montpellier, and who, characteristically sympathizing with the inconstant luis- band, 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 M i [chap. II..] MARRIAGE. 29 t ill existence I' lackadaisical Fourmantelle, IS making vio- pnblication of lie heroine of list of ladies ceptibic breast 1 of mistresses 3 at first bore ?ut, as I am not of those who hold that the con- ventionally "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 con- tinually languishing at the feet of some other woman, gives much less pain and scandal to others, or does much less mischief to himself anhtfid portraits that it possesses. We know from internal evidence that Tristram Shandy was bc;4un in the early days of 1750; and the first two volumes were probably completed by about the middlp of the year. " In the year 1700," writes Sterne, " T went up to London to publish my two first volumes of Shandy^ And it is stated in a note to this pi' s;;o'e, as cited in Scott's memoir, that the first edition was published " the year be- fore" in York. There is, ho^vever, no direct proof that it was in the hands of the public before the bcj^inninc; of 17G0, thoui^li it is possible that the date of its publication may just have fallen within the year, liut, at all events, on the 1st of January, 1700, an advertisement in the Pub- Ik Advertiser informed the world that '' this day " was "published, printed on superfine writino--papcr, »tc., 7'/<<' Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. York. Printed for and sold by John llinxham. Bookseller in Stonegate." The great London publisher, Dodsley, to whom the book had been offered, and who had declined the venture, fig- ures in the advertisement as the principal London book- seller from whom it was to be obtained. It seems that only a few copies were in the first instance sent up to the London mai :et; but they fell into good liands, for there is evidence that Tristram Shandy had attracted the notice of at least one competent critic in the cai)ital before the montli 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 oilcnce. Its llabelai- sian license of incident and allusion was calculated to of- fend the proprieties — the provincial proprieties especially — 88 STERNE. [chap. IV even in that froc-spokcn in,'e ; and tlicro was tliat in the book, moreover, which a provincial society may I'e count- ed on to abominate, with a keener if less disinterested ab- horrence than any sins a<,'ainst decency. It contained, or was.supposed to tjntain, a broaf Dr. Mead, which he had made merry with, "it was not lirst report( i (even to the fev. svho can understand the hint) by lue, but known before by every chanibenuaid 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, gr.:at man as he was, had, after all, not fared worse than " a man of twice his wis- dom" — to wit Solomon, of whom the same remark had Ml 40 STERNE. [chap. I I m been made, that " they -vvcre botli great men, and, like all mortal men, had eacli then- 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, af- ter all, the whole defence, considered seriously, rests, was quite inapplicable as an excuse for the incriminated pas- sage. The only living persons who could possibly be af- fected by it, for good or evil, were those surviving friends of the dead man, to whom Sterne's allusion to what he called Dr. Mend's "droll foible" was calculated to cause the deepest pain and shame. The other matter of oifence to Sterne's Yorkshire read- ers was of a much more elaborate kind. In the person of Dr. Slup, the grotesque man-midwife, Avho was to have as- sisted, but missed assisting, at Tristram s entry into the world, the good people of York were not slow to recog- nize the physical peculiarities and professional antecedents of Dr. r>urton, the local accoucheur, whom Archdeacon Sterne had arrested as a Jacobite. That the portrait was faithful to anvthiuii' but the external traits of tlie oriijinal, or was intended to reproduce anything more than these, Sterne afterwards denied ; and we have certainly no ground for thinking that liurton 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 med- ical art in which imposture is the most easily detected, could have been earned by mere quackery ; and be seems, IV.] " TRISTRAM RIIANDY," VOLS. I. AND II. 41 moreover, to have been a man of learning in more Ivinds than one. The probability is that the worst that could be alleged against him was a tendency to scientific pedan- try in his published writings, which was pretty sure to tickle the fancy of Mr, Sterne. Unscrnpulously, 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 York- shire scpiirearchy 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 cari- cature of ]5urton 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 encourage- ment 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, ami their friends might go in fear of similar treatment, but all that was nothing to "the town," and Tristram Shaitdi/ 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 Lotidon, in March, 1760, Tristram Shandy had become the rage. To say of this extraordinary work that it defies analysis 1) 3 4 ! , m 42 STEllXE. [chap. 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 .-u-giic an altogether mistaken conception of the author's intent. Its full "official" style and title is The Life^ and Opimons of Tristram Shandy, Gent, and it IS difficult to say whicli 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 Passao-cs from the Life of his Uncle." Its claim to be reo-arded°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 unin- dividualizcd 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, ho disappears from the story altogether. It is to be presumed, perhaps, thouo-h 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, suc- ceeded in this place of dignity by my Uncle Tobv. 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 Jiis studied eccentricity to do so. It was a "point" to give as little as possible about Iristram Shandy in a life of Tristram Shandy; just as it was a point to keep the reader waiting throughout the year s» n [chap. place. It was essence of its and the mere such process option of the I title is The Gent., and it IS about — the ■ his life. As Ljld be "The i>iae Passao'cs 3 reg-avded as tratcd bv the volume, and 1 the seventh he narrative, ;ss and unin- >nveyaiice of ye; and that ken up with ppcars from haps, though ■c seen more o\v much or of the book iter on, suc- oby. It not If mainly to display his ricity to do ssiblc about ; just as it mi the vear IV.] ' TRISTRAM SIIAXDY," VOLS. I. AXD If. 43 1760 for their hero to be so much as born. In the first volume, therefore, the author docs literally everythinf>- but make the slio;htcst progress with his story. Starting ol! 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 phi- losophizes gravely on this theme for two or three chapters; and then wanders away into an account of the local mid- wife, 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 liev. Mr. Yorick. Thence we return to Mr. and Mrs. Shandy, and arc 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 arc beckoned away by the jester to join him in . . ■»rate and not very edifying ridicule of the Catholic ( c"t;inc of ante-natal baptism ; and tlience— but it would be useless to follow farther the windings and doublings of this literary liare. \et though the book, as one thus summarizes it, may appear a mere farrago of digrcs.sions, it nevertheless, after its peculiar fashion, advances. Sucli definite purpose as underlies the tricks and grimaces of its author is by de- grees accomplished ; and before we reach the end of the first volume tlie highly humorous, if extravagantly ideal- ized, figure of Mr. Shandy takes bodily shape "and 'consist- ency before our eyes. It is a mistake, I think, of Sir Wal- 1 44 STERXE. [ciup. tcr Scott's to re-ard the portrait of this eccentric philoso- I.her as intended for a satire upon perverted and deran.red 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 httle more subtle and less commonplace than that. Mr Slia.idy, I imagine, is designed to personify not " crack- brained learning" so much as " theorv run mad." He is possessed by a sort of Demon of the Deductive, ever im- pelling him to push his premises to new conclusions with- out over allowing him time to compare them with the far>ts ^o doubt we are meant to regard him as a learned man • but his son gives us to understand distinctly and very earlv m the book that his crotchets were by no means those of a weak receptive mind, overladen with moro knowledo-e tuan It could digest, but rather those of an over-active in- telligence, far more deeply and constantly concerned with Its own processes than with the thoughts of others Tris- tram, 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 cer- tainly," says his son, "irresistible both in his orations and disputations," but that was because "he was born an orator (efoc.oa.Toe). Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the ele- ments 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 nlial panegyric, " lie htul nevo. read Cicero nor Quintiliau de Oratorc, nor Aristotle nor Long,„us among ti.e ancient., nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, noi' Ramus nor Farnuby among ti.e moderns: and wi.at is more astoni.l,- lug he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtiltv t % i [chap. ntric philoso- ^nd deraiiired )o imicli and in a step or ms to me a n that. Air. not "crack- lad." lie is ivo, ever itn- lusions with- itb the facts, earned man ; id very early ans those of ! knowJedo'c er-active in- ccrned with hers. Tris- his fatlier's and that he He was cer- irations and ■n an orator and the ele- " him, and cnesses and liave stood " continues IV.] " TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II. 45 struck into his miiul by one single lecture upon Crackcntliorpe oi- Burgersdioius or any Dutch commentator : he knew not so nuicli as in what tlie difference of an argument ad ignovnntiam and an argu- ment ad hominon consisted ; and wlien he went up along with me to enter my name at Jesus College, in * » * *, it was a matter of ju*t wonder with my woi'.hy 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 consterna- tion — 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 the- ory as to the importance of Christian names in deterinin- iiig tlie future beliaviour 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. lie solemnly maintained the opinion "that there was a strange kind of magic bias which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impre^ed upon our character and conduct." How many C.'usars 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 char- acters 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 charac- ter, which, when wronged, miglit afterwards be cleared; rii «.i !' 11 m 46 STERXE. [chap. and possibly some time or other, if not in the man's life, at least after his death, be someliow or other set to rio-hts \vith the worhl." This name-giving injury, he would say, " eonld never be undone ; nay, ho doubted whether an Aet of Parliament eould 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." A\ ith all this extravagance, however, there was com- bin('(l an admirable atfectation of sobriety. Mr, Shandy would have us believe that he was no blind slave to his theory, lie was quite willing to admit the existence of names which could not atfeet the character either for good or evil — Jack, Dick, and Tom, for instance; and such the philosopher styled "neutral names," atlirming 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 inditlerently borne them, so that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary directions, he thought they nuitually destroyed each other's effects; for which reason lie would often declare he would not give a cherry-stone to choose among them. Bob, whicli was my brother's name, was another of these neutral kinds of Christian names which operated very lit- tle cither way ; and as my father happened to be at lips .n when it was given him, he would ofttimes thank Heaven it wi' no worse." ForewariiOd of this peculiarity of Mr. Shandy's, th .ider is, of course, prepared to hear that of all the names in the universo the phihjsopher had the most unconipierable aversion for Tristram, "the lowest and most contemi)tible opinion of it of anything in the world." lie would break off in the midst of one of his frequent dis- putes on the subject of names, and "in a spirited e[>i[>hu- [chap. Jiiairs life, t to rig-lits would say, hci" an Act s you, tliat s ; but for , never yet was com- [r. Sliandv lave to his [istence of cither for ance ; and Hrniino- of as many since the [1, so that, I contrary yed each 3n declare ono- them, r of these d verv lit- at E[)s ,n ik Heaven ity of Mr. 'ar that of I the most and most )rld." He qncnt dis- d e|)i[thu- iv.J "TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II. 47 nema, or rather crotcsis," demand of his antagonist " wheth- er he would take upon him to say he had ever remembered, wiiether he had ever read, or whetlicr 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 pub- lished a book in defence of the belief, and sure enough " in the year sixteen," two years before the birth of his second s<)n, " 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 liiuiself at intervals till the end of the cliaj)ti'r. That he does not so persistently amuse the reader it is, of course, scarcely necessary to say. The jest has not sub- stance 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 sel- dom failing charm of the easy, gossiping style— prevents the thing fro!\i ever becoming utterly tiresome. On the whole, however, one begins to grow impatient for more of the same sort as the three admirable chapters t n the Rev. Mr. Yorick, and is not sorry to get to the opening of the second volume, with its half- tender, half -luimorous, and wholly delightful account of Uncle Toby's difficulties in describing the siege operations before Nainur, and of the happy chance by which these difficulties made him ulti- mately the fortunate possessor of a " hobby." Throughout this volume there are manifest signs of Sterne's unceasing interest in liis own creations, and of his increasing consciousness of creative power. Captain Toby ( i l V, i» 48 STf:RXE. [chap. IV, Sliandy is but just llglitly skctched-in in the first volume, while Corporal Trim has not made liis 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 fortifica- tion scheme, and the wounded ofiicer's delighted accept- ance of it, every trait in the simple characters— alike yet so different in their simplicity— of master and of man be- comes 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 al- most seem to have started into being as we pass from the one volume to the oth.T. There is nothing in the droll- eries 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 broth- er'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 re- cital of the Sermon on Conscience. AVit, 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 instal- ment of Tristmm 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. [fHAP. IT, st volume, ICO on the we know idood, one ters which s fins with Vim's ro- ll r, irony, hinns, of but it is st instal- conscious all these tioi), and immortal ur own. II CIIAriER V. LONnON TKirMPIIS. — FIRST SET OK SERMONS. — " TRISTRAM SHANDY,'' VOLS. III. AND IV. fOXWOI.D. VOLS. V. AND VI. — FIRST VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. I'AKIS. TO LLC USE. (17G0-17G2.) Sterne alighted from the York mail, just as Byron "awoke one morning," to "find himself famous." Seldom indeed has any lion so suddenly discovered boon pursued so eager- ly and by such a distinguished crowd of hunters. The chase was remarkable enougu to have left a lasting im- pression on the spectators; for it was several years after (in 177.3) 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 Lon- don," observed grutHy that " the man Sterne," he was told, " had had enixagements 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 be- sieged by a crowd of fashionable visitors; and in a few weeks he had probably made the ac(juaintance of " every- body who was anybody " in the London society of that day. How thoroughly he relished the delights of celebrity is 3* '% 60 STERNE. [fllAl', ^•] !il| U revealed, with a simple vanity which almost disaiiiis ciiti- cisiii, in many a passaj^c of his correspondence. In t>ne of Ills earliest letters to Miss Fourmantellc we find him proudly relatinjif to her how already lie "was enyaj^ed to ten noblemen and men of fashion." Of Garrick, who had warmly welcomed the humourist who:e merits he had been the first to discover, Sterne says that he had " promised him at dinner to numbers of ^reat people." Amonjnrst these great people who song'ht him out for themselves was that discerninjj; patron of ability in every shaj»e. Lord Rockingham. In one of the many letters which Madame de Medallo fiung dateless upon the world, but which from internal evidence we can assign to the early months of 1700, Sterne writes that he is about to "set off with a grand retinue of Lord Rockingham's (in whose suite I move) for AVindsor" to witness, it should seem, an instal- lation of a Kniglit of the Garter. It is in his letters to Miss Fourmantelle, however, that his almost boyish exulta- tion 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 tlie 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 wc must not judge Sterne in this matter by too severe a standard. He was by nature nei- ther a diu'uified 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 ^•] LONDOX TIUUMPIIS. fil previously unexplored altltiulos was over so severely tried. It was not only "the yreat" in the sense of the hii^h in rank and social distinction by whom he was courted; he was welcomed also by the eminent in j^enius and learnin;^; and it would be no very diflicult t-'sk for him to Hatter himself that it was the latter form of rccoj^nition which he really valued nio^t. Much, at any rate, in the way of undue elation may be for<;ivcn to a country eleriryman who suddenly found himself the centre of a court, which was r.'i-iilarly atteiuled by statesmen, wits, and leaders of fashion, and with whom even bishops condescended to o[)cn liracious diplomatic communication. " l-^ven all the bishops," he writes, "have sent their compliments;" and thoun-h this can hardly have been true of the whole Epis- copal Bench, it is certain that Sterm; received something mure than a compliment from one bishop, who was a host in himself, lie was introduced by (larrick to Warburton, and received high encouragement from that formidable prelate.' The year 1700, however, was to bring to Sterne more solid gains than that of mere celebrity, or even than the somewhat precarious money ])rotits which depend on lit- crarv vo""uc. Oniy a few weeks after his arrival in town he was presented by Lord Falconberg with the curacy of Cuxwold, "a sweet retirement," as he describes it, "in comparison of Sutton," at wliich he was in future to pass most of the time spent by him in Yorkshire. ^Vhat ob- tained him this piece of preferment is unknown. It may be that Tvistr