Part 2 (1/2)

There is soot abroad with reference to a certain alleged transaction between Sterne and Warburton Before Sterne had been s were the natural subjects of the newest gossip, a story found its way into currency to the effect that the new-made Bishop of Gloucester had found it advisable to protect hiainst the satiric humour of the author of the _Tristra to Garrick's ears, it was repeated by him--whether seriously or in jest--to Sterne, from whom it evoked a curious letter, which in Madame de Medalle's collection has been studiously hidden away ast the correspondence of seven years later ”'Twas for all the world,” he began, ”like a cut across ave it a suck, wrapt it up, and thought no more about it The story you told ”--(the scandal was, that Warburton had been threatened with caricature in the next voluuise of the hero's tutor)--”this vile story, I say, though I then saw both how and where it wounded, I felt little froh it ruins reat deal of pain fro less than I had” And he goes on to repudiate, it will be observed, not somoney to spare Warburton, as the intellectual solecis him for ridicule ”What the devil!” he exclaihout the schools of misapplied science in the Christian world to make a tutor of for my Tristram--are we so run out of stock that there is no one lu-head chap a a Warburton?”

Later on, in a letter to his friend, Mr Croft, at Stillington, whoh a ”society journal” of the time, he asks whether people would suppose he would be ”such a fool as to fall foul of Dr Warburton,hi me a purse to buy off the tutorshi+p of Tristrah to own that I had taken a purse for that purpose?” It will be re received a purse fro received it by way of black-mail: and the most mysterious part of the affair is that Sterne did actually receive the strange present of a ”purse of gold” from Warburton (whom at that time he did not know nor had ever seen); and that he admits as much in one of his letters to Miss Fouriven me yesterday by a Bishop,” he writes, triu any explanation of this extraordinary gift Sterne's letter to Garrick was forwarded, it would see procured for him ”the confutation of an impertinent story the first moment I heard of it” This, however, can hardly count for much If Warburton had really wished Sterne to abstain fro him, he would be as anxious--and for much the same reasons--to conceal the fact as to suppress the caricature

He would naturally have the disclosure of it reported to Sterne for formal contradiction, as in fulfilain between them The epithet of ”irrevocable scoundrel,” which he afterwards applied to Sterne, is of less i from Warburton, than it would have been had it co Warburton's peculiar vocabulary; but it at least argues no very cordial feeling on the Bishop's side And, on the whole, one regrets to feel, as I must honestly confess that I do feel, far less confident of the groundlessness of this rather unpleasant story than could be wished It is iet, however, that while the ethics of this matter were undoubtedly less strict in those days than they are--or, at any rate, are recognized as being--in our own, there is nothing in Sterne's character to make us suppose him to have been at all in advance of the nate did not go down at once to take possession of his temporalities His London triumph had not yet run its course The first edition of Vols I and II of _Tristram Shandy_ was exhausted in soht out a second; and, concurrently with the advertiseruous companionshi+p--the announcement, ”Speedily will be published, The Sermons of Mr Yorick” The judicious Dodsley, or possibly the judicious Sterne hih in matters of this kind), had perceived that noas the time to publish a series of sermons by the very unclerical lion of the day There would--they, no doubt, thought--be an undeniable piquancy, a distinct flavour of se to the Word of Life froued droll; and the more staid and serious the sermon, the more effective the contrast There need not have beenthe kind of article required; and we may be tolerably sure that, even if Sterne did not perceive that fact for hi would do” Two of his pulpit discourses, the assize Serht worthy of publication by their author in a separate form; and the latter of these found a place in the series; while the rest sees of the parson's sermon-drawer The critics who find wit, eccentricity, flashes of Shandyism, and what not else of the same sort in these discourses, must be able--or so it seems to me--to discover these phenoment the Sermons are--with but few and partial exceptions--of the most commonplace character; platitudinous with the platitudes of a thousand pulpits, and insipid with the _crale extract will fully suffice for a specimen of Sterne's pre-Shandian homiletic style; his post-Shandian manner was very different, as we shall see The preacher is discoursing upon the orn subject of the inconsistencies of human character:

”If such a contrast was only observable in the different stages of a man's life, it would cease to be either a e, experience, and h be supposed to alter a s, and so entirely to transform him that, not only in outward appearance but in the very cast and turn of his mind, he may be as unlike and different froo as he ever was fro of his own species This, I say, is naturally to be accounted for, and in soht be praiseworthy too; but the observation is to be made of men in the same period of their lives that in the same day, sometimes on the very same action, they are utterly inconsistent and irreconcilable with theht, and he shall see, discreet, and brave; behold him in another point of view, and you see a creature all over folly and indiscretion, weak and timorous as cowardice and indiscretion can entle, courteous, and benevolent to all mankind; follow hie to all whose happiness depends upon his kindness A third, in his general behaviour, is found to be generous, disinterested, humane, and friendly Hear but the sad story of the friendless orphans too credulously trusting all their whole substance into his hands, and he shall appear more sordid, more pitiless and unjust than the injured themselves have bitterness to paint him Another shall be charitable to the poor, uncharitable in his censures and opinions of all the rest of the world besides: teue; shall have too ion to cheat the man who trusts him, and perhaps as far as the business of debtor and creditor extends shall be just and scrupulous to the utterreat concern, where he is to have the handling of the party's reputation and good name, the dearest, the tenderest property the e, and rob him there without _

There is clearly nothing particularly striking in all that, even conveyed as it is in Sterne's effective, if loose and careless, style; and it is no unfair sample of the whole The calculation, however, of the author and his shrewd publisher was that, whatever the intrinsic merits or deth of the author's name; nor, it would seem, was their calculation disappointed The edition of this series of ser before me is numbered the sixth, and its date is 1764; which represents a demand for a new edition every nine months or so, over a space of four years Theya certain serious-minded portion of the public to the author Sterne evidently hoped that theya copy to Warburton, in the month of June, i in return a letter of courteous thanks, and full of excellent advice as to the expediency of avoiding scandal by too hazardous a style of writing in the future

Sterne, in reply, protests that he would ”willingly give no offence towhich could look like the least violation of either decency or good manners;” but--and it is an i” in _Tristram_ ”down to the prudish huh he will do his best; but, in any case, ”laugh, h he did, and in such Rabelaisian fashi+on that the Bishop (somewhat inconsistently for a critic who had welcomed Sterne on the appearance of the first two volulish Rabelais”) reour, in a letter to a friend, that he fears the fellow is an ”irrevocable scoundrel”

The volumes, however, which earned ”the fellow” this Episcopal benediction were not given to the world till the next year At the end of May or beginning of June, 1760, Sterne went to his new hoin to show him to us at work upon further records of Mr Shandy's philosophical theory-spinning and the simpler pursuits of his excellent brother It is probable that this year, 1760, was, on the whole, the happiest year of Sterne's life

His health, though always feeble, had not yet finally given way; and though the ”vile cough” which was to bring him more than once to death's door, and at last to force it open, was already troubling hiainst all such physical ills His spirits, in fact, were at their highest His worldly affairs were going at least as s in that sunshi+ne of fa frolishman, as does the physique of the Southern races from that of the hardier children of the North; and lastly, he was exulting in a new-born sense of creative pohich no doubt made the composition of the earlier volumes of _Tristram_ a veritable labour of love

But the witty division of literary spinners into silkworms and spiders--those who spin because they are full, and those who do so because they are empty--is not exhaustive There are huradually transfor in order to unburden a full i after that process has been co in order to fill an eh to ”write himself out,” there are certain indications that he would not have left off writing if and when he felt that this stage of exhaustion had arrived His artistic impulses were curiously combined with a distinct ad of the co the public a couple of volu as they would stand it In these early days, however, there was no necessity even to discuss the probable period either of the writer's inspiration or of the reader's appetite At present the public were as eager to consume more Shandyism as Sterne was ready to produce it: the demand was as active as the supply was easy By the end of the year Vols III and IV were in the press, and on January 27, 1761, they made their appearance They had been disposed of in advance to Dodsley for 380_l_--no bad terh that the publisher ain The new voluhed at theue in London, whither he went in Dece the next spring as it had been in the last The tide of visitors again set in all its fors” His dinner list was once more full, and he was feasted and flattered by wits, beaux, courtiers, politicians, and titled-lady lion-hunters as sedulously as ever His letters, especially those to his friends the Crofts, of Stillington, abound, as before, in touches of the sa vanity With how delicious a sense of self-importance must he have written these words: ”You made me and my friends veryforbad the Court, but they do not consider what a considerable person theythere is a point that ever enters the K's head; and for those about him, I have the honour either to stand so personally well-known to them, or to be so well represented by those of the first rank, as to fear no accident of the kind” A, too, is it to note the familiarity, as of an old _habitue_ of Ministerial antechambers, hich this country parson discusses the political changes of that interesting year; though scarcely hter disguises the identity of the new Premier under the title B----e; and by a similar use of initials attempts to conceal the momentous state secret that the D of R had been removed from the place of Groom of the Chambers, and that Sir FD had succeeded T as Chancellor of the Exchequer Occasionally, however, the interest of his letters changes frolies that have become historical He was present in the House of Corand debate on the German war after the Great Commoner's retirement from office--”the pitched battle,” as Sterne calls it, ”wherein Mr P

was to have entered and thron the gauntlet” in defence of his military policy Thus he describes it:

”There never was so full a House--the gallery full to the top--I was there all the day; when lo! a political fit of the gout seized the great coed the House, as he saw not his right honourable friend there, to put off the debate--it could not be done: so Beckford rose up and , passionate, incoherent speech in defence of the Geral manner it was carried on, in which he addressed himself principally to the C[hancellor]

of the E[xchequer], and laid on hie answered Beckford very rationally and coolly Lord K spoke long

Sir F D[ashwood] maintained the Gerton] at last got up and spoke half an hour with great plainness and te to these accounts in favour of the late K, and told two or three conversations which had passed between the K and hireat honour upon the K's character This ith regard to the money the K had secretly furnished out of his own pocket to lessen the account of the Hanover-score brought us to discharge Beckford and Barrington abused all who fought for peace and joined in the cry for it, and Beckford added that the reasons of wishi+ng a peace noere the same as at the Peace of Utrecht--that the people behind the curtain could not bothanother sacrifice of the nation to their own interests

After all, the cry for a peace is so general that it will certainly end in one”

And then the letter, recurring to personal matters towards the close, records the success of Vols III and IV:

”One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly as the other half cry it up to the skies--the best is they abuse and buy it, and at such a rate that we are going on with a second edition as fast as possible”

This ritten only in the first week of March, so that the edition must have been exhausted in little more than a h this spring up to midsummer did Sterne remain in London to enjoy it But, with three distinct flocks awaiting a renewal of his pastoral ministrations in Yorkshi+re, it would scarcely have done for hi days of the Establishment, to take up his permanent abode at the capital; and early in July he returned to coxwold

Froins to darken, and fro of the next year onward Sterne's life was little better than a truceless struggle with the disease to which he was destined, prematurely, to succumb The wretched constitution which, in common with his short-lived brothers and sisters, he had inherited probably fro up Invalid from the first, it had doubtless been weakened by the hardshi+ps of Sterne's early years, and yet further, perhaps, by the excitee froaieties of the capital to hard literary labour in a country parsonage calculated to benefit hiht others Shandy Hall, as he christened his pretty parsonage at coxwold, and as the house, still standing, is called to this day, soon becaotten of unwonted quietude acted on his te effect The change fro life in London to the dull round of clerical duties in a Yorkshi+re villageto a mind better balanced and ballasted than his To hi nature, it was as the return of the schoolboy frohts of Dr Swishtail's; and, in a letter to Hall Stevenson, Sterne reveals his feelings with all the juvenile frankness of one of the Doctor's pupils:

”I rejoice you are in London--rest you there in peace; here 'tis the devil You were a good prophet I wish ain, as you told , pestiferous north-east wind blows in a line directly from Crazy Castle turret fresh upon me in this cuckoldly retreat (for I value the north-east wind and all its powers not a straw), but the transition from rapid motion to absolute rest was too violent I should have walked about the streets of York ten days, as a proper h before I entered upon my rest; I stayed but a moment, and I have been here but a few, to satisfy ed my miseries like a wise man, and if God for my consolation had not poured forth the spirit of Shandyism unto rave subject, I would else just now lay down and die”

It is true he adds, in the next sentence, that in half an hour's tiuinea I shall be as et it all,” but such sudden revulsions of high spirits can hardly be allowed to count fortone of discontented _ennui_ which pervades this letter

Apart, rets of London, his country ho from other causes a less pleasant place of abode His relations with his ere getting less and less cordial every year

With a perversity souished men, Mrs Sterne had failed to accept with enthusias spectator of her brilliant husband's triu unable, indeed, to help herself; but it is clear that when Sterne returned hoaieties of London, his wife, who had been vegetating the while in the retire hi so clearly that her husband preferred the world's society to hers, she naturally, perhaps, refused to disguise her preference of her own society to his

Their estrangeht thee of mutual indifference which is at once so coainst the risk of ”scenes”

and the hope of reconciliation, shut fast in its exeainst all possibility of _redintegratio a been cultivated on both sides, that Sterne, in the letter above quoted, can write of his conjugal relations in this philosophic strain:

”As to matrimony I should be a beast to rail at it, for my wife is easy, but the world is not, and had I stayed fro shame--else she declares herself happier without er is this declaration made (the ood sense, built on sound experience She hopes you will be able to strike a bargain for me before this twelvemonth to lead a bear round Europe, and from this hope froh in her favour at present She swears you are a felloit, though huh so the love of woold How do you like the simile?”