Part 7 (1/1)

Yorick Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the picture of the ”lively, witty, sensitive, and heedless parson,” in chapter x of the first volume of _Tristraure on the rawboned horse--the apparition which could ”never present itself in the village but it caught the attention of old and young,” so that ”labour stood still as he passed, the bucket hung suspended in the ot its round; even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap thehout this chapter Sterne, though describing hi his personality to a distance, as it were, and conte it dramatically; and the result is excellent

When in the next chapter he becoely is impels him to look inward, the invariable consequence follows; and though Yorick's enius at his bed-side, is redeemed from entire failure by an admixture of the humorous with its attempted pathos, we ask ourselves with some wonder what the unhappiness--or the death itself, for that s which were supposed to have broken Yorick's heart are most imperfectly specified (a comic proof, by the way, of Sterne's entire absorption in hie with that of the reader), and the first conditions of enlisting the reader's sympathies are left unfulfilled

But it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes itself upon the strictly narrative and dra charure, it is by the admirable life and colour of his scenes that he exercises his strongest powers of fascination over a reader Perpetual as are Sterne's affectations, and tireso in his own person, yet when once the dramatic instinct fairly lays hold of hiet hi thes, their looks and words, before us with such convincing force of reality

One wonders soh dramatic excellence of many of what actors would call his ”carpenter's scenes”--the e is being prepared for one of those more elaborate and deliberate displays of pathos or humour, which do not always turn out to be unmixed successes when they come Sterne prided himself vastly upon the incident of Le Fevre's death; but I dare say that there is hly-wrought piece of domestic drama, than that other exquisite little scene in the kitchen of the inn, when Corporal Trim toasts the bread which the sick lieutenant's son is preparing for his father's posset, while ”Mr

Yorick's curate was sood or bad, to comfort the youth” The whole scene is absolute life; and the dialogue between the Corporal and the parson, as related by the former to his master, with Captain Shandy's comments thereon, is almost Shakspearian in its excellence Says the Corporal:

”When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen to let lad if I would step upstairs, I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers, for there was a book laid on the chair by the bed-side, and as I shut the door I saw hiht, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr Trientleht, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it Are you sure of it? replied the curate A soldier, an' please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world 'Tell said of thee, Trim, said my Uncle Toby But when a soldier, said I, an' please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water--or engaged, said I, for erousothers to-ht out upon his arms; beat up in his shi+rt the next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, [he] must say his prayers how and when he can I believe, said I--for I was piqued, quoth the Corporal, for the reputation of the army--I believe, an't please your reverence, said I, that when a soldier gets tih not with all his fuss and hypocrisy Thou shouldst not have said that, Trim, said my Uncle Toby; for God only knoho is a hypocrite and who is not At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen who have done their duties in this world and who have not, and we shall be advanced, Trily I hope we shall, said Trim

It is in the Scripture, saidIn the meantime, we may depend upon it, Trihty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one I hope not, said the Corporal But go on, said ht al to that noble prose colloquy between the disguised king and his soldiers on the night before Agincourt, in _Henry V_ And though Sterne does not, of course, often reach this level of draes in abundance in which his dialogue assuh sheer force of individualized character, if not all the dignity, at any rate all the irand style”

Taken altogether, however, his place in English letters is hard to fix, and his tenure in human memory hard to deterreat writers of his era, but it has been in virtue, as I have attempted to show, of a contribution to the literary possessions of mankind which is as uniquely limited in amount as it is exceptionally perfect in quality One cannot but feel that, as regards the sum of his titles to recollection, his name stands far below either of those other thich in the course of the last century added thelish hu life and the varied hu of his vast intellectual inferiority to Swift, he never soconcernment to man which Swift handles with so terrible a fascination Certainly no enthusiastic Gibbon of the future is ever likely to say of Sterne's ”pictures of human manners” that they will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Ile of the House of Austria assuredly no one will ever find in _this_ so-called English antitype of the Cure of Meudon any of the deeper qualities of that gloo spirit which has been finely compared to the ”soul of Rabelais _habitans in sicco_” Nay, to descend even to minor aptitudes, Sterne cannot tell a story as Swift and Fielding can tell one; and his work is not assured of life as _Tom Jones_ and _Gulliver's Travels_, considered as stories alone, would be assured of it, even if the one were stripped of its cheerful huory And hence itin the land of literary reat writers aforesaid Banked, as he still is, aoes, I suspect, even lish classic's ordinary share of reverential neglect Aine, fewer readers than Fielding, and very much fewer than Swift Nor is he likely to increase their nuoes on, but rather, perhaps, the contrary

Indeed, the only question is whether with the lapse of years he will not, like other writers as famous in their day, become yet more of a e to which he may decline That object of so lish classic of the last and earlier centuries, presents hiories There is the class who are still read in a certain h in a reat body of ordinarily well-educated men

Of this class, the two authors whose na, are typical examples; and it may be taken to include Goldsmith also Then comes the class of those whom the ordinarily well-educated public, whatever they may pretend, read really very little or not at all; and in this class we may couple Sterne with Addison, with Smollett, and, except, of course, as to _Robinson Crusoe_--unless, indeed, our _blase_ boys have outgrown hi other pleasures of boyhood--with Defoe But below this there is yet a third class of writers, who are not only read by none but the critic, the connoisseur, or the historian of literature, but are scarcely read even by them, except from curiosity, or ”in the way of business” The type of this class is Richardson; and one cannot, I say, help asking whether he will hereafter have Sterne as a companion of his dusty solitude Are _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_ destined to descend froion of partial into that of total neglect, and to have their portion with _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison?_ The unbounded vogue which they enjoyed in their time will not save them; for sane and sober critics compared Richardson in his day to Shakspeare, and Diderot broke forth into prophetic rhapsodies upon the immortality of his works which to us in these days have become absolutely pathetic in their felicity of falsified prediction Seeing, too, that a good three-fourths of the attractions which won Sterne his conteht of dead matter, and that the vital residuuht seem to be but too close behind him Yet it is difficult to believe that this fate will ever quite overtake him His sentiment may have mostly ceased--it probably has ceased--to stir any emotion at all in these days; but there is an ih the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have any power over a perfuent freshness of its fragrance after the lapse of a hundred years

THE END