V. MORE LONDON TRIUMPHS

MEANWHILE Miss Fourmantelle had not yet arrived in London. She had written to him to use his influence in some local direction, the exertion of which would appear to have failed. It is scarcely a refinement to say that an almost perceptible change of tone can be discovered in this letter. The whirl of festivity, the universal adulation, or possibly some other "Dulcinea," whose presence in Mr. Sterne's head was a perpetual necessity, had done its work. "Never, my dear girl, be dejected; something else will offer and turn out in another quarter. Thou mayst be assured, nothing in this world shall be wanting that I can do with discretion." He then assured her that she will ever "find him the same man of honour and truth." This "protesting too much" is always significant of a change. What was to be expected from the fashionable Yorick, who was to preach the following Sunday before the Judges, and who had just been listening to the Duke of York's ballad singing?

In a few days "dear, dear Kitty" arrived in London, and took up her residence at Merd's-court, St. Anne, Soho, and her presence there, it is to be feared, was rather a little drag and hindrance upon the clergyman's lively motions. He saw her of one Sunday afternoon; then, about the middle of the week, writes a hurried line,saying he could not spare an hour or half an hour "if it would have saved my life," and that "every minute of this day and to-morrow is pre-engaged, that I am as much a prisoner as if I was in gaol." He then lays out a possible meeting for Friday. Sunday till Friday! But a few weeks before he would "have given a guinea for a squeeze" of her hand, and was momentarily engaged in sending out my soul" to see what she was about, and wishing he could send his body with it. Sunday till Friday! Still she was consoled with this comforting speech: "I beg, dear girl, you will

believe I do not spend an hour where I wish, for I wish to be with you always; but fate orders my steps, God knows how, for the present.Adieu! Adieu!" The "fate" that ordered Mr. Sterne's steps so cruelly was a many-headed Ananke, consisting of balls, parties, visits, dinners a fortnight deep, Ranelagh and Drurylane coulisses.

This is our last glimpse of "dear, dear Kitty." The car of Mr. Sterne swept by her. Such debris do the heroes leave behind them in their passage. She drops out of view at this point. She was second in order of Mr. Sterne's violent attachments. Poor "dear, dear Kitty!"

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There is no reason to doubt that it was of an honourable sort. It is difficult, and not an agreeable duty, to weigh and appraise the marks and tokens of such a passion-not very justifiable under a strict conjugal code. But the devout appeals to his Maker; his sending his service to your mamma;" his looking forward to a time when she might so live and so love me, as one day to share in my great good fortune;" his "praying to God" that she might so love him;-these things seem to point in a direction comparatively innocent. It is hard to decide upon such matters after the fashion of a jury; they are here set before the reader, who can form his own conclusions.

Warburton, meanwhile, held to him firmly, nor was he likely to be daunted by public cries. Perhaps the opposition of the crowd roused his controversial spirit. He even went round the bench of bishops, and recommended the book heartily to their notice; what was more extraordinary, he recommended the author also, telling them "he was the English Rabelais." To be introduced in such a character to ex-officio spirituality, would seem an odd proceeding, unless, indeed, as Horace Walpole wickedly insinuates, "they had never heard of such a writer!" Again, it must be repeated, such encouragement does, indeed, take much of the

blame from off the delinquent's shoulders, and looks very like an invitation to proceed with further instalments.

There are certain straws which show the strength of popularity. There was a new game of cards, called Tristram Shandy, introduced, in which "the knave of hearts, if hearts are trumps, is supreme, and nothing can resist his power," which might, indeed, have been taken as symbolical of that clerical knave of hearts, who at this moment was himself " supreme." For epicures there was a new salad invented, and christened the "Shandy Salad." And, later on, at the Irish steeple chases, horses were entered bearing the name of "Tristram Shandy." These are but straws on the current; but they show how strong the current was. Another current-that of the dinners flowed on with the old steadiness. Gray wrote that "one is invited to dinner where he dines a fortnight beforehand," so that there was actually a double competition for the new lion; first, to secure his presence at a dinner, which was difficult when he himself was engaged fourteen deep; and to be invited to the house where he was engaged to dine. To sustain this popularity and hold his own among the wits, he must have had special gifts of liveliness, and good conversation. There can be no question but that he imparted a good deal of Shandyism into his conversation, which he afterwards almost matured into a system, so as to astound the French noblesse, and make them inquire, "Qui le diable est ce Chevalier Shandy?" When in special vein he would phrase it, "I Shandy it now more than ever.”

That his London conversation took the shape of a pleasant tone of burlesque and grotesque exaggeration, always amusing if skilfully handled, seems likely from a sort of photograph of one of these London dinners which has been preserved, and its truth being acknowledged by Mr. Sterne, it becomes highly characteristic as a reported specimen of his talk.

He was dining at a fashionable house, where a certain self-sufficient physician chanced to be of the party, and engrossed the whole conversation, giving it a medical turn, and dis

coursing profoundly of "phrenitis," and "paraphrenitis," to the great annoyance of the host and his company. Mr. Yorick, seeing the turn matters were taking, and that the entertainment was likely to be shipwrecked by this pedantry, at once struck in, as it were, in the same key, and began to give an account of a recent malady from which he had suffered acutely. It was a cold, which he said he had caught originally by leaning on a damp cushion, the various stages and aggravations of which he proceeded to detail gravely, and with a happy parodying of the cant terms the professional gentleman had been dealing. He related how "after sneezing and snivelling a fortnight, it fell upon my breast. How they blooded and blistered me!" But, somehow, he grew steadily worse, for "I was treated according to the exact rules of the college. In short, it came eventually to an adhesion, and all was over with me." In this desperate case an ingenious idea suggested itself. "I bought a pole," continued Yorick, with due gravity, "and began leaping over the country. Whenever he came to a ditch, he, by long practice, contrived to fall exactly across the ridge of it upon the side opposite to the adhesion. "This tore it off at once. Now I am as you see. Come, let us fill to the success of this system." Thus pleasantly was extinguished the intrusive physician.

This story is very characteristic. It went round the clubs, and got into the papers. The host was given out to be "the amiable Charles Stanhope," and the physician, Dr. Mounsey, and with these names it fluttered down to York. But this was a mistake, rather an invention of the notorious Doctor Hill-"Bardana" Hill-who was the first to set the story afloat in his Inspector. He had a grudge against Mounsey, whom he at once cast for the part of the pedant.

Altogether, there can be no question that Mr. Sterne was far too "gay" for one of his cloth. But the indiscretion falls with more propriety on those who beset his path, and besieged with fashionable temptation-with Ranelagh, and the "holy society at Arthur's," as it was called in one of the magazines; and the coulisses of Garrick's theatre, which the stern moralist, Johnson, gave up frequenting, as it

tried his rigorous principles too severely. The famous brewer, Thrale, might exclaim despairingly on his death-bed, "Leave London! Lose my Ranelagh season!" but it would have been more discreet in a clergyman to have been moderate in these amusements.

There was at this time a very gay prince of the royal family, who had a marvellous taste for social amusement, and who eagerly mixed in all the leading circles of the town. In fact, it was remarked of the royal family generally, this year that Mr. Sterne came to London, that "all the world lives with them and they with all the world. Princes and princesses open shop in every corner of the town, and all the world deals with them." But the leading sybarite was Prince Edward, afterwards Duke of York. He delighted in balls, supperparties, and music, and was to die in a few years in a foreign country of over-dancing at a Marseilles ball. In London he would get the nobility to give supper-parties, at which he would stay until three in the morning.

To this royal votary of amusement was Mr. Sterne presented. Though comparatively a cheap distinction in London, it was of importance enough to be written down into Yorkshire. Mr. Sterne saw him at private concerts, where the Prince performed publicly on "the bass viol." This, it will be recollected, was also an accomplishment of Mr. Sterne's--so here was a bond of sympathy. With his usual good-fortune, Mr. Sterne made an impression, and "received great notice" from him. He was even invited to sup with him.

Some little trouble of a provoking sort was he now to know. The path of Yorick was not to be always over the smooth-mown lawns and plaisaunces of fashion. There was at this time in London a certain notorious Doctor Hill-a strange and versatile quack, whose name, eyes that glanced over the London Chronicle or Evening Post, were sure to light on in a corner. The "Elixir of Bardana," and the "Essence of Water-dock, in bottles, 38. each, sealed and signed by the author," had made his name quite as famous as that of more modern advertising charlatans. He had rushed into print also; had inter

changed epigrams with Garrick; and had a savage wrangle with the Royal Society. He had added to the ranks of the magazines, whose name was already legion; and directed the Inspector and Royal Female Magazine. "For dulness," said Warburton, bitterly, in allusion to this last, "who often has as great a hand as the devil in deforming God's works of the creation, has made them, it seems, male and female." And in the Royal Female Magazine for May the first, appeared a strange paper a photograph of the fashionable clergyman

outrageously personal, and laughably flattering, a curious yarn of truth and falsehood commingled. This has been already alluded to; and it comprised all the bibliographical scraps in reference to Yorick's past life, habits, manners, tastes, and appearance. The panegyric was, indeed, daubed on heavily. It was written in the worst dialect of what would now be called "flunkeyism." It was copied into the London Chronicle, and the London Magazine, and tuned in this key. "The subject," it began, was both a favourite and fashionable one. Yorick is a gentleman, a clergyman, and a man of learning singular in the highest degree, for he has an infinite share of wit and goodness." He is stated to be " a native of the field of war, and to add to the whimsicality, born in the barracks of Dublin. When his famous book made its appearance, he disdained to practise any of " those common arts" by which "a book is pushed. A parcel is merely sent up from the country;" and, what must have been a fatal oversight in the eyes of the patentee of "Water-dock," it was scarce advertised." "They have made their author's way to the tables of the first people in the kingdom, and to the friendship of Mr. Garrick. Fools," it goes on to say, "tremble at the allusions that may be made from the present volumes. Forty people have assumed to themselves the ridiculous titles in these volumes."

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It then dwells on the "extreme candour and modesty of his temper." "A vain man would be exalted at these attentions. He sees them in another light." It then gives a couple of Yorick's remarks, which were then going round; how Mr. Sterne used to say, pleasantly, that "he was like

More serious, however, was a fresh statement of that vulgar rumour, which had been to Mr. Sterne "for all the world like a cut across my finger with a sharp penknife," but which, in its present broad shape of statement, must have affected his sensibility far more acutely. And it is scarce to be credited whose liberal purse has bought off the dread of a tutor's character in those (volumes) which are to come." This was the old club story revived-that story of Tristram's episcopal tutor, with a little seasoning of corruption added.

It has been mentioned how triumphantly he wrote to "dear Kitty," that "I had a purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop," when he had been only two or three weeks in town. So odd and exceptional a present, coming from so sensitive a being as the new Bishop of Gloucester, would in itself be quite sufficient to cause such a rumour; for the spectacle of a fierce prelate presenting the clerical author of a free book -a second portion of which free book was to appear later-with so suspicious a douceur as a purse of money, might of itself set scandalous tongues in motion.

The whole town seems to have had this story. The purse of gold turns up in all directions. Walpole wrote of it to Florence; it was alluded to in newspaper paragraphs. But the quack doctor's magazine had travelled down to York, was read there greedily, and very speedily a goodnatured report was going round their little coteries, that Mr. Sterne himself had either written or inspired the whole. This was quite characteristic. What specially affected them was a paragraph relating to a piece of local generosity on the part of the Vicar of

Sutton. This was ushered in by some outrageous compliments. "Everybody is eager to see the author, and when they see him, everybody loves the man. When Lord Falconberg gave him the new benefice he found that his predecessor had left behind him a wife and family in great distress. The generous Yorick presented her with £100 in hand, and promised a pension for her life.'

His friends, the Crofts, watchful in his absence, wrote to him of the rumour, and of how the Yorkshire Mrs. Candours were circulating that he had furnished all the details of that complacent sketch. He wrote back an indignant denial almost at the instant he received it. No wonder he should marvel at the uncharitableness of the York people, who could "suppose any man so gross a beast as to pen such a character of himself." Such a tissue of wild stories only "shows the absurdity__of York credulity and nonsense." The best refutation, however, was in the blunders and mistakes-"falsehoods" he calls them-in reference to that "whimsicality" of his birth in "the barracks of Dublin," which event, as we have seen, occurred at Clonmel; and more particularly in reference to that showy act of generosity, the "hundred pounds" and pension to the widow of his predecessor-a charity quite beyond the measure of Yorick's purse.

He takes up the story of the purse of gold, and says, that "in this great town no one ever suspected it, for a thousand reasons," and refutes it by three arguments: the improbability of his "falling foul of Dr. Warburton, my best friend," by representing him so weak a man, or "of telling such a lie of him as his giving me a purse to buy off his tutorship for Tristram;" or lastly, which was perhaps the strongest, "that I should be fool enough to own I had taken his purse for such a purpose.'

VI. REVIEWS AND REVIEWERS.

THE reviewers had now begun to deal with the book. The critical re

viewers recommended it "to the public as a work of humour and ingenuity." The monthly reviewers do not appear to have noticed it at all, and the London Chronicle, and other journals, noticed it with disfavour or commendation, pretty impartially divided. It was not until much later that they opened on him without mercy, and turned all such fiercer sarcasm as their force could supply upon the succeeding issues of Shandy," so that it was no wonder, when wishing to convey an idea of "an act of humiliation" done to a sermon, he should employ the artful image of its being "twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs." One of these hostile reviews was conducted by a certain doctor, who wrote novels, and whom he christened Smelfungus, and who suggested horse drugs. The Monthly Review (194).

But the hardest shaft of all, because the wittiest, was to flutter out of the obscurity of Green Arbour Court; and the Citizen of the World, in the Public Ledger, was to enter his protest against this prodigious popularity. That protest is likely to do Mr. Sterne's book more mischief now than it did then; for the journal in which it appeared was but a journal newly started, and the writer of these delightful essays had no higher authority than what the reading public would allow to one of Mr. Griffith's hacks. When this pleasantry was slyly directed against the mere tricks and eccentricities of Mr. Sterne's manner it was well founded; but that lack of appreciation of his genuine gifts, his pathos and humour, his gallery of original men and women, seems incomprehensible in one of Goldsmith's nature. That judgment passed some years later upon Sterne's social merits-and "a very dull fellow "-would seem to have been his settled opinion of his literary gifts also. "The humour and wit,' says Mr. Forster, in his delightful book, "ought surely to have been admitted; and if the wisdom and charity of my Uncle Toby, a Mr.

Shandy, or a Corporal Trim, might anywhere have claimed frank and immediate recognition, it should have been in that series of essays which Beau Tibbs and the Man in Black have helped to make immortal." These distates are as incomprehensible as Shylock's list of physical repulsions. Doctor Johnson, Goldsmith's friend, could not endure a line of Gray's fine odes.

"Bless me,' says the Bookseller, in this light airy wit of trifling, to the Chinese traveller, 'now you speak of an epic poem, you shall see an excellent farce. Here it is. Dip into it where you will, it will be found replete with true modern humour. Strokes, sir; it is filled with strokes of wit and satire in every line. you call these dashes of the pen strokes?' replied I; for I must confess I see no other. 'And pray, sir,' returned he, 'what do you call them?

Do

Sir, a well-placed dash makes half the wit of our writers of modern humour. I bought last season a piece that had no other merit upon earth than nine hundred and ninetyfive breaks, seventy-two ha-ha's, and three good things.""

This was excellent fooling. But in a week or two the Chinese citizen comes back to the subject, and strikes heavily, and in all seriousness, at the Reverend Mr. Sterne. It is almost the only instance in the gay and good-humoured letters where he seems to grow warm and heated in his onslaught. He inveighs with justice against those freedoms and improprieties which disfigured "Tristram," but for which it was scarcely fair to pillory Mr. Sterne singly; for it is admitted, that "this manner of writing is perfectly adapted to the taste of gentlemen and ladies of fashion here."

He remarks how "very difficult it is for a dunce to obtain the reputation of a wit;" yet, "by the assistance of this freedom, this may be easily effected, and a licentious blockhead often passes for a fellow of smart parts and pretensions; every object in nature helps the jokes forward, without scarce any effort of the imagination.' A severe but just criti