FIRST VOLUMES OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 9 diminutive volumes, and for the copyright of two more which were not yet begun. Just then Lord Fauconberg presented him with the living of Coxwold, and it was inferred that it was a testimony of the patron's estimation of Tristram Shandy. The imputation of bestowing so incongruous a reward was undeserved, for Sterne states in a letter that the preferment was a return for some service he had rendered.1 Another report which gained general belief was that Warburton, in the fervour of his admiration, had sent him a purse full of gold. Shortly afterwards it was asserted that Sterne had formed a design of satirising the author of the Divine Legation, under the guise of tutor to Tristram, and that the bishop in alarm had paid the money to be spared the ridicule. The story in all its parts was a fiction, and Sterne wrote a letter to Garrick, which was evidently intended to be shown to Warburton, in which he expressed with affected extravagance great concern at the calumny, and great admiration of the bishop.3 The bishop replied that he was pleased to find that he had no reason to change his opinion of so original a writer, that he prided himself on having warmly recommended Tristram Shandy to all the best company in town, that he had been accused in a grave assembly as a particular patroniser of the work, and had pleaded guilty to the charge, and that if his enemies had been joined by the author, he believed the latter would have been grieved to find himself associated with "a crew of the most egregious blockheads that ever abused the blessing of pen and ink." Walpole relates that Warburton especially eulogised the book to his episcopal brethren, and told them that Sterne was the English Rabelais. The bishops, adds Horace, had never heard of such a writer.5 It is an obvious retort to this contemptuous pleasantry that it is just as well to be ignorant of works of genius as 3 [Letter vii.] 1 [Letter xix.] 2 [Letter ix.] to read them, as Walpole did Tristram Shandy, and be insensible to their merits. Warburton soon saw cause to withdraw his countenance. In a reputed letter of Sterne, but which is of doubtful authenticity, it is related that he remarked to a brother clergyman, who had read Tristram Shandy in manuscript, that he meant in correcting it to consider the colour of his cloth, and that the clergyman rejoined that with such an idea in his head he would render the book not worth a groat. Whether the conversation passed or not, Sterne acted on the opinion ascribed to his friend. Too much of his wit is the phosphoric light emitted by corruption. Amidst the applause which greeted his volumes, an outcry was raised in consequence against the indecorum of parts, while the author affirmed in his defence that the very passages excepted against were those best relished by sound critics, which showed him, he said, the folly of mutilating his book to please prudish individuals.2 No sooner had he made, through Garrick, the acquaintance of Warburton, than the bishop backed up the representations of the objectors, and repeatedly warned him against any renewed "violations of decency and good manners."3 Sterne professed to thank him for the advice, though he had probably no intention of profiting by it. His life in London was an unceasing round of levity and dissipation, and Warburton wrote to Garrick, in June, "I heard enough of his conduct there since I left to make me think he would soon lose the fruits of all the advantage he had gained by a successful effort, and would disable me from appearing as his friend and well-wisher." A few weeks before, two wicked and nonsensical poems, which Gray called "absolute madness," and of which the first is entitled "To My Cousin Shandy on his coming to Town," issued from the shop of the publisher of Tristram. They were notoriously written by Hall-Stevenson, the bosom 4 [Letter xi.] [Letter x.] 5 [Gray to Wharton, Works, vol. iii. p. 241.] 1 [Letter cxxxi.] 2 [Letter vi.] 3 WARBURTON'S CRITICISMS II friend of Sterne, who had as notoriously approved them. With an effrontery, it is to be hoped unparalleled in the history of English divinity, he now followed up his volumes of Tristram with two volumes of Sermons, and presented a copy to Warburton. The bishop seized the opportunity to send him a final letter of remonstrance, full of the most cutting and artful sarcasm. Sterne had complained in the note which accompanied the sermons that the scribblers used him ill. The bishop agrees that they are the pest of the public, and as an instance of their profligacy quotes their conduct with respect to the poems of Stevenson: "Whoever was the author, he appears to be a monster of impiety and lewdness. Yet, such is the malignity of the scribblers, some have given them to your friend Hall, and others, which is still more impossible, to yourself, though the first ode has the insolence to place you both in a mean and a ridiculous light. But this might arise from a tale equally groundless and malignant, that you had shown them to your acquaintances in MS. before they were given to the public. Nor was their being printed by Dodsley the likeliest means of discrediting the calumny." Not less admirable is his reproof of Sterne, under the veil of a panegyric upon Garrick, for his spendthrift habits, his presuming on his present popularity, and his companionship with dissolute men of rank: "But of all these things I dare say Mr. Garrick, whose prudence is equal to his honesty or his talents, has remonstrated to you with the freedom of a friend. He knows the inconstancy of what is called the Public towards all, even the best intentioned, of those who contribute to its pleasure or amusement. He, as every man of honour and discretion would, has availed himself of the public favour to regulate the taste, and, in his proper station, to reform the manners. of the fashionable world, while, by a well-judged economy, he has provided against the temptations of a mean and servile dependency on the follies and vices of the great."2 1 1 [Letter x.] 2 [Letter xi.] "I have done my best," said the bishop, on forwarding a copy of the letter to Garrick, "to prevent his playing the fool in a worse sense than I have the charity to think he intends. I esteemed him as a man of genius, and am desirous he would enable me to esteem him as a clergyman." He proceeded on the contrary from bad to worse, and eighteen months afterwards the arrogant bishop, whose invectives had often no better warrant than his passions, pronounced him with reason "an irrecoverable scoundrel."1 While still paying court to him, Sterne announced his intention of showing the world in the progress of his story "the honour and respect" in which he held so great a man.' Henceforth he abandoned the effort to conciliate him, and though he commemorated him in the final volume of Tristram Shandy, it was in a manner that, considering the protest of the bishop against the licentiousness of the work, seems rather intended to be offensive than flattering. "What," he says, "has this book done more than the Legation of Moses, or the Tale of a Tub, that it may not swim down the gutter of Time along with them? "3 "The gutter of Time" is a suitable expression for the viler parts of Swift and Sterne, but Warburton hoped to sail upon the stream. "2 The Assize Sermon of 1750, which was printed separately at the time, and found, as the author tells us, "neither purchasers nor readers," was much admired when he inserted it in the second volume of Tristram, where, besides its intrinsic merits, it was largely set off by the interlocutory comments of the Shandys, Slop, and Corporal Trim. Horace Walpole asserted that it was "the best thing in the book."5 The reader was told that, if he liked the sample, a set of similar discourses were at the service of the world, and the interpolation of the specimen 1 1 [To Hurd, 1761, Letters of an Eminent Prelate, p. 335.] 2 [To Garrick, Letter vii.] 3 [Tristram Shandy, vol. ix. chap. viii.] 4 [Preface to Sermons, Works, vol. vi.] 5 [Walpole's Letters, vol. iii. p. 298.] 6 [Tristram Shandy, vol. ii. chap. xvii.] PUBLICATION OF SERMONS 13 was, in fact, a cunning contrivance of Sterne by which to connect his sermons with the anticipated popularity of Tristram Shandy, and turn to account a quantity of unsaleable goods which had been long upon his hands. They appeared in June, 1760, with a double title-page, the first purporting that they were by Mr. Yorick, to "serve the purpose of the bookseller"; the second, with the real name of the author, to "ease," he said, "the minds of those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest was meant." Though he might think it prudent to insert this saving sentence, he had been careful, when drawing his own character in that of Yorick, to intimate that he selected the name as significant of his disposition, and it is equally apparent from many passages in his letters that he was prouder of his cap and bells than of his gown. After a season of five months in London, during which he was the rage, he went into the country to prepare a fresh portion of Tristram Shandy for the ensuing winter. He fixed his residence at Coxwold, which he describes as "a sweet retirement in comparison of Sutton." The value of his new living was a hundred guineas a year, but the clear addition to his income was only seventy, he being now obliged to hire a substitute for Stillington and Sutton. From this we learn incidentally that the stipend of a Yorkshire curate, who had the sole spiritual charge of two parishes, was, in 1760, thirty guineas per annum, or twelve shillings a week. The wages of a labourer at the same period were from eight to nine shillings. But the curates of that day were commonly inferior, both in descent and education, to the beneficed clergy, and the clergy again in the north much below those of the other parts of the kingdom. The poor parson in Tristram Shandy, as in the novels of Fielding, spends 1 [Preface, Works, vol. vi.] 2 [Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. xi.] 4 [Letter xix.] |