1896

STERNE

It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London, Johnson: 'Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The man Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three months.' Goldsmith: And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: 'Why, no, sir.'

ONE of my earliest recollections is a warning which I received from a country gentleman not to read too many books. For my part,' he said, I only read two books; but I read them over and over again. One is the Bible. The other is Tristram Shandy.' Apart from the absurdity of calling the Bible a book, and the indecorum of comparing sacred literature with profane, there is in the writings of Sterne no obvious inspiration from on high. But there are other qualities with which a mundane critic is naturally more competent to deal. Dr. Johnson, who knew better than to call Sterne dull, declared that Tristram Shandy would perish because it was odd, and nothing odd could live. Tristram Shandy, like Charles the Second, has been an unconscionably long time in dying. It would be an exaggeration to say that Mr. Disraeli was the last man who read Rasselas, or that no man living had read Irene. But references to these classical compositions would in the best educated company fall exceedingly flat, whereas Uncle Toby's sayings are as well known as Falstaff's, and the sub-acid humour' of Mr. Shandy plays, like the wit of Horace, round the cockles of the heart. It is now a pure curiosity of literature that men have lived who imputed dulness to Tristram Shandy. Goldsmith, who was not altogether incapable of jealousy, denounced it in the Citizen of the World with a bitterness unsuitable to his character, and censured its violations of propriety in language of extraordinary grossness. Horace Walpole informed Sir David Dalrymple that he could not help calling it a very insipid and tedious performance,' in which 'the humour was for ever attempted and missed.' That is a description which might be applied by an unfavourable critic to Walpole's own letters, except that it is not easy to understand how, if humour is always missed, there can be any humour at all. The great humour,' adds this great critic, ' consists in the whole narrative always going backwards.' That is like the definition propounded by a budding naturalist to Cuvier, in which a crab was called

a red fish that walks backwards. Your definition,' said Cuvier, would be perfect but for three facts: a crab is not red, it is not a fish, and it does not walk backwards.' Wordsworth thought that Candide was dull, and it is possible that Voltaire might have pronounced with more reason a similar judgment upon the Ecclesiastical Sonnets. As a straightforward and consecutive narrative of actual facts, duly set forth with appropriate comments, Tristram Shandy must be acknowledged, as Mr. Shandy said of the science of fortification, to have its weak points. Those who find it dull will probably find The Caxtons amusing, and I recommend them to try.

Mr. Fitzpreferred

Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has rewritten his Life of Sterne, and has published some of Sterne's letters not previously printed. He has also reproduced the famous autograph contained in the fifth, seventh, and ninth volumes of the second edition of Tristram Shandy. When Sterne wrote for the public he was a purist in style, if not in morals. When he wrote to ladies he was rhapsodical and in every sense of the word romantic. He corresponded with his male friends in a colloquial and rather slipshod fashion, which has nothing very characteristic about it except indomitable cheerfulness. gerald has disposed of Byron's charge that Sterne whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.' The mother was an insatiable harpy, and Sterne did relieve her on many occasions. He was a good-natured if at bottom a selfish man. He behaved much better to his wife than Byron, which is not saying much, and was as fond of his daughter as Wilkes, which is saying a great deal. It is a strange notion that a man's private life becomes more interesting if he writes good prose or verse. The late Professor Freeman protested against setting up a Chair of English Literature at Oxford if it was only to mean chatter about Harriet '—that is, the first Mrs. Shelley. Chatter about Jenny-that is, Miss Fourmantel-is equally devoid of edification. It was rather a mean sort of economy on Mr. Sterne's part to use up his old love letters to Mrs. Sterne in addressing Mrs. Draper. Nor can the tone of his epistle to Lady Percy be held up for the imitation of the married and beneficed clergy. But, as Captain Shandy exclaimed, what is all this to a man who fears God?'

Sterne was forty-five when he began Tristram Shandy. He had lived since his youth chiefly in York and the immediate neighbourhood. The book was begun as a sort of local satire, in which the characters were well known and speedily recognised. What is the secret of its unfailing charm? There is no plot. There is no story. There is no method. There is no order, not even an alphabetical order, of which an eminent judge said that, though inferior to chronological order, it was better than no order at all. There are only a few characters, some eccentric, others so broadly and typically human that one is startled by the familiarity and obviousness of

their comments upon novel and unexpected events. Take, for instance, the scene in the kitchen at Shandy Hall when the news arrived of Bobby Shandy's death.

into

'My young master in London is dead,' said Obadiah. A green satin nightgown of my mother's, which had been twice scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah's exclamation brought into Susannah's head. Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfections of words. Then,' quoth Susannah, 'we must all go mourning.' But note a second time: the word mourning, notwithstanding Susannah made use of it herself, failed also of doing its office; it excited not one single idea, tinged either with grey or black-all was green. The green satin nightgown hung there still. 'Oh! 'twill be the death of my poor mistress,' cried Susannah. My mother's whole wardrobe followed. What a procession! Her red damask, her orange-tawny, her white and yellow hat-strings, her brown taffeta, her bone-laced caps, her bedgowns and comfortable under-petticoats--not a rag was left behind. No, she will never look up again,' said Susannah. We had a fat foolish scullion-my father, I think, kept her for her simplicity. She had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy. He is dead,' said Obadiah; 'he is certainly dead.' 'So am not I,' said the foolish scullion. Here is sad news, Trim!' cried Susannah, wiping her eyes as Trim stepped into the kitchen. Master Bobby is dead and buried.' The funeral was an interpolation of Susannah's. 'We shall have all to go into mourning,' said Susannah. I hope not,' said Trim. You hope not!' cried Susannah earnestly. The mourning ran not in Trim's head, whatever it did in Susannah's. I hope,' said Trim, explaining himself, ‘I hope in God the news is not true.' 'I heard the letter read with my own ears,' answered Obadiah, and we shall have a terrible piece of work of it in stubbing the Oxmoor.' [Obadiah knew that Mr. Shandy had proposed to send Bobby abroad with the money originally intended for the moor.] 'Oh! he's dead,' said Susannah. As sure,' said the scullion, as I'm alive.'

hat.

6

Then follows the famous digression upon the dropping of Trim's "Are we not here now," continued the corporal, "and are we not" (dropping his hat plump upon the ground, and pausing before he pronounced the word) "gone! in a moment?" The descent of the hat was as if a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it. "Had he flung it, or thrown it, or cast it, or skimmed it, or squirted it, or let it slip or fall in any possible direction under heaven, or in the best direction that could be given to it. . . it had failed, and the effect upon the heart had been lost." Sterne goes on

in a style rather more fantastic than usual to treat Trim's hat as the symbol of all declamatory eloquence and histrionic effect. Nearly a hundred years after the publication of Tristram Shandy Richard Cobden and John Bright walked home together from the House of Commons. Mr. Bright had just made the great speech against the Crimean war, in which he exclaimed, 'The angel of death is abroad in the land. You can almost hear the beat of his wings.' It is one of the most justly celebrated passages in modern oratory. There was -one moment,' remarked Cobden, when I trembled for you. If you had said "flap" you would have been lost.' Whether Cobden had read Tristram Shandy or not he understood the moral of Trim's hat.

.

A great French critic, the late M. Taine, in his spirited and

6

ingenious history of English literature dismisses Sterne with a few contemptuous pages. He could see nothing in him but the eccentric and grotesque. But that is to miss the whole reason of Sterne's popularity and the whole source of his power. Dr. Johnson was right in his general principle, though wrong in his particular instance. Nothing merely odd does last. Tristram Shandy is not merely odd. Its oddity is on the surface. The author has ways and tricks which perplex some readers, and annoy others. But they are not of the essence of his work. They are superficial. What lies below is a profound knowledge of men and women, a subtle sympathy with human weakness, a consummate art of putting the great commonplaces of life in a form which makes them seem original. Difficile est proprie communia dicere.' It is difficult, but it is worth doing, for the prize is literary immortality. M. Taine, who so thoroughly appreciated and so nobly expressed the genius of Swift, could see in Sterne only a writer who ended where he ought to have begun, who prosed upon the conjugal endearments of an elderly merchant and his wife, who had strange theories of trivial things, who dragged in legal pedantry and theological disputes and the jargon of the schools without reason or excuse, No such book could have lived a hundred and thirty-six years, or thirty-six without the hundred. It may be that, as Mr. Fitzgerald says, Tristram Shandy is more talked about than read. All the masterpieces of literature are. If every copy of Tristram Shandy were destroyed to-morrow its influence upon style and thought would remain. Sterne had one great quality besides humour in common with Swift. He wrote his own English. I sometimes doubt whether justice has ever yet been done to the simplicity and beauty of it. The Sentimental Journey and the fragment of autobiography are almost perfect. The familiar description of the accusing spirit and the recording angel and Uncle Toby's oath would by the slightest blunder of taste have been made ridiculous, and the intrusion or even the misplacement of a word would have spoiled it. As it stands it is the admiration of every one who reads and the despair of every one who writes. The brief sketch of Uncle Toby's funeral, characteristically introduced in the middle of a book which leaves him perfectly well at the end of it, is a flawless and exquisite vignette in words. Sterne, like Swift, eschewed the mannerisms of his own age. There is hardly a phrase in Tristram Shandy or in Gulliver's Travels which would fix the date of either. They wrote for posterity, and. unlike the too famous ode, they have reached their address.

It is, perhaps, less strange that M. Taine should underrate Sterne than that Sterne should have become the rage in the Paris of Louis Quinze. Whatever may be said of the Sentimental Journey there is no more thoroughly English book than Tristram Shandy. But the Anglomania of 1760 was equal to anything, and the fine French ladies who thought Hume handsome found that Shandyism was just

6

the thing to suit them. Sterne's own French seems to have been as bad as Lord Brougham's. But Tristram Shandy was translated as it came out, and the Parisians bought it, if they did not read it. Long afterwards Madame de Beaumont, whose humour was not her strong point, carried Tristram Shandy about with her among her favourite volumes in the strange company of Voltaire's Letters and the Platonic Dialogue which describes the death of Socrates. It was not all Anglomania or affectation. It was also a conclusive tribute to the universality of the book. We know the sources from which Sterne's characters were drawn. Uncle Toby was a compound of his own father, concerning whom he says in the autobiography that you might have cheated him ten times a day if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose,' and Captain Hinde, of Preston Castle, in Hertfordshire. Yorick is, of course, himself, or one side of himself, for there is a great deal of Sterne in Mr. Shandy. Mrs. Shandy is said, alas! to have been his wife. Eugenius was John Hall Stevenson, owner of Crazy Castle, which was unfortunately destroyed, and author of Crazy Tales, which have been unfortunately preserved. Ernulphus is Bishop Warburton, Dr. Slop is Dr. Burton, and so forth. These facts are not without their interest, and it is still disputed, I believe, whether Dr. Burton was really a Roman Catholic and whether he was actually upset in the mud. The industrious inquirer who set himself to discover whether the husband of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet was really a merry man, or whether she was deceived into thinking him so by affectionate partiality for his memory, belonged to a class more numerous than less energetic people might suppose. 'The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.' But the shadows outlast the substance. They are too immaterial to feel the hand of death. They are like the songs of the old Greek, αἴσιν ὁ πάντων ἁρπακτὴρ 'Αΐδης οὐκ ἐπὶ χεῖρα βαλεῖ. There is not much superficial resemblance between Laurence Sterne and Jane Austen; but both drew their characters from their own immediate and not remarkable surroundings. Both drew them in such a fashion that all classes of readers can equally enjoy them. The early editions of Tristram Shandy bore on the title page a motto from Aristotle which gives the key to the whole work. Men are troubled, said the philosopher, not by facts, but by opinions about facts. Charles Lamb used to call himself a matter of fiction man. Walter Shandy is the type and presentment of the speculative mind. Nothing strikes him as it strikes other people. He judges everything by reference to a theory, and his theories have no necessary connection the one with the other. Yet his unfailing humour shines through his pedantry and, except when he lies on the bed, saves him from appearing ridiculous.

Sterne laughed at his critics, and their successors have not for