sentiment and genius are seldom as constantly domesticated in their habits as they should be. There are few of the women ill fated enough to become the wives of such men, who are either able or willing to try and account for the ways of their disagreeably-gifted husbands. Tom Moore's Bessie is a glorious exception, and she obtrudes herself on memory as these words are written. Robert Burns' Jean has also some claim to honourable mention in this respect. Fielding, too, was happy in his marriage relations. Could many more be mentioned? Our present concern is that LAURENCE STERNE was not. Two events are noticeable in his account of his boyhood. When mentioning that a relation of his mother invited the itinerant family to his parsonage at Animo, a hamlet within a few miles of the romantic Lake of Glandelow, he says: 'It was in this parish, during our stay, that I had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race whilst the mill was going, and of being taken up unhurt. This extraordinary adventure still lives in local tradition, and has been taken effective advantage of by Mr. Edmund Falconer in his melodrama Eileen Oge.' The other circumstance of STERNE'S boyhood worth specifying is the impression he made on his teacher at Halifax. 'He had the ceiling of the schoolroom new whitewashed; the ladder remained there. I, one unlucky day, mounted it, and wrote with a brush, in large capital letters, LAU STERNE, for which the usher severely whipped me. My master was very much hurt at this, and said before me, that never should that name be effaced, for I was a boy of genius, and he was sure I should come to preferment.' The boy did come to preferment, other, most probably, than the master predicted. But did anybody ever go to look for the ineffaceable name on the roof?

Sir Walter Scott remarks that the Autobiography to which the readers of this Memoir have been referred 'is but a slight sketch, and stops short just where the reader becomes most interested in its progress, being very succinct in all which regards the author's personal history.' This remark is too obviously true, and supplies the only reason any one can assign for attempting to amplify it-especially where space is necessarily so limited as it is in this edition of STERNE'S Works. The poverty of the Autobiography is felt from the month that the subject of it became a public man by the publication of Tristram Shandy. The living of Sutton, it will be seen, was his first appointment. His uncle, the Rev. Jacques Sterne, LL.D., Prebendary of Durham, Canon Residentiary, Precentor and Prebendary of York, and a Rector besides, got him this, and secured for him the Prebendary of York. Through his wife's influence,-her name is not known-all that appears is that it began with L-he got the living of Stillington. On the title-page of an early edition of his Works he is designated 'Prebendary of York, and Vicar of Sutton on the Forest, and of Stillington near York.' STERNE says, I remained near twenty years at Sutton, doing duty at both places. Books, paint

ing, fiddling, and shooting were my amusements.' A glimpse or two of his life at this time is to be had by the curious, who alone care to read for such a reward. He was well known as a wit of the Douglas Jerrold stamp. It is told that he was sitting in a publichouse at York one day, along with some clerical brethren, when a young fellow, a stranger, came in and annoyed the reverend gentlemen very much by descanting too freely on religious topics in general, and on the hypocrisy of the clergy in particular. He addressed STERNE directly, asking him what were his sentiments on the subject. The clerical wit replied by telling him that his dog was reckoned one of the most beautiful pointers in the whole county, was very good-natured, but that he had one infernal trick which destroyed all his good qualities: 'He never sees a clergyman, but he immediately flies at him.' 'How long may he have had that trick, sir?' inquired the profane person with apparent interest. 'Ever since he was a puppy,' was the reply, and it revealed the satire. Now in those days a reputation for wit like this, thus used, was almost enough to canonize a man. Such anecdotes are still told in Sunday schools, as if they were a subdivision of the evidences of Christianity.

Thus did STERNE live, a local celebrity, till he was forty-six years of age. This is noteworthy. Like Cowper, he was late of beginning to write for the public-that is, for fame. He wrote for fame, and found it. Before 1759, the year in which the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy were published, STERNE had printed only two sermons. He had written a good deal, it is true; but now, 'tired of employing his brains for other people's advantage,' he took to his pen for his own. Accused of writing upon Iago's advice, 'Put money in thy purse,' or, as it was pedantically expressed, nummum in loculo, he replied that he wrote, not to be fed, but to be famous. He gained what he wrote for. He stalked into renown on his 'Hobby-horse-a compound he rendered classical in Tristram Shandy. He wanted money too-all men who write do. He mentions having taken a small house in York at the time for the education of his daughter; and this requires money. STERNE was lucky enough to encounter both praise and pudding.

The genesis of Tristram Shandy is traceable. There will be found,. printed last in the present edition, an earlier work of fiction than Tristram Shandy. It was inspired by a controversy between two ambitious clerical gentlemen, Dr. John Fountayne, Dean of York, and a Dr. Topham, which took place in 1758-the year before the first instalment of Tristram Shandy was published. The gentleman who first made this jeu d'esprit public, speaks of it as written immediately before Tristram Shandy, and which may be considered the precursor of it. The origin of a dispute which originated a brochure which revealed to LAURENCE STERNE the power he had within him to write Tristram Shandy, and take rank among the immortals, was that

a person-Dr. Topham, called Trim by the humorist-who filled a lucrative benefice was not satisfied with enjoying it during his own lifetime, but exerted all his influence to have it entailed on his wife and son. after his decease. A friend of STERNE-Dr. Fountayne-thought he had good right to expect the reversion of this living, but saw it passing away from him, and felt he had not sufficient influence to prevent the success of his adversary. When matters were at a critical juncture for John, as STERNE styles his friend and protégé, the satirist attacked the monopolizer in a formidable joke, which he entitled, The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat, with which the present possessor is not content to cover his own shoulders, unless he can cut out of it a petticoat for his wife and a pair of breeches for his son. A Political Romance. We are told by a contemporary, that what all the serious arguments in the world could not have effected, STERNE'S satirical pen brought about. Dr. Topham, the man to whom the worldly interests of his wife and son were dearer than rights based upon a deed of endowment, sent him word, that if this sarcasm were suppressed, he would resign his pretensions to the 'petticoat and breeches.' Thus STERNE served a friend-and himself. He is Lorry Slim in the squabble, and tells us: As for the old breeches, poor Mark Slender lived to wear them but a short time, and they got into the possession of Lorry Slim, an unlucky wight, by whom they are still worn ;—in truth, as you may well guess, they are very thin by this time. But Lorry has a light heart, and what recommends them to him. is this, that, thin as they are, he knows that Trim, let him say what he will, still envies the possessor of them, and with all his pride would be very glad to wear them after him.' This means, STERNE was made Prebendary of York-got 'the breeches.'

There would be at this time of day absolutely no interest at all in such a dispute, but for STERNE'S 'Political'-it should have been termed Ecclesiastical-Romance.' It has, however, this interest in itself. Had it been discovered as an anonymous pamphlet, many a sensible expert in identifications of the sort would have assigned it to STERNE. There is the same class of wit-that of knocking a germ of thought or humour about, which suggests to the reader a game at intellectual football carried on by a single eccentric player; and there are the inevitable dashes and asterisks of which Tristram Shandy made such dexterous, not always decent, use. But we are not left to guess. It was suppressed during STERNE'S lifetime, and published twenty years after it was written. One lingers over it, and is reminded of a few things. If only the world knew in what accidents and by what hints great works of literary genius generally originate, that sapient institution would first wonder, and then undervalue these creative proofs of the divine element in man. It is known that Milton hunted about a good deal for a 'high argument' long before he fixed on Paradise Lost. It is also a recognised fact that

Paradise Regained is due to a suggestion by his kindly friend and admirer, the young Quaker. But who can tell-if not themselveswhat has set such mercurial souls as E. A. Poe a-writing his Raven, or P. B. Shelley his Alastor? An eminent living dramatist called one of his trifles Upon the Spur of the Moment, because he was asked to write something on such a condition. Fielding wrote all his comedies and farces in that way; and, if we only knew it, Tom Jones may have sprung from a suggestion similar in origin, different only in the amount of continuous labour it inflicted on its volatile victim and our benefactor. However it be, it seems no strain upon probability to assert that English literature owes Tristram Shandy to a miserable squabble springing from heartless -or conjugal-greed, in a forgotten clerical husband and father, who was once known by a limited circle in the old ecclesiastical city of York. This led to all that LAURENCE STERNE is to the world-whatever that is worth.

The two first volumes of Tristram Shandy arrived in London before STERNE'S reputation as a wit. They were printed at York, and offered to the antiquated booksellers of that ancient city of renown on very moderate terms for them-fifty pounds for the proprietorship of the first impression. Such judges of their commercial value were those gentlemen, that they would scarcely venture as much money on them as would cover the expenses to which paper and printing had put the reverend Prebendary. There were some good reasons for this. It is probable that one or two of the booksellers would read the short chapter which counts one in the first volume. To them this amount of critical estimate would be enough, added to the consideration that the two volumes came from a dignitary of York Minster. When this first instalment of an immortal work in English literature was brought out by London publishers, it made its way in the world without any of the artifices of publishers. The artifices of the author were sufficient in an age familiar with the writings of Cervantes, Le Sage, Swift, Smollett, and Fielding. A large impression was sold off at once. Booksellers were aroused to the monetary significance of a fresh portent in literature. Each of them was eager to purchase and publish the second edition of these two heralds of fame and funds. STERNE sold it for six hundred pounds. The new work was read and approved all round, and some people understood what it meant. The coarseness was nothing new in those days. The satire it laughed and lashed with would be appreciated by the readers of Rabelais, as well as of the other popular authors just mentioned. Even the reviewers were amiable. The author, they said, with the necessary professional grudge at somebody, was a writer infinitely more ingenious and entertaining than any of the race of novelist of that day; his characters were striking, original, and singular; his observations shrewd; and, with a few trifling exceptions, his humour was easy and genuine. But there

were grave and learned censors. STERNE'S professional brethren-not a very strait-laced generation in his day-thought he showed a deal too much wit and vivacity, and vastly too little respect for the formalities, and even the decencies, of the cloth he wore. This new-born fame of his was no comfort to many of them and their admirers, who had known his name ere he became famous. He had before then, and covertly in his two volumes, assigned to grave and reverend personages ridiculous epithets, which they resented all the more that they were applicable, and were the scintillations of a wit which would keep such nicknames alive. To require a person,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'to pardon an insult on account of the wit which accompanies the infliction of it, although it is what jesters often seem to expect, is as reasonable as to desire a wounded man to admire the painted feathers which wing the dart by which he is pierced.' On the one hand, STERNE was not pardoned; and on the other hand, the notorious Tristram Shandy, with his Opinions, was received with shouts of applause.

STERNE, like as do authors in our day after they have achieved a big hit, went to London to receive the adulation which his fame had bespoken for him. He was a lion of the literary genius sort. His company was coveted by the great, the gay, the literati, and the witty. It was an honour to people who have a penchant for meeting individuals with brains unlike their own, to spend an evening with Tristram Shandy. He enjoyed this kind of thing. He boasted of being engaged fourteen dinners deep. The poet Gray, in a letter dated June 22, 1760, wrote: Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration-the man as well as the book. One is invited to dinner, when he dines, a fortnight before. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them, and humour sometimes hit and sometimes missed.' Boswell tells us, in his Life of Johnson, that it having been observed that there was little hospitality in London, Johnson said: 'Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be generally invited in London. The man Sterne, I am told, has had engagements for three months.' Goldsmith: And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: Why, no, sir.' This wise lover of Church and State might think what he liked, but STERNE made acquaintances by his name, and its charm as a golden key fitted the lock of many a gilded saloon which was advantageous to him. Among others, the Earl of Faulconberg, in testimony of his admiration of both man and book, presented STERNE with the spiritual care of another parish. This was the Rectory of Coxwold, an agreeable addition to loaves and fishes, supposed to be the hire of one who labours in the cure of souls. It was very convenient for the Prebendary of York, Vicar of Sutton, and of Stillington,-being, like his other livings, in the neighbourhood of York.

STERNE'S next publication was two volumes of Sermons. He had