life was ebbing fast, it is put on record that the patient lay on his bed totally exhausted, and complained that his feet were cold, and requested the female attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it seemed to relieve him. He complained that the cold came up higher; and while the assistant was in the act of rubbing his ankles and legs, he expired without a groan. In the house of a stranger he ended his earthly career. Strangers performed the last offices over his dead body in an inn. Strangers buried him in the then new burying-ground belonging to the Parish of St. George, Hanover Square. And Dr. Ferriar was told, strangers robbed him of his gold sleeve-buttons while he was expiring. Was there ever such desolation in death? And as to the wife and daughter who were not allowed to discharge the last rites to the dying and the dead, they had little else to console them. They were left unprovided for. Of all his large income, Yorick had saved nothing. He did not die in debt, is the best sentence that can be uttered regarding his monetary management in the interest of those who were dependent on him. Alas, Poor Yorick!' We are told that STERNE'S widow and daughter being at York during the races,―were they at the races so soon after his death among strangers ?-some humane gentlemen, friends and admirers of the late Prebend, took into consideration their disagreeable situation, and made them a present of a purse containing a thousand pounds. This unexpected and generous supply, added to a very extensive subscription of the nobility to three additional volumes of his Sermons, afforded a sufficient provision to enable them to return to their convent life in France.

'We are well acquainted,' says Sir Walter Scott, with STERNE'S features and personal appearance, to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a hectic and consumptive appearance. His features, though capable of expressing with peculiar effect the sentimental emotions by which he was often affected, had also a shrewd, humorous, and sarcastic character, proper to the wit and the satirist, and not unlike that which predominates in the portraits of Voltaire. His conversation was animated and witty; but Johnson complained that it was marked by licence, better suiting the company of the Lord of Crazy Castle than of the great moralist. It has been said, and probably with truth, that his temper was variable and unequal, the natural consequence of an irritable bodily frame and continued bad health. But we will not readily believe that the parent of Uncle Toby could be a harsh, or habitually a badhumoured man. STERNE'S letters to his friends, and especially to his daughter, breathe all the fondness of affection; and his resources, such as they were, seem to have been always at the command of those whom he loved.'

In 1775, after her mother's death, STERNE'S daughter, Lydia, published three small volumes of his Letters. She made public also

on that occasion the short Autobiography of which this Memoir is merely a meagre supplement. The Letters are dedicated to David Garrick, Esq. The dedication is a rather inflated affair. I vowed,' she says, the Letters should be dedicated to the man my father so much admired, who, with an unprejudiced eye, read and approved his works, and, moreover, loved the man... .. May you, dear Sir, approve of these Letters as much as Mr. STERNE admired you.' Lydia had abandoned lodgings in a convent by this time, and had got married. She signs herself LYDIA STERNE DE MEDALLE-thus giving us the name of her husband. Do any of her descendants live? She evidently saw little indelicacy in her father's writings, or in some of the Letters. She complied with her mother's wish in publishing them. The two brother masons-the strangers who erected the monumental stone near the place where his body was laid-speaking of his dying days, say, 'His Letters at this period reflect so much credit on his character, that it is to be lamented some others in the collection were permitted to see the light.' They were published by his daughter. Some of the Letters are of a very extraordinary character. But the circumstance that they were exposed to public view by a daughter in honour of her father, and at the instance of her mother, is very curious indeed. The ten Letters addressed by STERNE to 'Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of Daniel Draper, Esq., counsellor at Bombay, and chief of the factory at Surat,' have created a deal of platonic controversy. Thackeray is terribly severe on STERNE for these Letters, and others their author was writing at the same time. It is to be remembered that the great humorist of our age sets out in his Lectures by announcing, that 'in treating of the English humorists of the past age, it is of the men and their lives rather than of their books that he speaks.' But he is bound to speak of them as he finds them in their books. He does so especially when he handles 'poor Yorick' so roughly. He speaks of him as a 'leering Satyr,' 'a coward,' 'a feeble wretch,' and finally he consigns him to Pluto-a euphemism for a peculiarly uncomfortable eternal habitation. No one with any respect for good order in society and at home will deny the folly of these and all other letters written by people who might have been better employed. But why assume guilt? Folly is bad enough. The Nemesis she invokes has a deadly glare in her eye. But until tangible proof is afforded that folly has not reigned alone in the conduct of a man and woman-each 'hungry at the heart and needy'-it is a superfluous waste of moral energy to invoke the aid of the darker genius to help us to an explanation of it. Besides, why put all the blame on STERNE? There are sentimental, romantic women who are difficult to keep at a distance which is at the same time respectful and respectable. They worship such men as the author of Tristram Shandy-if they have a chance. If not, they are eager for any other variety of sympathy; and yet they are, according

to the test which counts guilt from the beginning of bodily contact, as faithful to their marriage vows as priest of prude could bargain for. There is a great deal too much of assuming the worst in this world. And it is a pity that a man of so large a heart, and such a wide and miscellaneous experience, as William Makepeace Thackeray, should have lent his broad manly countenance to that immoral practice. The lady in question came to England for the recovery of her health. She and STERNE became acquainted, and were greatly-say foolishly-smitten mutually. STERNE'S Letters do not warrant any conclusion other than that he entertained for her, and she for him, feelings of very warm friendship. At all events, Mrs. Draper returned to her husband in India after her correspondence with STERNE. She made a second visit to England, died at Bristol, and was buried in the cathedral of that city, where there is a marble monument erected to her memory. Her name is mentioned in the history of literature as the correspondent of STERNE. The marble monument over the remains of the wife of Daniel Draper, Esq. excellent man and counsellor-had that been all that was known of her, would have required to be explained to the passer by, who is so often imperiously summoned to 'stop' by these stony monitors, which look like so many moral lamp-posts without the lamp. There are gems of simple sweetness among STERNE'S Letters. That one, nearly the last of them, in which he implores a friend to protect his daughter Lydia, would redeem the good name of even a 'Married Rake.' Thackeray admits that all his Letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate, and not sentimental; as a' hundred pages of his writings are beautiful, and full, not of surprising humour merely, but of genuine love and kindness.' Thackeray ought to have been less harsh on the memory of perhaps as good a man as himself, when he was so eminently capable of analyzing his character, as he shows himself to have been by the application he makes of the following anecdote which he tells. Some time since, I was in the company of a French actor, who began after dinner, and at his own request, to sing French songs of the sort called des chansons grivoises, and which he performed admirably, and to the satisfaction of most persons present. Having finished these, he commenced a sentimental ballad: it was so charmingly sung, that it touched all persons present, and especially the singer himself, whose voice trembled, whose eyes filled with emotion, and who was snivelling and weeping quite genuine tears by the time his own ditty was over. I suppose STERNE had this artistical sensibility.' He had, and he utilized it for the gratification of his generation, and for acquiring what money and lasting memory of himself he could secure. Did Mr. Thackeray aim at anything more noble? STERNE was an artist. He had a specialty of gift as an element in his genius. He was late in life of discovering it, and availing himself of it. It gratified the class in his age which corresponded to the readers of The Newcomes in ours.

It was they who praised STERNE's writings and himself, and were willing to make him rich. His written words were as remote from anecdotes which grim moralists allowed themselves to listen to, and even to repeat, in his day, as were those of Mr. Thackeray in an age of more watch upon its lips in the presence of women.

The most that STERNE ever published has been mentioned. An Impromptu' will be found at the end of this edition which deserves particular attention. It is altogether Shandean. S. P., who gave it to the public, says, STERNE drew it up in a few moments without stopping his pen.' In such a case it deserves the study of any one who wishes to look more closely into the secret of making a reputation in literature. In 1844 there was printed for private circulation a collection of Seven Letters by Sterne and his Friends. They are mentioned by Thackeray, and founded on by him for his notorious attack on the earlier humorist, against which it is a duty to protest. One of the best possible proofs of literary success is that an author's name becomes marketable. Our Prebend of York attained this distinction. In an edition of his works, in seven volumes, published in 1783-fifteen years after he died-the sixth volume is mainly made up of The Koran; or the Life, Character, and Sentiments of Tria Juncta in Uno, M. N. A., or Master of No Arts. It is dedicated in the fulsome terms of that period to the Right Honourable the Earl of Charlemont.' The editor pretends that the work was handed to him by STERNE, who left it to his discretion whether he would make it public or not. While reading the pages to him one day, STERNE, he says, stopped at the end of a particular chapter and expressed himself thus: 'Swift said, that if there were a dozen Arbuthnots in the world, he would burn his Gulliver. In like manner, I declare, that if there were only as many Charlemonts in these kingdoms, I would also commit my Primmer to the flames.' This mention of the Primmer is a bit of skilful imposture. It occurs as one of the many chapters which compose the Koran. That work was proved in the Gentleman's Magazine to be an infliction upon the name of STERNE. It is a tolerably clever imitation of what was weakest in him. It multiplies chapters as he did. It shows that the author of it understood STERNE'S devices in the way of affectation and allusiveness. But like all other imitations, it betrays itself by becoming too close. The author, who calls himself editor, says in his address to the reader a rather good thing of his original. It is this: STERNE 'was a second Democritus, who sported his opinions freely, just as his philosophy or his fancy led the way. And as he instilled no profligate principle, nor solicited any loose desire, the worst that could possibly be said of the very worst part of his writings might be only, that they were as indecent, but as innocent at the same time, as the sprawling of an infant on the floor.' This is the defence which STERNE himself gave for his writings to a lady who charged him with indelicacy; and of course suggests at once to the reader a

suspicion of forgery. But the affair is not left to conjecture. The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, who signs himself 'Normanus,' says, in his edition-Dublin, 1775, 5 vols., 12mo-the Koran was placed at the end, the editor honestly confessing that it was written by Mr. Richard Griffith, son of Mrs. Griffith the novelettist, himself a wealthy gentleman in Kildare. This imposture does not occur in Cadell's royal octavo four volume edition, published in 1803, which is followed in the present issue of the Complete Works of a genuine and generous humorist. STERNE'S affectation, indelicacy, and originality, have all been severely reprimanded by high authorities in the republic of letters. Coleridge is wise and wordy when he writes about his 'using the best dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for the basest.' And just as Professor Ferrier in our day distinguished himself by showing what a plagiarist Coleridge was, so a Dr. Ferriar of an earlier day made some name by exposing the plagiarisms of STERNE. Coleridge and STERNE live and will live as thinkers and thought-producing powers, notwithstanding the faults with which each has been charged. To the pure all things are pure. This is the motto which the editor of literature produced in the middle of last century adopts. If that embodiment of thought, wit, humour, and artistic skill were not reproduced, the thoughtful portion of mankind would soon begin to inquire after some missing link, the need of which they felt in their dreams by day and lingering thoughts in the night.'