MEMOIR. THE story of LAURENCE STERNE'S life-without and within-is better known than that of any of the other larger lights of English literature. About six months before he died, he wrote a short account of his nearly fifty-five years' peculiar pilgrimage, which will be found immediately after these few pages of introduction. It was meant for his daughter. He adds this postscript to it: I have set down these particulars relating to my family and self for my Lydia, in case hereafter she might have a curiosity, or a kinder motive, to know them.' It is sad to read words like these written by a father regarding his daughter. The few lines referring to this daughter and her mother which conclude the Autobiography slightly explain them, but do not relieve the sadness. They are: 'In 1762 I went to France, before the peace was concluded; and you both followed me. I left you both in France, and in two years after I went to Italy for the recovery of my health; and when I called upon you, I tried to engage your mother to return to England with me: she and yourself are at length come, and I have had the inexpressible joy of seeing my girl everything I wished.' There is here no 'inexpressible joy' uttered at seeing the girl's mother; and yet there is implied a very high compliment to that lady's motherly training. And this after a tender two years' courtship, and a marriage so unselfish on her part, and so romantic on his, as any one may read in the short Autobiography! There is not on record a marriage of affection which ought to have inspired more confident hopes of an old age like that of Burns' Mrs. John Anderson and her Joe, or of Tennyson's Miller and his Alice. Thackeray had no difficulty with the matter of explanation. After quoting from a scandalous letter, 'Whether husband or wife had most of the patience d'un ange,' he said in one of his lectures, 'may be uncertain; but there can be little doubt which needed it most!' The wife, forsooth. But it is most probably the old story over again. One of the elder biographers of STERNE, by no means an apologist of his, remarks that the wife and daughter, an agreeable young lady about sixteen, who had both resided for some years in a convent in France, having separated from Mr. STERNE through some pique, which was differently accounted for by the parties, returned to England.' It may as well be left so, out of respect to both husband and wife. Husbands of |
