charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable world, the delicious divine, for whose sermons the whole polite world was subscribing, the occupier of Rabelais's easy chair, only fresh stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of the cynical old curate of Meudon,**

d'ange" may be uncertain; but there can be no doubt which needed it most!

* "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. Have you read his 'Sermons,' with his own comick figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them? They are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience.' GRAY's Letters, June 22nd, 1760.

"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."" - BOSWELL'S Life of Johnson.

"Her [Miss Monckton's] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. 'I am sure,' said she, they have affected me.' Why,' said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about-'that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce.' When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and politeness, 'Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have said it.' Ibid.

** A passage or two from Sterne's "Sermons" may not be without interest here. Is not the following, levelled against

the more than rival of the Dean of St. Patrick's, wrote the above quoted respectable letter to his friend

the cruelties of the Church of Rome, stamped with the autograph of the author of the "Sentimental Journey?”.

"To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of the Inquisition behold religion with mercy and justice chained down under her feet, there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks, and instruments of torment.- Hark! what a piteous groan!— See the melancholy wretch who uttered it, just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, and endure the utmost pain that a studied system of religious cruelty has been able to invent. Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors. His body so wasted with sorrow and long confinement, you'll see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. — Observe the last movement of that horrid engine. What convulsions it has thrown him into! Consider the nature of the

posture in which he now lies stretched. - What exquisite torture he endures by it.-'T is all nature can bear. Good GOD! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not suffered to depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell, dragg'd out of it again to meet the flames and the insults in his last agonies, which this principle this principle, that there can be religion without morality has prepared for

him."- Sermon 27th.

The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix. ver. 1, 2, 3, concerning a "certain Levite:"

Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that uncomfortable blank in the heart in such a situation; for, notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many of which, no doubt, there are a good many handsome things said upon the secrets of retirement, &c. ... yet still, 'it is not good for man to be alone:' nor can all which the coldhearted pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship; a good heart wants some object to be kind to and the best parts of our blood,

in London; and it was in April of the same year, that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of "Daniel Draper, Esq., Counsellor of Bombay, and, in 1775, chief of the factory of Surata gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe."

"I got thy letter last night, Eliza," Sterne writes, on my return from Lord Bathurst's, where I dined

(the letter has this merit in it that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of better men than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind old gentleman)I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my return from Lord Bathurst's; and where I was heard as I talked of thee an hour without intermission with so much pleasure and attention, that the good old Lord toasted your health three different times; and now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes to live long enough to be introduced as a friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all other Nabobesses as much in

and the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution.

"Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed him! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way; let me be wise and religious, but let me be MAN; wherever thy Providence places me, or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, 'How our shadows lengthen as our sun goes down;' to whom I may say, 'How fresh is the face of Nature! how sweet the flowers of the field! how delicious are these fruits!"" - Sermon 18th.

The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous "Captive." The second shows that the same reflection was suggested to the Rev. Lawrence, by a text in Judges, as by the fille-de-chamber.

Sterne's Sermons were published as those of "Mr. Yorick."

wealth, as she does already in exterior, and what is far better (for Sterne is nothing without his morality), and what is far better, in interior merit. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. You know he was always the protector of men of wit and genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in which his notice began of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales's court, and said, 'I want to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit you also should know who it is that wishes this pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so much? I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast; but have survived them; and, despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my accounts; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die so: which I now do: so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew: added to which a man of learning courtesy and feeling."

and

"He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfaction for there was only a third person, of sensibility, with us: and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o'clock have we passed!* But thou,

"I am glad that you are in love-'t will cure you at least of the spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and - I myself must even have some Dulcinea in my

woman

Eliza! wert the star that conducted and enlivened the discourse! And when I talked not of thee, still didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of all good girls! - the sufferings I have sustained all night in consequence of thine, Eliza, are beyond the power of words.... And so thou hast fixed thy Bramin's portrait over thy writing desk, and will consult it in all doubts and difficulties?

Grateful and good girl! Yorick smiles contentedly over all thou dost: his picture does not do justice to his own complacency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly beings (Eliza was at Deal going back to the Counsellor at Bombay, and indeed it was high time she should be off.) You could least dispense with what is contrary to your own nature, which is soft and gentle, Eliza; it would civilise savages- though pity were it thou shouldest be tainted with the office. Write

head, it harmonises the soul; and in these cases I first endeavour to make the lady believe so, or rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love-but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—l'amour (say. they) n'est rien sans sentiment. Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called love."-STERNE's Letters, May 23, 1765.

"P. S.-My 'Sentimental Journey' will please Mrs. J and my Lydia [his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle] - I can answer for those two. It is a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow-creatures better than we do so it runs most upon those gentler passions and affections which aid so much to it."- Letters [1767].