Sterne

Sterne, by H.D. Traill

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Title: Sterne
Author: H.D. Traill
Release Date: April 25, 2004 [EBook #12142]
Language: English
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STERNE
BY
H.D. TRAILL

1882

PREFATORY NOTE.
The materials for a biography of Sterne are by no means abundant. Of
the earlier years of his life the only existing record is that preserved in
the brief autobiographical memoir which, a few months before his
death, he composed, in the usual quaint staccato style of his familiar
correspondence, for the benefit of his daughter. Of his childhood; of his
school-days; of his life at Cambridge, and in his Yorkshire vicarage; of
his whole history, in fact, up to the age of forty-six, we know nothing
more than he has there jotted down. He attained that age in the year
1759; and at this date begins that series of his Letters, from which, for
those who have the patience to sort them out of the chronological
confusion in which his daughter and editress involved them, there is, no
doubt, a good deal to be learnt. These letters, however, which extend
down to 1768, the year of the writer's death, contain pretty nearly all
the contemporary material that we have to depend on. Freely as Sterne
mixed in the best literary society, there is singularly little to be gathered
about him, even in the way of chance allusion and anecdote, from the
memoirs and ana of his time. Of the many friends who would have
been competent to write his biography while the facts were yet fresh,
but one, John Wilkes, ever entertained--if he did seriously
entertain--the idea of performing this pious work; and he, in spite of the
entreaties of Sterne's widow and daughter, then in straitened
circumstances, left unredeemed his promise to do so. The brief memoir
by Sir Walter Scott, which is prefixed to many popular editions of
Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey, sets out the so-called
autobiography in full, but for the rest is mainly critical; Thackeray's
well-known lecture essay is almost wholly so; and nothing, worthy to
be dignified by the name of a Life of Sterne, seems ever to have been
published, until the appearance of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's two stout
volumes, under this title, some eighteen years ago. Of this work it is
hardly too much to say that it contains (no doubt with the admixture of
a good deal of superfluous matter) nearly all the information as to the
facts of Sterne's life that is now ever likely to be recovered. The

evidence for certain of its statements of fact is not as thoroughly sifted
as it might have been; and with some of its criticism I, at least, am
unable to agree. But no one interested in the subject of this memoir can
be insensible of his obligations to Mr. Fitzgerald for the fruitful
diligence with which he has laboured in a too long neglected field.
H.D.T.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
(1713-1724.)
BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.
CHAPTER II.
(1724-1733.)
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.
CHAPTER III.
(1738-1759.)
LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.
CHAPTER IV.
(1759-1760.)
"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS. I. AND II.
CHAPTER V.

(1760-1762.)
LONDON TRIUMPHS.--FIRST SET OF SERMONS.--"TRISTRAM
SHANDY," VOLS. III. AND IV.--COXWOLD.--"TRISTRAM
SHANDY," VOLS. V. AND VI.--FIRST VISIT TO THE
CONTINENT.--PARIS.--TOULOUSE.
CHAPTER VI.
(1762-1765.)
LIFE IN THE SOUTH.--RETURN TO ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM
SHANDY," VOLS. VII. AND VIII.--SECOND SET OF SERMONS
CHAPTER VII.
(1765-1768)
FRANCE AND ITALY.--MEETING WITH WIFE AND
DAUGHTER.--RETURN TO ENGLAND.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY,"
VOL. IX.--"THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY"
CHAPTER VIII.
(1768.)
LAST DAYS AND DEATH
CHAPTER IX.
STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR.
FERRIAR'S "ILLUSTRATIONS"
CHAPTER X.
STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--HUMOUR AND
SENTIMENT

CHAPTER XI.
CREATIVE AND DRAMATIC POWER.--PLACE IN ENGLISH
LITERATURE

STERNE.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.
(1713-1724.)
Towards the close of the month of November, 1713, one of the last of
the English regiments which had been detained in Flanders to supervise
the execution of the treaty of Utrecht arrived at Clonmel from Dunkirk.
The day after its arrival the regiment was disbanded; and yet a few days
later, on the 24th of the month, the wife of one of its subalterns gave
birth to a son. The child who thus early displayed the perversity of his
humour by so inopportune an appearance was Laurence Sterne. "My
birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung notes by which he has
been somewhat grandiloquently said