Sterne | Page 5

can be said for the lot
in which his early days were cast. In almost all other respects there
could hardly have been--for a quick-witted, precocious, imitative
boy--a worse bringing-up. No one, I should imagine, ever more needed
discipline in his youth than Sterne; and the camp is a place of discipline
for the soldier only. To all others whom necessity attaches to it, and to
the young especially, it is rather a school of license and irregularity. It
is fair to remember these disadvantages of Sterne's early training, in
judging of the many defects as a man, and laxities as a writer, which
marked his later life; though, on the other hand, there is no denying the
reality and value of some of the countervailing advantages which came
to him from his boyish surroundings. The conception of my Uncle
Toby need not have been taken whole from Roger Sterne, or from any
one actual captain of a marching regiment; but the constant sight of,
and converse with, many captains and many corporals may
undoubtedly have contributed much to the vigour and vitality of Toby
Shandy and Corporal Trim. So far as the externals of portraiture were
concerned, there can be no doubt that his art benefited much from his
early military life. His soldiers have the true stamp of the soldier about
them in air and language; and when his captain and corporal fight their
Flemish battles over again we are thoroughly conscious that we are
listening, under the dramatic form, to one who must himself have heard
many a chapter of the same splendid story from the lips of the very men
who had helped to break the pride of the Grand Monarque under
Marlborough and Eugene.

CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.
(1723-1738.)
It was not--as we have seen from the Memoir--till the autumn of 1723,
"or the spring of the following year," that Roger Sterne obtained leave
of his colonel to "fix" his son at school; and this would bring Laurence
to the tolerably advanced age of ten before beginning his education in
any systematic way. He records, under date of 1721, that "in this year I
learned to write, &c.;" but it is not probable that the "&c."--that
indolent symbol of which Sterne makes such irritating use in all his
familiar writing--covers, in this case, any wide extent of educational
advance. The boy, most likely, could just read and write, and no more,
at the time when he was fixed at school, "near Halifax, with an able
master:" a judicious selection, no doubt, both of place as well as teacher.
Mr. Fitzgerald, to whose researches we owe as much light as is ever
likely to be thrown upon this obscure and probably not very interesting
period of Sterne's life, has pointed out that Richard Sterne, eldest son of
the late Simon Sterne, and uncle, therefore, of Laurence, was one of the
governors of Halifax Grammar School, and that he may have used his
interest to obtain his nephew's admission to the foundation as the
grandson of a Halifax man, and so, constructively, a child of the parish.
But, be this as it may, it is more than probable that from the time when
he was sent to Halifax School the whole care and cost of the boy's
education was borne by his Yorkshire relatives. The Memoir says that,
"by God's care of me, my cousin Sterne, of Elvington, became a father
to me, and sent me to the University, &c., &c.;" and it is to be inferred
from this that the benevolent guardianship of Sterne's uncle Richard
(who died in 1732, the year before Laurence was admitted of Jesus
College, Cambridge) must have been taken up by his son. Of his school
course--though it lasted for over seven years--the autobiographer has
little to say; nothing, indeed, except that he "cannot omit mentioning"
that anecdote with which everybody, I suppose, who has ever come
across the briefest notice of Sterne's life is familiar. The schoolmaster
"had the ceiling of the schoolroom new-whitewashed, and 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. This expression made me
forget the blows I had received." It is hardly to be supposed, of course,
that this story is pure romance; but it is difficult, on the other hand, to
believe that the incident has been related by Sterne exactly as it
happened. That the recorded prediction may have been made in jest--or
even in earnest (for penetrating