Sterne | Page 9

from the first.
As well might we say that the last light touches of the sculptor's chisel
upon the perfected statue are more skilful than its first vigorous strokes
upon the shapeless block.
It is certain, however, that Sterne must have been storing up his
material of observation, secreting his reflections on life and character,
and consciously or unconsciously maturing his powers of expression,
during the whole of those silent twenty years which have now to be
passed under brief review. With one exception, to be noted presently,
the only known writings of his which belong to this period are sermons,
and these--a mere "scratch" collection of pulpit discourses, which, as
soon as he had gained the public ear, he hastened in characteristic
fashion to rummage from his desk and carry to the book-market--throw
no light upon the problem before us. There are sermons of Sterne which
alike in manner and matter disclose the author of Tristram Shandy; but
they are not among those which he preached or wrote before that work
was given to the world. They are not its ancestors but its descendants.
They belong to the post-Shandian period, and are in obvious imitation
of the Shandian style; while in none of the earlier ones--not even in that
famous homily on a Good Conscience, which did not succeed till
Corporal Trim preached it before the brothers Shandy and Dr.
Slop--can we trace either the trick of style or the turn of thought that
give piquancy to the novel. Yet the peculiar qualities of mind, and the
special faculty of workmanship of which this turn of thought and trick
of style were the product, must of course have been potentially present
from the beginning. Men do not blossom forth as wits, humourists,
masterly delineators of character, and skilful performers on a
highly-strung and carefully-tuned sentimental instrument all at once,
after entering their "forties;" and the only wonder is that a possessor of
these powers--some of them of the kind which, as a rule, and in most
men, seeks almost as irresistibly for exercise as even the poetic instinct

itself--should have been held so long unemployed. There is, however,
one very common stimulus to literary exertions which in Sterne's case
was undoubtedly wanting--a superabundance of unoccupied time. We
have little reason, it is true, to suppose that this light-minded and
valetudinarian Yorkshire parson was at any period of his life an
industrious "parish priest;" but it is probable, nevertheless, that time
never hung very heavily upon his hands. In addition to the favourite
amusements which he enumerates in the Memoir, he was all his days
addicted to one which is, perhaps, the most absorbing of all--flirtation.
Philandering, and especially philandering of the Platonic and
ultra-sentimental order, is almost the one human pastime of which its
votaries never seem to tire; and its constant ministrations to human
vanity may serve, perhaps, to account for their unwearied absorption in
its pursuit. Sterne's first love affair--an affair of which, unfortunately,
the consequences were more lasting than the passion--took place
immediately upon his leaving Cambridge. To relate it as he relates it to
his daughter: "At York I became acquainted with your mother, and
courted her for two years. She owned she liked me, but thought herself
not rich enough or me too poor to be joined together. She went to her
sister's in Staffordshire, and I wrote to her often. I believe then she was
partly determined to have me, but would not say so. At her return she
fell into a consumption, and one evening that I was sitting by her, with
an almost broken heart to see her so ill, she said: 'My dear Laury, I
never can be yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live! But I
have left you every shilling of my fortune.' Upon that she showed me
her will. This generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she
recovered, and we were married in 1741." The name of this lady was
Elizabeth Lumley, and it was to her that Sterne addressed those earliest
letters which his daughter included in the collection published by her
some eight years after her father's death. They were added, the preface
tells us, "in justice to Mr. Sterne's delicate feelings;" and in our modern
usage of the word "delicate," as equivalent to infirm of health and
probably short of life, they no doubt do full justice to the passion which
they are supposed to express. It would be unfair, of course, to judge any
love-letters of that period by the standard of sincerity applied in our
own less artificial age. All such compositions seem frigid and formal
enough to us of to-day; yet in most cases of genuine attachment we

usually find at least a sentence here and there in