world, but not to that little world of your acquaintance, whose opinion and sentiments you call the general opinion of the best judges with entitled to statues; and all the historians or satirists who have said otherwise since they departed this life, from Sallust to S-e, are guilty of the crimes you charge me without exception, who all affirm (you say) that my 'cowardice and injustice.' book cannot be put into the hands of any woman of character. (I hope you except widows, doetor, for they are not all so squeamish; but I am told they are all really of my party, in return for some good offices done their interests in the 274th page of my first volume.) But for the chaste married, and chaste unmarried part of the sex, they must not read my book! Heaven forbid the stock of chastity should be lessened by the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,— But why cowardice? 'Because 'tis not courage to attack a dead man who can't defend himself.' But why do you doctors of the faculty attack such a one with your incision-knife? Oh! for the good of the living. "Tis my plea; but I have something more to say in my behalf, and it is this, I am not guilty of the charge, tho' defensible. I have not cut up Doctor Kunastrokius at all. I have just scratch'd him, and that scarce skin deep. I do him first all honour-yes, his Opinions; it would certainly debauch speak of Kunastrokius as a great man (be he whom he will), and then most distantly hint at a droll foible in his character, and that not first reported (to the few who can even understand the hint) by me, but known before by every chamber-maid and footman within the bills of mortality. But Kunastrokius, you say, was a great man: 'tis that very circumstance which makes the pleasantry, for I could name at this instant a score of honest gentlemen who might have done the very thing which Kunastrokius did, and seen no joke in it at all. As to the failing of Kunastrokius, which you say can only be imputed to his friends as a misfortune, I see nothing like a misfortune in it, to any friend or relation of Kunastrokius, that Kunastrokius upon occasion should sit with ***** and *****—I have put these stars not to hurt your Worship's delicacy. If Kunastrokius, after all, is too sacred a character to be even smiled at (which is all I have done), he has had better luck than his betters. In the same page (without imputation of cowardice) I have said as much of a man of twice his wisdom,—and that is Solomon, of whom I have made the same remark, That they were both great men, and, like all mortal men, had each their ruling passion.' The consolation you give me, 'That my book, however, will be read enough to answer my design of raising a tax upon the public,' is very unconsolatory, to say nothing how very mortifying! By H-n! an author is worse treated than a common ***** at this rate. You will get a penny by your sins, and that's enough.' Upon this chapter let me comment. That I proposed laying the world under contribution when I set pen to paper, is what I own; and I suppose I may be allowed to have that view in my head in common with every other writer, to make my labour of advantage to myself. Do you not do the same? But I beg I may add that, whatever views I had of that kind, I had other views, the first of which was the hopes of doing the world good, by ridiculing what I thought deserving of it, or of disservice to sound learning, etc. How I have succeeded, my book must show, and this I leave entirely to the | 'em. God take them under his protection in this fiery trial, and send us plenty of duennas to watch the workings of their humours, till they have safely got through the whole work. If this will not be sufficient, may we have plenty of Sangrados to pour in plenty of cold water, till this terrible fermentation is over! As for the nummum in loculo, which you mention to me a second time, I fear you think me very poor, or in debt. I thank God, though I don't abound, that I have enough for a clean shirt every day and a mutton chop; and my contentment with this has thus far (and I hope ever will) put me above stooping an inch for it, even for 's estate. Curse on it, I like it not to that degree, nor envy (you may be sure) any man who kneels in the dirt for it; so that, however I may fall short of the ends proposed in commencing author, I enter this protest: first, that my end was honest; and secondly, that I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous. I am much obliged to Mr. Garrick for his very favourable opinion; but why, dear sir, had he done better in finding fault with it than in commending it? To humble me! An author is not so soon humbled as you imagine: no, but to make the book better by castrations, that is still sub judice; and I can assure you, upon this chapter, that the very passages and descriptions you propose that I should sacrifice in my second edition, are what are best relished by men of wit, and some others whom I esteem as sound critics; so that, upon the whole, I am still kept up, if not above fear, at least above despair, and have seen enough to show me the folly of an attempt of castrating my book to the prudish humours of particulars. I believe the short cut would be to publish this letter at the beginning of the third volume, as an apology for the first and second. I was sorry to find a censure upon the insincerity of some of my friends. I have no reason myself to reproach any one man. My friends have continued in the same opinions of my books which they first gave me on them; many, indeed, have thought better of 'em by considering them more, few worse.—I am, sir, your humble servant, LAURENCE STERNE. VII.-TO DAVID GARRICK, Esq. [About April 1760.] Thursday, 11 o'clock-Night. DEAR SIR, 'Twas for all the world like a cut across my finger with a sharp pen-knife. I saw the blood-gave it a suck-wrapt it up-and thought no more about it. But there is more goes to the healing of a wound than this comes to: a wound (unless it is a wound not worth talking of,-but, by the bye, mine is) must give you some pain after. Nature will take her own way with it; it must ferment,-it must digest. The story you told me of Tristram's pretended tutor this morning,-my letter by right should have set out with this sentence, and then the simile would not have kept you a moment in suspense. This vile story, I say,-though I then saw both how and where it wounded,-I felt little from it at first, or, to speak more honestly (though it ruins my simile), I felt a great deal of pain from it, but affected an air usual on such accidents, of less feeling than I had. I have now got home to my lodgings, since the play (you astonished me in it), and have been unwrapping this self-same wound of mine, and shaking my head over it this half hour. What the devil! is there no one learned blockhead throughout the many schools of misapplied science in the Christian world, to make a tutor of for my Tristram?-ex quovis ligno non fit. Are we so run out of stock that there is no one lumber-headed, muddle-headed, mortar-headed, pudding-headed chap amongst our doctors? Is there no one single wight of much reading and no learning, amongst the many children in my mother's nursery, who bid high for this chargebut I must disable my judgment by choosing a Warburton ?-Vengeance! have I so little concern for the honour of my hero? Am I a wretch so void of sense, so bereft of feeling for the figure he is to make in story, that I should choose a preceptor to rob him of all the immortality I intended him? O! dear Mr. Garrick. Malice is ingenious, unless where the excess of it outwits itself. I have two comforts in this stroke of it: the first is, that this one is partly of this kind; and secondly, that it is one of the number of those which so unfairly brought poor Yorick to his grave. The report might draw blood of the author of Tristram Shandy, but could not harm such a man as the author of the Divine Legation-God bless him! though (by the bye, and according to the natural course of descents) the blessing should come from him to me. DEAR SIR,-I return you ten thousand thanks for the favour of your letter, and the account you give me of my wife and girl. I saw Mr. Ch-y to-night at Ranelagh, who tells me you have inoculated my friend Bobby. I heartily wish him well through, and hope in God all goes right. On Monday we set on with a grand retinue of Lord Rockingham's (in whose suite I move) for Windsor:' they have contracted for fourteen hundred pounds for the dinner, to some general undertaker, of which the K- has bargained to pay one-third. Lord George Sackville was last Saturday at the opera,-some say with great effrontery, others, with great dejection. I have little news to add. There is a shilling pamphlet wrote against Tristram. I wish they would write a hundred such. Mrs. Sterne says her purse is light: will you, dear sir, be so good as to pay her ten guineas? and I will reckon with you when I have the pleasure of meeting you. My best compliments to Mrs. C- and all friends. Believe me, dear sir, your obliged and faithful LAU. STERNE. IX.-TO THE SAME. May 1760. DEAR SIR,-I this moment received the favour of your kind letter. The letter in the Ladies' Magazine about me was wrote by the noted Dr. Hill, who wrote the Inspector, and undertakes that magazine. The people of York are very uncharitable to suppose any man so gross a beast as to pen such a character of himself. In this great town no soul ever suspected it, for a thousand reasons. Could they suppose I should be such a fool as to fall foul upon Dr. Warburton, my best friend, by representing him so weak a man, or by telling such a lie of him, as his giving me a purse to buy off his tutorship for Tristram; or I should be fool 1 Prince Ferdinand, the Marquis of Rockingham, and Earl Temple, were installed Knights of the Garter, on Pray have you no interest, lateral or collateral, Tuesday, May 6th, 1769, at Windsor. to get me introduced to his Lordship? Why do you ask? My dear sir, I have no claim to such an hon 2 The Clockmaker's Outcry against the Author of Tristram Shandy. 8vo. 3 The Royal Female Magazine, for April 1760 enough to own I had taken his purse for that purpose? You must know there is a quarrel between Dr. Hill and Dr. M-y, who was the physician meant at Mr. Charles Stanhope's, and Dr. Hill has changed the place on purpose, to give M-y a lick. Now that conversation, though perhaps true, yet happened at another place,' and another physician, which I have contradicted in this city, for the honour of my friend M-y: all which shows the absurdity of York credulity and nonsense. Besides, the account is full of falsehoods; first, with regard to the place of my birth, which was at Clonmel, in Ireland; the story of a hundred pounds to Mrs. W-," not true, or of a pension promised, the merit of which I disclaimed; and indeed there are so many other things so untrue, and unlikely to come from me, that the worst enemy I have here never had a suspicion; and, to end all, Dr. Hill owns the paper. 1 As the truth of this anecdote is not denied, it may gratify curiosity to communicate it in Dr. Hill's own words: At the last dinner that the late lost amiable Charles Stanhope gave to genius, Yorick was present. The good old man was vexed to see a pedantic medicine-monger take the lead, and prevent that pleasantry which good wit and good wine might have occasioned, by a discourse in the unintelligible language of his profession, concerning the difference between the phrenitis and the paraphrenitis and the concomitant categories of the mediastium and pleura. 'Good-humoured Yorick saw the sense of the master of the feast, and fell into the cant and jargon of physic, as if he had been one of Radcliffe's travellers. "The vulgar practice," says he, "savours much of mechanical principles; the venerable ancients were all empirics, and the profession will never regain its ancient credit till practice falls into the old track again. I am myself an instance. I caught cold by leaning on a damp cushion; and after sneezing and snivelling a fortnight, it fell upon my breast. They blooded me, blistered me, and gave me robs and bobs, and lohocks and eclegmata; but I grew worse; for I was treated according to the exact rules of the College. In short, from an inflammation it came to an ADHESION, and all was over with me. They advised me to Bristol, that I might not do them the scandal of dying under their hands; and the Bristol people for the same reason consigned me over to Lisbon. But what do I? Why, I considered an adhesion is, in plain English, only a sticking of two things together, and that force enough would pull them asunder. I bought a good ash pole, and began leaping over all the walls and ditches in the country. From the height of the pole I used to come souse down upon my fect like an ass, when he tramples upon a bulldog; but it did not do. At last, when I had raised myself perpendicularly over a wall, I used to fall exactly across the ridge of it upon the side opposite to the adhesion. This tore it off at once, and I am as you see. Come, fill a glass to the memory of the empiric medicine." If he had been asked elsewhere about this disorder (for he really had a consumptive disorder), he would have answered, that he was cured by Huxham's decoction of the bark and elixir of vitriol.' I shall be down before May is out. I preach before the judges on Sunday; my Sermons come out on Thursday after, and I purpose the Monday, at furthest, after that, to set out for York. I have bought a pair of horses for that purpose. My best respects to your lady.—I am, dear sir, your most obliged and faithful L. STERNE. P.S.-I beg pardon for this hasty scrawl, having just come from a concert where the D. of York performed. I have received great notice from him, and last weck had the honour of supping with him. X.-TO DR. WARBURTON, BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER. YORK, June 9, 1760. MY LORD,-Not knowing where to send two sets of my Sermons, I could think of no better expedient than to order them into Mr. Berenge's hands, who has promised me that he will wait upon your Lordship with them, the first moment he hears you are in town. The truest and humblest thanks I return to your Lordship, for the generosity of your protection, and advice to me; by making a good use of the one, I will hope to deserve the other. I wish your Lordship all the health and happiness in this world, for I am your Lordship's most obliged and most L. STERNE. grateful servant, P.S.-I am just sitting down to go on with Tristram, etc. The scribblers use me ill, but they have used my betters much worse, for which may God forgive them. XI.-TO THE REV. MR. STERNE. PRIOR PARK, June 15, 1760. REVEREND SIR,-I have your favour of the 9th instant, and am glad to understand you are got safe home, and employed again in your proper studies and amusements. You have it in your power to make that, which is an amusement to yourself and others, useful to both; at least you should, above all things, beware of its becoming hurtful to either, by any violations of decency and good manners. But I have already taken such repeated liberties of advising you on that head, that to say more would be needless, or perhaps unacceptable. Whoever is, in any way, well received by the public, is sure to be annoyed by that pest of the public, profligate scribblers. This is the common lot of successful adventurers; but such have i often a worse evil to struggle with,-I mean the over officiousness of their indiscreet friends. There are two Odes,' as they are called, printed 1 Intitled, Two Lyric Epistles; one to my Cousin 2 The widow of Mr. Sterne's predecessor in the living Shandy, on his coming to Town; and the other to the of Coxwould. Grown Gentlewomen, the Misses of ****. 4to. by Dodsley. Whoever was the author, he appears to be a monster of impiety and lewdness; yet, such is the malignity of the scribblers, some have given them to your friend Hall; and others, which is still more impossible, to yourself; though the first Ode has the insolence to place you both in a mean and a ridiculous light. But this might arise from a tale equally groundless and malignant, that you had shown them to your acquaintances in Ms. before they were given to the public. Nor was their being printed by Dodsley the likeliest means of discrediting the calumny. About this time, another, under the mask of friendship, pretended to draw your character, which was since published in a Female Magazine (for dulness, who often has as great a hand as the Devil in deforming God's works of the creation, has made them, it seems, male and female), and thence it was transferred into a Chronicle.1 Pray have you read it-or do you know its author? quence, which if you will burn the moment you get it, I promise to send you a fine set essay in the style of your female epistolizers, cut and trim'd at all points. God defend me from such, who never yet knew what it was to say or write one premeditated word in my whole life; for this reason I send you this with pleasure, because wrote with the careless irregularity of an easy heart. Who told you Garrick wrote the medley for Beard? 'Twas wrote in his house, however, and before I left town. I deny it, I was not lost two days before I left town. I was lost all the time I was there, and never found till I got to this Shandy castle of mine. Next winter I intend to sojourn amongst you with more decorum, and will neither be lost nor found anywhere. Now I wish to God I was at your elbow. I have just finished one volume of Shandy, and I want to read it to some one who I know can taste and relish humour. This, by the way, is a little impudent in me, for I take the thing for granted, which their high mightinesses the world have yet to determine; but I mean no such Shall I, in truth, give you mine? I dare not, but I will; provided you keep it to yourself: know then, that I think there is more laughable humour, with an equal degree of Cervantic satire, if not more than in the last; but we are bad judges of the merit of our children. But of all these things, I daresay Mr. Garrick, whose prudence is equal to his honesty or his talents, has remonstrated to you with the free-thing, I could wish only to have your opinion. dom of a friend. He knows the inconstancy of what is called the Public towards all, even the best intentioned, of those who contribute to its pleasure or amusement. He (as every man of honour and discretion would) has availed himself of the public favour, to regulate the taste, and, in his proper station, to reform the manners, I return you a thousand thanks for your of the fashionable world; while, by a well-friendly congratulations upon my habitation, judged economy, he has provided against the temptations of a mean and servile dependency on the follies and vices of the great. COXWOULD, August 3, 1760. MADAM,-When a man's brains are as dry as a squeez'd orange, and he feels he has no more conceit in him than a mallet, 'tis in vain to think of sitting down, and writing a letter to a lady of your wit, unless in the honest JohnTrot style of yours of the 15th instant came safe to hand, etc.; which, by the bye, looks like a letter of business; and you know very well, from the first letter I had the honour to write to you, I am a man of no business at all. This vile plight I found my genius in was the reason I have told Mr. - I would not write to you till the next post, hoping by that time to get some small recruit, at least of vivacity, if not wit, to set out with; but upon second thoughts, thinking a bad letter in season to be better than a good one out of it, this scrawl is the conse The London Chronicle, May 6, 1760. and I will take care you shall never wish me but well, for I am, madam, with great esteem and truth, your most obliged, L. STERNE. P.S.-I have wrote this so vilely and so precipitately, I fear you must carry it to a decipherer. I beg you'll do me the honour to write, otherwise you draw me in, instead of Mr. drawing you into a scrape, for I should sorrow to have a taste of so agreeable a correspondent -and no more. Adieu. XIII. TO S― C-, Esq. LONDON, Christmas Day, 1760. MY DEAR FRIEND,-I have been in such a continual hurry since the moment I arrived herewhat with my books, and what with visitors and visitings-that it was not in my power sooner to sit down and acknowledge the favour of your obliging letter, and to thank you for the most friendly motives which led you to write it. I am not much in pain upon what gives my kind friends at Stillington so much on the chapter of Noses, because, as the principal satire throughout that part is levelled at those learned blockheads who, in all ages, have wasted their time and much learning upon points as foolish, it shifts off the idea of what you fear to another point; and 'tis thought here very good; 'twill pass muster, I mean not with all: no, no! I shall be attacked and pelted, either from cellars or garrets, write what I will; and besides, must expect to have a party against me of many hundreds, who either do not, or will not, laugh. "Tis enough if I divide the world; at least, I will rest contented with it. I wish you was here, to see what changes of looks and political reasoning have taken place in every company and coffee-house since last year. We shall be soon Prussians and Anti-Prussians, B-s and Anti-B-s, and those distinctions will just do as well as Whig and Tory; and for aught I know, serve the same ends. The king seems resolved to bring all things back to their original principles, and to stop the torrent of corruption and laziness. He rises every morning at six to do business, rides out at eight to a minute, returns at nine to give himself up to his people. By persisting, 'tis thought he will oblige his ministers and dependants to despatch affairs with him many hours sooner than of late, and 'tis much to be questioned whether they will not be enabled to wait upon him sooner by being freed from long levees of their own, and applications; which will in all likelihood be transferred from them directly to himself, the present system being to remove that phalanx of great people which stood betwixt the throne and the subjects, and suffer them to have immediate access without the intervention of a cabal (this is the language of others). However, the king gives everything himself, knows everything, and weighs everything maturely, and then is inflexible. This puts old stagers off their game: how it will end, we are all in the dark. 'Tis feared the war is quite over in Germany. Never was known such havoc amongst troops. I was told yesterday, by a colonel from Germany, that out of two battalions of nine hundred men, to which he belonged, but seventyone are left! Prince Ferdinand has sent word, 'tis said, that he must have forty thousand men directly to take the field, and with provisions for them too, for he can but subsist them for a fortnight. I hope this will find you all got to York. I beg my compliments to the amiable Mrs. Croft, etc. Though I purposed going first to Golden Square, yet fate has thus long disposed of me; so I have never been able to set a foot towards that quarter.-I am, dear sir, yours affectionately, L. STERNE. XIV. TO THE SAME. About January 1761. MY DEAR SIR, I have just time to acknowledge the favour of yours, but not to get the two prints you mention, which shall be sent you by next post. I have bought them, and lent them to Miss Gilbert, but will assuredly send for them and enclose them to you: I will take care to get your pictures well copied, and at a moderate price. And if I can be of further use, I beseech you to employ me; and from time to time will send you an account of whatever may be worth transmitting. The stream now scts in strong against the German war. Loud complaints of making a trade of the war, etc. etc.; much expected from Ld. Granby's evidence to these matters, who is expected every hour. The king wins every day upon the people, shows himself much at the play (but at no opera), rides out with his brothers every morning, half an hour after seven till nine, returns with them, spends an hour with them at breakfast and chat, and then sits down to business. I never dined at home once since I arrived-am fourteen dinners deep engaged just now, and fear matters will be worse with me in that point than better. As to the main points in view, at which you hint, all I can say is that I see my way, and unless Old Nick throws the dice, shall in due time come off winner. Tristram will be out the twentieth. There is a great rout about him before he enters the stage. Whether this will be of use or no, I can't say. Some wits of the first magnitude here, both as to wit and station, engage me success; time will show. Adieu. XV.-TO THE SAME. March 1761. DEAR SIR,-Since I had the favour of your obliging letter, nothing has happened or been said one day, which has not been contradicted the next; so, having little certain to write, I have forborne writing at all, in hopes every day of something worth filling up a letter. We had the greatest expectations yesterday that ever were raised of a pitched battle in the House of Commons, wherein Mr. Pitt was to have entered and thrown down the gauntlet in defence of the German war. There never was so full a house-the gallery full to the top. I was there all the day, when lo! a political fit of the gout seized the great combatant: he entered not the lists. Beckford got up, and begged the House, as he saw not his right honourable friend there, to put off the debate. It could not be done; so Beckford rose up, and made a most long, passionate, incoherent speech in defence of the Germanic war, but very severe upon the unfrugal manner it was carried on, in which he addressed himself principally to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and laid him on terribly. It seems the chancery of Hanover had laid out 350,000 pounds on account, and brought in our treasury debtor; and the grand debate was for an honest examination of the particulars of this extravagant account, and for vouchers to authenticate it. Legge answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord N |