uncle Archdeacon Sterne he became Vicar of Sutton and Prebendary of York.

In 1741 he married, and in the fragmentary Life' which he wrote and addressed to his daughter he gives an affecting account of his courtship. Unhappily, as years went by, his love for his wife grew cold, but his affection for his daughter was always warm and sincere.

In 1760 Sterne took the London world by storm with the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy.' 'My rooms,' he writes, are filling every hour with great people of the first rank, who strive who shall most honour me,' and he also speaks of being engaged fourteen dinners deep. Bishop Warburton presented him with a purse of gold, and Lord Falconberg gave him another Yorkshire living. A new edition of the two volumes was required in a few months, and with them the Sermous of Mr. Yorick were announced and were speedily published. The poet Gray adds his tribute of praise, and writes in June:—

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Tristram Shandy' is a still greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book: one is invited to dinner, where 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 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.

Two more volumes of Tristram Shandy' appeared in 1761, and two more in the year following, and on each occasion Sterne came up to London to superintend the publication and enjoy the triumph.

His health which had never been robust now gave him

serious alarm, and he determined to visit the south of France. In January 1762 he reached Paris, and became as great a lion there as in London. He went as far south as Toulouse, sent for his wife and daughter to join him, and in May 1764 he returned to England, leaving wife and child behind him.

In January 1765 two more volumes of Tristram Shandy' were published, one of which contained the notes of his sojourn in France, and in October Sterne set forth once more in quest of health. He went rapidly through France and Italy, spending the winter in Naples, and was back again in Yorkshire in June 1766.

The ninth and last volume of Tristram Shandy' was published early in 1767, and Sterne then wrote his 'Sentimental Journey,' the famous outcome of his French and Italian travels. This was published in February 1768, and the next month Sterne died at his lodgings in Bond Street, attended only by strangers.

Tristram Shandy' is one of the strangest books, with its fantastical arrangement of subjects, its display of curious erudition, its sparkling wit, and its gleams of humour. Of Tristram himself little is said, but lifelike pictures are drawn of Mr. Shandy with his whimsical notions, of Parson Yorick, who is the author himself, and, above all, of Uncle Toby and his faithful servant, Corporal Trim. The creation of these last two characters is Sterne's greatest achievement.

Carlyle, after speaking of Shakspere and Ben Jonson and Swift as humourists, says:

Sterne follows next; our last specimen of humour, and, with all his faults, our best, our finest, if not our strongest; for Yorick, and Corporal

Trim, and Uncle Toby have yet no brother but in Don Quixote, far as he lies above them.

The following is part of the description given of Yorick :

With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and, at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen. So that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a day of somebody's tackling; and as the grave and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way, you may likewise imagine 'twas with such he had generally the ill-luck to get the most entangled.

A few pages later there is a pathetic account of Yorick's death after parting with his friend Eugenius. The character of Uncle Toby is drawn with so many fine. touches that it cannot well be shown in a single extract, but the following describes his delight in Trim's project of playing at fortifications in the bowling-green.

My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on, but it was not a blush of guilt, of modesty, or of anger, it was a blush of joy; he was fired with Corporal Trim's project and description. Trim! said my uncle Toby, thou hast said enough. We might begin the campaign, continued Trim, on the very day that his Majesty and the Allies take the field and demolish them town by town as fast as- Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no more. Your Honour, continued Trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would- Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby. Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure and good pastime, but good air, and good exercise, and good health, and your Honour's wound would be well in a month. Thou hast said enough, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby (putting his hand into his breeches pocket). I like thy project mightily. And if your Honour pleases, I'll this moment go and buy a pioneer's spade to take down with us, and I'll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe and a couple of Say no more Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up upon one leg quite overcome with rapture, and thrusting a guinea into Trim's hand. Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more; but

go down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.

Trim ran down, and brought up his master's supper to no purpose. Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it. Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to bed. 'Twas all one. Corporal Trim's description had fired his imagination, my uncle Toby could not shut his eyes.

JOHNSON AND BOSWELL

DR. JOHNSON exercised in the second half of the eighteenth century the same sway in the literary world which Addison and Pope possessed in the early half. But this influence arose not so much from any published writings of his as from the charm and power of his conversation, and happily for us his life has been recorded in a book which is better than the best of Johnson's.

Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichfield, where his father was a bookseller, fairly prosperous at that time, but he became poor as his son grew towards manhood. From his birth Samuel was a sickly child. He was put out to nurse, and he tells us:

In ten weeks I was taken home, a poor, diseased infant, almost blind. I remember my Aunt Ford told me she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street.

He grew up to be a sturdy man, but was troubled all his life with dimness of sight, and with innumerable ailments which made life a burden to him. His strange unconscious gesticulations were the wonder and amusement of those who saw him.

EE

Once he collected a laughing mob in Twickenham meadows by his antics his hands imitating the motions of a jockey riding at full speed, and his feet twisting in and out to make heels and toes touch alternately. He presently sat down and took out a Grotius De Veritate, over which he seesawed so violently that the mob ran back to see what was the matter.'

He was a scholar at Lichfield Grammar School till he' was sixteen, and then for two years he was at home and gathered knowledge from the folios in his father's shop. Then for three years he was at Oxford, but left without a degree, and he appears to have gained little instruction there. But he loved to revisit Oxford, and in later years he accepted with pleasure and pride the degree which the university conferred upon him.

After leaving Oxford Johnson made several ineffectual attempts to gain a livelihood by teaching, and in 1737 he came to London, and like Smollett with a tragedy in his pocket.

Two years before he had married his dear Tetty,' who was twenty years his senior, but to whom he was most sincerely attached.

His life in London was for some time a strenuous and almost hopeless fight with misery and want. We are told that in later and happier years

When Dr. Johnson one day read his own satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, with the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears.

The satire was The Vanity of Human Wishes,' the best of Johnson's poems, and the following are a few of the lines:

1 Leslie Stephen.