Meanwhile he regretted his incapacity to give them a specimen of the alieus or fish-meals of the ancients; such as the jus diabaton, the conger-eel, which, in Galen's opinion, is hard of digestion; the cornutta or gurnard, described by Pliny in his Natural History,' who says the horns of many of them were a foot and a half in length; the mullet and lamprey, that were in the highest estimation of old, of which last Julius Cæsar borrowed six thousand for one triumphal supper. He observed that the manner of dressing them was described by Horace, in the account be gives of the entertainment to which Mæcenas was invited by the epicure Nasiede

Affetur squillas inter muræna natantes, &c.;

and told them, that they were commonly eaten with the thus Syiracum, a certain anodyne and astringent seed, which qualified the purgative nature of the fish. Finally, this learned physician gave them to understand, that though this was reckoned a luxurious dish in the zenith of the Roman taste, it was by no means comparable in point of expense to some preparations in vogue about the time of that absurd voluptuary Heliogabalus, who ordered the brains of six hundred ostriches to be compounded in one mess.

By this time the dessert appeared, and the company were not a little rejoiced to see plain olives in suit and water; but what the master of the feast valued himself upon, was a sort of jelly, which he affirmed to be preferable to the hypotrimma of Hesychius, being a mixture of vinegar, pickle, and honey, boiled to a proper consistence, and candied asafoetida, which he asserted, in contradiction to Aumelbergius and Lister, was no other than the laser Syriacum, so precious as to be sold aniong the ancients to the weight of a silver penny. The gentlemen took his word for the excellency of this gum." but contented themselves with the olives, which gave such an agreeable relish to the wine that they seemed very well disposed to console themselves for the disgraces they had endured: and Pickle, unwilling to lose the least circumstance of entertainment that could be enjoyed in their company, went in quest of the painter, who remained in his penitentials in another apartment, and could not be persuaded to re-enter the banqueting-room, until Peregrine undertook to procure his pardon from those whom he had injured. Having assured him of this indulgence, our young gentleman led him in like a criminel, bowing on all hauds with an air of humility and contrition; and particularly addressing himself to the count, to whom he swore in English he had no intent to affront man, woman, or child, but was fain to make the best of his way, that he might not give the honourable company cause of offence by obeying the dictates of nature in their presence.

When Pickle interpreted this apology to the Italian. Pallet was forgiven in very pol te terms, and even received into favour by his friend the doctor in consequence of our hero's intercession; so that all the guests forgot their chagrin, and paid their respects so piously to the bottle, that in a short time the champagne produced very evident effects in the behaviour of all present.

LAURENCE STERNE.

Next in order of time and genius to Fielding and Smollett, and not inferior in conception of rich eccentric comic character, or in witty illustration, was the author of Tristram Shandy.' Sterne was a great humorist, a master of pathos, and a singularly original novelist, though at the same time a daring plagiarist. My Uncle Toby, Mr. Shandy, Corporal Trim, and Dr. Slop, will go down to posterity with the kindred creations of Rabelais and Cervantes. This idol of his own day is now, however, but little read by the great mass of readers of fiction; except perhaps in passages of pure sentiment or description. His broad humour is not relished, his oddities have lost the gloss of novelty, his indecencies startle the prudish and correct. The readers of this busy age will not hunt for his beauties amidst the blank and marbled leaves, the pages of no meaning, the quaint eru

dition stolen from old folios, the abrupt transitions and discursive flights in which his Shakspearian touches of character and his gems of fancy, wisdom, and feeling lie imbedded. His polished diction has even an air of false glitter, yet it is the weapon of a master-of one who can stir the heart to tears as well as laughter. The want of simplicity and decency is his great fault. His whim and caprice, which he partly imitated from Rabelais, and partly assumed for effect, come in sometimes with intrusive awkwardness to mar the touches of true genius, and the kindlings of enthusiasm. He took as much pains to spoil his own natural powers by affectation, as Lady Mary says Fielding did to destroy his fine constitution.

The life of LAURENCE STERNE was as little in keeping as his writings. A clergyman, he was profane and licentious; a sentirentalist, who had with his pen, tears for all animate and inanimate nature, he was selfish and reckless in his conduct. Had he kept to his living in the country, he would have been a better and wiser man. 'He degenerated in London,' says his friend David Garrick, like an ill-transplanted shrub: the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud— an invalid in body and mind.' Laurence Sterne was the great grandson of Dr. Richard Sterne, archbishop of York. His father-one of a numerous family-entered the army as an ensign in the 34th Regiment, with which he served in Flanders, and was present at the sieges of Lisle and Douay. The mother of the novelist was Agnes Hebert, widow of a captain of good family. Her father-in-law,' says Sterne, was a noted sutler in Flanders in Queen Anne's wars, where my father married his wife's daughter (N. B.-He was in debt to him). The family thus characteristically mentioned was from Clonmel in Ireland, and to Clonmel, at the close of the war, Ensign Sterne and his wife repaired after leaving Dunkirk. In the barracks at Clonmel Laurence was born, November 24, 1713. His father was again called to active service, and Laurence was familiar with soldiers and a soldier's life until he had reached his tenth year. He had a generous cousin, Squire Sterne of Elvingston, and this gentleman. placed the boy at school at Halifax, and afterwards at Jesus College, Cambridge. Having entered into holy orders, Laurence obtained by the interest of another relative, his uncle Dr. Jaques Sterne. the vicarage of Sutton, in Yorkshire, and shortly afterwards a prebendal stall in York Cathedral.

Sterne then married a Yorkshire lady, and received from a friend of his wife's the living of Stillington, close to Sutton. For about twenty years the fortunate churchman continued happy in the country, reading, painting, fiddling, and shooting. He has been accused of neglecting his poor widowed mother, who had set up a school in Ireland, and run in debt on account of an extravagant daughter. She would have rotted in a jail, Horace Walpole says, if the parents of her scholars had not raised a subscription for her; and Walpole adds:

'Her own son had too much sentiment to have any feeling: a dead ass was more important to him than a living mother.' The latest biographer of Sterne argues that, because others took part in the benevolent work of reli ing the widow, it must not be assumed that her son was wanting. One would have been glad, however, to find some proof of active sympathy on the part of the gay clerical son; but his best apology, perhaps, is that he was generally in debt himself, and had not resolution to shake off extravagant tastes and habits. In 1759, the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy' were published in York, and their author instantly became famous. He visited London, and 'the odd Yorkshire parson was received as a sort of Tristram in the flesh. With those who had no chance of coming in contact with him, the book received additional piquancy from the knowledge that the strange author was among them-fluttering here and there, feted, courted, and caressed.'* Lord Falconbridge conferred on him the curacy of Coxwould (about twenty miles from Sutton); the imperious Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, presented him with a purse of gold; Reynolds painted his portrait; Dodsley offered him £650 for a second edition, and two more volumes of Tristram;' in society he boasted of being engaged fourteen dinners deep! Two more volumes of the novel were ready in 1761, and other two in 1762. These contained the story of Le Fevre, which was copied into almost every journal in the kingdom.

Sterne now set off on a tour to France, which enriched the subsequent volumes of Tristram' with his exquisite sketches of peasants and vine-dressers, the muleteer, the abbess and Margarita, Maria at Moulines-not forgetting the poor ass with his heavy panniers at Lyon. In 1765, appeared vols. vii. and viii. and in 1767, vol. ix. Previous to the conclusion of the novel, Sterne published six small volumes of 'Sermons'-two in 1760, and four in 1766. In 1768 appeared his Sentimental Journey through France and Italy,' which he intended to continue in two more volumes. The work was published on the 27th of February 1768. Sterne had gone from Coxwould to London to superintend the publication. He was in wretched health, and about three weeks afterwards (March 18) he died in his lodgings in Bond Street. There was nobody but a hired nurse in attendance. He had wished to die in an inn, where the few cold offices he might want could be purchased with a few guineas, and paid to him with an undisturbed but punctual attention. His wish was realised almost to the letter. A party of noblemen and gentlemen were dining at Clifford Street in the neighbourhood, and they sent a footman to inquire after the invalid. The mistress told the man to go up to the nurse. 'I went into the room,' he says, and he was just adying. I waited ten minutes; but in five he said, Now is it come!" He put up his hand, as if to stop a blow, and died in a minute. '†

The Life of Sterne, by Percy Fitzgerald (London, 1864).

↑ The Life of a Footman, or the Travels of James Macdonald, 1790.

The body was interred in a new burying-ground attached to St. George's, Hanover Square; but was taken up two nights afterwards by a party of resurrectionists, and sent to the Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge. A gentlemen present at the dissection told Malone .that he recognized Sterne's face the moment he saw the body. Although Sterne had made large sums of money by his works (his 'Sermons' and 'Sentimental Journey' were published by subscription, besides which he had the copyright), he left £1100 of debt. His effects sold for £400, and a collection of £800 was made for his widow and daughter in York during the race-week. The widow had a small estate worth £40 per annum. His daughter Lydia (to whom he was tenderly attached) in 1775 published her father's correspondence, which she ought never to have permitted to see the light, as it is discreditable to his name and memory.

In Yorkshire, before he had attained celebrity, Sterne spent much of his time at Skelton Hall, the residence of JOHN HALL STEVENSON (1718-1785), a writer of satirical and humorous poetry, possessed of lively talents, but over-convivial in his habits, and licentious in his writings and conversation. Stevenson wrote 'Crazy Tales,' Fables for Grown Gentlemen,' Lyric Epistles,' &c.; but his chief claim to remembrance is that he was the original of Sterne's Eugenius in Tristram Shandy,' and the chosen friend and associate of the witty novelist. In the library at Skelton Hall there was a collection of old French authors, from whom Sterne derived part of the quaint lore that figures in his works. His chief plagiarisms, however, were derived from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,' which he plundered with an audacity almost without a parallel. Even when condemning such literary dishonesty, Sterne was eminently dishonest. Burton has the following figurative passage: As apothecaries, we make new mixtures, every day pour out of one vessel into another; and as the Romans robbed all the cities in the world to set out their badsited Rome, we skim the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens to set out our own sterile plots. We weave the same web, still twist the same rope again and again.' Sterne follows: Shall we forever make new books, as apothecaries make new medicines, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we for ever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope-for ever in the same track-for ever at the same pace? Scores of such thefts might be cited from Burton, Bishop Hall, Donne, &c. Luckily for Sterne, his plagiarisms were not detected until after his death.* He died in the blaze of his fame, as an original eccentric author— the wittiest and most popular of boon-companions and novelists. His influence on the literature of his age was also considerable. No one reads Sterne for the story; his great work is but a bundle of

* The detection was first made by a Manchester physician. DR. JOHN FEBRIAR (17641815), who, in 1798, published his Illustrations of Sterne. Dr. Ferriar was also the author of an Essay on Apparitions, and some medical treatises.

episodes and digressions, strung together without any attempt at order. The reader must give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hand-be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.' Through the whole novel, however, over its mists and absurdities, shines his little family band of friends and relativesthat inimitable group of originals and humorists-which stand out from the canvas with the force and distinctness of reality. This distinctness and separate identity is a proof of what Coleridge has termed the peculiar power of Sterne of seizing on and bringing for ward those points on which every man is a humorist, and of the masterly manner in which he has brought out the characteristics of two beings of the most opposite natures-the elder Shandy and Toby-and surrounded them with a group of followers, sketched with equal life and individuality; in the Corporal, the ob stetric Dr. Slop; Yorick, the lively and careless parson; the Widow Wadman, and Susannah. During the intervals of the publication of Tristram,' Sterne ventured before the public, as we have stated, with some volumes of Sermons,' his own comic figure, from the painting by Reynolds, at the head of them. The Sermons,* according to the opinion of Gray the poet, shew a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but,' he adds, you see the author often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience.' The affected pauses and abrupt transitions which disfigure Tristram' are not banished from the Sermons,' Lut there is, of course, more connection and coherency in the subject. The Sentimental Journey' is also more regular than Tristram in its plan and details; but, beautiful as some of its descriptions are, we want the oddities of Shandy, and the ever-pleasing good-nature and simplicity of Uncle Toby. Sterne himself is the only character. The pathetic passages are rather overstrained, but still finely conceived, and often expressed in his most felicitous manner.

That

gentle spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of his beloved Cervantes, turning the twilight of his prison into noonday brightness,' was seldom absent long from the invocations of his English imitator, even when he mounted his wildest hobby, and dabbled in the mire of sensuality.

Of the sentimental style of Sterne-his humour is either too subtle or too broad to be compressed within our limits-a few specimens are added.

The Story of Le Fevre.-From Tristram Shandy.'

It was some time in the summer of that year in which Dendermond was taken by the allies, which was about seven years before my father came into the country, and about as many after the time that my uncle Toby and Trim had privately decamped from my father's house in town, in order to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest fortified cites in Europe, when my uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper, with Trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard. I say sitting. for in consideration of the corporal's lame knee, which sometimes gave him exquisite pain, when my uncle Toby died or supped alone, he would never suffer the corporal to