laughed at us both.”1 A strange party, forsooth, and a strange man! Though at the present day we do not take Sterne very seriously, his contemporaries not only appreciated him as a humorist, but delighted especially in the depth and originality of his genius, in his "gloomy and mournful appearance," and in what his translator called "an aroma of sentiment, and a suppleness of thought, impossible to define." 2 By his countrymen he was praised for his joyous spirit, while in France he was looked upon as a kind of prophet of the new religion just brought into fashion by Rousseau, the religion of the self. II Sterne's works very quickly became known in France, where they met with a success not inferior to, though very different from, that which they attained in London. It was in May 1760 that the Journal encyclopédique first made mention of "that famous book, Tristram Shandy." In England this singular work of fiction gave rise to keen controversy. Those whose well-balanced minds were full of respect for tradition spoke of it only with pity. Goldsmith and Johnson did not disguise their contempt; Richardson pronounced it execrable; it made Walpole "smile two or three times at the beginning, but in recompense" made him yawn for two hours; "the humour," he says, "is for ever attempted and missed." But the public in general, by Walpole's own showing, went wild over the new novel: a portrait of the author, who but yesterday had been leading an obscure existence in the retirement of his parish, was painted by Reynolds, and a frontispiece for his works was designed by Hogarth. Gray asserts that it was impossible to dine with the author without making the engagement a fortnight beforehand. But the success of the book was due to curiosity more than to anything else, and readers were 2 Frenais's translation of the Sentimental Journey, P. 223. 4 Letters, 22nd June 1760. 1 Traill, p. 86. 3 April 1760. amused by Tristram's eccentric humour rather than convinced of the depth of his genius. Abroad, however, it was by no means the same. Sterne's reputation increased when it crossed the water. The Germans hailed him as a philosopher. Lessing was taken with him, and when Sterne died, wrote to Nicolai that he would gladly have sacrificed several years of his own life if by so doing he could have prolonged the existence of the sentimental traveller. Goethe writes: "Whoever reads him, immediately feels that there is something free and beautiful in his own soul."1 The ✓ philosophy of Sterne is the most brilliant invention of eighteenth century anglomania. In France the Gazette littéraire published extracts from Shandy, and three translators contended for the honour of producing a complete French version of the work.2 The Sentimental Journey was translated in the year following its publication; the Sermons, which the author was enabled to publish by the subscriptions of d'Holbach, Diderot, Crébillon fils, and Voltaire, were also issued in French, as well as the famous Letters to Eliza, which were regarded as a precious autobiographical document.3 His chief work, that wonderful, amazing, wearisome book, Tristram Shandy, with its extraordinary medley of every language and every art-French, Greek, Latin, medicine, theology, and the art of fortification; with its parentheses of two volumes, its dedica1 See Hettner, vol. i., p. 508, and, for the numerous German imitations of Sterne, vol. v., p. 410. 2 Frenais's translation of Tristram Shandy (Paris, 1776, 2 vols. 12mo) contains only the first part of the novel. Two translations of the remainder were published concurrently in 1785, by de Bonnay and G. de la Baume. (See Journal encyclopédique, 15th March 1786.) Finally, the two translations of Frenais and de Bonnay were reprinted together (1785, 4 vols. 12mo). 3 Voyage sentimental, by Mr Sterne, under the name of Yorick, translated from the English by M. Frenais, Amsterdam and Paris, 1769, 2 vols. 12mo (often reprinted). Sermons choisis de Sterne, translated by M. L. D. B. [de la Baume], London and Paris, 1786, 12mo. Lettres de Sterne à ses amis (translated by the same), London and Paris, 1788, 8vo; another translation (by Durand de SaintGeorges), the Hague, 1789, 12mo. Lettres d'Yorick à Elisa (translated by Frenais), Paris, 1776, 12mo. A volume entitled Beautés de Sterne, Paris, 2 parts, 8vo, was also published, and several editions of the Œuvres complètes (1787, 1797, 1803, etc.). tions in the midst of chapters, its insertion of a chapter xviii. after chapter xxviii., and its serpent-like twisting and turning of words; "this great curiosity shop," as Taine calls it, excited amazement rather than genuine admiration. How indeed should it have been appreciated? "Mr Sterne's pleasantries," says his translator, "have not always struck me as particularly happy. I have left them where I found them, and have put others in their place." Let us see what this heavy hand makes of the humorist's delicate fabric. Speaking of a village midwife, Sterne says that her | fame was world-wide: and by the "world," he says, we are to understand a circle "about four English miles in diameter." The irony is subtle, or at all events delicate. Frenais remarks:1 "But let us not deceive ourselves: he does not allude to the whole of the world. She was not known, for instance, to the Hottentots, nor to the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, who, it is said, bring forth their children in the same manner as Mme. Gigogne; the world, for her, was but a small circle," &c. Sterne's eccentricities become absurdities. The public looks for subtle and lively satire; and getting nothing but "a riddle to which there is no answer," it seeks in vain for "some deep meaning in drollery which contains none." Yet, even in the mutilated versions of his translators, Sterne delighted Voltaire. According to him "the second English Rabelais" had drawn "several pictures superior to those of Rembrandt and to the sketches of Callot." 8 Elsewhere, however, he makes certain reservations; in an article on Tristram Shandy in the Journal de politique et de littérature, he pronounces it "from beginning to end a piece of buffoonery after the style of Scarron." The book is empty-empty as the bottle which a certain charlatan had promised to enter. "There was philosophy in Sterne's head," nevertheless, queer fellow as he was. 1 Vol. i., p. 22. In 2 Gazette littéraire, 20th March 1765. The first two volumes "excited the curiosity of their readers, who took them for a subtle and lively satire in which the sage hid his face behind the jester's mask. The sage has published four other volumes which the public has read with eagerness, but, to its amazement, has entirely failed to understand." 3 Dictionnaire philosophique: article on Conscience. 425th April 1777. him, as in Shakespeare, there were flashes of a superior reason. In truth, the eighteenth century failed to understand Sterne's inimitable humour. What impressed it was the spasmodic, disconnected progress of his thought, the tangles in the thread of his ideas, the abrupt flights taken by his imagination, all so opposed to French classical habits of systematic and coherent exposition. Diderot endeavoured to adopt some of his methods: "How did they meet? By chance, like every one else. Whence did they come? From the next place. Whither were they going? Which of us can tell whither he is going? What did they say? The master said nothing, and Jacques said his captain had told him that everything that happens to us here below is written above." This passage, at the opening of Jacques le fataliste, is worthy of Sterne: it is even taken from Sterne, literally. Diderot borrowed freely from Tristram Shandy: the young woman who receives Jacques when he is wounded is the one who has already given shelter to Toby;2 and a certain broad anecdote is derived from the same source.3 These instances of borrowing are palpable, and they are not happy. Diderot delighted in this roving, disconnected mode of progress—and he, too, wrote his Jacques le fataliste at odd times, in the postchaise which carried him to Holland and to Russia. The superficial character of the work he succeeded in reproducing, but the fine edge of Sterne's humour escaped him. The Englishman's true heirs in this respect came after the Revolution, in the persons of Xavier de Maistre and Charles Nodier.5 The eighteenth century appreciated Sterne primarily as the disciple of Richardson, the minute and punctilious painter of everyday life, “a life wherein there can be no sublimity either in 1 See de Wailly's translation, ch. cclxiii. 2 Diderot, Euvres, vol. vi., p. 14. 3 Ibid., p. 284. Ibid., p. 8. M. Ducros, in his Diderot, has given a most acute study of that author's imitations of Sterne. 5 See especially Un voyage autour de ma chambre, chaps. xix. and xxviii., and Nodier's Histoire du roi de Bohême et de ses sept châteaux. An imitation of Sterne may also be found in V. Hugo's Bug-Jargal, in which Captain d'Auverney and Sergeant Thadée are reminiscences of Captain Toby and Corporal Trim, events or things or thoughts, a life which has always lacked observers, as though it were unworthy anyone's interest because it is that which each one of us leads."1 "2 Following Richardson's example, Sterne observes insignificant facts and faint fluctuations of thought: he writes the novel of gesture. "I paused," says Henrietta Byron, "I hesitated. .... Then I stopt, and held down my head.”—“Speak out, my dear," said Lady L. "Thus called upon; thus encouraged-and I lifted my head as boldly as I could (but it was not, I believe, very boldly). Such is Richardson's method of presenting his characters, whether in action or in repose. He sees them completely, and at each successive moment. Sterne does the same, and thereby earns the compliments of his French readers, who at the same time mildly banter him for carrying the process too far. Of one of the characters in Faublas we are told that "by a mechanical movement, his left arm was raised in the air, where it became fixed" ..; and the writer adds: "Why, fair lady, am I not Tristram Shandy? I might then tell you to what height it was raised, in what direction and in what position." This hits the mark; Sterne's work is so distinctly the novel of gesture that his characters even resemble automata or waxwork figures. 3 In the second place he displays the most exquisite art in paintJing tiny gems of pictures in the smallest of frames. Sometimes he drops into triviality; but on the other hand, when he is at his best, he brings to light forgotten yet delightful recesses in the lives of the humble, both animals and men. His province, as a phrase of singular felicity has described it, is that of mental entomology. He seizes the most delicate impressions in their flight and deftly pins them down. "Sterne's merit," wrote Mme. Suard, his passionate admirer, "lies, it seems to me, in his having attached an interest to details which in themselves have none whatever; in his having caught a thousand faint. impressions, a thousand evanescent feelings, which pass through 2 Ballantyne, vi., p. 35. 1 Garat, Mémoires sur Suard, vol. ii., p. 143. |