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A genius of much finer mold was Lawrence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy, 1759-1767, and the Sentimental Journey, 1768. Tristram Shandy is hardly a novel: the story merely serves to hold together a number of characters, such as Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, conceived with rare subtlety and originality. Sterne's chosen province was the whimsical, and his great model was Rabelais.
He seems to enter into an individual, and make him betray his peculiarities by significant actions and phrases. Thus Mr. Shandy exposes at once the nature of his mind and the vigor of his "hobby-horse," when he exclaims to his brother Toby: "What is the character of a family to an hypothesis?"
Then quite suddenly, in 1759, the lazy, lounging, most eccentric, and ill-chosen clergyman enraptured London by the publication of the first two volumes of "Tristram Shandy." The author of "Tristram Shandy" came to town, and was received with more than Roman triumph. Wealth, wit, genius, nobility, thronged his door, sought his friendship, proffered favors. Sterne revelled in this new life.
Some of these oddities, it must be confessed, are very odd. One of them, which I call the paradox of Tristram Shandy, is the converse of the Achilles, and shows that the tortoise, if you give him time, will go just as far as Achilles.
One day, in low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances, Caleb asked him, "if he had no sermons like the one in 'Tristram Shandy?" But Sterne had no notion that "sermons" were saleable, for two preceding ones had passed unnoticed. "If you could hit on a striking title, take my word for it that they would go down." The next day Sterne made his appearance in raptures.
He would only admit two good verses in Gray's exquisite "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," where it would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. "Tristram Shandy" would not live. "Hamlet" was gabble. Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" was poor stuff, and he never wrote anything good except "A Tale of a Tub." Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoundrel.
Norman of Torn lowered his raised sword. "It is I, Shandy," he said. "Keep a still tongue in thy head until I speak with thee apart. Wait here, My Lady Joan; these be friends." Drawing Shandy to one side, he learned that the faithful fellow had become alarmed at his chief's continued absence, and had set out with a small party to search for him.
Very satisfactorily, replied Yorick; no mortal, Sir, has any concern with it for Mrs. Shandy the mother is nothing at all a-kin to him and as the mother's is the surest side Mr. Shandy, in course is still less than nothing In short, he is not as much a-kin to him, Sir, as I am. That may well be, said my father, shaking his head.
Surely we all know men of this kind, and the consternation comparable only to that of M. Jourdain under the impromptu carte-and-tierce of his servant-maid which their sturdy if informal dialectic will often spread among many kinds of "learned societies." But such men are certainly not of the class which Scott supposed to have been ridiculed in the character of Walter Shandy.
With all this extravagance, however, there was combined an admirable affectation of sobriety. Mr. Shandy would have us believe that he was no blind slave to his theory.
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