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He felt, or friends felt for him, the advantage of having at his side a man who was chiefly known as an author in the service of Dodsley, and as having conducted the Annual Register with great ability, but who even then was widely spoken of as nothing less than an encyclopaedia of political knowledge. It is commonly believed that Burke was commended to Lord Rockingham by William Fitzherbert.
Johnson, as yet only the author of London, and journeyman to Cave, could scarcely be expected in the roll; and, in any case, his friendship for the author of Pamela would probably have kept him away. Among some other well- known eighteenth century names are those of Dodsley and Millar the booksellers, and the famous Vauxhall impresario Jonathan Tyers.
The allusions to foreign travel in this letter were made with, something more than a jesting intent. Sterne had already begun to be seriously alarmed, and not without reason, about the condition of his health. He shrank from facing another English winter, and meditated a southward flight so soon as he should have finished his fifth and sixth volumes, and seen them safe in the printer's hands. His publisher he had changed, for what reason is not known, and the firm of Becket & De Hondt had taken the place of Dodsley. Sterne hoped by the end of the year to be free to depart from England, and already he had made all arrangements with his ecclesiastical superiors for the necessary leave of absence. He seems to have been treated with all consideration in the matter. His Archbishop, on being applied to, at once excused him from parochial work for a year, and promised, if it should be necessary, to double that term. Fortified with this permission, Sterne bade farewell to his wife and daughter, and betook himself to London, with his now completed volumes, at the setting in of the winter. On the 21st of December they made their appearance, and in about three weeks from that date their author left England, with the intention of wintering in the South of France. There were difficulties, however, of more kinds than one which had first to be faced a pecuniary difficulty, which Garrick met by a loan of 20£., and a political difficulty, for the removal of which Sterne had to employ the good offices of new acquaintance later on. He reached Paris about the 17th of January, 1762, and there met with a reception which interposed, as might have been expected, the most effectual of obstacles to his further progress southward. He was received in Paris with open arms, and stepped at once within the charmed circle of the philosophic salons. Again was the old intoxicating cup presented to his lips this time, too, with more dexterous than English hands and again did he drink deeply of it. "My head is turned," he writes to Garrick, "with what I see, and the unexpected honour I have met with here. Tristram was almost as much known here as in London, at least among your men of condition and learning, and has got me introduced into so many circles ('tis comme
It was too late to transfer his confidence or fondness. In May, 1744, his death was approaching. On the 6th he was all day delirious, which he mentioned for days afterwards as a sufficient humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colours, and one day, its the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came from the wall.
This work in two 4to. vol. is dedicated by permission to Lieutenant General Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and printed in London by Dodsley, 1769. It has for its motto ne quid falsi, dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. Every body around us believed that America was conquered, and the war over.
Dodsley that is my groom's name tells me that he does a great deal more mowing now than he need, simply because they worry him for the work. Gratitude, you see, Mr. Ledsam, sheer gratitude. If you were to provide a dozen alms-houses for your poor dependants, I wonder how many of them would be anxious to mow your lawn.... Come, let me show you your room now."
It has often been asked, and naturally enough, how a man who, hardly more than a few months before, was still contented to earn an extra hundred pounds a year by writing for Dodsley, should now have launched out as the buyer of a fine house and estate, which cost upwards of twenty-two thousand pounds, which could not be kept up on less than two thousand five hundred a year, and of which the returns did not amount to one-fifth of that sum.
Before the publication of Tristram Shandy it would be futile to seek for any knowledge of Sterne on German soil. He had published, as is well known, two sermons preached on occasions of note; and a satirical skit, with kindly purpose, entitled “The History of a Good Warm Watchcoat,” had been written, privately circulated, and then suppressed; yet he was an unknown and comparatively insignificant English clergyman residing in a provincial town, far, in those days very far, from those centers of life which sent their enlightenment over the channel to the continent. His fame was purely local. His sermons had, without doubt, rendered the vicar of Sutton a rather conspicuous ecclesiastic throughout that region; his eccentricities were presumably the talk of neighboring parishes; the cathedral town itself probably tittered at his drolleries, and chattered over his sentiments; his social graces undoubtedly found recognition among county families and in provincial society, and his reputation as a wit had probably spread in a vague, uncertain, transitory fashion beyond the boundaries of the county. Yet the facts of local notoriety and personal vogue are without real significance save in the light of later developments; and we may well date his career in the world of books from the year 1760, when the London world began to smile over the first volumes of Tristram Shandy. From internal evidence in these early volumes it is possible to note with some assurance the progress of their composition and the approximate time of their completion. In his wayward, fitful way, and possibly for his own amusement more than with dreams of fame and fortune, Sterne probably began the composition of Shandy in January, 1759, and the completion of the first installment is assigned to the summer or early autumn of that year. At the end of the year the first edition of the first two volumes was issued in York, bearing the imprint of John Hinxham. Dodsley and Cooper undertook the sale of the volumes in London, though the former had declined to be responsible for the publication. They were ready for delivery in the capital on the first day of the new year 1760. Sterne’s fame was immediate; his personal triumph was complete and ranks with the great successes in the history of our literature. On his arrival in London in March, the world aristocratic, ecclesiastic, and literary was eager to receive the new favorite, and his career of bewildering social enjoyment, vigorous feasting and noteworthy privilege began. “No one”, says Forster, “was so talked of in London this year and no one so admired as the tall, thin, hectic-looking Yorkshire parson.” From this time on until his death Sterne was a most conspicuous personage in English society, a
He read it to me; said, "this man has great powers," pointed out the severest passages, and observed how well they were expressed. This air of indifference, which imposed upon the worthy Dodsley, was certainly nothing but a specimen of that dissimulation which Lord Chesterfield inculcated as one of the most essential lessons for the conduct of life.
Dodsley purchased it for a hundred pounds, but afterwards paid him twenty-five pounds more, when it came to a second edition.
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