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Updated: May 7, 2025
The publication of the letters from Yorick to Eliza was the justification afforded Lydia Sterne de Medalle for issuing her father’s correspondence according to her mother’s request: the other volume was not issued till after it was known that Sterne’s daughter was engaged in the task of collecting and editing his correspondence.
Medalle added to her collection the “Fragment in the manner of Rabelais” and the invaluable, characteristic scrap of autobiography, which was written particularly for “my Lydia.” The work appeared at Becket’s in three volumes, and the dedication to Garrick was dated June, 1775; but, as the notice in the Monthly Review for October asserts that they have “been published but a few days,” this date probably represents the time of the completion of the task, or the inception of the printer’s work.
Not that such records are by any means always the most trustworthy of evidence. There are some men whose real character is never more effectually concealed than in their correspondence. But it is not so with Sterne. The careless, slipshod letters which Madame de Medalle "pitchforked" into the book-market, rather than edited, are highly valuable as pieces of autobiography.
Medalle,” Leipzig, 1776, pp. xxviii, 391. Weidmanns Erben und Reich. Bode’s translation of Yorick’s letters to Eliza is reviewed in the Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitung, August 9, 1775, with quotation of the second letter in full. The same journal notes the translation of the miscellaneous collection, November 4, 1775, giving in full the letter of Dr. Eustace and Sterne’s reply.
[Footnote 38: Two letters, however, were given in both volumes, the letter to Mrs. M-d-s, “The first time I have dipped,” etc., and that to Garrick, “’Twas for all the world like a cut,” etc., being in the Mme. Medalle collection, Nos. 58 and 77 (II, pp. 126-131, 188-192) and in the anonymous collection Nos.
Its place was filled in 1747 by a second daughter, also christened Lydia, who lived to become the wife of M. de Medalle, and the not very judicious editress of the posthumous "Letters."
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