vive the generations of social pressure that have
crushed them down in civilised communities--had an irresistible
attraction for the curiosity of his genius. The whole story is full of
power; it abounds in phrases that have the stamp of genius; and
suppressed vehemence lends to it strength. But it is fatally wanting in
the elements of tenderness, beauty, and sympathy. If we chance to take
it up for a second or for a tenth time, it infallibly holds us; but
nobody seeks to return to it of his own will, and it holds us under
protest.

If Richardson created one school in France, Sterne created another. The
author of _Tristram Shandy_ was himself only a follower of one of the
greatest of French originals, and a follower at a long distance. Even
those who have the keenest relish for our "good-humoured, civil,
nonsensical, Shandean kind of a book," ought to admit how far it falls
behind Rabelais in exuberance, force, richness of extravagance, breadth
of colour, fulness of blood. They may claim, however, for Sterne what,
in comparison with these great elements, are the minor qualities of
simplicity, tenderness, precision, and finesse. These are the qualities
that delighted the French taste. In 1762 Sterne visited Paris, and found
_Tristram Shandy_ almost as well known there as in London, and he
instantly had dinners and suppers for a fortnight on his hands. Among
them were dinners and suppers at Holbach's, where he made the
acquaintance of Diderot, and where perhaps he made the discovery that
"notwithstanding the French make such a pother about the word
_sentiment_, they have no precise idea attached to it."[13] The
_Sentimental Journey_ appeared in 1768, and was instantly pronounced by
the critics in both countries to be inimitable. It is no wonder that a
performance of such delicacy of literary expression, united with so much
good-nature, such easy, humane, amiable feeling, went to the hearts of
the French of the eighteenth century. "My design in it," said Sterne,
"was to teach us to love the world and our fellow-creatures better than
we do, so it runs most upon those gentle passions and affections which
aid so much to it."[14] This exactly fell in with the reigning Parisian
modes, and with such sentiment as that of Diderot most of all. There
were several French imitations of the _Sentimental Journey_,[15] but the
only one that has survived in popular esteem, if indeed this can be said
to have survived, is Diderot's _Jacques