be, I am," he says,
"busy playing the fool with my Uncle Toby, whom I have got soused over
head and ears in love." Now, it is not till the eighth volume that
the Widow Wadman begins to weave her spells around Captain Shandy's
ingenuous heart; while the seventh volume is mainly composed of that
series of travel-pictures in which Sterne has manifestly recorded
his own impressions of Northern France in the person of the youthful
Tristram. It is scarcely doubtful, therefore, that it is these
sketches, and the use which he then proposed to make of them, that
he refers to, when speaking in this letter of "hints and projects
for other works." Originally intended to form a part of the volume
afterwards published as the _Sentimental Journey_, it was found
necessary--under pressure, it is to be supposed, of insufficient
matter--to work them up instead into an interpolated seventh volume
of _Tristram Shandy_. At the moment, however, he no doubt as little
foresaw this as he did the delay which was to take place before any
continuation of the novel appeared. He clearly contemplated no very
long absence from England. "When I have reaped the benefit of the
winter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have anything more to do with it.
Therefore, after having gone with my wife and girl to Bagneres, I
shall return from whence I came." Already, however, one can perceive
signs of his having too presumptuously marked out his future. "My
wife wants to stay another year, to save money; and this opposition of
wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 'twill not be as
sweet as sugar." And again: "If the snows will suffer me, I propose to
spend two or three months at Barege or Bagneres; but my dear wife is
against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity
(though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer--though,
by-the-bye, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will go my own way,
and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who
can say so much in praise of his wife? Few, I trow." The tone of
contemptuous amiability shows pretty clearly that the relations
between husband and wife had in nowise improved. But wives do not
always lose all their influence over husbands' wills along with the
power over their affections; and it will be seen that Sterne did _not_
make his projected winter trip to Bagneres, and that he did remain
at Toulouse for a considerable part of the second year for which Mrs.
Sterne desired to