s as a man,
and laxities as a writer, which marked his later life; though, on the
other hand, there is no denying the reality and value of some of
the countervailing advantages which came to him from his boyish
surroundings. The conception of my Uncle Toby need not have been taken
whole from Roger Sterne, or from any one actual captain of a marching
regiment; but the constant sight of, and converse with, many captains
and many corporals may undoubtedly have contributed much to the vigour
and vitality of Toby Shandy and Corporal Trim. So far as the externals
of portraiture were concerned, there can be no doubt that his art
benefited much from his early military life. His soldiers have the
true stamp of the soldier about them in air and language; and when
his captain and corporal fight their Flemish battles over again we are
thoroughly conscious that we are listening, under the dramatic form,
to one who must himself have heard many a chapter of the same splendid
story from the lips of the very men who had helped to break the pride
of the Grand Monarque under Marlborough and Eugene.

CHAPTER II.

SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE.

(1723-1738.)

It was not--as we have seen from the Memoir--till the autumn of 1723,
"or the spring of the following year," that Roger Sterne obtained
leave of his colonel to "fix" his son at school; and this would bring
Laurence to the tolerably advanced age of ten before beginning his
education in any systematic way. He records, under date of 1721, that
"in this year I learned to write, &c.;" but it is not probable that
the "&c."--that indolent symbol of which Sterne makes such irritating
use in all his familiar writing--covers, in this case, any wide extent
of educational advance. The boy, most likely, could just read and
write, and no more, at the time when he was fixed at school, "near
Halifax, with an able master:" a judicious selection, no doubt, both
of place as well as teacher. Mr. Fitzgerald, to whose researches we
owe as much light as is ever likely to be thrown upon this obscure and
probably not very interesting period of Sterne's life, has pointed out
that Richard Sterne, eldest son of the late Simon Sterne, and uncle,
therefore, of Laurence, was one of the governors of Halifax Grammar
School, and that he may have used his interest to obtain his nephew's
admission to the foundation as the grandson of a Halifax man, and so,
constructively, a child of the paris