ge pillow which I had the _prevoyance_ to
purchase before I set out. I am worn out, but pass on to Barnby Moor
to-night, and if possible to York the next. I know not what is the
matter with me, but some derangement presses hard upon this machine.
Still, I think it will not be overset this bout"--another of those
utterances of a cheerful courage under the prostration of pain which
reveal to us the manliest side of Sterne's nature. On reaching Coxwold
his health appears to have temporarily mended, and in June we find him
giving a far better account of himself to another of his friends. The
fresh Yorkshire air seems to have temporarily revived him, and to his
friend, Arthur Lee, a young American, he writes thus: "I am as happy
as a prince at Coxwold, and I wish you could see in how princely a
manner I live. 'Tis a land of plenty. I sit down alone to dinner--fish
and wild-fowl, or a couple of fowls or ducks, with cream and all the
simple plenty which a rich valley under Hamilton Hills can produce,
with a clean cloth on my table, and a bottle of wine on my right hand
to drink your health. I have a hundred hens and chickens about my
yard; and not a parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout but
he brings it as an offering to me." Another of his correspondents at
this period was the Mrs. H. of his letters, whose identity I have been
unable to trace, but who is addressed in a manner which seems to show
Sterne's anxiety to expel the old flame of Eliza's kindling by a new
one. There is little, indeed, of the sentimentalizing strain in which
he was wont to sigh at the feet of Mrs. Draper, but in its place
there is a freedom of a very prominent, and here and there of a highly
unpleasant, kind. To his friends, Mr. and Mrs. James, too, he writes
frequently during this year, chiefly to pour out his soul on the
subject of Eliza; and Mrs. James, who is always addressed in company
with her husband, enjoys the almost unique distinction of being the
only woman outside his own family circle whom Sterne never approaches
in the language of artificial gallantry, but always in that of simple
friendship and respect.[1] Meanwhile, however, the _Sentimental
Journey_ was advancing at a reasonable rate of speed towards
completion. In July he writes of himself as "now beginning to be truly
busy" on it, "the pain and sorrows of this life having retarded its
progress."

[Footnote 1: To this period of Sterne's life, it may here be remarked,
is to