by a
large mastiff Dog; notwithstanding which, on Sunday night last, some
Villains found means to steal out another dead Body, and carried off
the very Dog." Body-snatchers so adroit and determined as to contrive
to make additional profit out of the actual means taken to prevent
their depredations, would certainly not have been deterred by any
considerations of prudence from attempting the theft of Sterne's
corpse. There was no such ceremony about his funeral as would lead
them to suppose that the deceased was a person of any importance,
or one whose body could not be stolen without a risk of creating
undesirable excitement. On the whole, therefore, it is impossible
to reject the body-snatching story as certainly fabulous, though
its truth is far from being proved; and though I can scarcely myself
subscribe to Mr. Fitzgerald's view, that there is a "grim and lurid
Shandyism" about the scene of dissection, yet if others discover an
appeal to their sense of humour in the idea of Sterne's body being
dissected after death, I see nothing to prevent them from holding that
hypothesis as a "pious opinion."

CHAPTER IX.

STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR. FERRIAR'S
"ILLUSTRATIONS."

Everyday experience suffices to show that the qualities which win
enduring fame for books and for their authors are not always those
to which they owe their first popularity. It may with the utmost
probability be affirmed that this was the case with _Tristram Shandy_
and with Sterne. We cannot, it is true, altogether dissociate the
permanent attractions of the novel from those characteristics of it
which have long since ceased to attract at all; the two are united in
a greater or less degree throughout the work; and this being so, it
is, of course, impossible to prove to demonstration that it was the
latter qualities, and not the former, which procured it its immediate
vogue. But, as it happens, it is possible to show that what may be
called its spurious attractions varied directly, and its real merits
inversely, as its popularity with the public of its day. In the
higher qualities of humour, in dramatic vigour, in skilful and subtle
delineation of character, the novel showed no deterioration, but, in
some instances, a marked improvement, as it proceeded; yet the second
instalment was not more popular, and most of the succeeding ones
were distinctly less popular, than the first. They had gained in many
qualities, while t