thought and trick of style were
the product, must of course have been potentially present from the
beginning. Men do not blossom forth as wits, humourists, masterly
delineators of character, and skilful performers on a highly-strung
and carefully-tuned sentimental instrument all at once, after entering
their "forties;" and the only wonder is that a possessor of these
powers--some of them of the kind which, as a rule, and in most men,
seeks almost as irresistibly for exercise as even the poetic instinct
itself--should have been held so long unemployed. There is, however,
one very common stimulus to literary exertions which in Sterne's case
was undoubtedly wanting--a superabundance of unoccupied time. We
have little reason, it is true, to suppose that this light-minded
and valetudinarian Yorkshire parson was at any period of his life an
industrious "parish priest;" but it is probable, nevertheless, that
time never hung very heavily upon his hands. In addition to the
favourite amusements which he enumerates in the Memoir, he was all
his days addicted to one which is, perhaps, the most absorbing of
all--flirtation. Philandering, and especially philandering of the
Platonic and ultra-sentimental order, is almost the one human
pastime of which its votaries never seem to tire; and its constant
ministrations to human vanity may serve, perhaps, to account for their
unwearied absorption in its pursuit. Sterne's first love affair--an
affair of which, unfortunately, the consequences were more lasting
than the passion--took place immediately upon his leaving Cambridge.
To relate it as he relates it to his daughter: "At York I became
acquainted with your mother, and courted her for two years. She owned
she liked me, but thought herself not rich enough or me too poor to
be joined together. She went to her sister's in Staffordshire, and I
wrote to her often. I believe then she was partly determined to have
me, but would not say so. At her return she fell into a consumption,
and one evening that I was sitting by her, with an almost broken heart
to see her so ill, she said: 'My dear Laury, I never can be yours, for
I verily believe I have not long to live! But I have left you every
shilling of my fortune.' Upon that she showed me her will. This
generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and we
were married in 1741." The name of this lady was Elizabeth Lumley, and
it was to her that Sterne addressed those earliest letters