raordinary work that it defies analysis would be the
merest inadequacy of commonplace. It was meant to defy analysis; it
is of the very essence of its scheme and purpose that it should do so;
and the mere attempt to subject it systematically to any such process
would argue an altogether mistaken conception of the author's intent.
Its full "official" style and title is _The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gent.,_ and it is difficult to say which it contains
the less about--the opinions of Tristram Shandy or the events of
his life. As a matter of fact, its proper description would be "The
Opinions of Tristram Shandy's Father, with some Passages from the Life
of his Uncle." Its claim to be regarded as a biography of its nominal
hero is best illustrated by the fact that Tristram is not born till
the third volume, and not breeched till the sixth; that it is not till
the seventh that he begins to play any active part in the narrative,
appearing then only as a completely colourless and unindividualized
figure, a mere vehicle for the conveyance of Sterne's own Continental
_impressions de voyage_; and that in the last two volumes, which
are entirely taken up with the incident of his uncle's courtship, he
disappears from the story altogether. It is to be presumed, perhaps,
though not very confidently, that the reader would have seen more
of him if the tale had been continued; but how much or how little
is quite uncertain. The real hero of the book is at the outset Mr.
Shandy, senior, who is, later on, succeeded in this place of dignity
by my Uncle Toby. It not only served Sterne's purpose to confine
himself mainly to these two characters, as the best whereon to display
his powers, but it was part of his studied eccentricity to do so. It
was a "point" to give as little as possible about Tristram Shandy in
a life of Tristram Shandy; just as it was a point to keep the reader
waiting throughout the year 1760 for their hero to be so much as born.
In the first volume, therefore, the author does literally everything
but make the slightest progress with his story. Starting off abruptly
with a mock physiologic disquisition upon the importance of a
proper ordering of their mental states on the part of the intending
progenitors of children, he philosophizes gravely on this theme for
two or three chapters; and then wanders away into an account of the
local midwife, upon whose sole services Mrs. Shandy, in opposition
to her husband, was