een these crotchets and his brother's plain sense--to indicate the
kind of power displayed in that remarkable colloquy _a quatre_, which
begins with the arrival of Dr. Slop and ends with Corporal Trim's
recital of the Sermon on Conscience. Wit, humour, irony, quaint
learning, shrewd judgment of men and things, of these Sterne had
displayed abundance already; but it is not in the earlier but in the
later half of the first instalment of _Tristram Shandy_ that we first
become conscious that he is something more than the possessor of all
these things; that he is gifted with the genius of creation, and has
sent forth new beings into that world of immortal shadows which to
many of us is more real than our own.

CHAPTER V.

LONDON TRIUMPHS.--FIRST SET OF SERMONS.--"TRISTRAM SHANDY," VOLS.
III. AND IV.--COXWOLD.--VOLS. V. AND VI.--FIRST VISIT TO THE
CONTINENT.--PARIS.--TOULOUSE.

(1760-1762.)

Sterne alighted from the York mail, just as Byron "awoke one morning,"
to "find himself famous." Seldom indeed has any lion so suddenly
discovered been pursued so eagerly and by such a distinguished crowd
of hunters. The chase was remarkable enough to have left a lasting
impression on the spectators; for it was several years after (in 1773)
that Dr. Johnson, by way of fortifying his very just remark that "any
man who has a name or who has the power of pleasing will be generally
invited in London," observed gruffly that "the man Sterne," he was
told, "had had engagements for three months." And truly it would
appear from abundant evidence that "the man Sterne" gained such a
social triumph as might well have turned a stronger head than his.
Within twenty-four hours after his arrival his lodgings in Pall Mall
were besieged by a crowd of fashionable visitors; and in a few weeks
he had probably made the acquaintance of "everybody who was anybody"
in the London society of that day.

How thoroughly he relished the delights of celebrity is revealed, with
a simple vanity which almost disarms criticism, in many a passage
of his correspondence. In one of his earliest letters to Miss
Fourmantelle we find him proudly relating to her how already he "was
engaged to ten noblemen and men of fashion." Of Garrick, who had
warmly welcomed the humourist whose merits he had been the first to
discover, Sterne says that he had "promised him at dinner to numbers
of great people." Amongst these great people who sought him out for
themselves was that