discerning patron of ability in every shape, Lord
Rockingham. In one of the many letters which Madame de Medalle flung
dateless upon the world, but which from internal evidence we can
assign to the early months of 1760, Sterne writes that he is about to
"set off with a grand retinue of Lord Rockingham's (in whose suite I
move) for Windsor" to witness, it should seem, an installation of
a Knight of the Garter. It is in his letters to Miss Fourmantelle,
however, that his almost boyish exultation at his London triumph
discloses itself most frankly. "My rooms," he writes, "are filling
every hour with great people of the first rank, who strive who shall
most honour me." Never, he believes, had such homage been rendered to
any man by devotees so distinguished. "The honours paid me were the
greatest that were ever known from the great."

The self-painted portrait is not, it must be confessed, altogether
an attractive one. It is somewhat wanting in dignity, and its air of
over-inflated complacency is at times slightly ridiculous. But we must
not judge Sterne in this matter by too severe a standard. He was by
nature neither a dignified nor a self-contained man: he had a head
particularly unfitted to stand sudden elevation; and it must be
allowed that few men's power of resisting giddiness at previously
unexplored altitudes was ever so severely tried. It was not only "the
great" in the sense of the high in rank and social distinction by
whom he was courted; he was welcomed also by the eminent in genius and
learning; and it would be no very difficult task for him to flatter
himself that it was the latter form of recognition which, he really
valued most. Much, at any rate, in the way of undue elation may be
forgiven to a country clergyman who suddenly found himself the centre
of a court, which was regularly attended by statesmen, wits, and
leaders of fashion, and with whom even bishops condescended to open
gracious diplomatic communication. "Even all the bishops," he writes,
"have sent their compliments;" and though this can hardly have been
true of the whole Episcopal Bench, it is certain that Sterne received
something more than a compliment from one bishop, who was a host in
himself. He was introduced by Garrick to Warburton, and received high
encouragement from that formidable prelate.[1]

[Footnote 1: It is admitted, moreover, in the correspondence with Miss
Fourmantelle that Sterne received something more substantial from the