outset
by picking Sterne's life to pieces, holding up the shreds and warning
the reader that any nobility apparent in his book will be nothing
better than a sham. Sterne is scarcely arrived at Calais and in
conversation with the Monk before you are cautioned how you listen to
the impostor. "Watch now," says the critic; "he'll be at his tricks in
a moment. Hey, _paillasse_! There!--didn't I tell you?" And yet I am
as sure that the opening pages of the _Sentimental Journey_ are full
of genuine feeling as I am that if Jonathan Swift had entered the room
while the Lecture upon him was going forward, he would have eaten
William Makepeace Goliath, white waistcoat and all.

Frenchmen, who either are less awed than we by lecturers in white
waistcoats, or understand the methods of criticism somewhat better,
cherish the _Sentimental Journey_ (in spite of its indifferent French)
and believe in the genius that created it. But the Briton reads it
with shyness, and the British critic speaks of Sterne with bated
breath, since Thackeray told it in Gath that Sterne was a bad man, and
the daughters of Philistia triumphed.

* * * * *

October 6, 1894. Mr. Whibley's Edition of "Tristram Shandy."

We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of
interesting by-products; but a new _Tristram Shandy_ stands not yet
among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the
best of it and given us a new edition of the old _Tristram_--two
handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction.
Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and
forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so
unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for
Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne
thus:--

"A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced,
grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his
habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those
who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his
immorality."[B]

But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes
straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit
of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:--

"He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of
pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not
bew