ne another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with
the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the
annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and
there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained
readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is
the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the
real merits of Sterne. When so acute a writer as Bagehot condemns much
of _Tristram Shandy_ as "a sort of antediluvian fun, in which uncouth
saurian jokes play idly in an unintelligible world," he hits the nail on
the head of why so many readers nowadays turn with impatience from that
work. But they should persevere, for Sterne himself saw his error, and
gradually dropped the "uncouth saurian jokes" which he had filched out
of Burton and Beroalde, relying more and more exclusively on his own
rich store of observations taken directly from human nature. In the
adorable seventh volume of _Tristram_, and in _The Sentimental Journey_,
there is nothing left of Rabelais except a certain rambling artifice of
style.

The death of Sterne, at the age of fifty-four, is one of those events
which must be continually regretted, because to the very end of his life
he was growing in ease and ripeness, was discovering more perfect modes
of self-expression, and was purging himself of his compromising
intellectual frailties. It is true that from the very first his
excellences were patent. The portrait of my Uncle Toby, which Hazlitt
truly said is "one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature,"
occurs, or rather begins, in the second volume of _Tristram Shandy_. But
the marvellous portraits which the early sections of that work contain
are to some extent obscured, or diluted, by the author's determination
to gain piquancy by applying old methods to new subjects. Frankly, much
as I love Sterne, I find Kunastrockius and Lithopaedus a bore. I suspect
they have driven more than one modern reader away from the enjoyment of
_Tristram Shandy_.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century a leading Dissenting minister,
the Rev. Joseph Fawcett, said in answer to a question: "Do I _like_
Sterne? Yes, to be sure I should deserve to be hanged if I didn't!" That
was the attitude of thoughtful and scrupulous people of cultivation more
than one hundred years ago. But it was their attitude only on some
occasions. There is no record of the