STERNE.
No less pious a railway director than Sir Edward Watkin once prefaced an oration to the shareholders of one of his numerous undertakings by expressing, in broken accents, the wish that ‘He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb might deal gently with illustrious personages in their present grievous affliction.’ The wish was a kind one, and is only referred to here as an illustration of the amazing skill of the author of the phrase quoted in so catching the tone, temper, and style of King James’s version, that the words occur to the feeling mind as naturally as any in Holy Writ as the best expression of a sorrowful emotion.
The phrase itself is, indeed, an excellent example of Sterne’s genius for pathos. No one knew better than he how to drive words home. George Herbert, in his selection of ‘Outlandish Proverbs,’ to which he subsequently gave the alternate title ‘Jacula Prudentum,’ has the following: ‘To a close-shorn sheep God gives Wind by measure’; but this proverb in that wording would never have succeeded in making the chairman of a railway company believe he had read it somewhere in the Bible. It is the same thought, but the words which convey it stop far short of the heart. A close-shorn sheep will not brook comparison with Sterne’s ‘shorn lamb’; whilst the tender, compassionate, beneficent ‘God tempers the wind’ makes the original ‘God gives wind by measure’ wear the harsh aspect of a wholly unnecessary infliction.
Sterne is our best example of the plagiarist whom none dare make ashamed. He robbed other men’s orchards with both hands; and yet no more original writer than he ever went to press in these isles.
He has been dogged, of course; but, as was befitting in his case, it has been done pleasantly. Sterne’s detective was the excellent Dr. Ferriar, of Manchester, whose ‘Illustrations of Sterne,’ first published in 1798, were written at an earlier date for the edification of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Those were pleasant days, when men of reading were content to give their best thoughts first to their friends and then—ten years afterwards—to the public.
Dr. Ferriar’s book is worthy of its subject. The motto on the title-page is delightfully chosen. It is taken from the opening paragraph of Lord Shaftesbury’s ‘Miscellaneous Reflections’: ‘Peace be with the soul of that charitable and Courteous Author who for the common benefit of his fellow-Authors introduced the ingenious way of Miscellaneous Writing.’ Here Dr. Ferriar stopped; but I will add the next sentence: ‘It must be owned that since this happy method was established the Harvest of Wit has been more plentiful and the Labourers more in number than heretofore.’ Wisely, indeed, did Charles Lamb declare Shaftesbury was not too genteel for him. No pleasanter penance for random thinking can be devised than spending an afternoon turning over Shaftesbury’s three volumes and trying to discover how near he ever did come to saying that ‘Ridicule was the test of truth.’
Dr. Ferriar’s happy motto puts the reader in a sweet temper to start with, for he sees at once that the author is no pedantic, soured churl, but a good fellow who is going to make a little sport with a celebrated wit, and show you how a genius fills his larder.
The first thing that strikes you in reading Dr. Ferriar’s book is the marvellous skill with which Sterne has created his own atmosphere and characters, in spite of the fact that some of the most characteristic remarks of his characters are, in the language of the Old Bailey, ‘stolen goods.’ ‘“There is no cause but one,” replied my Uncle Toby, “why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, but because God pleases to have it so.” “That is Grangousier’s solution,” said my father. “’Tis he,” continued my Uncle Toby, looking up and not regarding my father’s interruption, “who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions and for such ends as is agreeable to His infinite wisdom.”’
‘“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh”; and if those are not the words of my Uncle Toby, it is idle to believe in anything’: and yet we read in Rabelais—as, indeed, Sterne suggests to us we should—‘“Pourquoi,” dit Gargantua, “est-ce que frère Jean a si beau nez?” “Parce,” répondit Grangousier, “qu’ainsi Dieu l’a voulu, lequel nous fait en telle forme et à telle fin selon son divin arbitre, que fait un potier ses vaisseaux.”’
To create a character and to be able to put in his mouth borrowed words which yet shall quiver with his personality is the supreme triumph of the greatest ‘miscellaneous writer’ who ever lived.
Dr. Ferriar’s book, after all, but establishes this: that the only author whom Sterne really pillaged is Burton, of the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ a now well-known writer, but who in Sterne’s time, despite Dr. Johnson’s partiality, appears to have been neglected. Sir Walter Scott, an excellent authority on such a point, says, in his ‘Life of Sterne,’ that Dr. Ferriar’s essay raised the ‘“Anatomy of Melancholy” to double price in the book market.’
Sir Walter is unusually hard upon Sterne in this matter of the ‘Anatomy.’ But different men, different methods. Sir Walter had his own way of cribbing. Sterne’s humorous conception of the character of the elder Shandy required copious illustration from learned sources, and a whole host of examples and whimsicalities, which it would have passed the wit of man to invent for himself. He found these things to his hand in Burton, and, like our first parent, ‘he scrupled not to eat.’ It is not easy to exaggerate the extent of his plunder. The well-known chapter with its refrain, ‘The Lady Baussiere rode on,’ and the chapter on the death of Brother Bobby, are almost, though not altogether, pure Burton.
The general effect of it all is to raise your opinion immensely—of Burton. As for your opinion of Sterne as a man of conduct, is it worth while having one? It is a poor business bludgeoning men who bore the brunt of life a long century ago, and whose sole concern now with the world is to delight it. Laurence Sterne is not standing for Parliament. ‘Eliza’ has been dead a dozen decades. Nobody covers his sins under the cloak of this particular parson. Our sole business is with ‘Tristram Shandy’ and ‘The Sentimental Journey’; and if these books are not matters for congratulation and joy, then the pleasures of literature are all fudge, and the whole thing a got-up job of ‘The Trade’ and the hungry crew who go buzzing about it.
Mr. Traill concludes his pleasant ‘Life of Sterne’ in a gloomy vein, which I cannot for the life of me understand. He says: ‘The fate of Richardson might seem to be close behind him’ (Sterne). Even the fate of ‘Clarissa’ is no hard one. She still numbers good intellects, and bears her century lightly. Diderot, as Mr. Traill reminds us, praised her outrageously—but Mr. Ruskin is not far behind; and from Diderot to Ruskin is a good ‘drive.’ But ‘Tristram’ is a very different thing from ‘Clarissa.’ I should have said, without hesitation, that it was one of the most popular books in the language. Go where you will amongst men—old and young, undergraduates at the Universities, readers in our great cities, old fellows in the country, judges, doctors, barristers—if they have any tincture of literature about them, they all know their ‘Shandy’ at least as well as their ‘Pickwick.’ What more can be expected? ‘True Shandeism,’ its author declares, ‘think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs.’ I will be bound to say Sterne made more people laugh in 1893 than in any previous year; and, what is more, he will go on doing it—‘“that is, if it please God,” said my Uncle Toby.’