II
In the fast-developing fiction of the late eighteenth century, the possible ramifications of the Novel from the parent tree of Richardson enriched it with the work of Sterne, Swift and Goldsmith. They added imaginative narratives of one sort or another, which increased the content of the form by famous things and exercised some influence in shaping it. The remark has in mind "Tristram Shandy," "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Vicar of Wakefield." And yet, no one of the three was a Novel in the sense in which the evolution of the word has been traced, nor yet are the authors strictly novelists.
Laurence Sterne, at once man of the world and clergyman, with Rabelais as a model, and himself a master of prose, possessing command of humor and pathos, skilled in character sketch and essay-philosophy, is not a novelist at all. His aim Is not to depict the traits or events of contemporary society, but to put forth the views of the Reverend Laurence Sterne, Yorkshire parson, with many a quaint turn and whimsical situation under a thin disguise of story-form. Of his two books, "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey," unquestionable classics, both, in their field, there is no thought of plot or growth or objective realization: the former is a delightful tour de force in which a born essayist deals with the imaginary fortunes of a person he makes as interesting before his birth as after it, and in passing, sketches some characters dear to posterity: first and foremost, Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. It is all pure play of wit, fancy and wisdom, beneath the comic mask—a very frolic of the mind. In the second book the framework is that of the travel-sketch and the treatment more objective: a fact which, along with its dubious propriety, may account for its greater popularity. But much of the charm comes, as before, from the writer's touch, his gift of style and ability to unloose in the essay manner a unique individuality.
In his life Sterne, like Swift, exhibited most un-clerical traits of worldliness and in his work there is the refined, suggestive indelicacy, not to say indecency, which we are in the habit nowadays of charging against the French, and which is so much worse than the bluff, outspoken coarseness of a Fielding or a Smollett. At times the line between Sterne and Charles Lamb is not so easy to draw in that, from first to last, the elder is an essayist and humorist, while the younger has so much of the eighteenth century in his feeling and manner. In these modern times, when so many essayists appear in the guise of fiction-makers, we can see that Sterne is really the leader of the tribe: and it is not hard to show how neither he nor they are novelists divinely called. They (and he) may be great, but it is another greatness. The point is strikingly illustrated by the statement that Sterne was eight years publishing the various parts of "Tristram Shandy," and a man of forty-six when he began to do so. Bona fide novels are not thus written. Constructively, the work is a mad farrago; but the end quite justifies the means. Thus, while his place in letters is assured, and the touch of the cad in him (Goldsmith called him "the blackguard parson") should never blind us to his prime merits, his significance for our particular study—the study of the modern Novel in its development—is comparatively slight. Like all essayists of rank he left memorable passages: the world never tires of "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and pays it the high compliment of ascribing it to holy writ: nor will the scene where the recording angel blots out Uncle Toby's generous oath with a tear, fade from the mind; nor that of the same kindly gentleman letting go the big fly which has, to his discomfiture, been buzzing about his nose at dinner: "'Go,' says he, lifting up the latch and opening his hand as he spoke to let it escape. 'Go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? The world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me'"—a touch so modern as to make Sterne seem a century later than Fielding. These are among the precious places of literature. This eighteenth century divine has in advance of his day the subtler sensibility which was to grow so strong in later fiction: and if he be sentimental too, he gives us a sentimentality unlike the solemn article of Richardson, because of its French grace and its relief of delicious humor.