History of English Humour, Vol. 2

by A. G. K. L'Estrange

"'Are we not,' continued Corporal Trim, looking still at Susanah—'Are we not like a flower of the field?' A tear of pride stole in betwixt every two tears of humiliation—else no tongue could have described Susanah's affliction—'Is not all flesh grass?—'Tis clay—'tis dirt.' They all looked directly at the scullion;—the scullion had been just scouring a fish kettle—It was not fair.

"'What is the finest face man ever looked at?' 'I could hear Trim talk so for ever,' cried Susanah, 'What is it?' Susanah laid her head on Trim's shoulder—'but corruption!'—Susanah took it off.

"Now I love you for this;—and 'tis this delicious mixture within you, which makes you dear creatures what you are;—and he, who hates you for it—all I can say of the matter is—that he has either a pumpkin for his head, or a pippin for his heart...."

"Wanting the remainder of a fragment of paper on which he found an amusing story, he asked his French servant for it; La Fleur said he had wrapped it round the stalks of a bouquet, which he had given to his demoiselle upon the Boulevards. 'Then, prithee, La Fleur,' said I 'step back to her, and see if thou canst get it.' 'There is no doubt of it,' said La Fleur, and away he flew.

"In a very little time the poor fellow came back quite out of breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks than would arise from the simple irreparability of the payment. Juste ciel! in less than two minutes that the poor fellow had taken his last farewell of her—his faithless mistress had given his gage d'amour to one of the Count's footmen—the footman to a young semptress—and the semptress to a fiddler, with my fragment at the end of it. Our misfortunes were involved together—I gave a sigh, and La Fleur echoed it back to my ear. 'How perfidious!' cried La Fleur, 'How unlucky,' said I.

"'I should not have been mortified, Monsieur,' quoth La Fleur, 'If she had lost it.'

"'Nor I, La Fleur,' said I, 'had I found it.'"

We very commonly form our opinion of an Author's character from his writings, and there is no doubt that his tendencies can scarcely fail to betray themselves to a careful observer. But experience has generally taught him to curb or quicken his feelings according to the notions of the public taste, so that he often expresses the sentiments of others rather than his own. Hence a literary friend once observed to me that a man is very different from what his writings would lead you to suppose. I think there are certain indications in Sterne's writings that he introduced those passages to which objection was justly taken for the purpose of catching the favour of the public. He had already published some Sermons, which, he says, "found neither purchasers nor readers."

Conscious of his talent, and being no doubt reminded of it by his friends, he wished to obtain a field for it, and determined now to try a different course. He wrote "Tristram Shandy" as he says "not to be fed, but to be famous," and so just was the opinion of what would please the age in which he lived that we find the quiet country rector suddenly transformed into the most popular literary man of the day,—going up to London and receiving more invitations than he could accept. He had made his gold current by a considerable admixture of alloy; and endeavoured to excuse his offences of this kind by a variety of subterfuges. Upon one occasion, he compared them to the antics of children which although unseemly, are performed with perfect innocence.

Of course this was a jest. Sterne was not living in a Paradisaical age, and he intentionally overstept the boundaries of decorum. But granting he had an object in view, was he justified in adopting such means to obtain it? certainly not; but he had some right to laugh, as he does, at the inconsistency of the public, who, while they blamed his books, bought up the editions of them as fast as they could be issued.