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.’