In 1759, were published the first two volumes of "Tristram Shandy," a singular and brilliant medley of wit, sentiment, indecency, and study of character. Laurence Sterne was a profligate clergyman, a dishonest author, and an unfaithful husband. He wrote "Tristram Shandy," and he wrote a great many sermons. He descended to the indulgence of low tastes, and rose to an elevated strain of thought, with equal facility. He was a man who knew the better and followed the worse. His talents made him a welcome guest at great men's tables, where he paid for his dinner by amusing the company with a brilliant succession of witticisms and indecent anecdotes, which, to his hearers, derived an additional piquancy from the fact that they proceeded from the mouth of a divine. But although the man was in many respects contemptible, although he disgraced his priestly character by his profligacy, and his literary character by a shameless plagiarism,[189] he possessed in a high degree a quality which must give him a distinguished place in English fiction. His borrowed plumage and his imitation of Rabelais' style apart, Sterne had originality, a gift at all times rare, and always, perhaps, becoming rarer. As a humorist, he is to be classed with Fielding and Smollett, but as a novelist, his position in the history of fiction is separate and unique.
"Tristram Shandy" has all the elements of a novel except the plot. The author has no story to tell. His aim is to amuse the reader by odd and whimsical remarks on every subject and on every personage whose peculiarities promise material for humor and satire. Sterne is perpetually digressing, moralizing commenting on every trivial topic which enters into his story, until the story itself is completely lost, if, indeed, it can be said ever to have been begun. The absence of arrangement is so marked that it is very difficult to turn to a passage which in a previous perusal has struck the eye. The eccentricity and whimsicality of the book contributed greatly to its immediate popularity. But the same characteristics which seem brilliant when novel, soon become dull when familiar, and although "Tristram Shandy" will always afford single passages of lasting interest to the lover of literature, the work as a whole is not a little tedious when read continuously from cover to cover.
In the course of his literary medley, Sterne introduces his reader to a group of characters amongst the most odd and original in fiction. Mr. Shandy, with his syllogisms and his hypotheses, his "close reasoning upon the smallest matters"; Yorick, the witty parson, whose epitaph, Alas! Poor Yorick! expresses so tenderly the amiable faults for which he suffered; Captain Shandy, that combination of simplicity, gentleness, humanity, and modesty, are all creations which deserve to rank with the most individual and happily conceived of fictitious personages. Sterne makes a character known to the reader by a succession of delicate touches rather than by description. He seems to enter into an individual, and make him betray his peculiarities by significant actions and phrases. Thus Mr. Shandy exposes at once the nature of his mind and the vigor of his "hobby-horse," when he exclaims to his brother Toby: "What is the character of a family to an hypothesis?"
The combination of sentiment, pathos, and humor which Sterne sometimes reached with remarkable success, is particularly apparent in every incident which concerns the celebrated Captain Toby Shandy, for the creation of which character this author may most easily be forgiven his indecencies and his literary thefts. Uncle Toby's sympathy with Lefevre, a poor army officer, on his way to join his regiment, who died in an inn near Shandy's house, is exquisitely painted throughout, and the colloquy between the captain and his faithful servant, Corporal Trim, when the death of the officer is imminent, is probably the finest passage which ever fell from the skilful pen of Laurence Sterne:
A sick brother-officer should have the best quarters, Trim; and if we had him with us,—we could tend and look to him.—Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim: and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's, and mine together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his legs.
—In a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle Toby, smiling, he might march.—He will never march, an' please your Honour, in this world, said the Corporal.—He will march, said my uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the bed with one shoe off.—An' please your Honour, said the Corporal, he will never march but to his grave. He shall march, cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch,—he shall march to his regiment.—He cannot stand it, said the Corporal.—He shall be supported, said my uncle Toby.—He'll drop at last, said the Corporal, and what will become of his boy? He shall not drop said my uncle Toby, firmly,—Ah, well-a-day!—do what we can for him, said Trim, maintaining his point,—the poor soul will die.—He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
—The accusing spirit, which flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in;—and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.[190]
"Ye, who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." Thus begins the famous tale which Dr. Johnson made the repository of so much of his wisdom, and so beautiful an example of English style. Rasselas and his royal brothers and sisters live in a secluded portion of the earth known as the Happy Valley, where, completely isolated from the world, they await their succession to the crown of the imaginary land of Abyssinia, surrounded by every luxury which can make life agreeable, and shut off from all knowledge of those evils which can make it painful. The aim of the story is to show the vanity of expecting perfect happiness, and the folly of sacrificing present advantages for the delusive promises of the future.
The scene opens in the Happy Valley, where there is all that labor or danger can procure or purchase, without either labor to be endured or danger to be dreaded. Rasselas illustrates the habitual discontent of man by wearying of the monotonous happiness of his royal home, and, together with his sister Nekayah, who shares his ennui, and Imlac, a man of learning, he escapes from the abode of changeless joys and perpetual merriment.
Once beyond the barriers of the Happy Valley, Rasselas and Nekayah seek in the various ranks and conditions of men the abode of true happiness. It is sought in vain amidst the hollow and noisy pleasures of the young and thoughtless; in vain among philosophers, whose theories so ill accord with their practice; in vain among shepherds, whose actual life contrasts so painfully with the descriptions of the poet; in vain in crowds, where sorrow lurks beneath the outward smile; in vain in the cell of the hermit, who counts the days till he shall once more mix with the world. The task becomes more hopeless with each new disappointment. Rasselas pursues his investigation among the higher ranks, in courts and cities; Nekayah, hers among the poor and humble, in the shop and the hamlet. But when the brother and sister meet to share their experiences, they both have the same tale to tell of human discontent. Finally, in returning disappointed to Abyssinia, they illustrate the tendency among men to look back with regret on the early pleasures of life, abandoned for the impossible happiness which discontent had taught them to seek.
On this slight thread of narrative, Johnson strung his thoughts with great felicity. The characters, by the different view which they entertain of life, are distinct and individual. The book is filled with pregnant and beautiful passages, which leave a deep impression on the reader. The words in which Imlac describes to the Prince and Princess the dangers of an unrestrained imagination, might, with equal propriety, find a place in a scientific treatise on the causes of insanity, and in a collection of beautiful literary extracts:
To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone, we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.
In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees, the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time, despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.[191]