The Berlinische Monatsschrift[62] calls attention to the excellence of the work and quotes the sermons at considerable length. The comment contains the erroneous statement that Sterne was a dissenter, and opposed to the established church. The translation published at Thorn in 1795, evidently building on this information, continues the error, and, in explanation of English church affairs, adds as enlightenment the thirty-nine articles. This translation is confessedly a working-over of the Leipzig translation already mentioned. It is difficult to discover how these sermons ever became attached to Sterne’s name, and one can hardly explain the fact that such a magazine as the Berlinische Monatsschrift[63] should at that late date publish an article so flatly contradictory to everything for which Sterne stood, so diametrically opposed to his career, save with the understanding that gross ignorance attended the original introduction and early imitation of Yorick, and that this incomprehension, or one-sided appreciation of the real Sterne persisted in succeeding decades. The German Yorick was the champion of the oppressed and downtrodden. The author of the “Sermons to Asses” appeared as such an opponent of coercion and arbitrary power in church and state, an upholder of human rights; hence, possibly, the authorship of this book was attributed to Sterne by something the same process as that which, in the age of heroic deeds, associated a miscellaneous collection of performances with a popular hero. The “Sermons to Asses” were written by Rev. James Murray (1732–1782), a noted dissenting minister, long pastor of High Bridge Chapel in Newcastle-on-Tyne. They were published in London in 1768 and dedicated to G. W., J. W., W. R. and M. M.—George Whitfield, John Wesley, William Romaine and Martin Madan. The English people are represented as burden-bearing asses laden with oppression in the shape of taxes and creeds.[64] They are directed against the power of the established church. It is needless to state that England never associated these sermons with Sterne.[65] The English edition was also briefly reviewed in the Hamburgische Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten[66] without connecting the work with Sterne. The error was made later, possibly by the translator of the Zürich edition.

The new collection of Sterne’s sermons published by Cadell in 1769, Vols. V, VI, VII, is reviewed by Unterhaltungen.[67] A selection from Sterne’s sermon on the Prodigal Son was published in translation in the Hamburgische Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten for April 13, 1768. The new collection of sermons was translated by A. E. Klausing and published at Leipzig in 1770, containing eighteen sermons.[68]

Both during Sterne’s life and after his death books were published claiming him as their author. In England contemporary criticism generally stigmatized these impertinent attempts as dubious, or undoubtedly fraudulent. The spurious ninth volume of Shandy has been mentioned.[69] The “Sermons to Asses” just mentioned also belong here, and, with reservation, also Stevenson’s continuation of the Sentimental Journey, with its claim to recognition through the continuator’s statement of his relation to Yorick. There remain also a few other books which need to be mentioned because they were translated into German and played their part there in shaping the German idea of Yorick. In general, it may be said that German criticism was never acute in judging these products, partially perhaps because they were viewed through the medium of an imperfectly mastered foreign tongue, a mediocre or an adapted translation. These books obtained relatively a much more extensive recognition in Germany than in England.

In 1769 a curious conglomerate was brought over and issued under the lengthy descriptive title: “Yoricks Betrachtungen über verschiedene wichtige und angenehme Gegenstände. Nemlich über Nichts, Ueber Etwas, Ueber das Ding, Ueber die Regierung, Ueber den Toback, Ueber die Nasen, Ueber die Quaksalber, Ueber die Hebammen, Ueber den Homunculus, Ueber die Steckenpferde, Ueber das Momusglas, Ueber die Ausschweifungen, Ueber die Dunkelkeit im Schreiben, Ueber den Unsinn, Ueber die Verbindung der Ideen, Ueber die Hahnreiter, Ueber den Mann in dem Monde, Ueber Leibnitzens Monaden, Ueber das was man Vertu nennt, Ueber das Gewissen, Ueber die Trunkenheit, Ueber den Nachtstuhl, Betrachtungen über Betrachtungen.—neque—cum lectulus, aut me Porticus excepit, desum mihi, Horat.” Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1769, 8o. The book purported to be a collection of Sterne’s earliest lucubrations, and the translator expresses his astonishment that no one had ever translated them before, although they were first issued in 1760. It is without doubt the translation of an English volume entitled “Yorick’s Meditations upon interesting and important subjects,” published by Stevens in London, 1760.[70] It had been forgotten in England long before some German chanced upon it. The preface closes with a long doggerel rhyme, which, the translator says, he has purposely left untranslated. It is, however, beyond the shadow of a doubt original with him, as its contents prove. Yorick in the Elysian Fields is supposed to address himself, he “anticipates his fate and perceives beforehand that at least one German critic would deem him worthy of his applause.”

“Go on, poor Yorik, try once more

In German Dress, thy fate of yore,

Expect few Critics, such, as by

The bucket of Philosophy

From out the bottom of the well

May draw the Sense of what you tell