[75.] Sidney Lee in Nat’l Dict. of Biography. It was also given in the eighth volume of the Edinburgh edition of Sterne, 1803.
[76.] See London Magazine, June, 1770, VI, p. 319; also Monthly Review, XLII, pp. 360–363, May, 1770. The author of this latter critique further proves the fraudulence by asserting that allusion is made in the book to “facts and circumstances which did not happen until Yorick was dead.”
[77.] It is obviously not the place here for a full discussion of this question. Hédouin in the appendix of his “Life of Goethe” (pp. 291 ff) urges the claims of the book and resents Fitzgerald’s rather scornful characterization of the French critics who received the work as Sterne’s (see Life of Sterne, 1864, II, p. 429). Hédouin refers to Jules Janin (“Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Sterne”) and Balzac (“Physiologie du mariage,” Meditation xvii,) as citing from the work as genuine. Barbey d’Aurevilly is, however, noted as contending in la Patrie against the authenticity. This is probably the article to be found in his collection of Essays, “XIX Siècle, Les oeuvres et les hommes,” Paris, 1890, pp. 73–93. Fitzgerald mentions Chasles among French critics who accept the book. Springer is incorrect in his assertion that the Koran appeared seven years after Sterne’s death, but he is probably building on the incorrect statement in the Quarterly Review (XCIV, pp. 303 ff). Springer also asserts erroneously that it was never published in Sterne’s collected works. He is evidently disposed to make a case for the Koran and finds really his chief proof in the fact that both Goethe and Jean Paul accepted it unquestioningly. Bodmer quotes Sterne from the Koran in a letter to Denis, April 4, 1771, “M. Denis Lit. Nachlass,” ed. by Retzer, Wien, 1801, II, p. 120, and other German authors have in a similar way made quotations from this work, without questioning its authenticity.
[78.] III, p. 537, 1771.
[79.] X, p. 173.
[80.] Leipzig, Schwickert, 1771, pp. 326, 8o.
[81.] V, p. 726.
[82.] Hamburg, Herold, 1778, pp. 248, 12o.
[83.] 1779, p. 67.
[84.] Anhang to XXV-XXXVI, Vol. II, p. 768.