There is a considerable analogy, as one may note in passing, between the two men; and if Sterne was not a poet, his prose could perhaps be even more vivid and picturesque than Heine's. But his humour is generally wanting in the quality suggested by Mr. Arnold's phrase. We cannot represent it by a sardonic smile, or indeed by any other expression which we can very well associate with the world-spirit. The imaginative humourist must in all cases be keenly alive to the 'absurdity of man;' he must have a sense of the irony of fate, of the strange interlacing of good and evil in the world, and of the baser and nobler elements in human nature. He will be affected differently according to his temperament and his intellectual grasp. He may be most impressed by the affinity between madness and heroism; by the waste of noble qualities on trifling purposes; and, if he be more amiable, by the goodness which may lurk under ugly forms. He may be bitter and melancholy, or simply serious in contemplating the fantastic tricks played by mortals before high heaven. But, in any case, some real undercurrent of deeper feeling is essential to the humourist who impresses us powerfully, and who is equally far from mere buffoonery and sentimental foppery. His smile must be at least edged with melancholy, and his pathos too deep for mere 'snivelling.'
Sterne is often close to this loftier region of the humorous; sometimes he fairly crosses it; but his step is uncertain as of one not feeling at home. The absurdity of man does not make him 'sardonic' He takes things too easily. He shows us the farce of life, and feels that there is a tragical background to it all; but somehow he is not usually much disposed to cry over it, and he is obviously proud of the tears which he manages to produce. The thought of human folly and suffering does not usually torment and perplex him. The highest humourist should be the laughing and weeping philosopher in one; and in Sterne the weeping philosopher is always a bit of a humbug. The pedantry of the elder Shandy is a simple whim, not a misguided aspiration; and Sterne is so amused with his oddities that he even allows him to be obtrusively heartless. Uncle Toby undoubtedly comes much nearer to complete success; but he wants just that touch of genuine pathos which he would have received from the hands of the greatest writers. But the performance is so admirable in the best passages, where Sterne can drop his buffoonery and his indecency, that even a criticism which sets him below the highest place seems almost unfair.
And this may bring us back for a moment to the man himself. Sterne avowedly drew his own portrait in Yorick. That clerical jester, he says, was a mere child, full of whim and gaiety, but without an ounce of ballast. He had no more knowledge of the world at 26 than a 'romping unsuspicious girl of 13.' His high spirits and frankness were always getting him into trouble. When he heard of a spiteful or ungenerous action he would blurt out that the man was a dirty fellow. He would not stoop to set himself right, but let people think of him what they would. Thus his faults were all due to his extreme candour and impulsiveness. It wants little experience of the world to recognise the familiar portrait of an impulsive and generous fellow. It represents the judicious device by which a man reconciles himself to some very ugly actions. It provides by anticipation a complete excuse for thoughtlessness and meanness. If he is accused of being inconstant, he points out the extreme goodness of his impulses; and if the impulses were bad, he argues that at least they did not last very long. He prides himself on his disregard to consequences, even when the consequences may be injurious to his friends. His feelings are so genuine for the moment that his conscience is satisfied without his will translating them into action. He is perfectly candid in expressing the passing phrase of sentiment, and therefore does not trouble himself to ask whether what is true to-day will be true to-morrow. He can call an adversary a dirty fellow, and is very proud of his generous indiscretion. But he is also capable of gratifying the dirty fellow's vanity by high-flown compliments if he happens to be in the enthusiastic vein; and somehow the providence which watches over the thoughtless is very apt to make his impulses fall in with the dictates of calculated selfishness. He cannot be an accomplished courtier, because he is apt to be found out; but he can crawl and creep for the nonce with anyone. In real life such a man is often as delightful for a short time as he becomes contemptible on a longer acquaintance. When we think of Sterne as a man, and try to frame a coherent picture of his character, we must give a due weight to the baser elements of his composition. We cannot forget his shallowness of feeling and the utter want of self-respect which prompted him to condescend to be a mere mountebank, and to dabble in filth for the amusement of graceless patrons. Nor is it really possible entirely to throw aside this judgment even in reading his works; for even after abstracting our attention from the rubbish and the indecency, we are haunted in the really admirable parts by our misgivings as to their sincerity. But the problem is often one to tax critical acumen. It is one aspect of a difficulty which meets us sometimes in real life. Every man flatters himself that he can detect the mere hypocrite. We seem to have a sufficient instinct to warn us against the downright pitfalls where an absolute void is covered by an artificial stratum of mere verbiage. Perhaps even this is not so easy as we sometimes fancy; but there is a more refined sort of hypocrisy which requires keener dissection. How are men to draw the narrow and yet all-important line which separates—not the genuine from the feigned emotion—but the emotion which is due to some real cause, and that which is a cause in itself? Some people we know fall in love with a woman, and others are really in love with the passion. Grief may be the sign of lacerated affection, or it may be a mere luxury indulged in for its own sake. The sentimentalism which Sterne represented corresponded in the main to this last variety. People had discovered the art of extracting direct enjoyment from their own 'sensibility,' and Sterne expressly gives thanks for his own as the great consolation of his life. He has the heartiest possible relish for his tears and lamentations, and it is precisely his skill in marking this vein of interest which gives him his extraordinary popularity. So soon as we discover that a man is enjoying his sorrow our sympathy is killed within us, and for that reason Sterne is apt to be repulsive to humourists whose sense of the human tragi-comedy is deeper than his own. They agree with him that the vanity of human dreams may suggest a mingling of tears and laughter; but they grieve because they must, not because they find it a pleasant amusement. Yet it is perhaps unwise to poison our pleasure by reflections of this kind. They come with critical reflection, and may at least be temporarily suppressed when we are reading for enjoyment. We need not sin ourselves by looking a gift horse in the mouth. The sentiment is genuine at the time. Do not inquire how far it has been deliberately concocted and stimulated. The man is not only a wonderful artist, but he is right in asserting that his impulses are clear and genuine. Why should not that satisfy us? Are we to set up for so rigid a nature that we are never to consent to sit down with Uncle Toby and take him as he is made? We may wish, if we please, that Sterne had always been in his best, and that his tears flowed from a deeper source. But so long as he really speaks from his heart—and he does so in all the finer parts of the Toby drama—why should we remember that the heart was rather flighty, and regarded with too much conscious complacency by its proprietor? The Shandyism upon which he prided himself was not a very exalted form of mind, nor one which offered a very deep or lasting satisfaction. Happily we can dismiss an author when we please; give him a cold shoulder in our more virtuous moods, and have a quiet chat with him when we are graciously pleased to relax. In those times we may admit Sterne as the best of jesters, though it may remain an open question whether the jester is on the whole an estimable institution.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Sterne says in the letter that Hall was over forty; and he was five years older than Hall.
COUNTRY BOOKS
A love of the country is taken, I know not why, to indicate the presence of all the cardinal virtues. It is one of those outlying qualities which are not exactly meritorious, but which, for that very reason, are the more provocative of a pleasing self-complacency. People pride themselves upon it as upon early rising, or upon answering letters by return of post. We recognise the virtuous hero of a novel as soon as we are told that the cat instinctively creeps to his knee, and that the little child clutches his hand to stay his tottering steps. To say that we love the country is to make an indirect claim to a similar excellence. We assert a taste for sweet and innocent pleasures, and an indifference to the feverish excitements of artificial society. I, too, love the country—if such a statement can be received after such an exordium; but I confess—to be duly modest—that I love it best in books. In real life I have remarked that it is frequently damp and rheumatic, and most hated by those who know it best. Not long ago, I heard a worthy orator at a country school-treat declare to his small audience that honesty, sobriety, and industry, in their station in life, might possibly enable them to become cabdrivers in London. The precise form of the reward was suggested, I fancy, by some edifying history of an ideal cabman; but the speaker clearly knew the road to his hearers' hearts. Perhaps the realisation of this high destiny might dispel their illusions. Like poor Susan at the corner of Wood Street, they would see
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flow on through the vale of Cheapside.
The Swiss, who at home regards a mountain as an unmitigated nuisance, is (or once was) capable of developing sentimental yearnings for the Alps at the sound of a ranz des vaches. We all agree with Horace that Rome is most attractive at Tibur, and vice versâ. It is the man who has been 'long in populous cities pent' who, according to Milton, enjoys