Sterne Part 7

Yorick. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the picture of the "lively, witty, sensitive, and heedless parson," in chapter x. of the first volume of _Tristram Shandy_. We seem to see the thin, melancholy figure on the rawboned horse--the apparition which could "never present itself in the village but it caught the attention of old and young," so that "labour stood still as he pa.s.sed, the bucket hung suspended in the middle of the well, the spinning-wheel forgot its round; even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he was out of sight." Throughout this chapter Sterne, though describing himself, is projecting his personality to a distance, as it were, and contemplating it dramatically; and the result is excellent.

When in the next chapter he becomes "lyrical," so to speak; when the reflection upon his (largely imaginary) wrongs impels him to look inward, the invariable consequence follows; and though Yorick's much bepraised death-scene, with Eugenius at his bed-side, is redeemed from entire failure by an admixture of the humorous with its attempted pathos, we ask ourselves with some wonder what the unhappiness--or the death itself, for that matter--is "all about." The wrongs which were supposed to have broken Yorick's heart are most imperfectly specified (a comic proof, by the way, of Sterne's entire absorption in himself, to the confusion of his own personal knowledge with that of the reader), and the first conditions of enlisting the reader's sympathies are left unfulfilled.

But it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes itself upon the strictly narrative and dramatic parts of his work; and, next to the abiding charm and interest of his princ.i.p.al figure, it is by the admirable life and colour of his scenes that he exercises his strongest powers of fascination over a reader. Perpetual as are Sterne's affectations, and tiresome as is his eternal self-consciousness when he is speaking in his own person, yet when once the dramatic instinct fairly lays hold of him there is no writer who ever makes us more completely forget him in the presence of his characters--none who can bring them and their surroundings, their looks and words, before us with such convincing force of reality.

One wonders sometimes whether Sterne himself was aware of the high dramatic excellence of many of what actors would call his "carpenter's scenes"--the mere interludes introduced to amuse us while the stage is being prepared for one of those more elaborate and deliberate displays of pathos or humour, which do not always turn out to be unmixed successes when they come. Sterne prided himself vastly upon the incident of Le Fevre's death; but I dare say that there is many a modern reader who would rather have lost this highly-wrought piece of domestic drama, than that other exquisite little scene in the kitchen of the inn, when Corporal Trim toasts the bread which the sick lieutenant's son is preparing for his father's posset, while "Mr.

Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the fire, but said not a word, good or bad, to comfort the youth." The whole scene is absolute life; and the dialogue between the Corporal and the parson, as related by the former to his master, with Captain Shandy's comments thereon, is almost Shakspearian in its excellence. Says the Corporal:

"When the lieutenant had taken his gla.s.s of sack and toast he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen to let me know that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would step upstairs, I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers, for there was a book laid on the chair by the bed-side, and as I shut the door I saw him take up a cus.h.i.+on. I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim, never said your prayers at all. I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it. Are you sure of it? replied the curate. A soldier, an' please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to G.o.d of any one in the whole world. 'Twas well said of thee, Trim, said my Uncle Toby. But when a soldier, said I, an' please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water--or engaged, said I, for months together in long and dangerous marches; hara.s.sed, perhaps, in his rear today; hara.s.sing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded there; resting this night out upon his arms; beat up in his s.h.i.+rt the next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, [he] must say his prayers how and when he can. I believe, said I--for I was piqued, quoth the Corporal, for the reputation of the army--I believe, an't please your reverence, said I, that when a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson--though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. Thou shouldst not have said that, Trim, said my Uncle Toby; for G.o.d only knows who is a hypocrite and who is not. At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen who have done their duties in this world and who have not, and we shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly. I hope we shall, said Trim.

It is in the Scripture, said my Uncle Toby, and I will show it thee in the morning. In the meantime, we may depend upon it, Trim, for our comfort, said my Uncle Toby, that G.o.d Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one. I hope not, said the Corporal. But go on, said my Uncle Toby, with thy story."

We might almost fancy ourselves listening to that n.o.ble prose colloquy between the disguised king and his soldiers on the night before Agincourt, in _Henry V._ And though Sterne does not, of course, often reach this level of dramatic dignity, there are pa.s.sages in abundance in which his dialogue a.s.sumes, through sheer force of individualized character, if not all the dignity, at any rate all the impressive force and simplicity, of the "grand style."

Taken altogether, however, his place in English letters is hard to fix, and his tenure in human memory hard to determine. Hitherto he has held his own, with the great writers of his era, but it has been in virtue, as I have attempted to show, of a contribution to the literary possessions of mankind which is as uniquely limited in amount as it is exceptionally perfect in quality. One cannot but feel that, as regards the sum of his t.i.tles to recollection, his name stands far below either of those other two which in the course of the last century added themselves to the highest rank among the cla.s.sics of English humour. Sterne has not the abounding life and the varied human interest of Fielding; and, to say nothing of his vast intellectual inferiority to Swift, he never so much as approaches those problems of everlasting concernment to man which Swift handles with so terrible a fascination. Certainly no enthusiastic Gibbon of the future is ever likely to say of Sterne's "pictures of human manners" that they will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of the House of Austria. a.s.suredly no one will ever find in _this_ so-called English ant.i.type of the Cure of Meudon any of the deeper qualities of that gloomy and commanding spirit which has been finely compared to the "soul of Rabelais _habitans in sicco_." Nay, to descend even to minor apt.i.tudes, Sterne cannot tell a story as Swift and Fielding can tell one; and his work is not a.s.sured of life as _Tom Jones_ and _Gulliver's Travels_, considered as stories alone, would be a.s.sured of it, even if the one were stripped of its cheerful humour, and the other disarmed of its savage allegory. And hence it might be rash to predict that Sterne's days will be as long in the land of literary memory as the two great writers aforesaid. Banked, as he still is, among "English cla.s.sics," he undergoes, I suspect, even more than an English cla.s.sic's ordinary share of reverential neglect. Among those who talk about him he has, I should imagine, fewer readers than Fielding, and very much fewer than Swift. Nor is he likely to increase their number as time goes on, but rather, perhaps, the contrary.

Indeed, the only question is whether with the lapse of years he will not, like other writers as famous in their day, become yet more of a mere name. For there is still, of course, a further stage to which he may decline. That object of so much empty mouth-honour, the English cla.s.sic of the last and earlier centuries, presents himself for cla.s.sification under three distinct categories. There is the cla.s.s who are still read in a certain measure, though in a much smaller measure than is pretended, by the great body of ordinarily well-educated men.

Of this cla.s.s, the two authors whose names I have already cited, Swift and Fielding, are typical examples; and it may be taken to include Goldsmith also. Then comes the cla.s.s of those whom the ordinarily well-educated public, whatever they may pretend, read really very little or not at all; and in this cla.s.s we may couple Sterne with Addison, with Smollett, and, except, of course, as to _Robinson Crusoe_--unless, indeed, our _blase_ boys have outgrown him among other pleasures of boyhood--with Defoe. But below this there is yet a third cla.s.s of writers, who are not only read by none but the critic, the connoisseur, or the historian of literature, but are scarcely read even by them, except from curiosity, or "in the way of business." The type of this cla.s.s is Richardson; and one cannot, I say, help asking whether he will hereafter have Sterne as a companion of his dusty solitude. Are _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_ destined to descend from the second cla.s.s into the third--from the region of partial into that of total neglect, and to have their portion with _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison?_ The unbounded vogue which they enjoyed in their time will not save them; for sane and sober critics compared Richardson in his day to Shakspeare, and Diderot broke forth into prophetic rhapsodies upon the immortality of his works which to us in these days have become absolutely pathetic in their felicity of falsified prediction. Seeing, too, that a good three-fourths of the attractions which won Sterne his contemporary popularity are now so much dead weight of dead matter, and that the vital residuum is in amount so small, the fate of Richardson might seem to be but too close behind him. Yet it is difficult to believe that this fate will ever quite overtake him. His sentiment may have mostly ceased--it probably has ceased--to stir any emotion at all in these days; but there is an imperishable element in his humour. And though the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have any power over a perfume which so wonderfully retains the pungent freshness of its fragrance after the lapse of a hundred years.

THE END.