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harassed with the care of a large family, survived him twenty-seven years. Law- rence made good progress at school, and in 1733 was sent, through the bounty of a relation and namesake, to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1736, and M.A. in 1740. He is de- scribed at this period as " a thin, spare, hollow-chested youth, with joints and members but ill kept together, with curiously bright eyes, and a Voltairean mouth. About the mouth and eye there was no very special air of sanctity." His uncle (a prebendary of Durham and of York) procured for him the small living of Sutton in Yorkshire. In 1741 he ob- tained a prebend, and on 30th March was man-ied in York Minster to Elizabeth Lumley. The courtship had lasted for several years. The marriage was by no means a happy one, and the wife was often treated with the coldest neglect — Sterne perpetually falling into violent love fevers with one lady and another. Some years were now passed in attending to the duties of his cure. " I had then," he says, " very good health ; books, painting, fiddling, and shooting were my amusements." He and his uncle had a quarrel shortly after his marriage, " because I would not write paragraphs in the newspapers : though he was a party man, I was not, and detested such dirty work, thinking it beneath me ; " yet Sterne did go on doing this dirty work for his uncle for twenty years afterwards. A friend of Mrs. Sterne's presented him with the living of Stillington, near Sut- ton ; and he remained nearly twenty years at Sutton doing the duty of the two places, not more than a mile and a half apart. In 1747 he published a charity sermon — Elijah and the Widow of Zare- phath ; in 1750 another sermon — The Abuses of Coiiscience. This last he subse- quently introduced in the second volume of Tristram Shandy. Towards the close of 1759 appeared at York the first two volumes of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. Sterne had been unable to induce any London book- seller to run the risk of its publication. The work proved an immediate success, and raised him at once from obscurity to literary fame. Shortly after its appear- ance he repaired to London to enjoy the popular applause and other advan- tages in store for the author of so bril- liant a work. He was oflfered £700 for the copyright of the first two volumes, and the expectation of two more, which he promised. The poet Gray wrote to a friend in June 1760 : " Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration — the
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man as well as the book ; one is invited to dinner, when he dines, a fortnight be- fore. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them, and humour sometimes hit, and sometimes missed. Have you read his Sermons, with his own comick figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them ? They are in a style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart ; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of his audience." These sermons, which eventually ran to seven volumes, had a large sale, due to Sterne's reputation as the author of Tristram Shandy. "Any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited," observed Dr. Johnson ; " the man Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three months. . . I did read them [the Sermons], but it was in a stage-coach. I should never have deigned even to look at them had I been at large." The remaining volumes of Tristram Shandy were published as follows : iii. and iv., in 1761 ; v. and vi., 1762 ; vii. and viii., 1765 ; ix., 1767. Sterne received the additional prefer- ment of the curacy of Coxwold, in York- shire, from his friend Lord Falconbridge ; he took a house in York for his wife and his child, Lydia, spending most of his own time in London and on the Continent. He resided much at Skelton Castle, or " Crazy Castle," as he called it, the seat of his friend, Mr. Hall. In 1762, he visited France, with his wife and daughter. He returned to England alone, and in 1764 went to Italy for the benefit of his health, then much impaired. We do not find him again in England until 1767, when he resided with his wife and daughter at York until he had written all that we have of his Sentimental Journey, which appeared in February 1 768. Horace Wal- pole in writing to a friend, characterized this work as " very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely prefer- able to his tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I could never get through three vol- umes. In these there is great good nature and strokes of delicacy." Thackeray thus concludes a notice of the Sentimental Journey : " And with this pretty dance and chorus the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can't give the whole de- scription. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away — a latent corruption — a hint as of an impure presence." Sterne was in miserable health when the Sentimental 493
