lais,[1] whom be pretended to succeed, poured from them as naturally as song does from a bird; they lose no manly dignity with it, but laugh their hearty great laugh out of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this man—who can make you laugh, who can make you cry, too—never lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience to repose: when you are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The man is a great jester, not a great humorist. He goes to work systematically and of cold blood; paints his face, puts on his ruff and motley clothes, and lays down his carpet and tumbles on it." Sterne is properly rated for whimpering "over that famous dead donkey," for which Mr. Thackeray has no semblance of a tear to spare, but only laughter and contempt; comparing the elegy of "that dead jackass" to the cuisine of M. de Soubise's campaign, in such fashion does Sterne dress it, and serve it up quite tender, and with a very piquant sauce. "But tears, and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with a dead donkey inside! Psha! Mountebank! I'll not give thee one penny more for that trick, donkey and all!" This, and similar passages in the lecture, will jar somewhat on the judgment of those who go only part of the way with Mr. Leigh Hunt, in his affirmation,[2] that to accuse Sterne of cant and sentimentality, is itself a cant or an ignorance; or that, at least, if neither of these, it is but to misjudge him from an excess of manner here and there, while the matter always contains the solidest substance of truth and duty. Such readers will probably be unshaken in their allegiance to one of proven sway over their smiles and tears, and murmur to themselves the dosing lines of a sonnet in his praise, by the rigorous, keen-scented censor[3] who exposed, unsparingly, his plagiarisms from old Burton and Rabelais:
But the quick tear that checks our wondering smile,
In sudden pause or unexpected story.
Owns thy true mastery—and Le Fevre's woes,
Maria's wanderings, and the Prisoner's throes.
Fix thee conspicuous on the throne of glory.
As for Hogarth, perhaps the most emphatic characterisation he meets with from the lecturer lies in the remark: "There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire: if he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off." No man, we are assured,
- ↑ This comparison of Sterne with Rabelais reminds us of what a distinguished French critic has said, in allusion to the well-known story of Sterne's apology to a lady for his objectionable freedoms in composition—most offensive we aver, and quite without excuse, but mere bagatelles when the enormities of the Gaul are considered. "Une dame faisait un jour reproche à Sterne," says M. Sainte Beuve, "des nudités qui se trouvent dans son "Tristram Shandy;" au même moment, un enfant de trois ans jouait à terre et se montrait en toute innocence: 'Voyez!' dit Sterne, "mon livre, c'est cet enfant de trois ans qui se roule sur le tapis.' Mais, avec Rabelais, l'enfant a grandi; c'est un homme, c'est un géant, c'est Gargantua, c'est Pantagruel ou pour le moins Panurge, et il continue de ne rien cacher." That Sterne, nevertheless, was inherently a purer-minded man than Rabelais, it might be rash to assert.
- ↑ "Table-Talk."
- ↑ Dr. Ferriar.
