The poor parson, bedraggled, blood-stained, begrimed, exhausted but triumphant, returned to the village, carrying the shreds of the bladder and the emptied tear-bottle in his hand. "Why, parson, are you mad?" cried the innkeeper as he passed the tavern door. "Quite!" gasped the parson and staggered in at his garden gate. "Lord-a-mercy!" exclaimed the maid who was sweeping off the step, "but you've got yourself filthy, master." "Haven't I!" said the parson, and reeled into the parlor, where his wife sat knitting. "Why, John," screamed his wife, "haven't you torn your breeches?" "Badly!" said the parson, and, stumbling up the stairs, threw himself on his bed. His weak heart having been overstrained by excitement, in a little while he died.
Laurence Sterne was that "poor parson" and the "old gray wolf" whom he hunted with jests and tears was the brutal insensitiveness of the healthy, redblooded Englishman. It would, of course, be absurd to represent him as conscious of any passion for any sort of reform. If he accomplished any "good" in the world, if he refined the manners of his time, if he introduced into polite society a new form of feeling, it was by indulging and expressing the pleasures in which his own nature found most gratification—like Montaigne, or, for a modern example, like Mr. George Moore.
We mention by way of background that he published several volumes of sermons, goodish in morality, weak in divinity, and embellished with plagiarisms from his illustrious predecessors. The upbearing wings of his reputation are two world-renowned books, "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey," filled with curious learning and sly wit, pervaded by
