of his office of sexton. But the parish clerk came upon Trim just in time to prevent him from cutting out of the parochial garment an under-petticoat for his wife and a jerkin for himself. Thereupon Trim, thwarted in one direction, endeavoured to rob his neighbour Lorry Slim, ‘an unlucky wight,’ of a threadbare pair of black plush breeches. The sketch ends with Trim's signal humiliation. Much of the jesting is coarse, but throughout Sterne gave proofs of his capacity as a literary artist in humour. In its general tone it adumbrates many characteristic features of ‘Tristram Shandy.’ The name Trim Sterne transferred to his novel unaltered. The sketch was furtively circulated among Sterne's friends—doubtless in manuscript—but was deemed unfit for publication. It was first published in 1769, in the year after Sterne's death, under the title of ‘A Political Romance addressed to ——, esq. of York,’ with a list of dramatis personæ and the names of the persons they were intended to represent. The advertisement vaguely described the piece as ‘written in 1759,’ but it doubtless dated further back. The edition of 1769 is of some rarity. There are copies in York minster and the British Museum libraries. It was subsequently appended to Sterne's ‘Correspondence,’ and often reprinted under the title of ‘The History of a Warm Watch Coat.’
This skit indicated Sterne's vocation, and in fantastic accord with his irresponsible temperament, a crisis which he disreputably provoked in his domestic affairs gave him, at the mature age of forty-six, an opportunity of pursuing it. Writing in Latin during 1758 to his friend Hall-Stevenson, he expressed himself weary of his wife's society, and announced a visit to London on an adulterous errand (this letter is often misdated 1767). Within a few months of its composition, in 1758, Sterne's wife was stricken by an attack of insanity. The immediate cause was a fit of anger occasioned by her discovery of her husband in compromising relations with a maid-servant (CROFT, Anecdotes). Sterne suffered for a time such remorse as was possible to his disposition, and in the early stages of the illness took whimsical pains to humour his wife's diseased imaginings. ‘She fancied herself the queen of Bohemia. He treated her as such, with all the supposed respect due to a crowned head.’ ‘To induce her to take the air, he proposed coursing in the way practised in Bohemia. For that purpose he procured bladders and filled them with beans and tied them to the wheels of a single horse-chair, when he drove madam into a stubble field. With the motion of the carriage and the bladders' rattle it alarmed the hares, and the greyhounds were ready to take them’ (Croft, Scrapeana, p. 22). But such remedies proved of little avail, and Mrs. Sterne was at length placed in ‘confinement under a lunatic doctor in a private house at York’ (Croft, Anecdotes). In his wife's absence Sterne lived at first much alone. His daughter's health seemed failing, and his spirits declined. It was then that he turned for solace to literary work, and by way of relieving his melancholy wrote the opening books of ‘Tristram Shandy.’ He laboured with a rare zest. Although he corrected his manuscript liberally, he had completed fourteen chapters in six weeks (bk. i. chap. xiv.), and reached his twenty-first chapter on 26 March 1759. The employment dissipated most of his cares. He was so delighted with his facility that he jestingly promised to write two volumes every year for the rest of his days (cf. bk. i. chap. xxii.).
Meanwhile his yearning for feminine sympathy revived, and happening to meet at York a very young and intelligent French lady of unblemished reputation, who was lodging with her mother, Madame Fourmantelle, in the Stonegate, he, with indefensible disregard of his domestic position, amused himself with a flirtation. During the year (1759) that he was shaping his magnum opus, a playful correspondence and a series of interviews with Mlle. Fourmantelle, his ‘dear, dear Kitty,’ formed his main source of recreation. In the book he refers to the lady as his ‘dear, dear Jenny,’ between whom and himself there subsisted ‘that twice tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in friendship where there is a difference of sex.’ He sent her sweetmeats and honey, and declared himself hers ‘to eternity’ (the correspondence was published from the originals in the possession of Mr. John Murray by the Philobiblon Society in 1855–6, vol. ii.).
When Sterne had gone some way with ‘Tristram Shandy,’ his friend Croft assembled a select company at Stillington Hall after dinner to hear portions read by the author; but the company fell asleep, and Sterne is said to have flung the manuscript in anger into the fire. Luckily his host rescued the scorched papers from the flames (Croft). Other friends who examined it declared it to be laughable. The rumour spread that it would prove ‘extraordinary,’ and when by the autumn of 1759 two books were completed, Sterne offered them to Dodsley, the great London publisher, for 50l. with much self-satisfaction. The offer was declined. A friend, Arthur Lee, lent him 100l., and he printed at York a small edition of two or
