Sterne's character defies analysis in brief space. It is too subtle and individual to be conveyed in general terms. For comments upon him from points of view more or less diverse the reader may be referred to Thackeray's Humourists, Professor Masson's British Novelists (1859), and H. D. Traill's sketch in the " English Men of Letters " Series. The fullest biography is Mr Percy Fitzgerald's (1864). But the reader who cares to have an opinion about Sterne should hesitate till he has read and re-read in various moods considerable portions of Sterne's own writing. This writing is so singularly frank and unconventional that its drift is not at once apparent to the literary student. The indefensible indecency and overstrained sentimentality are on the surface; but after a time every repellent defect is forgotten in the enjoyment of the exquisite literary art. In the delineation of character by graphically significant speech and action, introduced at unexpected turns, left with happy audacity to point their own meaning, and pointing it with a force that the dullest cannot but understand, he takes rank with the very greatest masters. In Toby Shandy he has drawn a character universally lovable and admirable; but Walter Shandy is almost greater as an artistic triumph, considering the difficulty of the achievement. Dr Ferriar, in his Illustrations of Sterne (published in 1798), pointed out several unacknowledged plagiarisms from Rabelais, Burton and others; but it is only fair to the critic to say that he was fully aware that they were only plagiarisms of material, and do not detract in the slightest from Sterne's reputation as one of the greatest of literary artists.
A revised edition of Mr Percy Fitzgerald's Life of Sterne, containing much new information, appeared in 1896. There is also a valuable study of Sterne by M. Paul Stapfer (1870, 2nd ed., 1882) ; and many fresh particulars as to Sterne's relations with his wife and daughter, and also with the lady known as " Eliza " (Mrs Elizabeth Draper), are collected in Mr Sidney Lee's article in the Dict. Nat. Biog. Sterne's original journal to Mrs Draper (" The Bramine's Journal "), after she had gone back to India, and extending from the 13th of April to the 4th of August 1767, is now in the department of MSS., British Museum (addit. MS. 34,527). A convenient edition of Sterne's works, edited by Professor George Saintsbury, was issued in six volumes in 1894. See also Wilbur L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne (New York, 1909) ; and Walter Sichel, Sterne: a Study (1910). (W. M.; A. D.)
STERNE, RICHARD (c. 1500–1683), English divine, archbishop of York, was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and
was educated at the free-school in that town and at Trinity
College, Cambridge. He was elected fellow of Corpus Christi
College in 1620; in 1633 he became chaplain to Archbishop
Laud and in 1634 master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and rector
of Yelverton, Somerset. For his zeal in helping the royalist
cause with college plate he suffered imprisonment at the order
of parliament and lost his appointments. He attended Laud
at his execution, and during the Commonwealth kept a school
at Stevenage, Hertfordshire. At the Restoration he was reinstated as master of Jesus College and soon after was made bishop
of Carlisle. With George Griffith, bishop of St Asaph, and Brian
Walton, bishop of Chester, he was appointed by Convocation
to revise the Prayer Book. In 1664 he was raised to the arch-
bishopric of York. He had impoverished Carlisle, and in his
new see, according to Burnet (who calls him " a sour ill-tempered
man "), " minded chiefly the enriching of his family." For his
regard to the duke of York's interests he was suspected of leaning
towards Roman Catholicism. He died on the 20th of June 1683.
He helped Brian Walton with the Polyglot Bible and wrote a
book on logic, Summa logicae (London, 1685).
He has also been credited with The Whole Duty of Man, which must, however, be assigned to the royalist divine Richard Allestree (1619–1681), provost of Eton College, whose original was considerably altered by his literary executor, John Fell (1625–1686), bishop of Oxford.
STESICHORUS (c. 640–555 B.C.), Greek lyric poet, a native
of Himera in Sicily, or of Mataurus a Locrian colony in the south
of Italy. According to Suïdas, his name was originally Tisias,
but was changed to Stesichorus (" organizer of choruses ").
His future eminence as a poet was foretold when a nightingale
perched upon his lips and sang (Pliny, Nat. Hist.,x. 43). We
are told that he warned his fellow-citizens against Phalaris,
whom they had chosen as their general, by relating to them the
well-known fable of the horse, which, in its eagerness to punish
the stag for intruding upon its pastures, became the slave of
man (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). But his warnings had no
effect; he himself was obliged to flee to Catana, where he died
and was buried before the gate called after him the Stesichorean.
The story that he was struck blind for slandering Helen in a poem
and afterwards recovered his sight when, in consequence of a
dream, he had composed a palinode or recantation (in which he
declared that only Helen's phantom had been carried off to
Troy), is told by Plato (Phaedrus 243 A.), Pausanias (iii. 19, 13), and others. We possess about thirty fragments of his poems,
none of them longer than six lines. They are written in the
Doric dialect, with epic licences; the metre is dactylico-trochaic. Brief as they are, they show us what Longinus meant by calling Stesichorus " most like Homer "; they are full of epic grandeur, and have a stately sublimity that reminds us of Pindar. Stesichorus indeed made a new departure by using lyric poetry to
celebrate gods and heroes rather than human feelings and passions; this is what Quintilian (Instit., x. 1, 62) means by saying
that he " sustained the burden of epic poetry with the lyre."
Several of his poems sung of the adventures of Heracles; one
dealt with the siege of Thebes, another with the sack of Troy.[1]
The last is interesting as being the first poem containing that
form of the story of Aeneas's flight to which Virgil afterwards
gave currency in his Aeneid. The popular legends of Sicily
also inspired his muse; he was the first to introduce the shepherd
Daphnis who came to a miserable end after he had proved faithless to the nymph who loved him. Stesichorus completed the
form of the choral ode by adding the epode to the strophe and
antistrophe; and " you do not even know Stesichorus's three "
passed into a proverbial expression for unpardonable ignorance
(unless the words simply mean, " you do not even know three
lines, or poems, of Stesichorus "). He was famed in antiquity
for the richness and splendour of his imagination and his style,
although Quintilian censures his redundancy and Hermogenes
remarks on the excessive sweetness that results from his abundant
use of epithets.
Fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci, iii.; see also S. Bernage, De Stesichoro lyrico (1880); O. Crusius, "Stesichorus und die epodische Composition in der griechischen Lyrik," in Commentationes Philologicae, dedicated to O. Ribbeck (1888).
STETHOSCOPE (Gr. στῆθος, chest, and σκοπεῑν, to look,
examine), a medical instrument used in auscultation (q.v.).
The single stethoscope is a straight wooden or metal tube with
a flattened bell, the surface of which is usually covered with
ivory or bone at the end which is placed against the body of
the patient, and a small cup at the other to fit the ear of the
observer. In the " binaural " stethoscope, which has the
advantage of flexibility, the tube is divided above the bell into
two flexible tubes which lead to both ears.
STETTIN, a seaport of Germany, capital of the Prussian
province of Pomerania, on the Oder, 17 m. above its entrance
into the Stettiner Haff, 30 m. from the Baltic, 84 m. N.E. of
Berlin by rail, and at the junction of lines to Stargard-Danzig
and Küstrin-Breslau. Pop. (1885), 99,475; (1890), 116,228; (1900)—including the incorporated suburbs—210,680; (1905) 224,078. The main part of the town occupies a hilly site on the
left bank of the river, and is connected by four bridges, including a massive railway swing-bridge, with the suburbs of Lastadie (" lading place " from lastadium, " burden,") and Silberwiese, on an island formed by the Parnitz and the Dunzig, which here diverge from the Oder to the Dammsche-See. Until 1874
Stettin was closely girdled by very extensive and strong fortifications, which prevented the expansion of the town, but
the steady growth of its commerce and manufactures encouraged
the foundation of numerous industrial suburbs beyond the
- ↑ The tabula Iliaca, a stucco bas-relief found in the ruins of an ancient temple on the site of the ancient Bovillae and so called because it represents the chief events of the Trojan War, is a sort of commentary upon this (see O. Jahn and A. Michaelis, Griechische Bilderchroniken, 1873; and M. F. Paulcke, De tabula iliaca quaestiones Stesichoreae, 1897, an exhaustive treatise).
