STERNE AND GOLDSMITH.
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glows, and tears are trickling down on my paper as I trace the word L."
And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault, but that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, "Sum fatigatus et ægrotus"—Sum mortaliter in amore with somebody else! That fine flower of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne snivelled so many tears, could not last for a quarter of a century!
Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with such a fountain at command, should keep it to arroser one homely old lady, when a score of younger and prettier people might be refreshed from the same gushing source.[1] It was in December, 1767, that the
- ↑ In a collection of "Seven Letters by Sterne and his friends,"
{printed for private circulation), in 1844, is a letter of M. Tollot, who was in France with Sterne and his family in 1764. Here is a paragraph:—
"Nous arrivâmes le lendemain à Montpellier, où nous trouvâmes notre ami Mr. Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet et quelques autres Anglaises; j'cus, je vous l'avoue, beaucoup de plaisir en revoyant le bon et agréable Tristram. . . . . . . Il avait été assez longtemps à Toulouse, où il se serait amusé sans sa femme, qui le poursuivit partout, et qui voulait être de tout. Ces dispositions dans cette bonne dame, lui ont fait passer d'assez mauvais momens; il supporte tous ces désagrémens avec une patience d'ânge."
About four months after this very characteristic letter, Sterne wrote to the same gentleman to whom Tollot had written; and from his letter we may extract a companion paragraph:—
. . . . . . "All which being premised, I have been for eight weeks smitten with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I wish, dear cousin, thou couldst conceive (perhaps then canst without my wishing it) how deliciously I canter'd away with it the first
