Rev. Lawrence Sterne, the famous Shandean, the charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable world, the delicious divine, for whose sermons the whole polite world was subscribing,[1] the occupier of Rabelais's
- ↑ "'Tristram Shandy' is still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book; one is invited to dinner, when he dines, a fortnight before. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them, and humour sometimes hit and sometimes missed. Have you read his 'Sermons,' with his own comick figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them? They are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience."—Gray's Letters, June 22nd, 1760.
"It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London—Johnson: 'Nay, Sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three months.' Goldsmith: 'And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: 'Why, no, Sir.'"—Boswell's Life of Johnson.
"Her [Miss Monckton's| vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it, 'I am sure,' said she, 'they
month, two up, two down, always upon my hânches along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once—then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for good and all. I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks we were every hour upon the doleful ditty of parting—and thou mayest conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my gait and air—for I went and came like any louden'd earl, and did nothing but jouer des sertimens with her from sun-rising even to the setting of the same; and now she is gone to the south of France; and to finish the comédic, I fell ill, and broke a vessel in my lungs, and half bled to death. Voilà mon histoire!"
Whether husband or wife had most of the "patience d'ange" may be uncertain; but there can be no doubt which needed it most!
