| Laurence Sterne |
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Introduction
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(1713-1768).—
Novelist, son of an officer in the army, and the
great-grandson of an Archbishop of York, was born at Clonmel, where
his father’s regiment happened to be stationed, and passed part
of his boyhood in Ireland. At the age of 10 he was handed over to a
relation, Mr. Sterne of Elvington in Yorkshire, who put him to school
at Halifax, and thereafter sent him to Cambridge He entered the
Church, a profession for which he was very indifferently fitted, and
through family influence procured the living of Sutton, Yorkshire. In
1741 he m. a lady—Miss Lumley—whose influence
obtained for him in addition an adjacent benefice, and he also became
a prebendary of York. It was not until 1760 that the first two
vols. of his famous novel, Tristram Shandy, appeared. Its
peculiar and original style of humour, its whimsicality, and perhaps
also its defiance of conventionality, and even its frequent lapses
into indecorum, achieved for it an immediate and immense
popularity. S. went up to London and became the lion of the day. The
third and fourth vols. appeared in 1761, the fifth and sixth in 1762,
the seventh and eighth in 1765, and the last in 1767. Meanwhile he had
published the Sermons of Mr. Yorick (1760), and his remaining
work, The Sentimental Journey appeared in 1768. From the time
of his finding himself a celebrity his parishioners saw but little of
him, his time being passed either in the gaieties of London or in
travelling on the Continent. Latterly he was practically separated
from his wife and only daughter, to the former of whom his behaviour
had been anything but exemplary. His health, which had begun to give
way soon after his literary career had commenced, finally broke down,
and he fell into a consumption, of which he died in London on March
18, 1768, utterly alone and unattended. His body was followed to the
grave by one coach containing his publisher and another gentleman; and
it was exhumed and appeared in a few days upon the table of the
anatomical professor at Cambridge He died in debt, but a subscription
was raised for his wife and daughter, the latter of whom m. a
Frenchman, and is said to have perished under the
guillotine. Worthless as a man, S. possessed undoubted genius. He had
wit, originality, and pathos, though the last not seldom runs into
mawkishness, and an exquisitely delicate and glancing style. He has
contributed some immortal characters to English fiction, including
Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. His great faults as a writer are
affection and a peculiarly deliberate kind of indecency, which his
profession renders all the more offensive; and he was by no means
scrupulous in adopting, without acknowledgment, the good things of
previous writers.
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