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The character of Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was as eccentric as his works. He was born in Ireland, but received his education at the University of Cambridge. He entered the church, and through the influence of his relatives enjoyed considerable preferment. To the living of Sutton he added a prebend's stall in the Cathedral of York, and he was ultimately advanced to the rich living of Coxwold. His private life was little in harmony with his profession; he appears to have been fanciful, vain, and self-indulgent, perpetually at war with his brother churchmen, and to have been masking caprice and selfishness in his domestic relations under a pretence of extreme sensibility. In 1761 he published the first two volumes of a novel entitled Tristram Shandy (196). The freshness and oddity of his style captivated popular taste, and two more volumes which appeared in the following year, instantly attained the height of public favor. Sterne became the lion of fashionable society in London. For a time he indulged his morbid appetite for flattery and his propensity to sentimental intrigue in the brilliant circles of the capital. He then went upon the Continent; and during his travels through France and Italy accumulated the materials for his charming Sentimental Journey. This was his best and last production; he took up his residence in London for the purpose of superintending its publication, and died in desolate lodgings, in the fifty-fifth year of his age.

Sterne's works consist of the novel of Tristram Shandy, of the Sentimental Journey, and of a collection of Sermons, written in the odd and fantastic style which he brought into temporary vogue. Tristram Shandy, though nominally a romance in the biographical form, is intentionally irregular and capricious. The hero makes no appearance on the scene of action, and the story consists of a series of episodes which introduce the reader to the home-life of an English country family. This family is one of the most amusing collections of odd individualities that ever genius has delineated. The mythical Tristram and Yorick, a humorous clergyman in whom Sterne has idealized his own character, alternately carry on the narrative; and other prominent personages are Walter Shandy, a retired merchant, the father of Tristram, his wife, his brother, Toby Shandy, a veteran officer, and his servant, Corporal Trim. These are all conceived and executed in the finest and most Shakespearean spirit of humor and tenderness; and they are supported by a crowd of

minor, yet hardly less individual portraitures. Mr Shandy, the restless crotchety philosopher, is drawn with consummate skill, and is admirably contrasted with the simple benevolence and professional enthusiasm of the unequalled Uncle Toby, a creation of the order of Sancho Panza and Parson Adams. Acute observation of the minor traits of human nature seems to have been Sterne's strongest quality. He portrays his characters not by description, but by allusion, and fascinates the reader by incidental and unexpected revelation of their amiable eccentricities. He also shows himself a master in combining the humorous and the pathetic. Both his humor and his pathos are often truly admirable; although the one sometimes degenerates into indecent buffoonery, and the other into sickly sentimentality. The Sentimental Journey was intended by its author to form a sequel to Tristram Shandy. It has glaring faults, both in taste and in morality; yet it abounds in charming descriptions and passages of quaint pathos. Much may be forgiven the author, in consideration of the candor and appreciation of his tone in treating of foreigners and foreign institutions. Such a tone was equally rare and laudable, at a time when Englishmen regarded all other nations with the most bigoted prejudice and hostility.

In Sterne's writings there is a parade of obscure and quaint erudition. This tends to give an original flavor to his style, and at the time of his writing, when the elder authors were but little studied, it passed for an indication of extensive learning; but he is now known to have been the boldest of plagiarists, pillaging without scruple the pages of Burton, Rabelais, and the old lawyers and canonists.

CHAPTER XXI.

HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

IN N accordance with a law which seems at particular epochs to govern the appearance of great names in one department of art or literature, like the sculptors of the Periclean age, the romantic dramatists in that of Elizabeth, and the novelists who appeared in England in the days of Richardson and Fielding, the middle of the eighteenth century was signalized by a remarkable wealth of historical genius, and gave birth to Hume, Robertson and Gibbon.

David Hume (1711-1776), a Scotchman, was educated at the University of Edinburgh. A taste for literature and literary pursuits early declared itself as his ruling passion, but the limited circumstances of his family seemed to make its gratification impossible. However, after a vain attempt to devote himself to the Law, and an equally unsuccessful trial of commercial life, Hume resolved "to make a very rigid frugality supply his deficiency of fortune, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of his talents in literature." At the age of twenty-three he went to France with the intention of pursuing his studies in a country retreat. Three years passed very agreeably in close attention to philosophy and general literature. In 1737 he returned to Great Britain to publish the first-fruits of his pen, A Treatise on Human Nature. "Never," says Hume's autobiography, was literary attempt more unfortunate. But being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow." Two volumes of Moral and Philosophical Essays, published in 1742, met with a more favorable reception; but the wavering fortunes of the next ten years would have chilled the aspirations of a less resolute soul. True to his resolve, Hume eked out his slender patrimony with genuine Scotch thrift; it was, however, hardly sufficient for his

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support, and as yet his receipts from the booksellers were very small. By acting for one year as tutor to an insane nobleman, and for two more as aid-de-camp of a military embassy, he obtained what seemed to his modest desires a competence. He then, in 1752, became Librarian of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. This position brought him no salary, but placed at his command a large and excellent collection of books. With the aid thus furnished he began his great work, the History of England from the Accession of the Stuarts to the Revolution of 1688 (203). To this he afterwards added the earlier history, from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the reign of James I. The first two volumes were received with the same neglect which had blighted his former publications; and indifference became general odium when the work was found to bẻ an embodiment of high Tory principles. However, the great merits of the plan and the excellence of the style, revealed more and more with each successive volume, gradually overcame prejudices. 1762] Before the time of its completion, the History had attained a great and universal reputation. One edition after another was rapidly bought up; and common consent named Hume the first of English historians. He now received a call to public service, and attended Lord Hertford on his embassy to Paris. Although he had neither the personal graces nor the conversational talents requisite for shining in the brilliant society of the capital, his literary reputation secured him abundant homage. His autobiography speaks with evident complacency of the "excessive civilities" he received from "men and women of all ranks and stations." After his return to Scotland, he for two years discharged the duties of Under-Secretary of State. The emoluments of his public offices, added to his income from the publishers, had by this time raised him to comparative affluence. He retired to his native city of Edinburgh, and passed the last years of his life in the tranquil enjoyment of his literary fame, and in the affection of his personal friends.

As a metaphysical writer Hume deserves a distinguished place in the history of philosophy (204). He was a skeptic of the most logical and uncompromising type.

The History of England is a book of very high value. In a certain exquisite ease and vivacity of narration it has certainly never been surpassed; and in the analysis of character and the

appreciation of great events, Hume's singular clearness and philosophic view give him a right to one of the foremost places among modern historians. But its defects are no less considerable. Hume's indolence induced him to remain contented with taking his facts from preceding writers, without troubling himself about accuracy, so that he must be read with distrust whenever he discusses questions that should have required patient research.

Naming them in the order of their birth, the second in this group of historians is William Robertson (1721-1793) (205), the son of a Scotch clergyman. At twenty-two years of age he entered his father's profession, and began his public work in a quiet rural parish. There he remained for fifteen years, faithfully performing the duties of his office, acquiring skill as a writer in the composition of his sermons, gaining reputation as a scholarly thinker, and devoting all the time he could spare to the study of history. In 1758 he was promoted to the charge of an important church in Edinburgh, and in the following year he introduced himself to the literary world by the publication of A History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and James the Sixth (205). Three years later he was appointed Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and Royal Historiographer of Scotland. Ten years after the publication of his History of Scotland, his greatest work, The History of the Emperor Charles the Fifth of Germany, was ready for the press. Eight years more were spent in preparing his History of America.

Like Hume he is distinguished by the eloquence of his narrative, by the picturesque delineation of characters and events, and by the purity and dignity of his style. In all of his works there is richness and melody of expression, and a strong power of vivid and pathetic description; but there is a lack of accuracy in research. Recent investigations made by Prescott and by English writers have dispelled some of the romance of Robertson. "The fault of this great historian was one common to the writers of his time. Filled with an exaggerated idea of the dignity of history, he trembles at the thought of descending to so mean a thing as daily life. The Emperor moves before us in all his grandeur, the rich velvet of his train sweeping in stately waves upon the marble that he treads. We know many of the laws he made, the wars he waged, the great public assemblies and pageants of which he was the brilliant central

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