We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of
interesting by-products; but a new _Tristram Shandy_ stands not yet
among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the
best of it and given us a new edition of the old _Tristram_--two
handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction.
Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and
forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so
unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for
Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne
thus:--
"A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced,
grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his
habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those
who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his
immorality."[B]
But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes
straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit
of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:--
"He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of
pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not
bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle
before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls
his feelings. Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy,
none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of
disgust. The _Sentimental Journey_, despite its interludes of
tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of
irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne
the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic
figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the
rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity
for idle tears in _Tristram Shandy_.... Yet no occasion is
lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The
vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression,
and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the
suggestion of self-defence. Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is
something: degraded by the oft-quoted platitude: 'Go, poor
devil,' says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his
nose; 'get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely
is big enough to hold both thee and me.'"
But here Mr. Whibley's notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into
confusion. That the passage has been over-quoted is no fault of
Sterne's. Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been
predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of
his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure
it is honestly characteristic.
Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne _is_ a
sentimentalist. Sterne _is_ indecent by reason of his reticence--more
indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would
have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have
plumped out with a coarse word and a laugh. Sterne _is_ a convicted
thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary
and justifiable borrowing. To draw material from a heterogeneous
work--to found, for instance, the play of _Coriolanus_ upon Plutarch's
_Life_--is justifiable: to take from a homogeneous work--to enrich
your drama from another man's drama--is plagiary. But even on this
interpretation of the law Sterne must be condemned; for in decking out
_Tristram_ with feathers from the history of Gargantua he was
pillaging a homogeneous work. Nor can it be pleaded in extenuation
that he improved upon his originals--though it can, I think, be
pleaded that he made his borrowings his own. I do not think much of
Mr. Whibley's instance of Servius Sulpicius' letter. No doubt Sterne
took his translation of it from Burton; but the letter is a very well
known one, and Burton's translation happened to be uncommonly good,
and the borrowing of a good rendering without acknowledgment was not,
as far as I know, then forbidden by custom. In any case, the whole
passage is intended merely to lead up to the beautiful perplexity of
My Uncle Toby. And that is Sterne's own, and could never have been
another man's. "After all," says Mr. Whibley, "all the best in Sterne
is still Sterne's own."
But the more I agree with Mr. Whibley's strictures the more I desire
to remove them from an Introduction to _Tristram Shandy_, and to read
them in a volume of Mr. Whibley's collected essays. Were it not
better, in reading _Tristram Shandy_, to take Sterne for once (if only
for a change) at his own valuation, or at least to accept the original
postulates of the story? If only for the entertainment he provides we
owe him the effort. There will be time enough afterwards to turn to
the cold judgment of this or that critic, or to the evidence of this
or that thief-taker. For the moment he claims to be heard without
prejudice; he has genius enough to make it worth our while to listen
without prejudice; and the most lenient "appreciation" of his sins, if
we read it beforehand, is bound to raise prejudice and infect our
enjoyment as we read. And, as a corollary of this demand, let us ask
that he shall be allowed to present his book to us exactly as he
chooses. Mr. Whibley says, "He set out upon the road of authorship
with a false ideal: 'Writing,' said he, 'when properly managed, is
but a different name for conversation.' It would be juster to assert
that writing is never properly managed, unless it be removed from
conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very
likely. But since Sterne _had_ this ideal, let us grant him full
liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge
afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the
empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's
method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we
consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for
conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a
man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You
may take my word"--it is Sterne who speaks, and in his very first
chapter--
"You may take my word that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or
his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend
upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and
trains you put them into, so that when they are once set
going--whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter--away
they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same
steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as
plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are
used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive
them off it."
This, at any rate, is Sterne's own postulate. And I had rather judge
him with all his faults after reading the book than be prepared
beforehand to make allowances.
* * * * *
Nov. 12, 1895. Sterne's Good-nature.
Let one thing be recorded to the credit of this much-abused man. He
wrote two masterpieces of fiction (one of them a work of considerable
length), and in neither will you find an ill-natured character or an
ill-natured word. On the admission of all critics My Father, My
Mother, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Mrs. Wadman are immortal
creations. To the making of them there has gone no single sour or
uncharitable thought. They are essentially amiable: and the same may
be said of all the minor characters and of the author's disquisitions.
Sterne has given us a thousand occasions to laugh, but never an
occasion to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. For savagery or
bitterness you will search his books in vain. He is obscene, to be
sure. But who, pray, was ever the worse for having read him? Alas,
poor Yorick! He had his obvious and deplorable failings. I never
heard that he communicated them. Good-humor he has been communicating
now for a hundred and fifty years.