Sterne is a writer who less than any one else in the present list
reveals the secrets of his manner and mind to the casual and hasty
reader. "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey" are books to
be enjoyed slowly and lingeringly, with many humorous after-thoughts
and a certain Rabelaisian unction. A shrewd and ironical wisdom,
gentle and light-fingered and redolent of evasive sentiment, is evoked
from these digressive and wanton pages.
At his best Sterne is capable of an imaginative interpretation of
character which for delicacy and subtlety has never been surpassed.
For the Epicurean in literature, his unfailing charm will be found in
his style--a style so baffling in the furtive beauty of its disarming
simplicity that even the greatest of literary critics have been unable
to analyze its peculiar flavour. There is a winnowed purity about it,
and a kind of elfish grace; and with both these things there mixes,
strangely enough, a certain homely, almost Dutch domesticity, quaint
and mellow and a little wanton--like a picture by Jan Steen.