place

Pitt seems unmoved

Stocks rise

a peace inevitable the peers this moment kissing hands

&c. &c. (this week may be christened the kisshands week) for a hundred changes will happen in consequence of these. Pray present my compliments to Mrs. C. and all friends, and believe, me, with the greatest fidelity,

Your ever obliged

L. STERNE.

P. S. Is it not strange that Lord Talbot should have power to remove the Duke of R-d?

Pray when you have read this, send the news to Mrs. Sterne.

I SYMPATHISED for, or with, you, on the detail you give me of your late agitations, and would willingly have taken my horse, and trotted to the oracle to have enquired into the etymology of all your sufferings, had I not been assured that all evacuation of bilious matter, with all that abdominal motion attending it (both which are equal to a month's purgation and exercise) will have left you better than it found you. Need one go to D-to be told that all kind of mild (mark I am going to talk more foolishly than your apothecary), opening, saponacious, dirty-shirt, sud-washing liquors are proper for you, and consequently all styptical potations, death and destruction if had not shut up your gall-ducts by these, the glauber-salts could not

you

have hurt as it was, 'twas like a match to the gunpowder, by raising a fresh combustion, as all physic does at first, so that you have been let off nitre, brimstone, and charcoal (which is blackness itself), all at one blast 'twas well the piece did not burst, for I think it underwent great violence, and as it is proof, will, I hope, do much service in this militating world. - Panty is mistaken, I quarrel with no one. There was that coxcomb of in the house, who lost temper with me for no reason upon earth but that I could not fall down and worship a brazen image of learning and eloquence, which he set up, to the persecution of all true believers I sat down upon his altar, and whistled in the time of his divine service and broke down his carved work, and kicked his incense-pot to the D-, so he retreated, sed non sine felle in corde suo. I have wrote a clerum; whether I shall take my doctor's degrees or no I am much in doubt, but I

trow not. I go on with Tristram

I have bought seven hundred books at a purchase, dog cheap and many good and I have been a week getting them set up in my best room here why do not you transport yours to town? but I talk like a fool.

This

will just catch you at your spaw -I wish you incolumem do you go there for good and all

apud Londinum

or ill? — I am, dear cousin,

Yours affectionately,

L. STERNE.

The Reverend Mr. R—~L~~.

rest.

DEAR H

Coxwould [about August], 1761.

I REJOICE you are in London rest you there in peace: here 'tis the devil. You was a good prophet. I wish myself back again, as you told me I should but not because a thin, death-doing, pestiferous, north-east wind blows in a line directly from Crazycastle turret full upon me in this cuckoldy retreat (för I value the north-east wind and all its powers not a straw), but the transition from rapid motion to absolute rest was too violent. I should have walked about the streets of York ten days, as a proper medium to have passed through, before I entered upon my I staid but a moment, and I have been here but a few, to satisfy me I have not managed my miseries like a wise man and if God, for my consolation under them, had not poured forth the spirit of Shandeism into me, which will not suffer me to think two moments upon any grave subject, I would else, just now, lie down and die die and yet, in half an hour's time, I'll lay a guinea, I shall be as merry as a monkey and as mischievous too, and forget it allso that this is but a copy of the present train running cross my brain. And so you think this cursed stupid but that, my dear H-, depends much upon the quotâ horâ of your shabby clock, if the pointer of it is in any quarter between ten in the morning or four in the afternoon I give it up or if the day is obscured by dark engendering clouds of either wet or dry weather, I am still lost

-

but

who knows but it may be five, and the day as fine a

day as ever shone upon the earth since the destruction of Sodom, and peradventure your Honour may have got a good hearty dinner to-day, and eat and drank your intellectuals into a placidulish and a blandulish amalgama to bear nonsense, so much for that. 'Tis as cold and churlish just now as (if God had not pleased it to be so) it ought to have been in bleak December, and therefore I am glad you are where you are, and where (I repeat it again) I wish I was also. Curse of poverty and absence from those we love! they are two great evils which embitter all things and yet with the first I am not haunted much. As to matrimony, I should be a beast to rail at it, for my wife is easy but the world is not and had I staid from her a second longer, it would have been a burning shame else she declares herself happier without me but not in anger is this declaration made but in pure sober good sense, built on sound experience she hopes you will be able to strike a bargain for me before this time twelvemonth, to lead a bear round Europe: and from this hope from you, I verily believe it is that you are so high in her favour at present She swears you are a fellow of wit, though humorous; a funny, jolly soul, though somewhat splenetic; and (bating the love of women) as honest as gold how do you like the simile? Oh, Lord! now are you going to Ranelagh to-night, and I am sitting sorrowful as the prophet was, when the voice cried out to him, and said, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" - "Tis well the Spirit does not make the same at Coxwould for, unless for the few sheep left me to take care of, in this wilderness, I might as well, nay better, be at Mecca. When we find we

can, by a shifting of places, run away from ourselves, what think you of a jaunt there, before we finally pay a visit to the vale of Jehosaphat? As ill a fame as we have, I trust I shall one day or other see you face to face so tell the two colonels, if they love good company, to live righteously and soberly, as you do, and then they will have no doubts or dangers within or without them present my best and warmest wishes to them, and advise the eldest to prop up his spirits, and get a rich dowager before the clusion of the peace why will not the advice suit both, par nobile fratrum?

con

To-morrow morning (if Heaven permit) I begin the fifth volume of Shandy

I care not a curse for the

my hands, or let and 'tis in proand see it in its

critics I'll load my vehicle with what goods he sends me, and they may take 'em off them alone I am very valorous portion as we retire from the world, true dimensions, that we despise it God above bless you! You know I am Your affectionate cousin,

no bad rant!

LAURENCE STERNE.

and

What few remain of the Demoniacs, greet write me a letter, if you are able, as foolish as this.

XIX. TO LADY

Coxwould, Sept. 21, 1760.

I RETURN to my new habitation, fully determined to write as hard as can be, and thank you most cordially, my dear lady, for your letter of congratulation

* Alluding to the first edition.