ened at the sight of Maria, deserted and out of her senses; but Sterne lets the tears stream: "I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief. I then steep'd it in my own,———

and then in her's,

and then in mine, - and

then I wip'd her's again."

In these and in other instances, Sterne's emotions are extraordinary. They may be at times pathological: his paroxysms of tears may come from shattered nerves. But Sterne's emotions are, I think, always sincere, - Thackeray to the contrary, notwithstanding. The Sentimental Journey is not, as Thackeray claimed, trick and sham, like "the virtuous oratory" of Joseph Surface in the play. True, Sterne is never profound; he is unstable and volatile: one emotion quickly passes into another, but each is genuine enough while it lasts, though it never lasts long. Three minutes after listening to the sad tale of the Franconian peasant, the dead donkey was forgotten, and Yorick was cursing his postillion. A heart that was broken by the woes of Maria soon recovered, and was ready to enter into the festivity of the vintage season. This was all aptly put by Mme. Suard, one of Sterne's most appre

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ciative admirers in France.

"Sterne's merit,"

she said, "lies, it seems to me, in his having attached an interest to details which in themselves have none whatever; in his having caught a thousand faint impressions, a thousand evanescent feelings, which pass through the heart or the imagination of a sensitive man.” *

Yorick travelled with eye and ear alert and soul awake. His impressions - even when they take the form of fancies and opinionsall come from scenes and incidents on the way. There are no meaningless digressions on things in general. Hence it is that the Sentimental Journey, subjective as it may be, is also the most objective of books. It moves in a series of dramatic pictures, which, like the emotions that rise out of them, fade into one another with consummate art. With this aspect of the Sentimental Journey in view, run over in imagination the shifting scenes at Calais with two or three human figures in them-the monk, the fair Fleming, the little French captain and then pass on to Montreuil and Paris, to Le Fevre, the beautiful grisette who per

* J. Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (English translation by J. W. Matthews).

mits Yorick to count her pulse beats, the fille de chambre who steps into the bookseller's shop and asks for Crébillon's Egarements du Cœur ; and on to the French peasant's house, the supper, and the dance of his children and grandchildren on the esplanade; or to that touching scene before the assembled States at Rennes, where the Marquis d'E― reclaims the sword he had laid aside some twenty years before to enter business that he might repair the fortunes of his house. -"His sword was given him, and the moment he got it into his hand, he drew it almost out of the scabbard -'t was the shining face of a friend he had once given up-he look'd attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same when observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point, he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it- I think I saw a tear fall upon the place: I could not be deceived by what followed. I shall find,' said he, 'some other way to get it off.' These little pictures with their nice selection of detail the sword of the Marquis has a little rust near the point- have been compared to Dutch painting. But they are not broad and coarse enough for that. They are, to para

INTRODUCTION

phrase Montégut, more like the delicate pastels of Latour with the added color of Watteau. They are delicate and they are brilliant. Were Sterne living and writing to-day, he would be among the impressionists.

W. L. C.