suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times a
day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose." This is a
captivating little picture; and it no doubt presents traits which may
have impressed themselves early and deeply on the imagination which
was afterwards to give birth to "My Uncle Toby." The simplicity of
nature and the "kindly, sweet disposition" are common to both the
ensign of real life and to the immortal Captain Shandy of fiction; but
the criticism which professes to find traces of Roger Sterne's "rapid
and hasty temper" in my Uncle Toby is compelled to strain itself
considerably. And, on the whole, there seems no reason to believe that
Sterne borrowed more from the character of his father than any
writer must necessarily, and perhaps unconsciously, borrow from his
observation of the moral and mental qualities of those with whom he
has come into most frequent contact.

That Laurence Sterne passed the first eleven years of his life with
such an exemplar of these simple virtues of kindliness, guilelessness,
and courage ever before him, is perhaps the best that can be said
for the lot in which his early days were cast. In almost all other
respects there could hardly have been--for a quick-witted, precocious,
imitative boy--a worse bringing-up. No one, I should imagine, ever
more needed discipline in his youth than Sterne; and the camp is a
place of discipline for the soldier only. To all others whom necessity
attaches to it, and to the young especially, it is rather a school of
license and irregularity. It is fair to remember these disadvantages
of Sterne's early training, in judging of the many defects as a man,
and laxities as a writer, which marked his later life; though, on the
other hand, there is no denying the reality and value of some of
the countervailing advantages which came to him from his boyish
surroundings. The conception of my Uncle Toby need not have been taken