use in all his familiar writing--covers, in this case, any wide extent
of educational advance. The boy, most likely, could just read and
write, and no more, at the time when he was fixed at school, "near
Halifax, with an able master:" a judicious selection, no doubt, both
of place as well as teacher. Mr. Fitzgerald, to whose researches we
owe as much light as is ever likely to be thrown upon this obscure and
probably not very interesting period of Sterne's life, has pointed out
that Richard Sterne, eldest son of the late Simon Sterne, and uncle,
therefore, of Laurence, was one of the governors of Halifax Grammar
School, and that he may have used his interest to obtain his nephew's
admission to the foundation as the grandson of a Halifax man, and so,
constructively, a child of the parish. But, be this as it may, it
is more than probable that from the time when he was sent to Halifax
School the whole care and cost of the boy's education was borne by his
Yorkshire relatives. The Memoir says that, "by God's care of me, my
cousin Sterne, of Elvington, became a father to me, and sent me to
the University, &c., &c.;" and it is to be inferred from this that the
benevolent guardianship of Sterne's uncle Richard (who died in 1732,
the year before Laurence was admitted of Jesus College, Cambridge)
must have been taken up by his son. Of his school course--though it
lasted for over seven years--the autobiographer has little to say;
nothing, indeed, except that he "cannot omit mentioning" that anecdote
with which everybody, I suppose, who has ever come across the briefest
notice of Sterne's life is familiar. The schoolmaster "had the ceiling
of the schoolroom new-whitewashed, and the ladder remained there. I,
one unlucky day, mounted it, and wrote with a brush, in large capital
letters, LAU. STERNE for which the usher severely whipped me. My
master was very much hurt at this, and said before me that never
should that name be effaced, for I was a boy of genius, and he was
sure I should come to preferment. This expression made me forget the