It is certain, however, that Sterne must have been storing up his
material of observation, secreting his reflections on life and
character, and consciously or unconsciously maturing his powers of
expression, during the whole of those silent twenty years which have
now to be passed under brief review. With one exception, to be noted
presently, the only known writings of his which belong to this
period are sermons, and these--a mere "scratch" collection of pulpit
discourses, which, as soon as he had gained the public ear, he
hastened in characteristic fashion to rummage from his desk and carry
to the book-market--throw no light upon the problem before us. There
are sermons of Sterne which alike in manner and matter disclose the
author of _Tristram Shandy_; but they are not among those which he
preached or wrote before that work was given to the world. They
are not its ancestors but its descendants. They belong to the
post-Shandian period, and are in obvious imitation of the Shandian
style; while in none of the earlier ones--not even in that famous
homily on a Good Conscience, which did not succeed till Corporal Trim
preached it before the brothers Shandy and Dr. Slop--can we trace
either the trick of style or the turn of thought that give piquancy to
the novel. Yet the peculiar qualities of mind, and the special faculty
of workmanship of which this turn of thought and trick of style were
the product, must of course have been potentially present from the
beginning. Men do not blossom forth as wits, humourists, masterly
delineators of character, and skilful performers on a highly-strung
and carefully-tuned sentimental instrument all at once, after entering
their "forties;" and the only wonder is that a possessor of these
powers--some of them of the kind which, as a rule, and in most men,
seeks almost as irresistibly for exercise as even the poetic instinct
itself--should have been held so long unemployed. There is, however,