succeed the hysteria of laughter, and of that laughter which succeeds
the passion of tears. From early childhood, and all through youth and
manhood, he had been collecting observations upon human nature in these
rapidly alternating moods.

He observed it in its frailty, but being exquisitely frail himself, he
was no satirist. A breath of real satire would blow down the whole
delicate fabric of _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_.
Sterne pokes fun at people and things; he banters the extravagance of
private humour; but it is always with a consciousness that he is himself
more extravagant than any one. If we compare him for a moment with
Richardson, who buttonholes the reader in a sermon; or with Smollett,
who snarls and bites like an angry beast; we feel at once that Sterne
could not breathe in the stuffiness of the one or in the tempest of the
other. Sympathy is the breath of his nostrils, and he cannot exist
except in a tender, merry relation with his readers. His own ideal,
surely, is that which he attributed to the fantastic and gentle Yorick,
who never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of old and
young. "Labour stood still as he passed; the bucket hung suspended in
the middle of the well; the spinning-wheel forgot its round, even
chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got
out of sight." Like Yorick, Sterne loved a jest in his heart.

There are, it seems to me, two distinct strains in the intellectual
development of Sterne, and I should like to dwell upon them for a
moment, because I think a lack of recognition of them has been apt to
darken critical counsel in the consideration of his writings. You will
remember that he was forty-six years of age before he took up the
business of literature seriously. Until that time he had been a country
parson in Yorkshire, carrying his body, that "cadaverous bale of goods,"