matters, but we have agreed not to joke about them. I read the other day
a dictum of one of those young gentlemen who act as our moral policemen:
he prophesied that a jest on a sexual subject would, in twenty years, be
not merely reprehensible, as it is now, but unintelligible. Very proper,
no doubt, only do not let us call this morality, it is only a change of
habits.

Sterne is not suited to readers who are disheartened at irrelevancy. It
is part of his charm, and it is at the same time his most whimsical
habit, never to proceed with his story when you expect him to do so, and
to be reminded by his own divagations of delightful side-issues which
lead you, entranced, whither you had no intention of going. He did not
merely not shun occasions of being irrelevant, but he sought them out
and eagerly cultivated them. Remember that a whole chapter of _Tristram_
is devoted to the _attitude_ of Corporal Trim as he prepared himself to
read the Sermon. Sterne kept a stable of prancing, plump little
hobby-horses, and he trotted them out upon every occasion. But this is
what makes his books the best conversational writing in the English
language. He writes for all the world exactly as though he were talking
at his ease, and we listen enchanted to the careless, frolicking, idle,
penetrating speaker who builds up for us so nonchalantly, with
persistent but unobtrusive touch upon touch, the immortal figures of Mr.
Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Yorick, the Widow Wadman, and so many more.

This, I am inclined to think, in drawing this brief sketch to an end, is
Sterne's main interest for ourselves. He broke up the rhetorical manner
of composition, or, rather, he produced an alternative manner which was
gradually accepted and is in partial favour still. I would ask you to
read for yourselves the scene of the ass who blocked the way for
Tristram at Lyons, and to consider how completely new that method of