Laurence Sterne

“ Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.
—Laurence Sterne.
Laurence Sterne, an English novelist of great fame, was born at Clonmel, Ireland, November 24, 1713, and died in London, March 18, 1768. His most noted works are: “Tristram Shandy,” “The Sermons of Mr. Yorick,” and “A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.”
Since the seventeenth century, we have had no poet of the highest order, though Shelley, had he lived, would perhaps have become one. ”

“ There was nothing from which I had painted out for my self so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the vintage, through this part of France; but pressing through this gate, of sorrow to it, my sufferings have totally unfitted me. In every scene of festivity, I saw Maria in the background of the piece, sitting pensive under her poplar; and I had got almost to Lyons before I was able to cast a shade across her.
—Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! ”

“ I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.—O diem praeclarum!—then nothing which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. ”

“ What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he gives them proper vent:—It was the identical thing which my father did:—for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express Dissertation simply upon the word Tristram,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name. ”

“ Does not all the world know, said the curate d’Estella at the conclusion of his work, that Noses ran the same fate some centuries ago in most parts of Europe, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom of Navarre?—The evil indeed spread no farther then—but have not beds and bolsters, and night-caps and chamber-pots stood upon the brink of destruction ever since? Are not trouse, and placket-holes, and pump-handles—and spigots and faucets, in danger still from the same association?—Chastity, by nature, the gentlest of all affections—give it but its head——’tis like a ramping and a roaring lion. ”

“ I would have given a crown to have it sew’d up—Nannette would not have given a SOUS—Viva la joia! was in her lips—Viva la joia! was in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us——She look’d amiable!——Why could I not live, and end my days thus? Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here——and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? ”

“ La Fosseuse’s voice was naturally soft and low, yet ’twas an articulate voice: and every letter of the word Whiskers fell distinctly upon the queen of Navarre’s ear—Whiskers! cried the queen, laying a greater stress upon the word, and as if she had still distrusted her ears——Whiskers! replied La Fosseuse, repeating the word a third time——There is not a cavalier, madam, of his age in Navarre, continued the maid of honour, pressing the page’s interest upon the queen, that has so gallant a pair——Of what? cried Margaret, smiling—Of whiskers, said La Fosseuse, with infinite modesty. ”

“ Under his care, Sterne took deacon’s orders in March 1736 at the hands of the Bishop of Lincoln; and as soon as, two years later, he had been ordained priest, he was appointed to the living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, eight miles from York. The uncle and nephew some years later quarrelled bitterly—according to the latter’s account, because he would not write “dirty paragraphs in the newspapers,” being “no party man.” That Sterne would have been particularly squeamish about what he wrote may be doubted ”

“ And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was moreover filch’d from me at Sienna, and twice that I pay’d five Pauls for two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at Capua—I do not think a journey through France and Italy, provided a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe: there must be ups and downs, or how the duce should we get into vallies where Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.—’Tis nonsense to imagine they will lend you their voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing ”

“ Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself—or with any one else,—the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust,—he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;—that is, he kept others off,—for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her,—or ”

“ I could not conceive what it was, and indeed gave myself little trouble to find it out, as I had another riddle so much more interesting upon my mind, which was that of the man’s asking charity before the door of the hotel.—I would have given anything to have got to the bottom of it; and that, not out of curiosity,—’tis so low a principle of enquiry, in general, I would not purchase the gratification of it with a two-sous piece;—but a secret, I thought, which so soon and so certainly soften’d the heart of every woman you came near, was a secret at least equal to the philosopher’s stone ”

“ With us, you see, the case is quite different:—we are all ups and downs in this matter;—you are a great genius;—or ’tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;—not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,—no,—we are not so irregular as that comes to;—but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she. ”

“ Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against him;—and tried an experiment at least—whether calmness and serenity of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother Toby, to her evacuations and repletions—and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.—My child was bereft of these!—What a teazing life did she lead herself, and consequently her foetus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? ”

“ It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us:—the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up—then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury—you would think they would never stop:—and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before us. ”

“ She, dear Goddess, by an instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases, determines us to a sally of this or that member—or else she thrusts us into this or that place, or posture of body, we know not why—But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries—the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works ”

“ I am going forwards, said the stranger, for Frankfort—and shall be back at Strasburg this day month.
I hope, continued the stranger, stroking down the face of his mule with his left hand as he was going to mount it, that you have been kind to this faithful slave of mine—it has carried me and my cloak-bag, continued he, tapping the mule's back, above six hundred leagues.
—'Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the master of the inn—unless a man has great business.—Tut! tut! said the stranger, I have been at the promontory of Noses ”

“ I HAD now the whole south of France, from the banks of the Rhône to those of the Garonne, to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure—at my own leisure——for I had left Death, the Lord knows——and He only—how far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ France, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome rate.”——Still he followed,——and still I fled him——but I fled him cheerfully——still he pursued——but, like one who pursued his prey without hope——as he lagg’d, every step he lost, softened his looks——why should I fly him at this rate? ”

“ It grieves me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish bandy-leg'd drummer, that so courteous a soul should have lost his scabbard—he cannot travel without one to his scymetar, and will not be able to get a scabbard to fit it in all Strasburg.—I never had one, replied the stranger, looking back to the centinel, and putting his hand up to his cap as he spoke—I carry it, continued he thus—holding up his naked scymetar, his mule moving on slowly all the time, on purpose to defend my nose. ”

“ There is a soft aera in every gentle mortal's life, where such a story affords more pabulum to the brain, than all the Frusts, and Crusts, and Rusts of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for it.
—'Twas all that stuck on the right side of the cullender in my own, of what Spon and others, in their accounts of Lyons, had strained into it ”

“ What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,—or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep. ”

“ It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to the Republick of letters;—so that my own is quite swallowed up in the consideration of it,—that this selfsame vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and humour,—and so wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more carnal parts of a composition will go down:—The subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards,——the heavy moral escapes downwards ”

“ Our Time, I must ever think of as their lawful Property—this once Devoted to them, & judiciously arranged for the Purpose of Solid Improvements—They must be a Blessing to us—if Nature has not forgot indeed or much erred, in the Execution of her part.—I do declare to you my friend, that when I am once settled in England—Betsey shall be as inseparable from me, as my Right Hand is from my left.—I am astonished at the Reasoning of those Parents, who can imagine that a Venal person will do justice to their Children for the sake of a Pecuniary Reward ”

“ Dessein, the master of the hôtel, who had just returned from vespers, and with his hat under his arm, was most complaisantly following me, to put me in mind of my wants. I had wrote myself pretty well out of conceit with the désobligeant, and Mons. Dessein speaking of it, with a shrug, as if it would no way suit me, it immediately struck my fancy that it belong’d to some Innocent Traveller, who, on his return home, had left it to Mons. Dessein’s honour to make the most of. Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Mons. Dessein’s coach-yard ”

“ I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, Trim, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop, would take part in what they deliver as deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine;— [I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop] —I maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole world:——But alas! ”

“ Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your reverences would imitate—and that was, never to refuse her assent and consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her—but no more ”

“ This Gentleman had not yet opened his Mouth, but had waited patiently till they had all gone thro' their several Evidences on the other Side;—reserving him­self, like an Expert Practitioner, for the last Word in the Debate. When the Partition-Treaty-Gentleman had finish'd what he had to say,—He got up,—and, advancing towards the Table, told them, That the Error they had all gone upon thus far, in making out the several Facts in the Romance,—was in looking too high ”

“ No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies—or one man may be generous, as another is puissant;—sed non quoad hanc—or be it as it may,—for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for aught I know, which influence the tides themselves: ’twould oft be no discredit to us, to suppose it was so: I’m sure at least for myself, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied, to have it said by the world, “I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame,” ”