hink," he writes, with characteristic incoherence, to Hall
Stevenson--"I do not think a week or ten days' playing the good fellow
(at this very time) so abominable a thing; but if a man could get
there cleverly, and every soul in his house in the mind to try what
could be done in furtherance thereof, I have no one to consult in
these affairs. Therefore, as a man may do worse things, the plain
English of all which is, that I am going to leave a few poor sheep in
the wilderness for fourteen days, and from pride and naughtiness
of heart to go see what is doing at Scarborough, steadfully meaning
afterwards to lead a new life and strengthen my faith. Now, some folks
say there is much company there, and some say not; and I believe there
is neither the one nor the other, but will be both if the world will
have patience for a month or so." Of his work he has not much to say:
"I go on not rapidly but well enough with my Uncle Toby's amours.
There is no sitting and cudgelling one's brains whilst the sun shines
bright. 'Twill be all over in six or seven weeks; and there are dismal
weeks enow after to endure suffocation by a brimstone fireside." He
was anxious that his boon companion should join him at Scarborough;
but that additional pleasure was denied him, and he had to content
himself with the usual gay society of the place. Three weeks, it
seems, were passed by him in this most doubtfully judicious form of
bodily and mental relaxation--weeks which he spent, he afterwards
writes, in "drinking the waters, and receiving from them marvellous
strength, had I not debilitated it as fast as I got it by playing
the good fellow with Lord Granby and Co. too much." By the end of the
month he was back again at Coxwold, "returned to my Philosophical Hut
to finish _Tristram_, which I calculate will be ready for the
world about Christmas, at which time I decamp from hence and fix
my headquarters at London for the winter, unless my cough pushes me
forward to your metropolis" (he is writing to Foley, in Paris), "or
that I can persuade some _gros milord_ to make a trip to you."
Again, too, in this letter we get another glimpse at that thoroughly
desentimentalized "domestic interior" which the sentimentalist's
household had long presented to the view. Writing to request a
remittance of money to Mrs. Sterne at Montauban--a duty which, to do
him justice, he seems to have very watchfully observed--Sterne adds
his solicitation to Mr. Foley to "do some