er and more solid qualities in them, these
chapters are, for mere fun--for that kind of clever nonsense which
only wins by perfect spontaneity, and which so promptly makes ashamed
the moment spontaneity fails--unsurpassed by anything of the same kind
from the same hand. How strange, then, that, with so keen an eye for
the humorous, so sound and true a judgment in the highest qualities of
humour, Sterne should think it possible for any one who has outgrown
what may be called the dirty stage of boyhood to smile at the story
which begins a few chapters afterwards--that of the Abbess and Novice
of the Convent of Andouillets! The adult male person is not so much
shocked at the coarseness of this story as astounded at the bathos of
its introduction. It is as though some matchless connoisseur in wine,
after having a hundred times demonstrated the unerring discrimination
of his palate for the finest brands, should then produce some vile and
loaded compound, and invite us to drink it with all the relish with
which he seems to be swallowing it himself. This story of the Abbess
and Novice almost impels us to turn back to certain earlier chapters,
or former volumes, and re-examine some of the subtler passages of
humour to be found there--in downright apprehension lest we should
turn out to have read these "good things," not "in," but "into," our
author. The bad wine is so very bad, that we catch ourselves wondering
whether the finer brands were genuine, when we see the same palate
equally satisfied with both. But one should, of course, add that it
is only in respect of its supposed humour that this story shakes
its readers' faith in the gifts of the narrator. As a mere piece of
story-telling, and even as a study in landscape and figure-painting,
it is quite perversely skilful. There is something almost irritating,
as a waste of powers on unworthy material, in the prettiness of the
picture which Sterne draws of the preparations for the departure
of the two _religieuses_--the stir in the simple village, the
co-operating labours of the gardener and the tailor, the carpenter and
the smith, and all those other little details which bring the whole
scene before the eye so vividly that Sterne may, perhaps, in
all seriousness, and not merely as a piece of his characteristic
persiflage, have thrown in the exclamation, "I declare I am interested
in this story, and wish I had been there." Nothing, again, could be
better done than the sketch of