t those of the angels--or the triangles; and such
writers as Byron, for instance, are quite free from the charge of
over-spiritualizing their description of the passion. Yet one might
safely say that there is far less to repel a healthy mind in the
poet's account of the amour of Juan and Haidee than is to be found in
many a passage in this volume. It is not merely that one is the poetry
and the other the prose of the sexual passion: the distinction goes
deeper, and points to a fundamental difference of attitude towards
their subject in the two writers' minds.

The success of this instalment of _Tristram Shandy_ appears to have
been slightly greater than that of the preceding one. Writing from
London, where he was once more basking in the sunshine of social
popularity, to Garrick, then in Paris, he says (March 16, 1765): "I
have had a lucrative campaign here. _Shandy_ sells well," and "I am
taxing the public with two more volumes of sermons, which will more
than double the gains of _Shandy_. It goes into the world with a
prancing list _de toute la noblesse_, which will bring me in three
hundred pounds, exclusive of the sale of the copy." The list was,
indeed, extensive and distinguished enough to justify the curious
epithet which he applies to it; but the cavalcade of noble names
continued to "prance" for some considerable time without advancing.
Yet he had good reasons, according to his own account, for wishing to
push on their publication. His parsonage-house at Button had just been
burnt down through the carelessness of one of his curate's household,
with a loss to Sterne of some 350_l._ "As soon as I can," he says, "I
must rebuild it, but I lack the means at present." Nevertheless, the
new sermons continued to hang fire. Again, in April he describes the
subscription list as "the most splendid list which ever pranced before
a book since subscription came into fashion;" but though the volumes
which it was to usher into the world were then spoken of as about to
be printed "very soon," he has again in July to write of them only
as "forthcoming in September, though I fear not in time to bring them
with me" to Paris. And, as a matter of fact, they do not seem to have
made their appearance until after Sterne had quitted England on his
second and last Continental journey. The full subscription list may
have had the effect of relaxing his energies; but the subscribers had
no reason to complain when, in 1766, the volumes at la