wn the 20th of
next month, after having recruited myself at York." Then he adds the
strange observation, "I might, indeed, solace myself with my wife (who
is come from France), but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental
being, whatever your Lordship may think to the contrary. The world
has imagined because I wrote _Tristram Shandy_ that I was myself more
Shandian than I really ever was. 'Tis a good-natured world we live
in, and we are often painted in divers colours, according to the ideas
each one frames in his head." It would, perhaps, have been scarcely
possible for Sterne to state his essentially unhealthy philosophy of
life so concisely as in this naive passage. The connubial affections
are here, in all seriousness and good faith apparently, opposed to
the sentimental emotions--as the lower to the higher. To indulge the
former is to be "Shandian," that is to say, coarse and carnal; to
devote oneself to the latter, or, in other words, to spend one's
days in semi-erotic languishings over the whole female sex
indiscriminately, is to show spirituality and taste.

Meanwhile, however, that fragile abode of sentimentalism--that frame
which had just been "torn to pieces" by the feelings--was becoming
weaker than its owner supposed. Much of the exhaustion which Sterne
had attributed to the violence of his literary emotions was no doubt
due to the rapid decline of bodily powers which, unknown to him, were
already within a few months of their final collapse. He did not set
out for London on the 20th of December, as he had promised himself,
for on that day he was only just recovering from "an attack of fever
and bleeding at the lungs," which had confined him to his room for
nearly three weeks. "I am worn down to a shadow," he writes on the
23rd, "but as my fever has left me, I set off the latter end of next
week with my friend, Mr. Hall, for town." His home affairs had already
been settled. Early in December it had been arranged that his wife
and daughter should only remain at York during the winter, and should
return to the Continent in the spring. "Mrs. Sterne's health," he
writes, "is insupportable in England. She must return to France, and
justice and humanity forbid me to oppose it." But separation from his
wife meant separation from his daughter; it was this, of course, which
was the really painful parting, and it is to the credit of Sterne's
disinterestedness of affection for Lydia, that in his then state
of health h