piqued, quoth the Corporal, for the reputation
of the army--I believe, an't please your reverence, said I, that when
a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson--though
not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. Thou shouldst not have said
that, Trim, said my Uncle Toby; for God only knows who is a hypocrite
and who is not. At the great and general review of us all,
corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen
who have done their duties in this world and who have not, and we
shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly. I hope we shall, said Trim.
It is in the Scripture, said my Uncle Toby, and I will show it thee in
the morning. In the meantime, we may depend upon it, Trim, for our
comfort, said my Uncle Toby, that God Almighty is so good and just
a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it
will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat
or a black one. I hope not, said the Corporal. But go on, said my
Uncle Toby, with thy story."

We might almost fancy ourselves listening to that noble prose colloquy
between the disguised king and his soldiers on the night before
Agincourt, in _Henry V._ And though Sterne does not, of course, often
reach this level of dramatic dignity, there are passages in abundance
in which his dialogue assumes, through sheer force of individualized
character, if not all the dignity, at any rate all the impressive
force and simplicity, of the "grand style."

Taken altogether, however, his place in English letters is hard to
fix, and his tenure in human memory hard to determine. Hitherto he has
held his own, with the great writers of his era, but it has been in
virtue, as I have attempted to show, of a contribution to the literary
possessions of mankind which is as uniquely limited in amount as it is
exceptionally perfect in quality. One cannot but feel that, as regards
the sum of his titles to recollection, his name stands far below
either of those other two which in the course of the last century
added themselves to the highest rank among the classics of English
humour. Sterne has not the abounding life and the varied human
interest of Fielding; and, to say nothing of his vast intellectual
inferiority to Swift, he never so much as approaches those problems of
everlasting concernment to man which Swift handles with so terrible
a fascination. Certainly no enthusiastic Gibbon of the future is ever