likely to say of Sterne's "pictures of human manners" that they will
outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of the
House of Austria. Assuredly no one will ever find in _this_ so-called
English antitype of the Cure of Meudon any of the deeper qualities of
that gloomy and commanding spirit which has been finely compared to
the "soul of Rabelais _habitans in sicco_." Nay, to descend even to
minor aptitudes, Sterne cannot tell a story as Swift and Fielding
can tell one; and his work is not assured of life as _Tom Jones_ and
_Gulliver's Travels_, considered as stories alone, would be assured
of it, even if the one were stripped of its cheerful humour, and the
other disarmed of its savage allegory. And hence it might be rash to
predict that Sterne's days will be as long in the land of literary
memory as the two great writers aforesaid. Banked, as he still is,
among "English classics," he undergoes, I suspect, even more than an
English classic's ordinary share of reverential neglect. Among those
who talk about him he has, I should imagine, fewer readers than
Fielding, and very much fewer than Swift. Nor is he likely to increase
their number as time goes on, but rather, perhaps, the contrary.
Indeed, the only question is whether with the lapse of years he will
not, like other writers as famous in their day, become yet more of a
mere name. For there is still, of course, a further stage to which he
may decline. That object of so much empty mouth-honour, the English
classic of the last and earlier centuries, presents himself for
classification under three distinct categories. There is the class who
are still read in a certain measure, though in a much smaller measure
than is pretended, by the great body of ordinarily well-educated men.
Of this class, the two authors whose names I have already cited, Swift
and Fielding, are typical examples; and it may be taken to include
Goldsmith also. Then comes the class of those whom the ordinarily
well-educated public, whatever they may pretend, read really very
little or not at all; and in this class we may couple Sterne with
Addison, with Smollett, and, except, of course, as to _Robinson
Crusoe_--unless, indeed, our _blase_ boys have outgrown him among
other pleasures of boyhood--with Defoe. But below this there is yet a
third class of writers, who are not only read by none but the critic,
the connoisseur, or the historian of literature, but are scarcely read
even by the