nated in an attempt on the
part of the learned civilian, who appears to have been a pluralist of
an exceptionally insatiable order, to obtain the reversion of one of
his numerous offices for his son, alleging a promise made to him on
that behalf by the Archbishop. This promise--which had, in fact, been
given--was legally impossible of performance, and upon the failure
of his attempt the disappointed Topham turned upon the Dean, and
maintained that by _him_, at any rate, he had been promised another
place of the value of five guineas per annum, and appropriately known
as the "Commissaryship of Pickering and Pocklington." This the Dean
denied, and thereupon Dr. Topham fired off a pamphlet setting forth
the circumstances of the alleged promise, and protesting against the
wrong inflicted upon him by its non-performance. At this point Sterne
came to Dr. Fountayne's assistance with a sarcastic apologue entitled
the "History of a good Warm Watchcoat," which had "hung up many years
in the parish vestry," and showing how this garment had so excited
the cupidity of Trim, the sexton, that "nothing would serve him but
he must take it home, to have it converted into a warm under-petticoat
for his wife and a jerkin for himself against the winter." The
symbolization of Dr. Topham's snug "patent place," which he wished
to make hereditary, under the image of the good warm watchcoat, is of
course plain enough; and there is some humour in the way in which the
parson (the Archbishop) discovers that his incautious assent to Trim's
request had been given _ultra vires._ Looking through the parish
register, at the request of a labourer who wished to ascertain his
age, the parson finds express words of bequest leaving the watch-coat
"for the sole use of the sextons of the church for ever, to be worn by
them respectively on winterly cold nights," and at the moment when he
is exclaiming, "Just Heaven! what an escape have I had! Give this
for a petticoat to Trim's wife!" he is interrupted by Trim himself
entering the vestry with "the coat actually ript and cut out" ready
for conversion into a petticoat for his wife. And we get a foretaste
of the familiar Shandian impertinence in the remark which follows,
that "there are many good similes subsisting in the world, but which I
have neither time to recollect nor look for," which would give you an
idea of the parson's astonishment at Trim's impudence. The emoluments
of "Pickering and Pocklington" appear