the world, the good people of York were not slow
to recognize the physical peculiarities and professional antecedents
of Dr. Burton, the local accoucheur, whom Archdeacon Sterne had
arrested as a Jacobite. That the portrait was faithful to anything
but the external traits of the original, or was intended to reproduce
anything more than these, Sterne afterwards denied; and we have
certainly no ground for thinking that Burton had invited ridicule on
any other than the somewhat unworthy ground of the curious ugliness
of his face and figure. It is most unlikely that his success as a
practitioner in a branch of the medical art in which imposture is the
most easily detected, could have been earned by mere quackery; and
he seems, moreover, to have been a man of learning in more kinds than
one. The probability is that the worst that could be alleged against
him was a tendency to scientific pedantry in his published
writings, which was pretty sure to tickle the fancy of Mr. Sterne.
Unscrupulously, however, as he was caricatured, the sensation which
appears to have been excited in the county by the burlesque portrait
could hardly have been due to any strong public sympathy with the
involuntary sitter. Dr. Burton seems, as a suspected Jacobite, to have
been no special favourite with the Yorkshire squirearchy in general,
but rather the reverse thereof. Ucalegon, however, does not need to be
popular to arouse his neighbour's interest in his misfortunes; and the
caricature of Burton was doubtless resented on the _proximus ardet_
principle by many who feared that their turn was coming next.

To all the complaints and protests which reached him on the subject
Sterne would in any case, probably, have been indifferent; but he was
soon to receive encouragement which would have more than repaid a
man of his temper for twice the number of rebukes. For London cared
nothing for Yorkshire susceptibilities and Yorkshire fears. Provincial
notables might be libelled, and their friends might go in fear
of similar treatment, but all that was nothing to "the town," and
_Tristram Shandy_ had taken the town by storm. We gather from a
passage in the letter above quoted that as early as January 30
the book had "gained the very favourable opinion" of Mr. Garrick,
afterwards to become the author's intimate friend; and it is certain
that by the time of Sterne's arrival in London, in March, 1760,
_Tristram Shandy_ had become the rage.

To say of this ext