by's roquelaure, are doubtless
reminiscences of the boy, who had lived with the followers of William and
Marlborough, and had beat time with his little feet to the fifes of
Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn flags and
halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at Clonmel.

Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years old. His
wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of his master here:
for when the usher whipped Laurence for writing his name on the newly
whitewashed schoolroom ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the
under-strapper, and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne
was a boy of genius, and would come to preferment.

His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus College,
Cambridge, where he remained five years, and taking orders, got, through
his uncle's interest, the living of Sutton and the prebendary of York.
Through his wife's connexions, he got the living of Stillington. He
married her in 1741; having ardently courted the young lady for some years
previously. It was not until the young lady fancied herself dying, that
she made Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. One
evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost broken heart to see
her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne's heart was a good deal broken in the
course of his life), she said--"My dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I
verily believe I have not long to live, but I have left you every shilling
of my fortune," a generosity which overpowered Sterne: she recovered: and
so they were married, and grew heartily tired of each other before many
years were over. "Nescio quid est materia cum me," Sterne writes to one of
his friends (in dog-Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too), "sed sum fatigatus
et aegrotus de mea uxore plus quam unquam," which means, I am sorry to
say, "I don't know what is the matter with me: but I am more tired and
sick of my wife than ever."(162)

This to be sure was five-and-twenty years after Laurey had been overcome
by her generosity and she by Laurey's love. Then he wrote to her of the
delights of marriage, saying--"We will be as merry and as innocent as our
first parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend entered that
indescribable scene. The kindest affections will have room to expand in
our retirement--let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the
desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a po