Of his two books, "Tristram Shandy"
and "The Sentimental Journey," unquestionable classics, both, in
their field, there is no thought of plot or growth or objective
realization: the former is a delightful tour de force in which a
born essayist deals with the imaginary fortunes of a person he
makes as interesting before his birth as after it, and in
passing, sketches some characters dear to posterity: first and
foremost, Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. It is all pure play of
wit, fancy and wisdom, beneath the comic mask--a very frolic of
the mind. In the second book the framework is that of the
travel-sketch and the treatment more objective: a fact which,
along with its dubious propriety, may account for its greater
popularity. But much of the charm comes, as before, from the
writer's touch, his gift of style and ability to unloose in the
essay manner a unique individuality.
In his life Sterne, like Swift, exhibited most un-clerical
traits of worldliness and in his work there is the refined,
suggestive indelicacy, not to say indecency, which we are in the
habit nowadays of charging against the French, and which is so
much worse than the bluff, outspoken coarseness of a Fielding or
a Smollett. At times the line between Sterne and Charles Lamb is
not so easy to draw in that, from first to last, the elder is an
essayist and humorist, while the younger has so much of the
eighteenth century in his feeling and manner.
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