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 them, except from curiosity, or “in the way of business.”  The type of this class is Richardson; and one cannot, I say, help asking whether he will hereafter have Sterne as a companion of his dusty solitude.  Are Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey destined to descend from the second class into the third—­from the region of partial into that of total neglect, and to have their portion with Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison? The unbounded vogue which they enjoyed in their time will not save them; for sane and sober critics compared Richardson in his day to Shakspeare, and Diderot broke forth into prophetic rhapsodies upon the immortality of his works