The volumes, however, which earned “the fellow” this Episcopal benediction were not given to the world till the next year.  At the end of May or beginning of June, 1760, Sterne went to his new home at Coxwold, and his letters soon begin to show him to us at work upon further records of Mr. Shandy’s philosophical theory-spinning and the simpler pursuits of his excellent brother.  It is probable that this year, 1760, was, on the whole, the happiest year of Sterne’s life.  His health, though always feeble, had not yet finally given way; and though the “vile cough” which was to bring him more than once to death’s door, and at last to force it open, was already troubling him, he had that within him which made it easy to bear up against all such physical ills.  His spirits, in fact, were at their highest.  His worldly affairs were going at least as smoothly as they ever went.  He was basking in that sunshine of fame which was so delightful to a temperament differing from that of the average Englishman, as does the physique of the Southern races from that of the hardier children of the North; and lastly, he was exulting in a new-born sense of creative power which no doubt made the composition of the earlier volumes of Tristram a veritable labour of love.

But the witty division of literary spinners into silkworms and spiders—­those who spin because they are full, and those who do so because they are empty—­is not exhaustive.  There are human silk-worms who become gradually transformed into spiders—­men who begin writing in order to unburden a full imagination, and who, long after that process has been completely performed, continue writing in order to fill an empty belly; and though Sterne did not live long enough to “write himself out,” there are certain indications that he would not have left off writing if and when he felt that this stage of exhaustion had arrived.  His artistic impulses were curiously combined with a distinct admixture of the “potboiler” spirit; and it was with something of the complacency of an annuitant that he looked forward to giving the public a couple of volumes of Tristram Shandy every year as long as they would stand it.  In these early days, however, there was no necessity even to discuss the probable period either of the writer’s inspiration or of the reader’s appetite.  At present the public were as eager to consume more Shandyism as Sterne was ready to produce it:  the demand was as active as the supply was easy.  By the end of the year Vols.  III. and IV. were in the press, and on January 27, 1761, they made their appearance.  They had been disposed of in advance to Dodsley for 380_l._—­no bad terms of remuneration in those days; but it is still likely enough that the publisher made a profitable bargain.  The new volumes sold freely, and the public laughed at them as heartily as their two predecessors.  Their author’s vogue in London, whither he went in December, 1760, to superintend publication, was