“‘De par le Roi.’ ‘’Tis a pithy prolegomenon,’ quoth I, and so read on....  ‘By all which it appears,’ quoth I, having read it over a little too rapidly, ’that if a man sets out in a post-chaise for Paris, he must go on travelling in one all the days of his life, or pay for it.’

“‘Excuse me,’ said the commissary, ’the spirit of the ordinance is this, that if you set out with an intention of running post from Paris to Avignon, &c., you shall not change that intention or mode of travelling without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further than the place you repent at; and ‘tis founded,’ continued he, ’upon this, that the revenues are not to fall short through your fickleness.’

  “‘O, by heavens!’ cried I, ’if fickleness is taxable in France, we
  have nothing to do but to make the best peace we can.’

  “And so the peace was made.”

And the volume ends with the dance of villagers on “the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is the best Muscatto wine in all France”—­that charming little idyll which won the unwilling admiration of the least friendly of Sterne’s critics.[1]

With the close of this volume the shadowy Tristram disappears altogether from the scene; and even the clearly-sketched figures of Mr. and Mrs. Shandy recede somewhat into the background.  The courtship of my Uncle Toby forms the whole motif and indeed almost the entire substance, of the next volume.  Of this famous episode in the novel a great deal has been said and written, and much of the praise bestowed upon it is certainly deserved.  The artful coquetries of the fascinating widow, and the gradual capitulation of the Captain, are studied with admirable power of humorous insight, and described with infinite grace and skill.  But there is, perhaps, no episode in the novel which brings out what may be called the perversity of Sterne’s animalism in a more exasperating way.  It is not so much the amount of this element as the time, place, and manner in which it makes its presence felt.  The senses must, of course, play their part in all love affairs, except those of the angels—­or the triangles; and such writers as Byron, for instance, are quite free from the charge of over-spiritualizing their description of the passion.  Yet one might safely say that there is far less to repel a healthy mind in the poet’s account of the amour of Juan and Haidee than is to be found in many a passage in this volume.  It is not merely that one is the poetry and the other the prose of the sexual passion:  the distinction goes deeper, and points to a fundamental difference of attitude towards their subject in the two writers’ minds.