great majority, I imagine—­who prefer Tristram Shandy to the Sentimental Journey should feel any misgivings as to the soundness of their taste.  The humour which goes the deepest down beneath the surface of things is the most likely to become inextricably interwoven with those deeper fibres of associations which lie at the roots of a language; and it may well happen, therefore, though from the cosmopolitan point of view it is a melancholy reflection, that the merit of a book, to those who use the language in which it is written, bears a direct ratio to the persistence of its refusal to yield up its charm to men of another tongue.

The favour, however, with which the Sentimental Journey was received abroad, and which it still enjoys (the last French translation is very recent), is, as Mr. Fitzgerald says, “worthily merited, if grace, nature, true sentiment, and exquisite dramatic power be qualities that are to find a welcome.  And apart,” he adds, “from these attractions it has a unique charm of its own, a flavour, so to speak, a fragrance that belongs to that one book alone.  Never was there such a charming series of complete little pictures, which for delicacy seem like the series of medallions done on Sevres china which we sometimes see in old French cabinets....  The figures stand out brightly, and in what number and variety!  Old Calais, with its old inn; M. Dessein, the monk, one of the most artistic figures on literary canvas; the charming French lady whom M. Dessein shut into the carriage with the traveller; the debonnaire French captain, and the English travellers returning, touched in with only a couple of strokes; La Fleur, the valet; the pretty French glove-seller, whose pulse the Sentimental one felt; her husband, who passed through the shop and pulled off his hat to Monsieur for the honour he was doing him; the little maid in the bookseller’s shop, who put her little present a part; the charming Greuze ‘grisset,’ who sold him the ruffles; the reduced chevalier selling pates; the groups of beggars at Montreuil; the fade Count de Bissie, who read Shakespeare; and the crowd of minor croquis—­postilions, landlords, notaries, soldiers, abbes, precieuses, maids—­merely touched, but touched with wonderful art, make up a surprising collection of distinct and graphic characters.”

CHAPTER VIII.

LAST DAYS AND DEATH.

(1768.)

The end was now fast approaching.  Months before, Sterne had written doubtfully of his being able to stand another winter in England, and his doubts were to be fatally justified.  One can easily see, however, how the unhappy experiment came to be tried.  It is possible that he might have delayed the publication of his book for a while, and taken refuge abroad from the rigours of the two remaining winter months, had it not been in the nature of his malady to conceal