His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an air of levity; he attempted this unusual manner.  It was probably a caprice which induced him to introduce one of his sermons in “Tristram Shandy;” it was fixing a diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy.  But he seems then to have had no design of publishing his “Sermons.”  One day, in low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances, Caleb asked him, “if he had no sermons like the one in ‘Tristram Shandy?’” But Sterne had no notion that “sermons” were saleable, for two preceding ones had passed unnoticed.  “If you could hit on a striking title, take my word for it that they would go down.”  The next day Sterne made his appearance in raptures.  “I have it!” he cried:  “Dramatic Sermons by Torick.”  With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this allusion to the church and the playhouse![A]

[Footnote A:  He published these two volumes of discourses under the title of “Yorick’s Sermons,” because, as he stated in his preface, it would “best serve the booksellers’ purpose, as Yorick’s name is possibly of the two the more known;” but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a second title-page with his own name, “to ease the minds of those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant.”  All this did not free Sterne from much severe criticism.—­ED.]

We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that “he submitted to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street.”  But it does not appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with neither friend nor relation by his side! a hired nurse was the sole companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every street, but whose heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed.  We cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, had resolved to practise his own principle,—­when he made the philosopher Shandy, who had a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion on death—­that “there is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groan? and convulsions—­and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains in a dying man’s room.  Strip it of these, what is it?” I find the moment of his death described in a singular book, the “Life of a Foot-man.”  I give it with all its particulars.  “In the month of January, 1768, we set off for London.  We stopped for some time at Almack’s house in Pall-Mall.  My master afterwards took Sir James Gray’s house in Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain.  He now began house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and kept a great deal of the best company.  About this time, Mr Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street.  He was sometimes called ‘Tristram Shandy,’ and sometimes ‘Yorick;’ a very great favourite of the gentlemen’s.  One day my master had