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October 6, 1894.  Mr. Whibley’s Edition of “Tristram Shandy.”

We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of interesting by-products; but a new Tristram Shandy stands not yet among our achievements.  So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the best of it and given us a new edition of the old Tristram—­two handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction.  Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and forcibly needs not to be said.  His position is neither that so unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for Heaven knows how many of Allibone’s maiden aunts, summed up Sterne thus:—­

“A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced, grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his immorality."[B]

But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:—­

“He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of pathos....  There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls his feelings.  Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy, none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of disgust.  The Sentimental Journey, despite its interludes of tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of irrelevant grief....  Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the rags of the green-room.  Fortunately, there is scant opportunity for idle tears in Tristram Shandy....  Yet no occasion is lost....  Yorick’s death is false alike to nature and art.  The vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression, and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the suggestion of self-defence.  Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is something:  degraded by the oft-quoted platitude:  ’Go, poor devil,’ says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his nose; ’get thee gone.  Why should I hurt thee?  This world surely is big enough to hold both thee and me.’”

But here Mr. Whibley’s notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into confusion.  That the passage has been over-quoted is no fault of Sterne’s.  Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been predicted that he would not hurt a fly.  To me this trivial action of his is more than merely sentimental.  But, be this as it may, I am sure it is honestly characteristic.