Hence a literary friend once observed to me that a
man is very different from what his writings would lead you to suppose.
I think there are certain indications in Sterne's writings that he
introduced those passages to which objection was justly taken for the
purpose of catching the favour of the public. He had already published
some Sermons, which, he says, "found neither purchasers nor readers."
Conscious of his talent, and being no doubt reminded of it by his
friends, he wished to obtain a field for it, and determined now to try a
different course. He wrote "Tristram Shandy" as he says "not to be fed,
but to be famous," and so just was the opinion of what would please the
age in which he lived that we find the quiet country rector suddenly
transformed into the most popular literary man of the day,--going up to
London and receiving more invitations than he could accept. He had made
his gold current by a considerable admixture of alloy; and endeavoured
to excuse his offences of this kind by a variety of subterfuges. Upon
one occasion, he compared them to the antics of children which although
unseemly, are performed with perfect innocence.
Of course this was a jest. Sterne was not living in a Paradisaical age,
and he intentionally overstept the boundaries of decorum. But granting
he had an object in view, was he justified in adopting such means to
obtain it? certainly not; but he had some right to laugh, as he does, at
the inconsistency of the public, who, while they blamed his books,
bought up the editions of them as fast as they could be issued.
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