History of English Humour Volume II Part 9

There is a story that Lord Stair was so like Louis XIV. that, when he went to the French Court, the King asked him whether his mother was ever in France, and that he replied "No, your Majesty, but my father was."

This is in reality a Roman story, and the answer was made to Augustus by a young man from the country.

Sydney Smith's reply when it was proposed to pave the approach to St.

Paul's with blocks of wood, "The canons have only to put their heads together and it will be done," was not original; Rochester had made a similar remark to Charles II. when he noticed a construction near Sh.o.r.editch: and the story of the man who complained that the chicken brought up for his dinner had only one leg, and was told to go and look into the roost-house, is to be found in an old Turkish jest-book of the fifteenth century. When Byron said of Southey's poems that "they would be read when Homer and Virgil were forgotten--but not till then," he was no doubt repeating what Porson said of Sir Richard Blackmore's. "Most literary stories," observes Mr. Willmott, "seem to be shadows, brighter or fainter, of others told before."

CHAPTER VI.

Sterne--His Versatility--Dramatic Form--Indelicacy--Sentiment and Geniality--Letters to his Wife--Extracts from his Sermons--Dr.

Johnson.

Sterne exceeded Smollett[10] in indelicacy as much as in humorous talent. He calls him Smelfungus, because he had written a fastidious book of travels. But he profited by his works, and the character of Uncle Toby reminds us considerably of Commodore Trunnion. But Sterne is more immediately a.s.sociated in our minds with Swift, for both were clergymen, and both Irishmen by birth, though neither by parentage.

Sterne's great-grandfather had been Archbishop of York, and his mother heiress of Sir Roger Jacques, of Elvington in Yorkshire. Through family interest Sterne became a Prebendary of York, and obtained two livings; at one of which he spent his time in quiet obscurity until his forty-seventh year, when the production of "Tristram Shandy" made him famous. He did not long enjoy his laurels, dying nine years afterwards in 1768.

In both Sterne and Swift, as well as Congreve, we see the fertile erratic fancy of Ireland improved by the labour and reflection of England. Sterne's humour was inferior to Swift's, narrower and smaller; it was a sparkling wine, but light-bodied, and often bad in colour. His pleasantry had no depth or general bearing. He appealed to the senses, referred entirely to some particular and trivial coincidence, and often put amatory weaknesses under contribution to give it force. The current of his thoughts glided naturally and imperceptibly into poetry and humour, but his subject matter was not intellectual, though he sometimes showed fine emotional feeling.

Under the head of acoustic humour we may place that abruptness of style which he managed so adroitly, and that dramatic punctuation, which he may be said to have invented, and of which no one ever else made so much use. No doubt he was an accomplished speaker; and we know that he had a good ear for music.

There is something in Sterne which reminds us of a conjurer exhibiting tricks on the stage; in one place indeed, he speaks of his cap and bells, and no doubt many would have thought them more suitable to him than a cap and gown. He was a versatile man; fond of light and artistic pursuits, occupying, as he tells us, his leisure time with books, painting, fiddling, and shooting. In his nature there was much emotion and exuberance of mind, being that of an accomplished rather than of a thoughtful man; and we can believe when he avers that he "said a thousand things he never dreamed of." He had not sufficient foundation for humour of the highest kind; but in form and diction he was unrivalled. Perhaps this was why Thackeray said "he was a great jester, not a great humorist." But he had a dashing style, and the quick succession of ideas necessary for a successful author. Not only was he master of writing, but of the kindred art of rhetoric. He makes a correction in the accentuation of Corporal Trim, who begins to read a sermon with the text,--

"_For we trust we have a good conscience._ Heb. xiii., 8.

'TRUST! Trust we have a good conscience!!' 'Certainly,'

Trim, quoth my father, interrupting him, 'you give that sentence a very improper accent, for you curl up your nose, man, and read it with such a sneering tone, as if the parson was going to abuse the apostle.'"

The same kind of discrimination is shown in the following--

"'And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?' 'Oh, against all rule, my lord--most ungrammatically. Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus, stopping, as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and three-fifths by a stop watch, my lord, each time.' 'Admirable grammarism!' 'But in suspending his voice, was the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of att.i.tude or countenance fill up the chasm? Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look?' 'I looked only at the stop watch, my lord.' 'Excellent observer!'"

His sensibility and taste in this direction was probably one of the bonds of the close intimacy, which existed between himself and David Garrick.

We find among his works, numerous instances of his peculiar and artistic punctuation. Sometimes he continues an exclamation by means of dashes for three lines. Sometimes, by way of pause, he leaves out a whole page, and the first time he does this he humorously adds:--"Thrice happy book!

thou wilt have one page which malice cannot blacken." One of the chapters of Tristram begins--

"And a chapter it shall have."

"A sermon commences--Judges xix. 1. 2. 3.

"'And it came to pa.s.s in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of Mount Ephraim, who took unto himself a concubine.'

"'A concubine! but the text accounts for it, for in those days 'there was no king in Israel!' then the Levite, you will say, like every other man in it, did what was right in his own eyes; and so, you may add, did his concubine too, for she went away.'"

Another from Ecclesiastes--

"'It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.'--Eccl. vii. 2.

"That I deny--but let us hear the wise man's reasoning for it:--'for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart; sorrow is better than laughter, for a crack-brained order of enthusiastic monks, I grant, but not for men of the world.'"

Of course, he introduces this cavil to combat it, but still maintains that travellers may be allowed to amuse themselves with the beauties of the country they are pa.s.sing through.

The following represents his arrival in the Paris of his day--

"Crack, crack! crack, crack! crack, crack!--so this is Paris! quoth I,--and this is Paris!--humph!--Paris! cried I, repeating the name the third time."

"The first, the finest, the most brilliant!

"The streets, however, are nasty.

"But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells. Crack, crack!

crack, crack! what a fuss thou makest! as if it concerned the good people to be informed that a man with a pale face, and clad in black had the honour to be driven into Paris at nine o'clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin, turned up with a red calamanco! Crack! crack! crack! crack! crack! I wish thy whip----But it is the spirit of the nation; so crack, crack on."

Here is another instance;--

"Ptr--r--r--ing--twing--tw.a.n.g--prut--trut;--'tis a cursed bad fiddle. Do you know whether my fiddle's in tune or no?--trut--prut.

They should be fifths. 'Tis wickedly strung--tr--a, e, i, o, u, tw.a.n.g. The bridge is a mile too high, and the sound post absolutely down,--else,--trut--prut.

"Hark! 'tis not so bad in tone. Diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, dum. There is nothing in playing before good judges; but there's a man there--no, not him with the bundle under his arm--the grave man in black,--'sdeath! not the man with the sword on. Sir, I had rather play a capriccio to Calliope herself than draw my bow across my fiddle before that very man; and yet I'll stake my Cremona to a Jew's trump, which is the greatest odds that ever were laid, that I will this moment stop three hundred and fifty leagues out of time upon my fiddle without punishing one single nerve that belongs to him. Twiddle diddle,--tweddle diddle,--twiddle diddle,--twoddle diddle,--twiddle diddle;--prut-trut--krish--krash--krush,--I've outdone you, Sir, but you see he's no worse; and was Apollo to take his fiddle after me, he can make him no better. Diddle diddle; diddle diddle, diddle diddle,--hum--dum--drum.

"Your worships and your reverences love music, and G.o.d has made you all with good ears, and some of you play delightfully yourselves; trut-prut--prut-trut."

In the following pa.s.sages we may also observe that peculiar neat and dramatic form of expression for which Sterne was remarkable.

"'Are we not,' continued Corporal Trim, looking still at Susanah--'Are we not like a flower of the field?' A tear of pride stole in betwixt every two tears of humiliation--else no tongue could have described Susanah's affliction--'Is not all flesh gra.s.s?--'Tis clay--'tis dirt.' They all looked directly at the scullion;--the scullion had been just scouring a fish kettle--It was not fair.

"'What is the finest face man ever looked at?' 'I could hear Trim talk so for ever,' cried Susanah, 'What is it?' Susanah laid her head on Trim's shoulder--'but corruption!'--Susanah took it off.

"Now I love you for this;--and 'tis this delicious mixture within you, which makes you dear creatures what you are;--and he, who hates you for it--all I can say of the matter is--that he has either a pumpkin for his head, or a pippin for his heart...."

"Wanting the remainder of a fragment of paper on which he found an amusing story, he asked his French servant for it; La Fleur said he had wrapped it round the stalks of a bouquet, which he had given to his _demoiselle_ upon the Boulevards. 'Then, prithee, La Fleur,'

said I 'step back to her, and see if thou canst get it.' 'There is no doubt of it,' said La Fleur, and away he flew.

"In a very little time the poor fellow came back quite out of breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks than would arise from the simple irreparability of the payment. _Juste ciel!_ in less than two minutes that the poor fellow had taken his last farewell of her--his faithless mistress had given his _gage d'amour_ to one of the Count's footmen--the footman to a young semptress--and the semptress to a fiddler, with my fragment at the end of it. Our misfortunes were involved together--I gave a sigh, and La Fleur echoed it back to my ear. 'How perfidious!' cried La Fleur, 'How unlucky,' said I.

"'I should not have been mortified, Monsieur,' quoth La Fleur, 'If she had lost it.'

"'Nor I, La Fleur,' said I, 'had I found it.'"

We very commonly form our opinion of an Author's character from his writings, and there is no doubt that his tendencies can scarcely fail to betray themselves to a careful observer. But experience has generally taught him to curb or quicken his feelings according to the notions of the public taste, so that he often expresses the sentiments of others rather than his own. 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 pa.s.sages 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.

If Sterne's humour was often offensive, we must in justice admit it was never cynical. Had it possessed more satire it would have, perhaps, been more instructive, but there was a bright trait in Sterne's character, that he never accused others. On the contrary, he censures men who, "wishing to be thought witty, and despairing of coming honestly by the t.i.tle, try to affect it by shrewd and sarcastic reflections upon whatever is done in the world. This is setting up trade with the broken stock of other people's failings--perhaps their misfortunes--so, much good may it do them with what honour they can get--the farthest extent of which, I think, is to be praised, as we do some sauces--with tears in our eyes. It has helped to give a bad name to wit, as if the main essence of it was satire."