spoke long. Sir. F. Dashwood maintained the German war was most pernicious. Mr. C—, of Surry, spoke well against the account, with some others. L. Barrington at last got up, and spoke half an hour with great plainness and temper; explained a great many hidden springs relating to these accounts, in favour of the late king, and told two or three conversations which had passed between the king and himself, relative to these expenses, which cast great honour upon the king's character. This was with regard to the money the king had secretly furnished out of his pocket to lessen the account of the Hanover score brought us to discharge.

Beckford and Barrington abused all who sought for peace, and joined in the cry for it; and Beckford added that the reasons of wishing a peace now were the same as the peace of Utrecht, that the people behind the curtain could not both maintain the war and their places too, so were for making another sacrifice of the nation to their own interests. After all, the cry for a peace is so general that it will certainly end in one. Now for myself.

One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly as the other half cry it up to the skiesthe best is, they abuse and buy it, and at such a rate that we are going on with a second edition as fast as possible.

I am going down for a day or two with Mr. Spencer to Wimbleton; on Wednesday there is to be a grand assembly at Lady N-. I have inquired everywhere about Stephen's affair, and can hear nothing. My friend, Mr. Charles Townshend, will be now Secretary-at-war.' He bid me wish him joy of it, though not in possession. I will ask him, and depend, my most worthy friend, that you shall not be ignorant of what I learn from him. Believe me ever, ever, Yours, L. S.

XVI.-TO THE SAME.

[April 1761.]

MY DEAR SIR,-A strain which I got in my wrist by a terrible fall prevented my acknowledging the favour of your obliging letter. I went yesterday morning to breakfast with Mr. V-, who is a kind of right-hand man to the secretary, on purpose to inquire about the propriety or feasibility of doing what you wish me; and he has told me an anecdote, which, had you been here, would, I think, have made it wiser to have deferred speaking about the affair a month hence than now: it is this-You must know that the numbers of officers who have left their regiments in Germany, for the pleasures of the town, have been long a topic for merriment; as you see them in St. James's Coffeehouse and the Park, every hour, inquiring, open

1 He was appointed Secretary-at-war the 24th of March 1761.

mouth, how things go on in Germany, and what news, when they should have been there to have furnished news themselves; but the worst part has been, that many of them have left their brother-officers on their duty, and in all the fatigues of it, and have come with no end but to make friends, to be put unfairly over the heads of those who were left risking their lives. In this attempt there have been some but too successful, which has justly raised ill-blood and complaints from the officers who stayed behind. The upshot has been, that they have every soul been ordered off; and woe be to him ('tis said) who shall be found listening! Now just to mention our friend's case whilst this cry is on foot, I think would be doing more hurt than good; but, if you think otherwise, I will go with all my heart, and mention it to Mr. Townshend, for to do more I am too inconsiderable a person to pretend to. You made me and my friends here very merry with the accounts current at York, of my being forbid the Court; but they do not consider what a considerable person they make of me, when they suppose either my going or my not going there is a point that ever enters the king's head; and for those about him, I have the honour either to stand so personally well known to them, or to be so well represented by those of the first rank, as to fear no accident of that kind.

I thank God (B-s excepted) I have never yet made a friend or connection I have forfeited, or done aught to forfeit; but, on the contrary, my true character is better understood, and where I had one friend last year who did me honour, I have three now. If my enemies knew that by this rage of abuse and ill-will they were effectually serving the interests both of myself and works, they would be more quiet; but it has been the fate of my betters, who have found that the way to fame is like the way to heaven -through much tribulation; and, till I shall have the honour to be as much maltreated as Rabelais and Swift were, I must continue humble, for I have not filled up the measure of half their persecutions.

3

The Court is turning topsy-turvy. Lord Bute, le premier;' Lord Talbot to be groom of the chambers, in the room of the D- of R―d; Lord Halifax to Ireland; Sir F. Dashwood in Talbot's place; Pitt seems unmoved; a peace inevitable; Stocks rise; the peers this moment kissing hands, etc. etc. (this week may be christened the kiss-hands week),—for a hundred changes will happen in consequence of these. Pray present my compliments to Mrs. C- and

Lord Bute was appointed Secretary of State on the 26th of March 1761.

2 Lord Talbot was appointed Steward of the Household on the same day.

3 Lord Halifax was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland on the 20th of March 1761.

all friends; and believe me, with the greatest fidelity, your ever obliged

L. STERNE.

P.S.-Is it not strange that Lord Talbot should have power to remove the Duke of R-d?

Pray when you have read this, send the news to Mrs. Sterne.

XVII.-TO J- H-S-, Esq.

COXWOULD, July 28, 1761. DEAR H-,-I sympathized for, or with, you, on the detail you give me of your late agitations; and would willingly have taken my horse, and trotted to the oracle to have inquired into the etymology of all your sufferings, had I not been assured that all evacuation of bilious matter, with all that abdominal motion attend. ing it (both which are equal to a month's purgation and exercise), will have left you better than it found you. Need one go to D-to be told that all kind of mild (mark I am going to talk more foolishly than your apothecary), opening, saponacious, dirty-shirt, sud-washing liquors are proper for you, and consequently all styptical potations, death and destruction? If you had not shut up your gall-ducts by these, the glauber-salts could not have hurt; as it was, 'twas like a match to the gunpowder, by raising a fresh combustion, as all physic does at first, so that you have been let off-nitre, brimstone, and charcoal (which is blackness itself)-all at one blast. "Twas well the piece did not burst, for I think it underwent great violence, and as it is proof, will, I hope, do much service in this militating world. Panty' is mistaken: I quarrel with no one. There was that coxcomb of · in the house, who lost temper with me for no reason upon earth, but that I could not fall down and worship a brazen image of learning and eloquence, which he set up, to the persecution of all true believers. I sat down upon his altar, and whistled in the time of his divine service, and broke down his carved work, and kicked his incense-pot to the D-; so he retreated, sed non sine felle in corde suo. I have wrote a clerum: whether I shall take my doctor's degrees or no, I am much in doubt, but I trow not. I go on with Tristram. I have bought seven hundred books at a purchase, dog cheap, and many good; and I have been a week getting them set up in my best room here. Why do not you transport yours to town? but I talk like a fool. This will just catch you at your spaw. I wish you incolumen apud Londinum. Do you go there for good and all-or ill? I am, dear cousin, yours affectionately, L. STERNE.

1 The Reverend Mr. R-L-.

XVIII. TO THE SAME.

COXWOULD, [about August] 1761. DEAR H-,-I rejoice you are in London. Rest you there in peace: here 'tis the devil. You was a good prophet. I wish myself back again, as you told me I should; but not because a thin, death-doing, pestiferous, north-east wind blows in a line directly from Crazy-castle turret full upon me in this cuckoldy retreat (for I value the north-east wind and all its powers not a straw), but the transition from rapid motion to absolute rest was too violent. I should have walked about the streets of York ten days, as a proper medium to have passed through, before I entered upon my rest. I stayed but a moment, and I have been here but a few, to satisfy me I have not managed my miseries like a wise man; and if God, for my consolation under them, had not poured forth the spirit Shandeism into me, which will not suffer me to think two moments upon any grave subject, I would else just now lie down and die— die-and yet in half an hour's time, I'll lay a guinea, I shall be as merry as a monkey, and as mischievous too, and forget it all; so that this is but a copy of the present train running cross my brain. And so you think this cursed stupid; but that, my dear H-, depends much upon the quotâ horâ of your shabby clock: if the pointer of it is in any quarter between ten in the morning or four in the afternoon, I give it up; or if the day is obscured by dark engendering clouds of either wet or dry weather, I am still lost: but who knows but it may be five, and the day as fine a day as ever shone upon the earth since the destruction of Sodom? and peradventure your Honour may have got a good hearty dinner to-day, and eat and drank your intellectuals into a placidulish and a blandulish amalgama-to bear nonsense, so much for that.

"Tis as cold and churlish just now as (if God had not pleased it to be so) it ought to have been in bleak December, and therefore I am glad you are where you are, and where (I repeat it again) I wish I was also. Curse of poverty and absence from those we love !-they are two great evils which embitter all things; and yet with the first I am not haunted much. As to matrimony, I should be a beast to rail at it, for my wife is easy, but the world is not; and had I stayed from her a second longer, it would have been a burning shame-else she declares herself happier without me; but not in anger is this declaration made, but in pure sober good sense, built on sound experience. She hopes you will be able to strike a bargain for me before this time twelvemonth, to lead a bear round Europe; and from this hope from you, I verily believe it is that you are so high in her favour at present. She swears you are a fellow of wit, though humorous; a funny, jolly soul, though somewhat splenetic; and (bating the love of women) as honest as gold

the pamphlet upon theatrical, or rather tragical, declamation; I have bought another in verse worth reading; and you will receive them, with what I can pick up this week, by a servant of Mr. Hodges, whom he is sending back to England.

be of any service to you at Paris, command him who is, and ever will be, your Ladyship's faithful L. STERNE.

XXII-TO DAVID GARRICK, Esq.

PARIS, March 19, 1762. DEAR GARRICK,-This will be put into your hands by Dr. Shippen, a physician, who has been here some time with Miss Poyntz, and is this moment setting off for your metropolis; so I snatch the opportunity of writing to you and my kind friend Mrs. Garrick. I see nothing like her here, and yet I have been introduced to one half of their best goddesses, and in a

I am under great obligations to Mr. Pitt, who has behaved in every respect to me like a man of good breeding and good nature. In a post or two I will write again. Foley is an honest soul. I could write six volumes of what has passed comically in this great scene since these last fourteen days; but more of this hereafter. We are all going into mourning; nor you nor Mrs. Garrick would know me if you met me in my remise. Bless you both! Service to Mrs. Denis. Adieu, adieu. L. S.

XXI.-TO LADY D—.

LONDON,1 Feb. 1, 1762. YOUR Ladyship's kind inquiries after my health are indeed kind, and of a piece with the rest of your character. Indeed I am very ill, having broke a vessel in my lungs-hard writing in the summer, together with preaching, which I have not strength for, is ever fatal to me; but I cannot avoid the latter yet, and the former is too pleasurable to be given up. I believe I shall try if the south of France will not be of service to me; his G-of Y- has most humanely given me the permission for a year or two. I shall set off with great hopes of its efficacy, and shall write to my wife and daughter to come and join me at Paris, else my stay could not be so long. 'Le Fevre's story has beguiled your Ladyship of your tears,' and the thought of the accusing spirit flying up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, you are kind enough to say is sublime. My friend Mr. Garrick thinks so too, and I am most vain of his approbation; your Ladyship's opinion adds not a little to my vanity.

I wish I had time to take a little excursion to Bath, were it only to thank you for all the obliging things you say in your letter-but 'tis impossible; accept at least my warmest thanks. If I could tempt my friend Mr. H- to come to France, I should be truly happy. If I can

1 This Letter, though dated from London, was evidently written at Paris.

the other half. But I neither worship nor fall (much) upon my knees before them; but, on the contrary, have converted many into Shandeism; for be it known, I Shandy it away fifty times more than I was ever wont-talk more nonsense than ever you heard me talk in your days, and to all sorts of people. Qui le diable est cet homme la, said Choiseul, t'other day, ce Chevalier Shandy. You'll think me as vain as a devil, was I to tell you the rest of the dialogue. Whether the bearer knows it or no, I know not -t'will serve up after supper in Southampton Street, amongst other small dishes, after the fatigues of Richard the Third. O God! they have nothing here which gives the nerves so smart a blow as those great characters in the hands of Garrick !-but I forgot I am writing to the man himself. The Devil take (as he will) these transports of enthusiasm! Apropos-the whole city of Paris is bewitch'd with the comic opera, and if it was not for the affair of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of our talk, the comic opera would have it all. It is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it is; and was it not for some sudden starts and dashes of Shandeism, which now and then either break the thread, or entangle it so that the Devil himself would be puzzled in winding it off, I should die a martyr-this, by the way, I never will.

I send you over some of these comic operas by the bearer, with the Sallon, a satire. The French comedy, I seldom visit it-they act scarce anything but tragedies-and the Clairon is great, and Mademoiselle Dumesnil, in some places, still greater than her; yet I cannot bear preaching-I fancy I got a surfeit of it in my younger days. There is a tragedy to be damn'd to-night; peace be with it, and the gentle brain which made it! I have ten thousand things to tell you; I cannot write. I do a thousand things which cut no figure, but in the doing; and as in London, I have the honour of having done and said a thousand things I never did or dream'd of-and yet I dream abundantly. If the Devil stood behind me in the shape of a courier, I could not write faster than I do, having five letters more to despatch by the same gentle