lished by Sterne's daughter Lydia, was dropped out, apparently by accident, for there is no reason for questioning its authenticity. Again, careful as the publishers were in the main, they nevertheless printed three suspicious letters, two of which are certainly forgeries. These and other inaccuracies have of course been noted in the present edition. Otherwise it follows for the old matter the text of 1780. But since the appearance of the first authentic edition of Sterne, various new manuscripts have been discovered and made public. Midway in the nineteenth century W. Durrant Cooper, for example, printed for private circulation a series of letters by Sterne and his friends; and John Murray edited for the Philobiblon Society the "Dear, Dear Kitty" correspondence, descriptive of a very sentimental episode and giving details of Sterne's extraordinary reception in London on the publication of the first volumes of Tristram. From the time of Isaac D'Israeli, it has been known that there existed a body of anecdotes respecting Sterne's life in the north. Few of these Yorkshire anecdotes appeared in print till 1898. They are given here entire. A Report on Manuscripts presented to Parliament by Com mand of His Majesty in 1903 has also just made available a series of letters from Sterne to his friend and patron Lord Fauconberg of Newburgh Priory. Such are some of the places where fresh material has been gathered for a new edition of Sterne. But surpassing in interest anything of Sterne's published for more than a century is the so-called Gibbs Manuscript, which came to the British Museum in 1894 on the death of its owner, Thomas Washbourne Gibbs of Bath. So important is the Manuscript that after seeing it Mr. Percy Fitzgerald rewrote his Life of Sterne, published some thirty years before. It will probably be remembered that Yorick mentions in his letters to Eliza a Journal which he kept during their separation. Long supposed to be lost, it was discovered by Mr. Gibbs when a boy among old books and papers inherited from his father. It was read by Thackeray, and though not mentioned by him in his lecture on the humorist, it helps to account for his view of Sterne the man. Less finished than the Sentimental Journey, the Journal is perhaps as great a document in the history of sentimental literature. Some description of its contents was given to the public in 1878 by Mr. Gibbs, but the daily record of Yorick's "miserable feelings" after Eliza's departure to India is now printed as a whole for the first time. In one of his letters, Yorick quotes with admiration a sentence of Eliza's, and then asks, "Who taught you the art of writing so sweetly? You have absolutely exalted it to a science." All eighteenth century collections of letters purporting to have been written by Eliza to Yorick are palpable forgeries. And until recently no specimen of her style was known to exist. From the Gibbs Manuscript we are able to print a letter of a hundred pages to Mrs. James, in which Eliza tells about her connection with Sterne and his family, and touches upon a score of interesting topics, among which are her literary aspirations. She had not, as will be seen, reduced the art of writing to a science, but she thought and wrote sensibly. Of other extant letters of Eliza's, one at least from another source will be given as an example of her good sense in practical affairs. Among the curiosities of the Gibbs Manuscript is a crude draft of a letter from Sterne to Eliza's husband, wherein is elaborated the chaste character of poor Yorick's passion. Hardly less interesting, but from another point of view, is the original of a letter from Sterne to the Jameses, which, when compared with the text of the letter in the usual editions, is very illuminating on the unscrupulous way in which Lydia tried to save the reputation of her father, as if his conduct could be squared to the standard of conventional morality. Appended to the Gibbs Manuscript, which is to be printed in its entirety, are two letters of Thackeray to Mr. Gibbs, in the second of which the author of Vanity Fair gives his impression of the Journal to Eliza. As a fitting conclusion to this edition of Sterne, arrangements have been made with Mr. Percy Fitzgerald to reprint his admirable Life of Sterne as revised in 1896. |