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"A. Dom. 1741.

£ s. d. "Laid out in sashing the house, 12 0 0 "In stuckoing and bricking the

hall,.

4 0 500

"In building the chair-house,
"In building the parr. chimney, 300
"Spent in shapeing the rooms, plas-
tering, underdrawing, and jobbing, God
knows how much."

In short, a total of about five-andthirty pounds, putting a reasonable eum to stand behind that characteristic "God knows how much!" which particulars are to be in perpetuam rei memoriam, to testify that he has been an improving tenant, possibly with a view to indemnity from his successor. But he will amply indemnify himself later for his charges; when it shall come to pass that the whole edifice shall be burnt to the ground, and he shall dexterously shift the burden of rebuilding it to other shoulders.

We can well fancy the odd figure bent over the old registry, turning over the yellow leaves in search of something droll, from its very old fashion. No one relished this groping among book catacombs so much as he. Presently he gets back to the year 1678, to the age when old Vicar Walker was in office, and falls with delight on a devout and solemn entry, a wonderful hailstorm, with hailstones of a portentous size.

This was chronicled by old Vicar Walker, not Sterne's immediate predecessor, Vicar John, but Vicar William Walker. There is such a quaint and childish simplicity in the entry, that we, too, will look over Mr. Sterne's shoulder and read.

"Upon ye 21st of April, in ye year of our Lord, 1698, did fall soe much snow that it made very nigh a ffoot in depth at sunsetting. Doubtless it must have been much deeper had not ye season of ye year caused the melting of much of it as it came. It came without wind; on ye night following, soe sharp a ffrost succeeded, that I took up Ice out of ye stone trough in ye church-yard, nigh an inch thick. The weather for a ffortnight after was very severe and unhospitable. The third day of May, was a Tempestous day of wind, snow, and rain, and the night very ffrosty. About the back end of May or beginning of June, soe gt a shower of

Hail fell, that some of it lay unmelted for 24 hours after. There being soe unusual occurrences, I though fit to attest ym under my hand,

"WILL. WALKER, Vicar." This delicious simplicity must have been exquisitely relished by a child of Shandy. It was irresistible. Something in the way of parody suggests itself.

By-and-by the Rev. Laurence comes back to his great book, and writes seriously among the births and christenings, "Hail fell in the midst of summer as large as a pigeon's egg, which unusual occurrence I thought fit to attest under my hand.

"L. STERNE."

This bit of private waggery, which was not likely to be seen until a season when he would not hope to be by to relish its effect, is a true key to his nature, for it shows us that careless and most indiscreet spirit of humour, which was perfectly genuine, and would break out in all seasons irrespective of propriety. Such persons it is within our own experience are sure to commit moral suicide with their characters; and it is unlikely that Mr. Sterne's humour confined itself to such harmless sport as making comic entries in his parish leger.

IV. PARSON YORICK.

IT is now, then, time to ask what manner of man this, whom the Yorkshire farmers, lifting their heads from their work, saw riding by, whom the few families near were glad to see at their houses, and whose company the squire of his own district did not affect (they were never on good terms); and whom the whole congregation listened to preaching on the Sunday.

Parson Yorick, as is well-known, prefigures Parson Sterne, and in the history of the Shandy Clergyman, are chronicled what grievous issues this spirit further developed led to. It is conceded that many of Mr. Yorick's adventures are drawn from life; but in all the colouring and smaller details, an irresistible conviction presses on us, that Mr. Sterne's parish experience must have been travelling through his mind. This breaks out in a thousand natural little touches, scraps

of furniture as it were, not important enough to be supplied by the invention, but exactly what would come without effort from the memory.

Well might this stout muscular flock be surprised at the lean, lanky, and pale-faced figure, who seemed utterly without stamina" in the chest region, and who if he attempted the self approbative thump of the stage Yorkshire men, on the traditional red waistcoat of virtue, might bring on the most fatal results. In that curious face, there were not cheeks, but sides, to the face; and a long Voltairean mouth, which went away at an angle, and a singular nose. If the jaws were lantern, there was a steady Rabelais light inside to illuminate it. And if that nose was shaped as the ace of clubs, the mouth as clearly took the figure of the lower half of the ace of hearts. He tells us all about this nose, not in the wonderful legend, but in a little personal paragraph; and anyone who looks at the wonderful Lansdowne portrait, or even at the mere common engravings which face the title-page of cheap editions on the stalls, will admit the truth of this comic simile. Sometimes he was to be seen riding, and "had made himself the country talk by a breach of all decorum, and that was in never appearing better or otherwise mounted than upon a lean sorry jackass of a horse, value about one pound fifteen shillings, who, to shorten all description of him, was full brother to Rosinante." Clearly another parish association, which ushers in that droll sketch of the universal request in which was this clerical nag. How, at last, being wearied out with midnight expresses from parishioners whose ladies were in very critical straits, for the use of his horse to fetch medical aid, and having lost many good steeds from these charitable loans, he was at last in self-defence driven to the device of keeping some wretched worn-out hack, not worth the borrowing. The vicar of another famous cure, known as Wakefield, was to be later driven to an expedient, kindred in spirit, and quite as Shandean. Parish cousins troubled the good man too, and when it was desirous to be rid of any person of this class, who was troublesome, or whose character was doubtful,

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a

ling coat," or "sometimes a horse

of small value," was lent to him, and he always "had the satisfaction of finding that he never came back to return them."

On such a "Fiddleback," who was always either "twitter-boned or broken-winded, or spavined, or greazed” (Mr. Sterne knew something of horses and the ills of horse-flesh, and was to ride a good deal hereafter along the French post-roads), he was to be seen jogging along the Yorkshire lanes, never passing a village but he "caught the attention of both old and young." We can well believe it, that as he came trotting up, just waking out a reverie, either "composing a sermon," or "composing his cough," "labour stood still, the bucket hung suspended in the middle of the well, the spinning-wheel forgot its round, even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping until he had got out of sight."

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It is wonderful how one of his delicate frame and figure could have so long stood the rough blasts and trying climate of Yorkshire. He had miserable health, and may be said to have been always fighting off consumption. Something was radically wrong with his chest. At Cambridge he had "broken a vessel in his lungs," and there is an asthma," which he "caught by skating against the wind," but not in Flanders ;" and "a vile cough," which is destined to be his old man of the sea. Perhaps, after all, these rude but stimulating breezes, and the healthful air of Sutton and Stillington were of service, and gave strength to that weak and ill-put-together frame.

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With the "Squire of the parish"Squire Harland-he was not on good terms, nor is one of his pattern of mind, delighting in sly and concealed humour, likely to be ever acceptable, to the rude, boisterous "Westerns of a country district; such a temper, especially in one of position, gathers enemies as it goes, and would make a clergyman, in particular, feared and highly unpopular. Far more suitable is an abundance "of a mysterious carriage of body to cover the defects of the mind"-the French translation for gravity-and the best clerical garment that can be put on. With a few select friends, that "life, and whim, and gaiete de cœur about him," must have

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made the Parson of Sutton a delightful companion; but with the manyheaded of the district, the dull, the starched, the unnoticed, the illnatured, these were dangerous quali ties. "For with all this," he carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping unsuspicious girl of thirteen." No wonder, then, that the "gale of his spirits ran him foul ten times in the day of somebody's tackling" and as "the grave and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way," it may be well conceived how much the mischief was complicated.

This age of twenty-six, the "first setting out" of the luckless Yorick, was just about the age when Mr. Sterne was first setting out on his parish duties, which shows how curiously and minutely exact was this parallel intended to be. And though there is some varnish of romance spread over all, in that pathetic end of the slandered Yorick, and his peculiar and fatal sensitiveness of the remarks made about him, still it is easy to separate the romance from his own proper experiences, and correct the one portrait by the other. The Reverend Laurence was not likely to let a few idle tongues disturb his quiet. The iron was not to enter into his soul on such poor pretences as that. "At first setting out," indeed, that cold welcome and harsh requital of these "ungracious pranks" might have burst and thrown him back upon himself; but a twenty years' rough experience must have rubbed down that delicate surface.

By the time he was drawing Parson Yorick, he would have grown to care little how busy the Sneers and Candours, and Sir Benjamins of the district, might be in perverting his most innocent actions, and tolerably hardened could, under a sort of parable, enter a resigned and quiet protest against the cruel misconstruction that was to dog him through life. He was too proud to vindicate himself; for his was "that singularity of temper which would never suffer him to set a story straight with the

world, however in his power." A touch of character, which seems not devised for mere purposes of fiction, but drawn from a genuine personal experience. It is set down with a slight bitterness, the bitterness of one who had long suffered in silence from those malicious persecutions, but was too proud to complain or protest.

The country clergy of Mr. Sterne's time had not yet struggled out of that dead level of rural parsonship, of which Macaulay has left so graphic and yet so unpleasant a picture. The chaplain was still the retainer more than the companion of the master, and presumptuously raised his eyes to my lady's lady's-maid. My lord, by a sort of feudal prerogative, would sometimes force on him even a less dignified alliance. In the country districts were hunting, and swearing, and drinking parsons, but into these categories Mr. Sterne was not to fall. He was to be conspicuous among the Yorkshire parsons by intellectual gifts and more elegant tastes.

Of such a clerical brother did a Yorkshire gentleman draw the following picture from life :--

“Jock, groom, sailor-first of jokers,
Legislator among smokers;

Like Moses, wrapt in clouds of smoke,
He laid down laws to hearts of oak.
A sportsman keen by land and water,
Yet never took delight in slaughter.

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John Hall Stevenson's Poems.

taining "Olio," seems to hint at a prototype among these Yorkshire clergy.

But Tristram gives a glimpse of the ecclesiastical status, worth a dissertation. For when Trim went on his charitable embassy to the sick Le Fever, lying at the inn, he opened the kitchen door, and found that "Mr. Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire."

Mr. Sterne's tastes were not to be of this pot-house order. No; "books, painting, fiddling, and shooting," were the confessed amusements of the Vicar of Sutton, some pious works, a good deal of preaching, and, perhaps, a little love-making of a harmless and "clergymanical" order, were his unacknowledged pleasures. First, for the fiddling.

V. MR. STERNE PLAYS UPON THE BASS VIOL.

"Ptr-r-r-ing-twing-twang 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.-twang. the bridge is a mile too high, and the 'sound post' absolutely down, else trut-prut. Hark! 'tis not so bad a tone. Diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, dum- Twaddle diddle, tweedle diddle, twiddle diddle, twoddle diddle, twuddle diddleprut-trut-krish-krash-krush. We have undone you, sir, but you see he

is no worse.

Were the windows open of a summer's evening at Sutton, some such fanfare as this would be heard, the Vicar being busy tuning his bass. The scientific reader will endorse Mr. Sterne's practical knowledge of his instrument, when he hears that "they should be fifths," one of the mysteries of tuning. Inside, no doubt, there

"Tristram Shandy," chap. xv., vol. v.

were musical neighbours enough sitting round to listen; the bearer, "with the bundle under his arm,' the

grave man in black," and the "gentleman with the sword." These might have been good connoisseurs, for "there is nothing in playing before good judges." But sometimes there came Yorkshire listeners, of dull inappreciative tempers, before whom Mr. Sterne, with his fund of "sensibility," found it insupportable to play. True musicians will quite comprehend his indignant protest,-"Sir, I had rather play a caprichio 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 musical odds that ever were laid, that I will, this moment, stop three hundred and fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, without punishing one single nerve that belongs to him." Hence it may be concluded how acute were his sufferings when compelled to hearken to a performance even a bare "league" or so out of tune. Abrupt change from one position to another could not be tolerated even by Mr. Shandy, for "attitudes are nothing, madam‡— 'tis the transposition from one attitude to another, like the preparation and resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in all."

That his love for music was enthusiastic and genuine, and the performances on the "Bass Viol" incessant, may be gathered from any dozen pages of Tristram. There is here no affectation of connoisseurship or dilettante patronage of the science, but an eager relish and earnest appreciation. It is his favourite illustration. Crotchets and the technical argot are almost troublesome by their constant intrusion; and if his fingering of his favourite instrument corresponded at all to his theoretical

† Rabelais, however, tuned a fiddlestring in this mimetic fashion long before Mr. Sterne's day.

It will be seen whence the ingenious author of Roundabout Papers has helped himself to this easy and familiar shape of address. Tristram is perpetually taking some lady by the sleeve, and chattering to her in the true original Roundabout fashion, as"My dear Madam." Even in the last Roundabout Paper (December, 1862), the old hostility of 1851, is still found fresh, and misleads Mr. Thackeray into the blunder of moralizing over the Romance of Dessein's Hotel, and the chamber where Sterne slept, when, perhaps, it is little suspected by him or others, that Desseins was rebuilt in the year 1770, two years after Sterne's death. The writer has corrected this mistake in a recent number of the Athenæum.

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knowledge, he must have been a very agreeable performer. Thus it is that Mr. Shandy speaks "in the sweetest modulation," and took down his hat with "gentlest movement of limbs that ever affliction harmonized and attuned together." So, when Phutatorius broke out into his various exclamatives, compounded of "amazement" and "bodily pain," a skilful observer could distinguish the two tones as plainly as a third or a fifth, or any other chord in music," and at the same time be puzzled; for "the concord was good in itself, but, then, 'twas quite out of the key," which, in the performance of Harpsichord and "Bass Viol," would produce fatal complication. And in that "humming over" of Doctor Homenas' notes for the sermon-where "the modulation's very well," and where there "up-started an air in the middle of it so fine, so rich, so heavenly" there seems to come a reminiscence of an old German symphony or Handelian overture, which, after "spiritless and jejune" bits, do often break into such sublime passages. Even when bearding his daytall" critics must he help himself out with the old-fashioned musical notation, and talk of "braying in G-sol-re-ut, from morning even unto night." Sitting with his Bass Viol between his knees, we can see those spirited words of command upon his music, with which the absent composer gives the signal for musical battle. "Just Heaven! how does the poco pice and the poco meno of the Italian artists The slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the fiddlestick, give the true swell, the true pleasure!" which shows that Mr. Sterne had penetrated to the true secret of refined musical enjoyment. One such glimpse do we actually obtain, and for a moment see the music on his desk. "Which must have been played off like the Sixth of Aviso Scarlatti.'-con furia-like mad." Grant me patience," he continues, aiming a sly stroke at certain musical affectations, "what has con furia, con strepito, or any other hurly-burly word whatever to do with harmony?" Often did the parlour at Sutton echo to the dismal groans of the "Bass Viol" as it was screwed to the fitting pitch

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before attacking "Aviso Scarlatti's" Sixth.

Among the last of those little tender offices with which the Bramin made himself so busy, for Eliza, then embarking on board the "Earl of Chatham" Indiaman, was the getting her piano, "tuned by Zumps," up to the C string of her guitar. Such an instrument to be presented long after to his daughter Lydia, when she became an accomplished little slut ;" and was very careful in his directions that it should have the proper chords. "It must be strung, with catgut," he writes, "and five chords." Then airing his Italian a little, he adds, "si chiama in Italiano la chitera di cinque corde," and " some musical body" must be got to buy it for her.

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Even in his sermon on the Houses of Mourning and of Feasting, he cannot forbear a sly allusion to his favourite instrument; and among the temptations of society, ready to ensnare the good man, reckons harmony-"When music likewise has lent her aid and tried her power upon his passions; when the voice of singing men and singing women with the sound of the viol," are joining in the seduction. The Croft family, and other houses to whom the Bass Viol would be brought that evening, must have exchanged a meaning glance. Another Sunday, contrasting truth and falsehood:

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Imposture is all dissonance let what master soever of it undertake the part, let him harmonize and modulate it as he may, one tone will contradict another. And while we have ears to hear we shall distinguish it. It is truth only which is consistent and ever in harmony with itself; it sits upon our lips like the natural notes of some melodies, ready to drop out whether we will or no."

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Even when he was travelling sentimentally, ex officio as it were, and was chatting so pleasantly with the Count de Bissie, he must give that nobleman his opinion of French manners in a lively musical metaphor: "I believe, Mons. Compte," said I, "that man has a certain compass as well as an instrument; and that the social and other calls have occasion by turns for every key in it; so that if you begin a note too high or too low, there must be a want either in the upper or the

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