spoiled his head, as their ragoûts had done his
stomach."

From London Sterne did not return to Sutton.
Finding a curate for that parish, he went to
reside at his own new curacy of Coxwould, which
he spoke of as "a sweet retirement in comparison
with Sutton." There were few parishioners,
and there were fine friends within reach.
He gave his parsonage there the name of Shandy
Hall, and wrote in it, within the next twelve-
month, the third and fourth volumes of Tristram,
wherewith, when done, he again made his
personal appearance to enjoy the flatteries of his
success among the Londoners. The dinner-
table was his paradise, and for about five weeks
he never dined at home. Dodsley paid three
hundred and eighty pounds for this second
instalment of Tristram, which was received with
equal parts of censure and applause, each of the
strongest. At this time Sterne's map of his
future life was to enjoy every year the London
season, and spend the rest of the year at home
in his parish, racing through two Shandy
volumes. To Stevenson, after his next return to
Coxwould, Sterne wrote that he should have
broken the fall from London to country dulness
by walking about the streets of York for ten
days. "I have not managed my miseries like a
wise man; and if God, for my consolation under
them, had not poured forth the spirit of Shandyism
into me, which will not suffer me to think
for two moments upon any grave subjects, I
would else just now lay down and die."

Two or three days before the next Christmas
appeared the third pair of volumes of Tristram,
issued by new publishers. The story of Le Fever
was among the best of their contents. Sterne
paid the usual visit to London, but he was now
much weakened by the disease of his lungs, and
a journey to the south of France was planned.
He set out first, and his wife and daughter were
to join him at Paris.

In Paris, too, the famous Yorkshire parson
was made much of in the salons as a new sort
of lion, and was in ecstasy at "the delights of
this place, which in the savoir-vivre exceeds all
the places, I believe, in this section of the globe."
But he was not at this time unmindful of his wife
and their young daughter Lydia, who was an
inheritor of his asthma or consumption. He
supplied them freely with accounts of his
adventures, and sent regularly to his bankers for
the letters of his wife. He provided carefully
and affectionately for their journey to him.
"When they joined him and he got to Toulouse,
the new experiences yielded matter for the
seventh volume of Tristram. Mrs. Sterne's
care in the south of France was as much for the
health of her daughter Lydia—probably, too, for
her own—as for that of her husband; and for
her daughter's sake she stayed at Montauban,
he watching carefully over her supply of money,
when Sterne himself returned to England.

So the year ended, and the usual yearly
instalment of Tristram appeared only a few weeks
after time, in January, seventeen 'sixty-five,
containing recollections of his travels, and the
episode of Captain Shandy's love. There was
the usual London season also to enjoy. This
time the Yorkshire parson fell into sentimental
love with, and wrote a strange love-letter to,
Lord Percy's wife, a daughter of Lord Bate:
"Though I had purchased a box-ticket to carry
me to  Miss——'s benefit, yet I know very well,
that was a single line directed to me, to let me
know Lady——would be alone at seven, and
suffer me to spend the evening with her, she
would infallibly see everything verified I have
told her."

Before next winter, his cough and severe
spitting of blood warned him southward, and he
proposed travelling to Italy, and calling by the
way upon his wife and daughter at Moutauban.
The tour that followed was the basis of the
famous Sentimental Journey. That he might
have time for this new work, he wrote that year
but one volume of Tristram, the ninth, and, as it
proved, the last. His wife was ill, but though
widely parted from her, he was attentive to her
comfort, and wrote also many letters of playful
affection to his daughter Lydia.

With the ninth volume of Shandy, Mr. Sterne
made his usual personal appearance in London
society. There appeared also some more sermons
by Mr. Yorick. It was at London in this season
that Sterne met a young married lady, Mrs.
Eliza Draper, about five-and-twenty years old,
whose husband, a counsellor at Bombay, had
sent her home to England with her children for
the safety of her declining health. Of this lady
—his Eliza—Sterne's mind was full when he
was writing his Sentimental Journey. She was
Bramine, and he her Bramin. He made no
secret of his new sentimental passion—with
Sterne in these matters there was a great deal
more vanity than vice—and news of it was taken
to his wife, then at Marseilles, who said only
that "she wished not to be informed." When
the lady's husband wrote for her to return to
India, Mrs. Draper went down to Deal to wait
for the signal of embarkation in the Indiaman
there lying, and it was then that Sterne wrote
to her the love-letters which have been
translated into almost every European language.
He bade her arrange them in chronological
order, and sew them together under a cover. "I
trust they will be a perpetual refuge to thee
from time to time, and that thou wilt (when
weary of fools and uninteresting discourse)
retire and converse an hour with them and me."

Some City friends had warned the lady against
Sterne, and he, resenting this, was desirous that
after her departure she should not write to them,
and thought he had effected his purpose, as he
said to one of his friends, "by a falsity which
Yorick's friendship to the Bramine can only
justify. I wrote her word that the most amiable
of women" (his one good motherly friend, Mrs.
James) "reiterated my request that, she would
not write to them. I said, too, she had concealed
many things for the sake of her peace of
mind, when in fact this was merely a child of
my own brain, made Mrs. James's by adoption,
to enforce the argument I had before urged