This Week's Books
overtly, at all events, a reasonably faithful husband ; and yet one who in writing to an occasional female flame would copy for her love-letters originally addressed to his wife (a pity to
waste good material) ; withal a man who retained worthy friends like Garrick, Beauclerk, and Sir George Macartney ; and finally, in all he wrote, a consummate artist. If we are ev, r to come near making up our minds about him, it is perhaps through his letters that we shall do so, and Mr. Brimley Johnson gives us an opportunity by submitting in The Letters of Laurence Sterne (Lane, 6s.) a selection of 89 out of the 172 definitely authenticated by an American critic to Yorick. " Everything of the man," says Mr. Johnson, " may be seen in his own letters," for they are " manifestly sincere." But can we be sure of this with a man who " could not feel or think without playing a part—to himself ? " Mr. Johnson may like to correct an obvious error on p. 15. Sterne died in 1768, not 1798, and the account of his death-bed (" ' Now it is come.' He put up his hand as to stop a blow and died in a minute ") was written by John Macdonald, a Highland gentleman who was in the-service of John Craufurd of Errol, and not by " one John Jackson, Fish Crawford's footman." * * * *
Previous page
