BOOKS.
FRENCH STUDIES ON STERNE AND ()TWAY.*
Fon many years now English literature has enjoyed in France the benefit of really appreciative criticism. The articles of M. Philarete Charles, afterwards those of M. Emile Montegut, in the Deux Mondes, on the principal writers and the works most en vogue amongst us, have generally surpassed in ability and truthfulness all but a very small number of the literary judgments passed in England on the same subjects. M. Taine has made of English literature the subject of one of his best works,—many would say, his masterpiece hitherto. The works before us afford a further proof of the interest taken by our neighbours in the literature of our country.
Of the two works in question, that of M. de Grisy on Otway- a thesis for the doctorate in letters—may be most briefly dismissed. It is careful, and shows an intimate knowledge of modern dramatic literature. But the subject was hardly worth the pains which he has taken with it. In this busy nineteenth century, with Ireland undergoing a complete social and religious reconstitu- tion, we really do not care to read 216 somewhat closely printed pages about a second-rate dramatist like Otway, whose life itself, so little can be told of it, scarcely fills three or four. Even if, as Englishmen, we could execute Lord Castlereagh's metaphor, and turn our backs upon ourselves, the very echoes of the French ple-biscite rumbling in the distance would drown the ring of Otway's declamation, translated into M. de Grisy's French. We cannot, indeed, but regret that the writer, who really seems to know English, should still be so absurd as to talk of Shakespeare as the " immortel William." Would he designate Corneille as " l'immortel Pierre," or Racine as " l'immortel Jean "? We feel surprised that he should treat " Jacobite " as synonymous with Royalist, and speak of "1a frivolite Jacobite, aide° par lea lettres que Charles II. soumet a son absolutisme." We feel pro- voked that be should persistently write " Wicherly." We will not grudge him his judgment on Otway,—that there was in him "more than the beginning of a poet, nay, a whole poet, whom evil times and the hand of death mowed down before the hour of his maturity." But the next time he has to speak with us at such length, we hope he may have something more interesting to talk about.
M. Stapler's work contains less matter in a bigger volume than M. de Grisy's, but its subject is more attractive, the writer wields a more practised and brilliant pen, and he claims, moreover, to enrich our literature with a hitherto unpublished fragment by his author. He frankly confesses, indeed, in his preface that the account he gives of it is not likely to satisfy any one. One of his friends, Vice-Principal of Elizabeth College, Guernsey, being two years ago at York at the house of a lady friend, was told by her that she possessed an unpublished essay in Sterne's handwriting. He examined it, and obtained permission to borrow it for M. Stapler, who was then preparing his book, and who returned it after taking a copy, intending eventually to ask from its owner a written account of the history of the MS. But the lady in ques- tion has since then fallen into a state of healtewhich estops all correspondence with her, and the MS. can no longer be seen. It is unsigned, but M. Stapfer declares that the handwriting, which is very clear and firm, is identical with Sterne's.
On the whole, we see no reason for doubting in anywise M. Stapler's story. The question is one substantially of internal evidence. The fragment, which makes up seventeen loosely printed pages of M. Stapler's work, and is dedicated "to Mr. Cook," consists of a jets d'esprit founded palpably on Fontenelle's Plurality of TVorlds, but which recalls also directly, RES M. Stapler well observes, the pages of Pascal on the Two Infinites. Walking in the orchard by starlight, the writer has been speculating on "the sublime notions of the modern philosophy, which makes the earth to be of the nature of a planet, moving round the sun, and supposes all the fixed stars to be suns in their respective systems, each of them surrounded, like this of ours, by a quire of planets." Why may not all these planets be inhabited? "Has not the microscope given us sensible evidence of a vast number of new worlds 9 We are situate on a kind of isthmus, which separates two infinities." It is hard to say "whether the solar system or a drop of pepper water affords a nobler subject of con- templation. . . . By a different conformation of its senses a * Laurence Sterne, Jes Personae et sex Outrages: Etude priced& dun Fragment midst de Sterne. Par Paul Stapier. Paris: Ernest Thorin. 1870.
Etude sur Thomas Otway : These presentee a la Faeulti des Lettra de Park. Par A, de Orley, Demur en Droll. Paris; Erwin Thermo. 1868.
creature might be made to apprehend any given portion of space as greater or less in any proportion than it appears to us. . . . I doubt not also but that by a different conformation of the brain a creature might be made to apprehend any given portion of time as greater or less in any proportion than it appears to us. . . .
The vigour with which the mind acts does no way depend on the bulk of the body. • . . I can imagine that 1 might possess all the same mental powers and capacities, and exert as vigorous acts of thinking and willing as I now do, though my body were no bigger than the millionth part of a grain of sand." After speculating for some time in this way under a plum-tree, our philosopher deems it time to go to bed. Here he dreams himself into "a new state of being," in a "vast and commodious world," the heavens of which are enlightened "with abundance of smaller luminaries resembling stars, and one glaring one resembling the moon," but fixed and with no apparent motion. A dimmer light was given by a different "set of luminaries" or "second stars," various in magnitude and form, some crescent-shaped, others round. "Besides these, there were several luminous streaks running across the heavens like our Milky Way, and many vari- able glimmerings like our North Lights." The natural philosophy of this new world teaches that the world is "fiat, immensely ex- tended in every way," with the sky "spread over it like a tent." Travelling, however, to a foreign country in quest of knowledge, our reader finds by degrees a considerable alteration in the heavens, sees the "luminaries gradually set, and a" huge dusky veil, like a cloud
only tinselled over with a faint glimmer of light," rise, till it sets in turn ; then stars arise again, and the traveller comes again to the same country, and is convinced that the world is round. He is at first persecuted for his pains, then laughed at when he proceeds to draw certain new conclusions, as that the "second stars" shine with light borrowed from the great one ; that the heavenly bodies are many of them as large even as the world he lives on, and the second stars inhabited. From the appearance of a "vast streak of light on the edge of the dusky veil," he is led to predict the coming of some vast luminary, which would "enlighten the world with surprising splendour." But there begins "to be heard all over the world a huge noise and fragor in the skies, as if all nature was approaching to her dissolu- tion." The stars seem "torn from their orbits," and "wander at random through the heavens," and some are by degrees "lost in the great dark veil." All is "consternation, horror, and amaze ;" no less is expected "than an universal wreck of nature." Suddenly he awakes, and ordinary existence seems to him "so small and so inconsiderable" that he can hardly believe that the present is not a dream. He hurries into the orchard, and "by a sort of natural instinct" makes for the plum-tree. It is sun-rise, and "a brisk gale of wind "is abroad. He remembers a hint of Fontenel le's, "that the blue on plums is no other than an immense number of living creatures ;" recognizes in the clusters of plums the "constellations of second stars" of his dream, except that some few were wanting, which he had himself seen fall. The "luminous streaks running across the heavens" were the branches ; the "variable glimmer- ings" like Northern Lights were the playing of the leaves in the moonbeams. The "great dusky veil" was the earth, which he had beheld from the under surface of his plum-world. The "vast streak of light" was the daybreak, the " fragor " that of the wind. "The time will come when the powers of heaven shall be shaken, and the stars shall fall like the fruit of a tree when it is shaken by a mighty wind."
It seems to us impossible to doubt that this fee d'esprit is good eighteenth-century writing by a first-rate author of the time, and we cannot therefore but be thankful to M. Stapfer for publishing it, whether it be Sterne's or not. If it be his, we should say that it must be an early work, if not his earliest, and interesting accordingly. It is too elaborate and consecutive to our taste for the style of his later days, and, if his, must belong to a period before the Shandyish manner had been assumed. The handwriting, " d'une nettete et d'une fermet6 remarquable," would entirely tally with the view of its being a work of his youth, before his health broke down. And until the contrary be shown, we see no reason for doubting the genuineness of the fragment. The hypothesis of its early date would, indeed, explain the fact of its having lain so long unpublished, since whatever he wrote in later days would be at once snapped up by the publishers. That it should have remained at York, Sterne's chief resort, till Tristram Shandy, first published at York itself, sent him straight into the highest and most brilliant London society,—probably with some friend to whom he had handed it over, and from whose hands he did not afterwards care to recall it,--seems perfectly natural. Cannot "Mr. Cook," to whom it is addressed, be identified ? Was
there any prebendary of the name, say, within ten or fifteen years after 1738, when Sterne was presented to the vicarage of Sutton ?
We have dwelt so long upon the fragment that we have no space left for M. Stapfer's work itself. He frankly states that its matter is all in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's " Life " of Sterne (1864), that he has had but to "choose and compose." But most readers will prefer his single volume to Mr. Fitzgerald's two, and deem that he has said quite enough about one whom M. Emile Mont6gut has called "the smallest of men of genius."
M. Stapfer's acquaintance with the English language and litera- ture is extensive and familiar. He has, however, missed the sense of "death-watch " in translating it " l'horloge de Is mort,"—a version which piles a further weight of solemnity on the poor little beetle's shell. And he certainly is not fair in charging upon poor Smollett whatever Sterne might choose toafather on his Smell- fungus.
M. Stapfer's work contains many happy, and some remarkable pages. Those in which he supports Sterne's opinion of the seriousness of the French nation are not the least so. We have but space for the last paragraph of the chapter :— " If seriousness, since Malherbe's time, becomes more and more characteristic of our literature and of our language, does not gaiety become less and less the mood of our society ? Hero the word ' serious ' is no longer sufficient, it ceases even to be correct ; the French are sad at bottom. You see them in crowds and always in motion hastening wherever there is amusement ; you hear their bursts of noisy joy, and you exclaim, 'What a gay people ! ' But do you not see that they are trying to stun themselves ? How should they not be and? After a century of successive interminable revolutions, of shakings and mininga of old faiths, their horizon in this life remains uncertain and storm- charged, the heavenly horizons are more and more blotted out from before their eyes. Our grandfathers, whom Sterne found so serious, had for being grave motives quite similar to those of their grand- children."
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