11 
STERNE, AND HIS TRISTRAM SHANDY. 
By J. LANGFIELD WARD, M.A. January 15th, 1889. 
Lawrence Sterne was born in Ireland in 1713. After wander- 
ing about for some time with his father’s regiment he was placed 
at school at Halifax, and thence proceeded to Cambridge, to 
Jesus College, of which his great-grandfather, Archbishop of 
York, had been master. An uneventful career at Cambridge 
ended with his being ordained a clergyman; he lived at York, 
and became acquainted with a Miss Lumley, whom after a some- 
what romantic courtship of two years he married. This brings 
us to 1741, and he was now 28. A small living, Sutton in the 
Forest, was procured for him, probably through the influence 
of his uncle, Jaques Sterne, Archdeacon of York, a type of the 
political parson, whom the Jacobite troubles of those days 
brought to the front. Of his life during the succeeding 16 or 
17 years we can gather bits of information from his biography, 
and from the story of Parson Yorick in ‘‘ Tristram Shandy.” 
His only surviving child was born in 1747. Before this 
another living, that of Stillington, producing for him £47 a 
year, fell to his lot, and during this time he was busily searching 
among the books of Skelton Castle, or ‘‘ Crazy Castle,” as 
Sterne called it, the residence of a college friend, John Hall 
Stevenson, and was procuring from that search a wonderful 
amount of knowledge of all kinds, which he reproduced in his 
book. It was not till 1759, that he began to turn his thoughts 
to literary work. He published nine volumes of his chief work, 
‘Tristram Shandy,’ his ‘Sentimental Journey,” and six 
volumes of sermons. The first instalments of the book won him 
a name, and he was welcomed in London, and during his stay 
there he was overwhelmed with invitations. He says in his 
letters that he had never dined at home since he arrived, and 
was 14 dinners deep engaged. 
In 1762 he went to France to recruit his health, though we 
were at that time at war with the French. He stayed six months 
at Paris, and after enduring agues at Toulouse and a fever at 
Montpellier, returned to England after an absence of two and a 
half years ; his wife and daughter remained behind, 
