13 
one can defend this, and it is especially hateful, as coming from 
a clergyman, who ought to have known better. But, granting 
these two charges are proved, it remains that we have here a 
book which attracts unbounded admiration from many, and 
which must live, if for no other reason, at all events for a 
character which is almost unapproachable in fiction; I mean 
Uncle Toby. There is no character, even in Shakespeare, that 
ereat delineator of character, whom I would not readily give up 
to preserve for myself that kindly old soldier, upon whom nature 
had written gentleman, with a fair hand in every line of his 
countenance. The people introduced in this “ Life and opinions 
of Tristram Shandy, gentleman,’ are the father of the hero, 
Walter Shandy, a retired merchant ; his brother, Toby Shandy, 
late captain in the army, wounded at the siege of Namur; Mrs. 
Walter Shandy, Corporal Trim (Uncle Toby’s servant), wounded 
at the battle of Landen; Dr. Slop, the country practitioner, an 
instance of Sterne making a personal attack on living persons, for 
in Slop he caricatures Dr. Burton, a York physician ; Widow 
Wadman, and Bridget, her servant, and the servants of Mr. 
Shandy, coachman, housemaid, cook, and foolish fat Scullion ; then 
there is Yorick, the parson of the village, intended to represent 
Sterne, and the hero himself, though his share in the story is 
small, and he remains chiefly in babyhood ; it is not till the 
third volume that he is born, and in the ninth he disappears 
altogether. The beauty of the book lies in the delineation of the 
characters and the humour of the conversations. Mr. Shandy 
was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off busimess for 
some years, and had devoted himself to smoking his pipe, study- 
ing and discoursing on philosophy. Mr. Shandy loved an 
argument ; he loved to lecture; it was a perpetual delight to 
him to sit by his fireside and hurl reasonings good and bad at 
those near, anything so as to rouse discussion ; to attack his 
brother’s weak points, deride military matters, so as to excite 
his attention and provoke a reply. He inveighed against Dr. 
Slop’s religion, to induce him to stand up for his church and its 
followers. He had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slash- 
ing way with him in his disputations (says Sterne), thrusting 
and ripping, and giving every one a stroke to remember him by 
in his turn; that if there were twenty people in company, in 
less than half-an-hour he was sure to have every one against 
him. If there was one post more untenable than the rest, he 
would be-sure to throw himself in, and there he would defend it 
so gallantly that it would have been difficult to turn him out. 
His learned talk contrasts skilfully with the simplicity of his 
brother, the captain, who knows no books but the Bible and 
military treatises, and who never can join in conversation with 
the scholar unless some military phrase happen to be jintro- 
