Journey—which I hope to lay at your feet, as a small (but a very honest) testimony of the constant truth, &c.…”

In a letter of November 12th to the same friends, there is an important declaration of his intentions in writing this book:

“My Sentimental Journey will please Mrs. James, and my Lydia—I can answer for those two. It is a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for some time past—I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do—so it runs most upon those gentler passions and affections, which aid so much to it.”

On November 19th he writes (to A. Lee):

“I am in earnest at my sentimental work”;

and on November 28th (to the Earl of Shelburne):

“ ’Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank your Lordship for your letter of enquiry about Yorick—he has worn out both his spirits and body with the Sentimental Journey—’tis true that an author must feel himself, or his reader will not—but I have torn my whole frame into pieces by my feelings—” … “I hope my book will please you, my Lord, and then my labour will not be totally in vain. If it is not thought a chaste book, mercy on them that read it, for they must have warm imaginations indeed!—”

On November 15th (to Mrs. H.) he writes:

“But I have something else for you which I am fabricating at a great rate, and that is my Sentimental Journey, which shall make you cry as much as it has affected me—or I will give up the business of sentimental writing—and write to the body—”

And finally on December 3rd to Sir G. Macartney:

“In three weeks I shall kiss your hand—and sooner, if I can finish my Sentimental Journey.”

Sterne must have taken his manuscript to London before the end of the year, and seen it very expeditiously through the press, for it was published on February 24th or 25th, 1768.

Sterne died on March 18th of the same year. For some time he had been living on his store of nervous energy, and now that the Journey was safely delivered to the public, he quickly disintegrated. We know from the Journal to Eliza that in June of the previous year he had somehow, innocently, contracted a venereal disease, and both the Journal and his letters of this year frequently refer to outbreaks of hæmorrhage of the lungs. There seems to be little doubt that all during these last few months, which include the period of the composition of the Sentimental Journey, Sterne was suffering from an advanced form of consumption. The immediate cause of his death was influenza, followed by pleurisy, and for these ailings his anæmic frame was mercilessly bled. There is no need to dwell on his end; it is sufficient for our present purposes to realise that the Sentimental Journey was the work of a sick man. It is true that during the actual composition of it he was living in the peace and calm of Coxwold, and enjoying the fruits of that vale of plenty. We probably owe the Sentimental Journey to the fact that Sterne lived in one of the few districts in England where good food and good cooking were established by nature and by tradition. But he was a sick man, and the hectic note of the Journal is sufficient evidence of it. It is so much the more remarkable that the Journey shows no trace of this physical anguish; there all is sweet light and imperturbable humour, and the very excess of sentiment seems to denote a state of well-being, rather than to cloak a waste of spirit.

II