He was obviously
a typical specimen of that class of men who are destitute alike of the
virtues and failings of the "respectable" and successful; whom many
people love and no one respects; whom everybody pities in their
struggles and difficulties, but whom few pity without a smile.
It is evident, however, that he succeeded in winning the affection of
one who had not too much affection of the deeper kind to spare for any
one. The figure of Roger Sterne alone stands out with any clearness by
the side of the ceaselessly flitting mother and phantasmal children of
Laurence Sterne's Memoir; and it is touched in with strokes so vivid
and characteristic that critics have been tempted to find in it
the original of the most famous portrait in the Shandy gallery. "My
father," says Sterne, "was a little, smart man, active to the last
degree in all exercises, most patient of fatigue and disappointments,
of which it pleased God to give him full measure. He was, in his
temper, somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly, sweet disposition,
void of all design, and so innocent in his own intentions, that he
suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times a
day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose.
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