" This is a
captivating little picture; and it no doubt presents traits which may
have impressed themselves early and deeply on the imagination which
was afterwards to give birth to "My Uncle Toby." The simplicity of
nature and the "kindly, sweet disposition" are common to both the
ensign of real life and to the immortal Captain Shandy of fiction; but
the criticism which professes to find traces of Roger Sterne's "rapid
and hasty temper" in my Uncle Toby is compelled to strain itself
considerably. And, on the whole, there seems no reason to believe that
Sterne borrowed more from the character of his father than any
writer must necessarily, and perhaps unconsciously, borrow from his
observation of the moral and mental qualities of those with whom he
has come into most frequent contact.
That Laurence Sterne passed the first eleven years of his life with
such an exemplar of these simple virtues of kindliness, guilelessness,
and courage ever before him, is perhaps the best that can be said
for the lot in which his early days were cast. In almost all other
respects there could hardly have been--for a quick-witted, precocious,
imitative boy--a worse bringing-up.
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