Sterne and Hall were distant
cousins, and it may have been the tie of consanguinity which first
drew them together. But there was evidently a thorough congeniality of
the most unlucky sort between them; and from their first meeting, as
undergraduates at Jesus, until the premature death of the elder, they
continued to supply each other's minds with precisely that sort of
occupation and stimulus of which each by the grace of nature stood
least in need. That their close intimacy was ill-calculated to raise
Sterne's reputation in later years may be inferred from the fact
that Hall Stevenson afterwards obtained literary notoriety by the
publication of _Crazy Tales_, a collection of comic but extremely
broad ballads, in which his clerical friend was quite unjustly
suspected of having had a hand. Mr. Hall was also reported,
whether truly or falsely, to have been a member of Wilkes's famous
confraternity of Medmenham Abbey; and from this it was an easy step
for gossip to advance to the assertion that the Rev. Mr. Sterne had
himself been admitted to that unholy order.
Among acquaintances which the young sizar of Jesus might have more
profitably made at Cambridge, but did not, was that of a student
destined, like himself, to leave behind him a name famous in English
letters.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34