We
have little reason, it is true, to suppose that this light-minded
and valetudinarian Yorkshire parson was at any period of his life an
industrious "parish priest;" but it is probable, nevertheless, that
time never hung very heavily upon his hands. In addition to the
favourite amusements which he enumerates in the Memoir, he was all
his days addicted to one which is, perhaps, the most absorbing of
all--flirtation. Philandering, and especially philandering of the
Platonic and ultra-sentimental order, is almost the one human
pastime of which its votaries never seem to tire; and its constant
ministrations to human vanity may serve, perhaps, to account for their
unwearied absorption in its pursuit. Sterne's first love affair--an
affair of which, unfortunately, the consequences were more lasting
than the passion--took place immediately upon his leaving Cambridge.
To relate it as he relates it to his daughter: "At York I became
acquainted with your mother, and courted her for two years. She owned
she liked me, but thought herself not rich enough or me too poor to
be joined together. She went to her sister's in Staffordshire, and I
wrote to her often.
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