Sterne's demands for sympathy in that department of his life and art,
one may say without the least hesitation that they would have been
beyond the power of any one woman, however distinguished a disciple of
the "Laura Matilda" school, to satisfy. "I must ever," he frankly
says in one of the "Yorick to Eliza" letters, "I must ever have some
Dulcinea in my head: it harmonizes the soul;" and he might have added
that he found it impossible to sustain the harmony without frequently
changing the Dulcinea. One may suspect that Mrs. Sterne soon had cause
for jealousy, and it is at least certain that several years before
Sterne's emergence into notoriety their estrangement was complete. One
daughter was born to them in 1745, but lived scarcely mare than long
enough to be rescued from the _limbus infantium_ by the prompt
rites of the Church. The child was christened Lydia, and died on the
following day. Its place was filled in 1747 by a second daughter, also
christened Lydia, who lived to become the wife of M. de Medalle, and
the not very judicious editress of the posthumous "Letters." For
her as she grew up Sterne conceived a genuine and truly fatherly
affection, and it is in writing to her and of her that we see him at
his best; or rather one might say it is almost only then that we can
distinguish the true notes of the heart through that habitual falsetto
of sentimentalism which distinguishes most of Sterne's communications
with the other sex.
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