But though the metropolitan success of the book
was destined to be delayed for still a month or two, in York it had
already created a _furore_ in more senses than one. For, in fact,
and no wonder, it had in many quarters given the deepest offence. Its
Rabelaisian license of incident and allusion was calculated to offend
the proprieties--the provincial proprieties especially--even in that
free-spoken age; and there was that in the book, moreover, which a
provincial society may be counted on to abominate, with a keener
if less disinterested abhorrence than any sins against decency. It
contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature
of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and
covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed
to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific
world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this
circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent,
to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects as
to be worth quoting. His correspondent was a Dr. * * * * * (asterisks
for which it is now impossible to substitute letters); and the burden
of what seem to have been several communications in speech and writing
on the subject was the maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
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