The edition of this series of sermons now lying before
me is numbered the sixth, and its date is 1764; which represents a
demand for a new edition every nine months or so, over a space of
four years. They may, perhaps, have succeeded, too, in partially
reconciling a certain serious-minded portion of the public to the
author. Sterne evidently hoped that they might; for we find him
sending a copy to Warburton, in the month of June, immediately after
the publication of the book, and receiving in return a letter of
courteous thanks, and full of excellent advice as to the expediency
of avoiding scandal by too hazardous a style of writing in the future.
Sterne, in reply, protests that he would "willingly give no offence to
mortal by anything which could look like the least violation of either
decency or good manners;" but--and it is an important "but"--he cannot
promise to "mutilate everything" in _Tristram_ "down to the prudish
humour of every particular" (individual), though he will do his best;
but, in any case, "laugh, my Lord, I will, and as loudly as I can."
And laugh he did, and in such Rabelaisian fashion that the Bishop
(somewhat inconsistently for a critic who had welcomed Sterne on
the appearance of the first two volumes expressly as the "English
Rabelais") remarked of him afterwards with characteristic vigour, in
a letter to a friend, that he fears the fellow is an "irrevocable
scoundrel.
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