The readers whom this, the third
instalment of the novel, had begun to repel, were mainly, I imagine,
those who had never felt any intelligent admiration for the former;
who had been caught by the writer's eccentricity, without appreciating
his insight into character and his graphic power, and who had seen no
other aspects of his humour than those buffooneries and puerilities
which, after first amusing, had begun, in the natural course of
things, to weary them.
Meanwhile, however, and with spirits restored by the Southern warmth
to that buoyancy which never long deserted them, Sterne had begun to
set to work upon a new volume. His letters show that this was not
the seventh but the eighth; and Mr. Fitzgerald's conjecture, that
the materials ultimately given to the world in the former volume were
originally designed for another work, appears exceedingly probable.
But for some time after his arrival at Toulouse he was unable, it
would seem, to resume his literary labours in any form. Ever liable,
through his weakly constitution, to whatever local maladies might
anywhere prevail, he had fallen ill, he writes to Hall Stevenson, "of
an epidemic vile fever which killed hundreds about me.
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