"I should," he writes, "be exceedingly surprised
to hear that David ever had an unpleasant contention with any man; and
if I should ever be made to believe that such an event had happened,
nothing would persuade me that his opponent was not in the wrong, for
in my life did I never meet with a being of a more placid and gentle
nature; and it is this amiable turn of his character which has given
more consequence and force to his scepticism than all the arguments of
his sophistry." The real truth of the matter was that, meeting Sterne
at Lord Hertford's table on the day when he had preached at the
Embassy Chapel, "David was disposed to make a little merry with the
parson, and in return the parson was equally disposed to make a little
merry with the infidel. We laughed at one another, and the company
laughed with us both." It would be absurd, of course, to identify
Sterne's latitudinarian _bonhomie_ with the higher order of tolerance;
but many a more confirmed and notorious Gallio than the clerical
humourist would have assumed prudish airs of orthodoxy in such a
presence, and the incident, if it does not raise one's estimate of
Sterne's dignity, displays him to us as laudably free from hypocrisy.
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