" Then he adds the
strange observation, "I might, indeed, solace myself with my wife (who
is come from France), but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental
being, whatever your Lordship may think to the contrary. The world
has imagined because I wrote _Tristram Shandy_ that I was myself more
Shandian than I really ever was. 'Tis a good-natured world we live
in, and we are often painted in divers colours, according to the ideas
each one frames in his head." It would, perhaps, have been scarcely
possible for Sterne to state his essentially unhealthy philosophy of
life so concisely as in this naive passage. The connubial affections
are here, in all seriousness and good faith apparently, opposed to
the sentimental emotions--as the lower to the higher. To indulge the
former is to be "Shandian," that is to say, coarse and carnal; to
devote oneself to the latter, or, in other words, to spend one's
days in semi-erotic languishings over the whole female sex
indiscriminately, is to show spirituality and taste.
Meanwhile, however, that fragile abode of sentimentalism--that frame
which had just been "torn to pieces" by the feelings--was becoming
weaker than its owner supposed.
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