The compliments
which courteous Frenchmen had paid the author upon his former work,
and which his simple vanity had swallowed whole and unseasoned,
without the much-needed grain of salt, might, no doubt, have been
repeated to him with far greater sincerity as regards the _Sentimental
Journey_, had he lived to receive them. Had any Frenchman told him a
year or two afterwards that the latter work was "almost as much known
in Paris as in London, at least among men of condition and learning,"
he would very likely have been telling him no more than the truth. The
_Sentimental Journey_ certainly acquired what _Tristram Shandy_ never
did--a European reputation. It has been translated into Italian,
German, Dutch, and even Polish; and into French again and again.
The French, indeed, have no doubt whatever of its being Sterne's
_chef-d'oeuvre_; and one has only to compare a French translation of
it with a rendering of _Tristram Shandy_ into the same language to
understand, and from our neighbours' point of view even to admit, the
justice of their preference. The charms of the _Journey_, its grace,
wit, and urbanity, are thoroughly congenial to that most graceful of
languages, and reproduce themselves readily enough therein; while,
on the other hand, the fantastic digressions, the elaborate
mystifications, the farcical interludes of the earlier work, appear
intolerably awkward and _bizzare_ in their French dress; and, what
is much more strange, even the point of the _double entendres_ is
sometimes unaccountably lost.
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