CHAPTER XI.
CREATIVE AND DRAMATIC POWER.--PLACE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Subtle as is Sterne's humour, and true as, in its proper moods, is
his pathos, it is not to these but to the parent gift from which they
sprang, and perhaps to only one special display of that gift, that he
owes his immortality. We are accustomed to bestow so lightly this last
hyperbolic honour--hyperbolic always, even when we are speaking of
a Homer or a Shakspeare, if only we project the vision far enough
forward through time--that the comparative ease with which it is to be
earned has itself come to be exaggerated. There are so many "deathless
ones" about--if I may put the matter familiarly--in conversation and
in literature, that we get into the way of thinking that they are
really a considerable body in actual fact, and that the works which
have triumphed over death are far more numerous still. The real truth,
however, is, that not only are "those who reach posterity a very
select company indeed," but most of them have come much nearer missing
their destiny than is popularly supposed. Of the dozen or score of
writers in one century whom their own contemporaries fondly decree
immortal, one-half, perhaps, may be remembered in the next; while of
the creations which were honoured with the diploma of immortality a
very much smaller proportion as a rule survive.
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