" The wrongs which were
supposed to have broken Yorick's heart are most imperfectly specified
(a comic proof, by the way, of Sterne's entire absorption in himself,
to the confusion of his own personal knowledge with that of the
reader), and the first conditions of enlisting the reader's sympathies
are left unfulfilled.
But it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes
itself upon the strictly narrative and dramatic parts of his work;
and, next to the abiding charm and interest of his principal figure,
it is by the admirable life and colour of his scenes that he exercises
his strongest powers of fascination over a reader. Perpetual as
are Sterne's affectations, and tiresome as is his eternal
self-consciousness when he is speaking in his own person, yet when
once the dramatic instinct fairly lays hold of him there is no writer
who ever makes us more completely forget him in the presence of his
characters--none who can bring them and their surroundings, their
looks and words, before us with such convincing force of reality.
One wonders sometimes whether Sterne himself was aware of the high
dramatic excellence of many of what actors would call his "carpenter's
scenes"--the mere interludes introduced to amuse us while the stage is
being prepared for one of those more elaborate and deliberate displays
of pathos or humour, which do not always turn out to be unmixed
successes when they come.
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