Still, in the latter half of the eighteenth century is to be traced a continual improvement, which is reflected in contemporary fiction.  As a remarkable example of the change which took place may be mentioned the instance of the Earl of March.  “As Duke of Queensberry, at nearer ninety than eighty years of age, he was still rolling in wealth, still wallowing in sin, and regarded by his countrymen as one whom it was hardly decent to name, because he did not choose, out of respect for the public opinion of 1808, to discontinue a mode of existence which in 1768 was almost a thing of course” among the higher ranks.[188]

[Footnote 184:  Wilson’s “Memoirs of Daniel Defoe.”]

[Footnote 185:  For the diary of Thomas Turner, see “Glimpses of our Ancestors,” by Charles Fleet, pp. 31-52.]

[Footnote 186:  For these manifestations, see Wesley’s “Journal,” and Lecky’s “History of England in the Eighteenth Century,” vol.  II, chap. ix.]

[Footnote 187:  Lecky, “Hist. of England in the 18th Century,” vol. ii, chap. 9.]

[Footnote 188:  See Trevelyan’s “Early History of Charles James Fox,” Harper’s ed., p. 75.]

II.

In 1759, were published the first two volumes of “Tristram Shandy,” a singular and brilliant medley of wit, sentiment, indecency, and study of character.  Laurence Sterne was a profligate clergyman, a dishonest author, and an unfaithful husband.  He wrote “Tristram Shandy,” and he wrote a great many sermons.  He descended to the indulgence of low tastes, and rose to an elevated strain of thought, with equal facility.  He was a man who knew the better and followed the worse.  His talents made him a welcome guest at great men’s tables, where he paid for his dinner by amusing the company with a brilliant succession of witticisms and indecent anecdotes, which, to his hearers, derived an additional piquancy from the fact that they proceeded from the mouth of a divine.  But although the man was in many respects contemptible, although he disgraced his priestly character by his profligacy, and his literary character by a shameless plagiarism,[189] he possessed in a high degree a quality which must give him a distinguished place in English fiction.  His borrowed plumage and his imitation of Rabelais’ style apart, Sterne had originality, a gift at all times rare, and always, perhaps, becoming rarer.  As a humorist, he is to be classed with Fielding and Smollett, but as a novelist, his position in the history of fiction is separate and unique.

“Tristram Shandy” has all the elements of a novel except the plot.  The author has no story to tell.  His aim is to amuse the reader by odd and whimsical remarks on every subject and on every personage whose peculiarities promise material for humor and satire.  Sterne is perpetually digressing, moralizing commenting on every trivial topic which enters into his story, until the story itself is completely