To all the complaints and protests which reached him on the subject Sterne would in any case, probably, have been indifferent; but he was soon to receive encouragement which would have more than repaid a man of his temper for twice the number of rebukes.  For London cared nothing for Yorkshire susceptibilities and Yorkshire fears.  Provincial notables might be libelled, and their friends might go in fear of similar treatment, but all that was nothing to “the town,” and Tristram Shandy had taken the town by storm.  We gather from a passage in the letter above quoted that as early as January 30 the book had “gained the very favourable opinion” of Mr. Garrick, afterwards to become the author’s intimate friend; and it is certain that by the time of Sterne’s arrival in London, in March, 1760, Tristram Shandy had become the rage.

To say of this extraordinary work that it defies analysis would be the merest inadequacy of commonplace.  It was meant to defy analysis; it is of the very essence of its scheme and purpose that it should do so; and the mere attempt to subject it systematically to any such process would argue an altogether mistaken conception of the author’s intent.  Its full “official” style and title is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., and it is difficult to say which it contains the less about—­the opinions of Tristram Shandy or the events of his life.  As a matter of fact, its proper description would be “The Opinions of Tristram Shandy’s Father, with some Passages from the Life of his Uncle.”  Its claim to be regarded as a biography of its nominal hero is best illustrated by the fact that Tristram is not born till the third volume, and not breeched till the sixth; that it is not till the seventh that he begins to play any active part in the narrative, appearing then only as a completely colourless and unindividualized figure, a mere vehicle for the conveyance of Sterne’s own Continental impressions de voyage; and that in the last two volumes, which are entirely taken up with the incident of his uncle’s courtship, he disappears from the story altogether.  It is to be presumed, perhaps, though not very confidently, that the reader would have seen more of him if the tale had been continued; but how much or how little is quite uncertain.  The real hero of the book is at the outset Mr. Shandy, senior, who is, later on, succeeded in this place of dignity by my Uncle Toby.  It not only served Sterne’s purpose to confine himself mainly to these two characters, as the best whereon to display his powers, but it was part of his studied eccentricity to do so.  It was a “point” to give as little as possible about Tristram Shandy in a life of Tristram Shandy; just as it was a point to keep the reader waiting throughout the year 1760 for their hero to be so much as born.  In the first volume, therefore, the author does literally everything but make the slightest progress with his story.  Starting off