“After a vile suspension of three weeks, we are beginning with our comedies and operas.  Yours I hear never flourished more; here the comic actors were never so low; the tragedians hold up their heads in all senses.  I have known one little man support the theatrical world like a David Atlas upon his shoulders, but Preville can’t do half as much here, though Mad.  Clairon stands by him and sets her back to his.  She is very great, however, and highly improved since you saw her.  She also supports her dignity at table, and has her public day every Thursday, when she gives to eat (as they say here) to all that are hungry and dry.  You are much talked of here, and much expected, as soon as the peace will let you.  These two last days you have happened to engross the whole conversation at the great houses where I was at dinner.  ’Tis the greatest problem in nature in this meridian that one and the same man should possess such tragic and comic powers, and in such an equilibrio as to divide the world for which of the two Nature intended him.”

And while on this subject of the stage let us pause for a moment to glance at an incident which connects Sterne with one of the most famous of his French contemporaries.  He has been asked “by a lady of talent,” he tells Garrick, “to read a tragedy, and conjecture if it would do for you.  ’Tis from the plan of Diderot; and, possibly, half a translation of it:  The Natural Son, or the Triumph of Virtue, in five acts.  It has too much sentiment in it (at least for me); the speeches too long, and savour too much of preaching.  This may be a second reason it is not to my taste—­’tis all love, love, love throughout, without much separation in the characters.  So I fear it would not do for your stage, and perhaps for the very reason which recommends it to a French one.”  It is curious to see the “adaptator cerebrosuga” at work in those days as in these; though not, in this instance, as it seems, with as successful results. The Natural Son, or the Triumph of Virtue, is not known to have reached either English readers or English theatrical audiences.  The French original, as we know, fared scarcely better.  “It was not until 1771,” says Diderot’s latest English biographer, “that the directors of the French Comedy could be induced to place Le Fils Naturel on the stage.  The actors detested their task, and, as we can well believe, went sulkily through parts which they had not taken the trouble to master.  The public felt as little interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after one or two representations, it was put aside.[1]”

[Footnote 1:  Morley:  Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, ii. 305.]