Text marked #like this# was printed in blackletter (“Gothic”) type. Nested _lines_ represent emphatic Roman text within Italic body text. The notation [-->] represents a pointing finger. The editor’s Introduction says: No attempt has been made to correct any oddities of spelling that are not clearly mere misprints. The same principle was used in the e-text. Unless otherwise noted, spelling, punctuation and capitalization are as in the original. Typographical errors are listed at the end of the text. Footnotes are numbered by Book, and are shown at the end of each chapter. All footnotes to the word “volume” have the same text. Except for footnotes and similar obvious additions, all brackets are in the original.] Everyman’s Library Edited By Ernest Rhys FICTION TRISTRAM SHANDY With An Introduction By GEORGE SAINTSBURY This is No. 617 of _EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY_. The Publishers will be pleased to send freely to all applicants a list of the published and projected volumes, arranged under the following sections: Travel * Science * Fiction Theology & Philosophy History * Classical For Young People Essays * Oratory Poetry & Drama Biography Reference Romance [Decoration] In four styles of binding: Cloth, Flat Back, Coloured Top; Leather, Round Corners, Gilt Top; Library Binding in Cloth, & Quarter Pigskin London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd. New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO. [Decorative Text: A TALE WHICH HOLDETH CHILDREN FROM PLAY & OLD MEN FROM THE CHIMNEY CORNER Sir Philip Sidney] [Decorative Text: THE LIFE & OPINIONS of TRISTRAM SHANDY * GENTLEMAN By LAURENCE * STERNE London & Toronto J·M·Dent & Sons Ltd. * New York E·P·Dutton & Co] First Issue of this Edition 1912 Reprinted 1915, 1917 INTRODUCTION It can hardly be said that Sterne was an unfortunate person during his lifetime, though he seems to have thought himself so. His childhood was indeed a little necessitous, and he died early, and in debt, after some years of very bad health. But from the time when he went to Cambridge, things went on the whole very fairly well with him in respect of fortune; his ill-health does not seem to have caused him much disquiet; his last ten years gave him fame, flirting, wandering, and other pleasures and diversions to his heart’s content; and his debts only troubled those he left behind him. He delighted in his daughter; he was able to get rid of his wife, when he was more than usually _fatigatus et aegrotus_ of her, with singular ease. During the unknown, or almost unknown, middle of his life he had friends of the kind most congenial to him; and both in his time of preparation and his time of production in literature, he was able to indulge his genius in a way by no means common with men of letters. If his wish to die in a certain manner and circumstance was only bravado--and borrowed bravado--still it was granted; and it is quite certain that to him an old age of real illness would have been unmitigated torture. Even if we admit the ghastly stories of the fate of his remains, there was very little reason why any one should not have anticipated Mr. Swinburne’s words on the morrow of Sterne’s death and said, “Oh! brother, the gods were good to you,” though even then he might have said it with a sort of mental reservation on the question whether Sterne had been very good to the gods. Nemesis, for the purpose of adjusting things, played him the exceptionally savage trick of using the intervention of his idolised daughter. Little or nothing seems to be known of...