But, in any case, such apologies rather explain how a man came to be bad, than prove that he was not bad. They would show at most that we were making an erroneous inference if we inferred badness of heart from conduct which was not condemned by the standard of his own day. This argument, however, is really inapplicable. Sterne's faults were of a kind for which if anything there was less excuse then than now. The faults of his best known contemporaries, of men like Fielding, Smollett, or Churchill, were the faults of robust temperament with an excess of animal passions. Their coarseness has left a stain upon their pages as it injured their lives. But, however much we may lament or condemn, we do not feel that such men were corrupt at heart. And that, unfortunately, is just what we are tempted to feel about Sterne. When the huge, brawny parson, Churchill, felt his unfitness for clerical life, he pitched his cassock to the dogs and blossomed out in purple and gold. He set the respectabilities at defiance, took up with Wilkes and the reprobates, and roared out full-mouthed abuse against bishops and ministers. He could still be faithful to his friends, observe his own code of honour, and do his best to make some atonement to the victims of his misconduct. Sterne, one feels, differs from Churchill not really as being more virtuous but in not having the courage to be so openly vicious. Unlike Churchill, he could be a consummate sneak. He was quite as ready to flatter Wilkes or to be on intimate terms with atheists and libertines, with Holbach and Crébillon, when his bishop and his parishioners could not see him. His most intimate friend from early days was John Hall Stevenson—the country squire whose pride it was to ape in the provinces the orgies of the monks of Medmenham Abbey, and once notorious as the author of a grossly indecent book. The dog-Latin letter in which Sterne informs this chosen companion that he is weary of his life contains other remarks sufficiently significant of the nature of their intimacy. The age was not very nice; but it was quite acute enough to see the objections to a close alliance between a married ecclesiastic of forty-five[8] and the rustic Don Juan of the district. But his cynicism becomes doubly disgusting when we remember that Sterne was all the time as eager as any patronage hunter to ingratiate himself into the good graces of bishops. Churchill, we remember, lampooned Warburton with savage ferocity. Sterne tried his best to conciliate the most conspicuous prelate of the day. He never put together a more elaborately skilful bit of writing than the letter which he wrote to Garrick, with the obvious intention that it should be shown to Warburton. He humbly says that he has no claim to an introduction, except 'what arises from the honour and respect which, in the progress of my work, will be shown the world I owe so great a man.' The statement was probably meant to encounter a suspicion which