More than a year passed away, when, in July, 1769, a strange report got into the papers: “It is rumoured that the body of Mr. Sterne, the ingenious author of _Tristram Shandy_, which was buried at Marylebone, has been taken up and anatomized by a surgeon at Oxford.” This must have astounded Hall-Stevenson and other jovial Shandeans. It was likely enough to be true. The meanness of his burial, the beggarly account of mourners, was a plain hint to the resurrection-men that here was a subject not likely to be watched or inquired after. The remains were certainly “lifted” and disposed of, like the late Mr. Gamp’s, “for the benefit of science.” Mr. Edmund Malone, who had much of his friend Boswell’s taste for small gossip, tells us that he had heard that the body was sent to Cambridge, and sold to a surgeon there for dissection. He adds, that a friend of Sterne’s, coming in during the operations, told him that he at once recognized the features. This was the last outrage that poor Yorick could have dreamed of--worse than what befell his own Slawkenbergius, or the sufferers by the famous Tagliacotian operation. Yet there seems little reason for doubting Malone’s account. There is a third version, which supplies even the name of the anatomist--one Mr. Charles Collignon, B.M. of Trinity, who died in 1785, and who on this occasion had invited some amateur anatomists to see him operate on “a subject” just received from London. After the recognition it was too late to suspend the dissection, which had nearly been completed. It is added that the friend of Mr. Sterne fainted away. So far the tale seems supported. But there is a further bit of evidence, such as it is. In a copy of the _Sentimental Journey_ the owner has written a curious note to the effect that “the Rev. Mr. Green told me that, being at Cambridge a short time after, he saw the skeleton, and had the story confirmed to him by the Professor himself.” Yorick, therefore, besides suffering the original indignity, would seem to have been regularly anatomized or “articulated,” according to the science of Mr. Venus. It might be worth inquiring whether any such skeleton is preserved in the Cambridge museums, private or public.