Now it is easy to say that such a letter was written with the hypocritical intention of allaying Mr. Draper's possible suspicions, and certainly the last sentence overshoots the mark. Against the general innocence of Sterne's life there exist, in particular, two damaging bits of evidence--that infamous thing in dog-Latin addressed to the master of the "Demoniacs," whose meaning must have been quite lost upon the daughter who published it, and a pair of brief notes to a woman named Hannah. Of the Latin letter one may say that it was probably written in the exaggerated tone of bravado suitable to its recipient; of both this and the notes one may add that they do not incriminate the later years of Sterne's life. As an offset we now have that extraordinary memorandum in the _Journal to Eliza_, dated April 24, 1767, which states explicitly, and convincingly, that he had led an entirely chaste life for the past fifteen years. It is not requisite, or indeed possible, to enter into the evidence further in this place, but the general inference may be stated with something like assurance: Sterne's relation to Eliza was purely sentimental, as was the case with most of his philandering; at the same time in his earlier years he had probably indulged in a life of pleasure such as was by no means uncommon among the clergy of his day. He was neither quite the lying scoundrel of Thackeray nor the "old flirt" of Bagehot, but a man led into many follies, and many kindnesses also, by an impulsive heart and a worldly philosophy. It is not his immorality that one has to complain of, and the talk in the books on that score is mostly foolishness; it is rather his bad taste. He cannot be much blamed for his estrangement from his wife, and his care for her comfort is not a little to his credit; but he might have refrained from writing to Eliza on the happiness they were to enjoy when the poor woman was dead--as he had already done to Mlle. Fourmantelle, and others, too, it may be. Mrs. Sterne, not long after the departure of Eliza, had written that she was coming over to England, and the _Journal_ for a time is filled with forebodings of the confusion she was to bring with her. One hardly knows whether to smile or drop a tear over the Postscript added after the last regular entry: