To some the _Journal_ will be most interesting for the light it sheds upon Sterne’s doings for four months in the last year of his life. By it may be determined the dates of letters and the order of Sterne’s movements in London and then in Yorkshire. It is no doubt a fragment of trustworthy autobiography. To others it may appeal as a Shandean essay. Indeed Sterne himself thought the story of his illness—especially in its first stages—as good as any of the accidents that befell Mr. Tristram Shandy. All will see that the _Journal_ is a sentimental document. For just as in the _Sentimental Journey_, Sterne here lets his fancy play about trivial incidents and trivial things. A cat as well as a donkey may become an emotional theme: “Eating my fowl,” he records for July 8, “and my trouts & my cream & my strawberries, as melancholly as a Cat; for want of you—by the by, I have got one which sits quietly besides me, purring all day to my sorrows—& looking up gravely from time to time in my face, as if she knew my Situation.—how soothable my heart is Eliza, when such little things sooth it! for in some pathetic sinkings I feel even some support from this poor Cat—I attend to her purrings—& think they harmonize me—they are _pianissimo_ at least, & do not disturb me.—poor Yorick! to be driven, w^{th}. all his sensibilities, to these resources—all powerful Eliza, that has had this magic^l. authority over him; to bend him thus to the dust.” With him was always the picture of Eliza, who had sat for him just before going down to Deal. It may have been one of Cosway’s; but we do not know, for it has disappeared along with all other portraits of Mrs. Draper. It rested upon his table as he wrote his daily record of incident and emotion. To it he said his matins and vespers, and felt all his murmurs quieted by the spirit that spoke to him from the “gentle sweet face.” “I’ve been,” he says, “as far as York to day with no Soul with me in my Chase, but y^r. Picture—for it has a _Soul_ I think—or something like one which has talk’d to me, & been the best Company I ever took a Journey with.” He showed the portrait to the Archbishop of York—“his Grace, his Lady and Sister”—and told them “a short but interesting Story” of his “friendship for the original.” It was taken over to Crazy Castle where it went round the table after supper and Eliza’s health with it. And finally, says Sterne, in allusion to the _Sentimental Journey_, “I have brought y^r. name _Eliza!_ and Picture into my work—where they will remain—when you and I are at rest for ever.” But with Sterne sentiment must end in humor; and so came that daring fancy of some Dryasdust commenting in a far distant time on Yorick and Eliza: “Some Annotator,” says Sterne, “or explainer of my works in this place will take occasion to speak of the Friendship w^{ch}. subsisted so long & faithfully betwixt Yorick & the Lady he speaks of—Her Name he will tell the world was Draper—a Native of