“Upon the death of my father,” he writes, “when I was eleven years old, a pile of old account books, letters, common-place books, and other papers of no documentary value was set aside as waste, and placed in a room where I used to play. I looked through the papers, and found the journal and letters. An early fondness for reading had made me acquainted with the well-known extracts from the writings of Sterne—‘The Story of Maria,’ ‘The Sword,’ ‘The Monk,’ ‘Le Fevre,’ and a small book containing the ‘Letters of Yorick and Eliza,’ and finding these names in the letters and book, I took all I could find, and obtained permission to preserve them, and they have been in my possession ever since. How they came into the hands of my father, who was a great reader, and had a large collection of books, I never had any means of knowing.” Mr. Gibbs showed the curious manuscripts to his friends, and in May, 1851, sent a part of them to Thackeray, then at work upon the _English Humourists_. Except for a mention of this incident in a _Roundabout_ (the pages were afterwards suppressed), nothing was publicly known concerning the manuscripts until March, 1878, when Mr. Gibbs read before the Bath Literary Institution a paper on “Some Memorials of Laurence Sterne,” the substance of which was printed in _The Athenæum_ for March 30, 1878. On the death of Mr. Gibbs in 1894, the manuscripts passed under his bequest to the British Museum. They are numbered 34527 among the additional manuscripts acquired in 1894–1899. They contain: 1. The Journal to Eliza. 2. A Letter from Sterne at Coxwold to Mr. and Mrs. James, dated August 10, 1767. 3. A Letter from Sterne at York to Mr. and Mrs. James, dated December 28, 1767. 4. Draft of a Letter from Laurence Sterne to Daniel Draper. 5. A Letter from Elizabeth Draper at Bombay to Anne James, dated April 15, 1772. 6. Two Letters from W. M. Thackeray to J. W. Gibbs dated May 31, and September 12, [1851.] * * * * * About the genuineness of every part of this manuscript material there can be no doubt. The _Journal to Eliza_ and the letters to Mr. and Mrs. James and to Daniel Draper are in Sterne’s own hand-writing. The first letter “has been through the post, and is franked by Lord Fauconberg, the patron of the Coxwold living.” The second letter has also passed through the post. The letter from Mrs. Draper is likewise in her own hand. And to the Thackeray letters have been preserved the original covering envelopes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA.