Our exuberant nescience in matters Sternian extends up to the very publication of _Tristram_, as far as the determining causes of its production are concerned. It is true that in passages of the letters Sterne seems to say that his experiment with the pen was prompted by a desire to make good some losses in farming, and elsewhere that he was tired of employing his brains for other people’s advantage, as he had done for some years for an ungrateful person, that is to say, his uncle. This last passage was written just before _Tristram_ came out; but at no time was Sterne a very trustworthy reporter of his own motives, and it would seem that the quarrel with his uncle must have been a good deal earlier. At any rate, the year 1759 seems to have been spent in writing the first two volumes of the book, and _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent._, published by John Hinxham, Stonegate, York, but obtainable also from divers London booksellers, appeared on the 1st of January 1760. I wish Sterne had thought of keeping it till the 1st of April, which he would probably then have done. The comparatively short last scenes of his life were as busy and varied as his long middle course had been outwardly monotonous. Although his book was nominally published at York, he had gone up to London to superintend arrangements for its sale there, perhaps not without a hope of triumph. If so, Fortune chose not to play him her usual tricks. In York, the extreme personality of the book excited interest of a twofold and dubious kind; but, to play on some words of Dryden’s, “London liked grossly” and swallowed _Tristram Shandy_ whole with singular avidity. Its author came to town just in time to enjoy the results of this, and was one of the chief lions of the season of 1760, a position which he enjoyed with a childish frankness that is not the least pleasant thing in his history. One, probably of the least important, though by accident one of the best known of his innumerable flirtations, with a Miss Fourmentelle, was apparently quenched by this distraction when it was on the point of going such lengths that the lady had actually come up alone to London to meet Sterne there. He was introduced to persons as different as Garrick and Warburton, from the latter of whom he received, in rather mysterious circumstances, a present of money. He haunted Ministers and Knights of the Garter; he was overwhelmed with invitations and callers; and, as has been said, he received one very solid present in the shape of the living of Coxwold. _Tristram_ went into a second edition rapidly; its author was enabled to announce a collection of “_Sermons_ by Mr. Yorick” in April; and he went to his new living in the early summer, determined to set to work vigorously on more of the work that had been so fortunate. By the end of the year he was ready with two more volumes, again came up to town, and again, when vols. iii. and iv.