unable to trace, but who is addressed in a manner which seems to show
Sterne's anxiety to expel the old flame of Eliza's kindling by a new
one. There is little, indeed, of the sentimentalizing strain in which
he was wont to sigh at the feet of Mrs. Draper, but in its place
there is a freedom of a very prominent, and here and there of a highly
unpleasant, kind. To his friends, Mr. and Mrs. James, too, he writes
frequently during this year, chiefly to pour out his soul on the
subject of Eliza; and Mrs. James, who is always addressed in company
with her husband, enjoys the almost unique distinction of being the
only woman outside his own family circle whom Sterne never approaches
in the language of artificial gallantry, but always in that of simple
friendship and respect.[1] Meanwhile, however, the _Sentimental
Journey_ was advancing at a reasonable rate of speed towards
completion. In July he writes of himself as "now beginning to be truly
busy" on it, "the pain and sorrows of this life having retarded its
progress."

[Footnote 1: To this period of Sterne's life, it may here be remarked,
is to be assigned the dog-Latin letter ("and very sad dog-Latin too")
so justly animadverted upon by Thackeray, and containing a passage
of which Madame de Medalle, it is to be charitably hoped, had no
suspicion of the meaning. Mr. Fitzgerald, through an oversight in
translation, and understanding Sterne to say that he himself, and
not his correspondent, Hall Stevenson, was "quadraginta et plus annos
natus," has referred it to an earlier date. The point, however, is of
no great importance, as the untranslatable passage in the letter would
be little less unseemly in 1754 or 1755 than in 1768, at the beginning
of which year, since the letter is addressed from London to Hall
Stevenson, then in Yorkshire, it must, in fact, have been written.]