CHAPTER VIII.


LAST DAYS AND DEATH.

(1768.)

The end was now fast approaching. Months before, Sterne had written
doubtfully of his being able to stand another winter in England, and
his doubts were to be fatally justified. One can easily see, however,
how the unhappy experiment came to be tried. It is possible that he
might have delayed the publication of his book for a while, and taken
refuge abroad from the rigours of the two remaining winter months,
had it not been in the nature of his malady to conceal its deadly
approaches. Consumption sported with its victim in the cruel fashion
that is its wont. "I continue to mend," Sterne writes from Bond Street
on the first day of the new year, "and doubt not but this with all
other evils and uncertainties of life will end for the best." And
for the best perhaps it did end, in the sense in which the resigned
Christian uses these pious words; but this, one fears, was not the
sense intended by the dying man. All through January and February he
was occupied not only with business, but as it would seem with a fair
amount, though less, no doubt, than his usual share, of pleasure also.
Vastly active was he, it seems, in the great undertaking of obtaining
tickets for one of Mrs. Cornely's entertainments--the "thing" to go to
at that particular time--for his friends the Jameses. He writes them
on Monday that he has not been a moment at rest since writing the
previous day about the Soho ticket. "I have been at a Secretary of
State to get one, have been upon one knee to my friend Sir George