upon for such a benevolent action. I wrote to her a fortnight ago,
and told her what, I trust, she will find in you. Mr. James will be a
father to her.... Commend me to him, as I now commend you to
that Being who takes under his care the good and kind part of the
world. Adieu, all grateful thanks to you and Mr. James.

"From your affectionate friend, L. STERNE."

This pathetic death-bed letter is superscribed "Tuesday." It seems to
have been written on Tuesday, the 15th of March, and three days later
the writer breathed his last. But two persons, strangers both, were
present at his deathbed, and it is by a singularly fortunate chance,
therefore, that one of these--and he not belonging to the class of
people who usually leave behind them published records of the events
of their lives--should have preserved for us an account of the closing
scene. This, however, is to be found in the Memoirs of John Macdonald,
"a cadet of the house of Keppoch," at that time footman to Mr.
Crawford, a fashionable friend of Sterne's. His master had taken a
house in Clifford Street in the spring of 1768; and "about this time,"
he writes, "Mr. Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the
silk-bag shop in Old Bond Street. He was sometimes called Tristram
Shandy and sometimes Yorick, a very great favourite of the gentlemen.
One day"--namely, on the aforesaid 18th of March--"my master had
company to dinner who were speaking about him--the Duke of Roxburghe,
the Earl of March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr.
Garrick, Mr. Hume, and a Mr. James." Many, if not most, of the party,
therefore, were personal friends of the man who lay dying in the
street hard by, and naturally enough the conversation turned on his
condition. "'John,' said my master," the narrative continues, "'go and
inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.'" Macdonald did so; and, in language