whom is said to have been his publisher Becket, and the other probably
Mr. James; and, thus duly neglected by the whole crowd of boon
companions, the remains of Yorick were consigned to the "new
burying-ground near Tyburn" of the parish of St. George's, Hanover
Square. In that now squalid and long-decayed grave-yard, within sight
of the Marble Arch and over against the broad expanse of Hyde Park,
is still to be found a tombstone inscribed with some inferior lines to
the memory of the departed humourist, and with a statement, inaccurate
by eight months, of the date of his death, and a year out as to his
age. Dying, as has been seen, on the 18th of March, 1768, at the age
of fifty-four, he is declared on this slab to have died on the 13th of
November, aged fifty-three years. There is more excuse, however, for
this want of veracity than sepulchral inscriptions can usually plead.
The stone was erected by the pious hands of "two brother Masons," many
years, it is said, after the event which it purports to record; and
from the wording of the epitaph which commences, "Near this place
lyes the body," &c., it obviously does not profess to indicate--what,
doubtless, there was no longer any means of tracing--the exact spot in
which Sterne's remains were laid. But, wherever the grave really was,
the body interred in it, according to the strange story to which I
have referred, is no longer there. That story goes: that two days
after the burial, on the night of the 24th of March, the corpse was
stolen by body-snatchers, and by them disposed of to M. Collignon,
Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge; that the Professor invited a few
scientific friends to witness a demonstration, and that among these
was one who had been acquainted with Sterne, and who fainted with
horror on recognizing in the already partially dissected "subject" the
features of his friend. So, at least, this very gruesome and Poe-like
legend runs; but it must be confessed that all the evidence which
Mr. Fitzgerald has been able to collect in its favour is of the very