loosest and vaguest description. On the other hand, it is, of course,
only fair to recollect that, in days when respectable surgeons and
grave scientific professors had to depend upon the assistance of
law-breakers for the prosecution of their studies and teachings, every
effort would naturally be made to hush up any such unfortunate affair.
There is, moreover, independent evidence to the fact that similar
desecrations of this grave-yard had of late been very common; and
that at least one previous attempt to check the operations of the
"resurrection-men" had been attended with peculiarly infelicitous
results. In the _St. James's Chronicle_ for November 26, 1767, we find
it recorded that "the Burying Ground in Oxford Road, belonging to the
Parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, having been lately robbed of
several dead bodies, a Watcher was placed there, attended by a
large mastiff Dog; notwithstanding which, on Sunday night last, some
Villains found means to steal out another dead Body, and carried off
the very Dog." Body-snatchers so adroit and determined as to contrive
to make additional profit out of the actual means taken to prevent
their depredations, would certainly not have been deterred by any
considerations of prudence from attempting the theft of Sterne's
corpse. There was no such ceremony about his funeral as would lead
them to suppose that the deceased was a person of any importance,
or one whose body could not be stolen without a risk of creating
undesirable excitement. On the whole, therefore, it is impossible
to reject the body-snatching story as certainly fabulous, though
its truth is far from being proved; and though I can scarcely myself
subscribe to Mr. Fitzgerald's view, that there is a "grim and lurid
Shandyism" about the scene of dissection, yet if others discover an
appeal to their sense of humour in the idea of Sterne's body being
dissected after death, I see nothing to prevent them from holding that
hypothesis as a "pious opinion."