CHAPTER IX.


STERNE AS A WRITER.--THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.--DR. FERRIAR'S
"ILLUSTRATIONS."

Everyday experience suffices to show that the qualities which win
enduring fame for books and for their authors are not always those
to which they owe their first popularity. It may with the utmost
probability be affirmed that this was the case with _Tristram Shandy_
and with Sterne. We cannot, it is true, altogether dissociate the
permanent attractions of the novel from those characteristics of it
which have long since ceased to attract at all; the two are united in
a greater or less degree throughout the work; and this being so, it
is, of course, impossible to prove to demonstration that it was the
latter qualities, and not the former, which procured it its immediate
vogue. But, as it happens, it is possible to show that what may be
called its spurious attractions varied directly, and its real merits
inversely, as its popularity with the public of its day. In the
higher qualities of humour, in dramatic vigour, in skilful and subtle
delineation of character, the novel showed no deterioration, but, in
some instances, a marked improvement, as it proceeded; yet the second
instalment was not more popular, and most of the succeeding ones
were distinctly less popular, than the first. They had gained in many
qualities, while they had lost in only the single one of novelty; and
we may infer, therefore, with approximate certainty, that what "took