respect with the two other great humourists who have been the
worst offenders in the same way. In one of those highly interesting
criticisms of English literature which, even when they most
conspicuously miss the mark, are so instructive to Englishmen, M.
Taine has instituted an elaborate comparison--very much, I need hardly
say, to the advantage of the latter--between the indecency of Swift
and that of Rabelais--that "good giant," as his countryman calls him,
"who rolls himself joyously about on his dunghill, thinking no evil."
And no doubt the world of literary moralists will always be divided
upon the question--one mainly of national temperament--whether mere
animal spirits or serious satiric purpose is the best justification
for offences against cleanliness. It is, of course, only the former
theory, if either, which could possibly avail Sterne, and it would
need an unpleasantly minute analysis of this characteristic in his
writings to ascertain how far M. Taine's eloquent defence of Rabelais
could be made applicable to his case. But the inquiry, one is glad
to think, is as unnecessary as it would be disagreeable; for,
unfortunately for Sterne, he must be condemned on a _quantitative_
comparison of indecency, whatever may be his fate when compared
with these other two great writers as regards the quality of their
respective transgressions. There can be no denying, I mean, that
Sterne is of all writers the most permeated and penetrated with
impurity of thought and suggestion; that in no other writer is its
latent presence more constantly felt, even if there be any in whom
it is more often openly obtruded. The unclean spirit pursues him
everywhere, disfiguring his scenes of humour, demoralizing his
passages of serious reflection, debasing even his sentimental
interludes. His coarseness is very often as great a blot on his art as
on his morality--a thing which can very rarely be said of either Swift
or Rabelais; and it is sometimes so distinctly fatal a blemish from