LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.

(1738-1759.)

Great writers who spring late and suddenly from obscurity into fame
and yet die early, must always form more or less perplexing subjects
of literary biography. The processes of their intellectual and
artistic growth lie hidden in nameless years; their genius is not
revealed to the world until it has reached its full maturity, and many
aspects of it, which, perhaps, would have easily explained themselves
if the gradual development had gone on before men's eyes, remain
often unexplained to the last. By few, if any, of the more celebrated
English men of letters is this observation so forcibly illustrated as
it is in the case of Sterne: the obscure period of his life so greatly
exceeded in duration the brief season of his fame, and its obscurity
was so exceptionally profound. He was forty-seven years of age when,
at a bound, he achieved celebrity; he was not five-and-fifty when he
died. And though it might be too much to say that the artist sprang,
like the reputation, full-grown into being, it is nevertheless true
that there are no marks of positive immaturity to be detected even in
the earliest public displays of his art. His work grows, indeed, most
marvellously in vividness and symmetry as he proceeds, but there
are no visible signs of growth in the workman's skill. Even when the
highest point of finish is attained we cannot say that the hand is any
more cunning than it was from the first. As well might we say that the
last light touches of the sculptor's chisel upon the perfected statue
are more skilful than its first vigorous strokes upon the shapeless
block.