a steady relaxation of deterrent restraints. He had fallen out with
his uncle some years since,[2] and the quarrel had freed him from at
least one influence making for clerical propriety of behaviour. His
incorrigible levities had probably lost him the countenance of most of
his more serious acquaintances; his satirical humour had as probably
gained him personal enemies not a few, and it may be that he had
gradually contracted something of that "naughty-boy" temper, as we
may call it, for which the deliberate and ostentatious repetition of
offences has an inexplicable charm. It seems clear, too, that, growth
for growth with this spirit of bravado, there had sprung up--in
somewhat incongruous companionship, perhaps--a certain sense of wrong.
Along with the impulse to give an additional shock to the prejudices
he had already offended, Sterne felt impelled to vindicate what he
considered the genuine moral worth underlying the indiscretions of the
offender. What, then, could better suit him than to compose a novel
in which he might give full play to his simious humour, startle more
hideously than ever his straighter-laced neighbours, defiantly defend
his own character, and caricature whatever eccentric figure in the
society around him might offer the most tempting butt for ridicule?

[Footnote 1: "I was once such a puppy myself," he writes to a certain
baronet whom he is attempting to discourage from speculative farming
of this sort, "and had my labour for my pains and two hundred pounds
out of pocket. Curse on farming! (I said). Let us see if the pen will
not succeed better than the spade."]

[Footnote 2: He himself, indeed, makes a particular point of this in
explaining his literary venture. "Now for your desire," he writes to
a correspondent in 1759, "of knowing the reason of my turning author?
why, truly I am tired of employing my brains for other people's