of the parson's sermon-drawer. The critics who find wit, eccentricity,
flashes of Shandyism, and what not else of the same sort in these
discourses, must be able--or so it seems to me--to discover these
phenomena anywhere. To the best of my own judgment the Sermons
are--with but few and partial exceptions--of the most commonplace
character; platitudinous with the platitudes of a thousand pulpits,
and insipid with the _crambe repetita_ of a hundred thousand homilies.
A single extract will fully suffice for a specimen of Sterne's
pre-Shandian homiletic style; his post-Shandian manner was very
different, as we shall see. The preacher is discoursing upon the
well-worn subject of the inconsistencies of human character:

"If such a contrast was only observable in the different stages of
a man's life, it would cease to be either a matter of wonder or of
just reproach. Age, experience, and much reflection may naturally
enough be supposed to alter a man's sense of things, and so entirely
to transform him that, not only in outward appearance but in the
very cast and turn of his mind, he may be as unlike and different
from the man he was twenty or thirty years ago as he ever was from
anything of his own species. This, I say, is naturally to be accounted
for, and in some cases might be praiseworthy too; but the observation
is to be made of men in the same period of their lives that in
the same day, sometimes on the very same action, they are utterly
inconsistent and irreconcilable with themselves. Look at the man in
one light, and he shall seem wise, penetrating, discreet, and brave;
behold him in another point of view, and you see a creature all over
folly and indiscretion, weak and timorous as cowardice and
indiscretion can make him. A man shall appear gentle, courteous,
and benevolent to all mankind; follow him into his own house,
maybe you see a tyrant morose and savage to all whose happiness