courteous thanks, and full of excellent advice as to the expediency
of avoiding scandal by too hazardous a style of writing in the future.
Sterne, in reply, protests that he would "willingly give no offence to
mortal by anything which could look like the least violation of either
decency or good manners;" but--and it is an important "but"--he cannot
promise to "mutilate everything" in _Tristram_ "down to the prudish
humour of every particular" (individual), though he will do his best;
but, in any case, "laugh, my Lord, I will, and as loudly as I can."
And laugh he did, and in such Rabelaisian fashion that the Bishop
(somewhat inconsistently for a critic who had welcomed Sterne on
the appearance of the first two volumes expressly as the "English
Rabelais") remarked of him afterwards with characteristic vigour, in
a letter to a friend, that he fears the fellow is an "irrevocable
scoundrel."

The volumes, however, which earned "the fellow" this Episcopal
benediction were not given to the world till the next year. At the
end of May or beginning of June, 1760, Sterne went to his new home
at Coxwold, and his letters soon begin to show him to us at work upon
further records of Mr. Shandy's philosophical theory-spinning and the
simpler pursuits of his excellent brother. It is probable that this
year, 1760, was, on the whole, the happiest year of Sterne's life.
His health, though always feeble, had not yet finally given way;
and though the "vile cough" which was to bring him more than once to
death's door, and at last to force it open, was already troubling him,
he had that within him which made it easy to bear up against all
such physical ills. His spirits, in fact, were at their highest. His
worldly affairs were going at least as smoothly as they ever went.
He was basking in that sunshine of fame which was so delightful to a
temperament differing from that of the average Englishman, as does the