physique of the Southern races from that of the hardier children of
the North; and lastly, he was exulting in a new-born sense of creative
power which no doubt made the composition of the earlier volumes of
_Tristram_ a veritable labour of love.

But the witty division of literary spinners into silkworms and
spiders--those who spin because they are full, and those who do so
because they are empty--is not exhaustive. There are human silk-worms
who become gradually transformed into spiders--men who begin writing
in order to unburden a full imagination, and who, long after that
process has been completely performed, continue writing in order to
fill an empty belly; and though Sterne did not live long enough to
"write himself out," there are certain indications that he would
not have left off writing if and when he felt that this stage of
exhaustion had arrived. His artistic impulses were curiously combined
with a distinct admixture of the "potboiler" spirit; and it was with
something of the complacency of an annuitant that he looked forward to
giving the public a couple of volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ every year
as long as they would stand it. In these early days, however, there
was no necessity even to discuss the probable period either of the
writer's inspiration or of the reader's appetite. At present the
public were as eager to consume more Shandyism as Sterne was ready to
produce it: the demand was as active as the supply was easy. By the
end of the year Vols. III. and IV. were in the press, and on January
27, 1761, they made their appearance. They had been disposed of in
advance to Dodsley for 380_l._--no bad terms of remuneration in
those days; but it is still likely enough that the publisher made
a profitable bargain. The new volumes sold freely, and the public
laughed at them as heartily as their two predecessors. Their author's
vogue in London, whither he went in December, 1760, to superintend