language, how exclusive is Sterne's employment of the words "humour,"
"humourists," in their older sense of "whimsicality," "an eccentric."
The later change in its meaning gives to the word "though" in the
above passage an almost comic effect.]

In conclusion, he tells his friend that the next morning, if Heaven
permit, he begins the fifth volume of _Shandy_, and adds, defiantly,
that he "cares not a curse for the critics," but "will load my vehicle
with what goods He sends me, and they may take 'em off my hands or let
'em alone."

The allusions to foreign travel in this letter were made with,
something more than a jesting intent. Sterne had already begun to be
seriously alarmed, and not without reason, about the condition of his
health. He shrank from facing another English winter, and meditated
a southward flight so soon as he should have finished his fifth
and sixth volumes, and seen them safe in the printer's hands. His
publisher he had changed, for what reason is not known, and the firm
of Becket & De Hondt had taken the place of Dodsley. Sterne hoped by
the end of the year to be free to depart from England, and already he
had made all arrangements with his ecclesiastical superiors for the
necessary leave of absence. He seems to have been treated with all
consideration in the matter. His Archbishop, on being applied to, at
once excused him from parochial work for a year, and promised, if
it should be necessary, to double that term. Fortified with this
permission, Sterne bade farewell to his wife and daughter, and betook
himself to London, with his now completed volumes, at the setting in
of the winter. On the 21st of December they made their appearance, and
in about three weeks from that date their author left England,
with the intention of wintering in the South of France. There were