of that ostentatious display of the treasures of his palace to the
ambassadors of Babylon for which Isaiah rebuked him by prophesying the
Babylonian captivity of Judah. Nothing, indeed, as Sterne protests,
could have been more innocent than the discourse which he founded
upon the _mal-à-propos_ text; but still it was unquestionably a fair
subject for "chaff," and the preacher was rallied upon it by no less
a person than David Hume. Gossip having magnified this into a dispute
between the parson and the philosopher, Sterne disposes of the idle
story in a passage deriving an additional interest from its tribute to
that sweet disposition which had an equal charm for two men so utterly
unlike as the author of _Tristram Shandy_ and the author of the
_Wealth of Nations_. "I should," he writes, "be exceedingly surprised
to hear that David ever had an unpleasant contention with any man; and
if I should ever be made to believe that such an event had happened,
nothing would persuade me that his opponent was not in the wrong, for
in my life did I never meet with a being of a more placid and gentle
nature; and it is this amiable turn of his character which has given
more consequence and force to his scepticism than all the arguments of
his sophistry." The real truth of the matter was that, meeting Sterne
at Lord Hertford's table on the day when he had preached at the
Embassy Chapel, "David was disposed to make a little merry with the
parson, and in return the parson was equally disposed to make a little
merry with the infidel. We laughed at one another, and the company
laughed with us both." It would be absurd, of course, to identify
Sterne's latitudinarian _bonhomie_ with the higher order of tolerance;
but many a more confirmed and notorious Gallio than the clerical
humourist would have assumed prudish airs of orthodoxy in such a
presence, and the incident, if it does not raise one's estimate of
Sterne's dignity, displays him to us as laudably free from hypocrisy.