Yet he had good reasons, according to his own account, for wishing to
push on their publication. His parsonage-house at Button had just been
burnt down through the carelessness of one of his curate's household,
with a loss to Sterne of some 350_l._ "As soon as I can," he says, "I
must rebuild it, but I lack the means at present." Nevertheless, the
new sermons continued to hang fire. Again, in April he describes the
subscription list as "the most splendid list which ever pranced before
a book since subscription came into fashion;" but though the volumes
which it was to usher into the world were then spoken of as about to
be printed "very soon," he has again in July to write of them only
as "forthcoming in September, though I fear not in time to bring them
with me" to Paris. And, as a matter of fact, they do not seem to have
made their appearance until after Sterne had quitted England on his
second and last Continental journey. The full subscription list may
have had the effect of relaxing his energies; but the subscribers had
no reason to complain when, in 1766, the volumes at last appeared.

The reception given to the first batch of sermons which Sterne had
published was quite favourable enough to encourage a repetition of the
experiment. He was shrewd enough, however, to perceive that on
this second occasion a somewhat different sort of article would be
required. In the first flush of _Tristram Shandy's_ success, and in
the first piquancy of the contrast between the grave profession of the
writer and the unbounded license of the book, he could safely reckon
on as large and curious a public for _any_ sermons whatever from the
pen of Mr. Yorick. There was no need that the humourist in his pulpit
should at all resemble the humourist at his desk, or, indeed, that
he should be in any way an impressive or commanding figure. The great
desire of the world was to know what he _did_ resemble in this new
and incongruous position. Men wished to see what the queer, sly face