Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

It is evident, that there is a principle of connection between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and that, in their appearance to the memory or imagination, they introduce each other with a certain degree of method and regularity. In our more serious thinking or discourse, this is so observable, that any particular thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected. And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay, in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a connection upheld among the different ideas which succeeded each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be transcribed, there would immediately be observed something which connected it in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you, that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of thought, which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation. Among different languages, even when we cannot suspect the least connection or communication, it is found, that the words expressive of ideas the most compounded, do yet nearly correspond to each other; a certain proof that the simple ideas comprehended in the compound ones were bound together by some universal principle, which had an equal influence on all mankind.

Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that different ideas are connected together, I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me there appear to be only three

principles of connection among ideas, namely, resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect.

That these principles serve to connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse with the others; and if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it. But that this enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader, or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, never stopping till we render the principle as general as possible. The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration which we form from the whole is complete and entire.

-:D:DXE:E:

XXXVII.

LAURENCE STERNE.

1713-1768.

STERNE was born, in 1713, at Clonmel in Ireland, where his father, who had served as a subaltern officer in Marlborough's wars, happened to be quartered. His brothers and sisters, with one exception, died either in infancy or in early life, and Laurence was throughout of a weak constitution. Till he was ten years old he followed with his mother the shifting of his father's quarters. Then he was put to a good school at Halifax, and finally sent by an uncle to Jesus College, Cambridge, whence he took the degree of B.A. in 1736. This uncle had valuable preferment and good interest in the Diocese of York, of which Laurence's great-grandfather had been Archbishop. It was this probably that led the nephew to the clerical profession, which can scarcely have sate easily upon him. His uncle soon got him the living of Sutton in the East Riding, and a prebendal stall at York. This enabled him to marry (after two years' courtship) in 1741. For nearly twenty years he lived unknown to the world at the remote village of Sutton, doing the duty of that and of another benefice which he held at Stillington, except when he was in York. His friends seem chiefly to have been among the Yorkshire gentry, who commonly then lived for some part of the year in the county-town. In 1759, Lord Falconbridge. gave him the living of Coxwold, a pleasant village in a valley under the Hambledon Hills, which was his home-when he was at homefor the rest of his life. In the same year he became suddenly famous by the publication of the first part of 'Tristram Shandy.'

The

It was finished at intervals during the next six years. money which he made by it enabled him to live a good deal in London, where he was made a fashionable ‘lion,' and to spend more than two years in France and Italy. This sojourn abroad suggested the 'Sentimental Journey,' published at the beginning of 1768, in which year he died.

Of these two exquisite works of humour, as no extracts are given from them, nothing need be said, except so far as they explain the affected style of his Sermons, from which the following passages are taken. These, it must be noticed, were preached to fashionable congregations, after he had become famous as a sentimental humourist. Thus in matter they represent an accommodation of Christian morals and religion to the requirements of an audience who expected from him laughter or the luxury of tears, and the awkwardness of this compromise appears also in the manner, which lacks the charm of his more spontaneous writing.

1.

The House of Mourning and the House of Feasting.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.

That I deny-but let us hear the wise man's reasoning upon it,—' for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart; sorrow is better than laughter:'-for a crack-brained order of Carthusian monks, I grant, but not for men of the world. For what purpose, do you imagine, has God made us? for the social sweets of the well-watered valleys, where he has planted us; or for the dry and dismal desert of a Sierra Morena? Are the sad accidents of life, and the uncheery hours which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough, but we must sally forth in quest of them,—belie our own hearts, and say, as our text would have us, that they

are better than those of joy? Did the best of Beings send us into the world for this end,-to go weeping through it,to vex and shorten a life short and vexatious enough already? Do you think, my good preacher, that He who is infinitely happy can envy us our enjoyments? or that a Being so infinitely kind would grudge a mournful traveller the short rest and refreshments necessary to support his spirits through the stages of a weary pilgrimage? or that he would call him to a severe reckoning, because in his way he had hastily snatched at some little fugacious pleasures, merely to sweeten this uneasy journey of life, and reconcile him to the ruggedness of the road, and the many hard jostlings he is sure to meet with? Consider, I beseech you, what provision and accommodation the Author of our being has prepared for us, that we might not go on our way sorrowing-how many caravanseras of rest-what powers and faculties he has given us for taking it-what apt objects he has placed in our way to entertain us; some of which he has made so fair, so exquisitely fitted for this end, that they have power over us for a time, to charm away the sense of pain, to cheer up the dejected heart under poverty and sickness, and make it go and remember its miseries no more.

I will not contend at present against this rhetoric; I would choose rather for a moment to go on with the allegory, and say we are travellers, and, in the most affecting sense of that idea, that, like travellers, though upon business of the last and nearest concern to us, we may surely be allowed to amuse ourselves with the natural or artificial beauties of the country we are passing through, without reproach of forgetting the main errand we are sent upon; and if we can so order it as not to be led out of the way by the variety of prospects, edifices, and ruins which solicit us, it would be a nonsensical piece of saint-errantry to shut our eyes.

« AnteriorContinuar »