purpose. Pedantry was ridiculous and cruelty odious before the time of Sterne, or of Rabelais. Goethe said of his own writings that a man who had read and digested them would feel a stronger sense of freedom than before, and would be conscious of a wider range of permissible action. Sterne and Rabelais both harp on the hindrance of prudery and superstition, or, as some might say, religion and respectability, to the thorough enjoyment of life. Sterne was not a man of profound learning. He was a desultory, indiscriminate reader, and there are those who consider these adjectives to be epithets of abuse. He could hardly have been acquainted with the romance of Sir Thomas Malory, or he would not have made Mr. Shandy say that no one named Tristram had ever achieved any exploit in the world. The eighteenth century despised the Middle Ages, as may be seen in that detestable poem La Pucelle

There is, I believe, an expurgated edition of Tristram Shandy, which begins with the sixth, or it may be with the seventh chapter. I do not know where it ends, nor what the same ingenious editor has done with the Sentimental Journey. The occasional impropriety of both works must be regretted, and cannot be denied. Every one knows the story of the lady whom Sterne asked whether she had read Tristram Shandy. 'No, Mr. Sterne,' said she, 'and, to be plain with you, I am told that it is not very fit for feminine perusal.' 'Pooh, pooh, ma'am, look at your child there, lolling on the carpet. He shows much that we conceal, but in perfect innocence, my dear ma'am, in perfect innocence.' Mr. Sterne's innocence was not perfect. It is always easy to condemn. It is often difficult to distinguish. There are passages in Sterne of which one can only say that while it would be coarse to print them now it was not coarse to print them then. That, however, is not an exhaustive account of the matter, and does not meet the gravest part of the charge. Sterne treated delicate subjects, and a delicate subject may be defined, for want of a better definition, as one which lends itself to indelicate treatment. By what standard and by what rules is a book like Tristram Shandy to be judged? Mr. Ruskin once complained that he was hampered in his moral and religious teaching (though no one would have suspected it) because he could not address the British public as frankly believing or frankly disbelieving in a future life. It does not seem easy to ascertain what the accepted view of indelicacy in literature is. When M. Zola did us the honour of visiting London, a brilliant assemblage, largely composed of fashionable ladies, gathered in the hall of a learned society to hear the gospel of the author of Nana. The English translator of M. Zola's works was, if I remember rightly, at the same time languishing in a dungeon for the offence of too faithfully translating them. If Tristram Shandy were veiled in the obscurity of the French language, no apology might be necessary for it. But there is between Sterne and Zola a difference

deeper and wider than nationality. M. Zola has no humour. deals with vice in deadly earnest, and without any reserve. When Sterne departs from conventional propriety it is always to raise a laugh, and never for any less avowable purpose. There is nothing so serious as passion, and laughter is quite incompatible with prurience. Thackeray contrasts the impurity of Sterne with the purity of Goldsmith. Goldsmith wrote two stanzas which are quite as indecent as anything in Sterne, and not in the least amusing. It cannot be said,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, who had surely, among all great men of letters, the soundest and healthiest mind, it cannot be said that the licentious humour of Tristram Shandy is of the kind which applies itself to the passions, or is calculated to corrupt society. But it is a sin against taste, if allowed to be harmless as to morals. A handful of mud is neither a firebrand nor a stone; but to fling it about in sport argues coarseness of mind and want of common manners.' For his sin against taste Sterne has paid the penalty. He has alienated and repelled many of the readers who would best appreciate his humanity, his pathos, and his eloquence. If any man cares to see what Shandean license can be without the great qualities which in Sterne's case redeem it, let him dip-he need do no more-into Hall Stevenson's Crazy Tales, which were once thought vastly witty and entertaining. A man and his work must be tried by contemporary comparison. But I do not know that a generation which reads La Terre can afford to hold up the hands of horror at the intricacies of Diego and Julia. There are some things in Tristram Shandy which would be better away. 'The knowledge of evil is not wisdom.' The tale of Slawkenbergius is tedious, and has happily ceased to be intelligible. Rhinology may not have been more absurd than phrenology, but it is more completely forgotten. The tale of the Abbess of Andouillets is low, gross, and stupid. But with these two exceptions there is hardly a dull page in Tristram Shandy. There is, moreover, this to be said for it, that the more innocent the reader the more innocent the book. M. Zola, who has, as Dr. Pusey said of Lord Westbury and eternal punishment, a personal interest in the question, argues that a book can no more be immoral than a mathematical demonstration or a musical composition. Morality is a quality of human beings and not of books. It may be suspected that a fallacy lurks in this generalisation. It is only as the work of man that books can be regarded as immoral. The essence of Tristram Shandy, as distinguished from its separable and inseparable accidents, is the triumph of moral simplicity and mother wit over metaphysical subtlety and undigested learning. But the fight is well sustained. Mr. Shandy is a man of great natural capacity and well able to hold his own in various companies against all comers. He is always, in his own favourite word, argute,' and it is no easy task to dispose of his polemics. Sterne was too genuine an artist to make Mr. Shandy a

weak-minded man, to put up a nine-pin for the sake of knocking it down. Uncle Toby's questions and comments appear obvious enough; but no other writer could have poured them with such deadly and destructive effect upon the speculative performances of his brother. Any serious description of Tristram Shandy is, however, so inadequate as to be almost grotesque. Those who do not feel the charm of the book cannot be taught it, and those who feel it resent being told what it is. It is impalpable and indefinable, like one of those combinations of colour at sunset for which there are no words in the language and no ideas in the mind. There have been few greater masters of conversation than Sterne, and in what may be called the art of interruption no one has ever approached him. He is one of the makers of colloquial English, and thousands who never heard of Shandy Hall repeat the phrases of the Shandy brothers. Of all English humourists except Shakespeare Sterne is still the greatest force, and that the influence of Parson Yorick is not extinct may be seen in almost every page of the Dolly Dialogues.

HERBERT PAUL.

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VOL. XL-No. 238

A MISTAKEN IMPERIAL CELEBRATION

ON the saga-haunted Kyffhäuser mountain, famed by the Barbarossa folk-tale, the German Emperor recently unveiled a colossal equestrian statue of the late Kaiser Wilhelm the First. Combined with it was a sculptured representation of the heroic and immortal ruler and his knights who, in popular belief, were held to sleep in the underground cave or castle until the day came when the ravens would no longer circle round the hill, and he would sally forth with his armed men to restore the country's power and glory. All German children have been taught to learn by heart Rückert's impressive poem, the first three verses of which run thus:

Der alte Barbarossa,
Der Kaiser Friederich,

Im unterird'schen Schlosse
Hält er verzaubert sich.

Er ist niemals gestorben,
Er lebt darin noch jetzt;
Er hat im Schloss verborgen
Zum Schlaf sich hingesetzt.

Er hat hinab genommen
Des Reiches Herrlichkeit,
Und wird einst wiederkommen

Mit ihr zu seiner Zeit.

In accordance with this poem, the artist has figured Frederick the Redbeard sitting, under a richly ornamented arch, on his throne, in the act of awaking, clad in the coronation mantle, holding the imperial sword in his hand, with the crown on his long-haired and bearded head. About him, his retinue and his castle-wardens, as well as the dwarfs of the tale, and the horses and hounds, are still sunk in sleep. The whole is said to be a most stately piece of art. As to the dimensions of the equestrian statue, near which two figures stand typifying ancient Germany in the shape of a stalwart warrior, and History as a female, offering a laurel wreath to William the Firstthey are truly gigantic. The weight of the monument (396 cwt.) is correspondingly enormous. So are the costs, which reach the pretty sum of 1,300,000 mark.

It would, no doubt, be an unduly strict criticism were it pointed out that, historically speaking, Barbarossa wore his hair, as we happen to know from very minute descriptions of his person, rather short. Certainly it might be supposed to have grown, during fully seven centuries, in his subterranean abode, where, in Rückert's words, 'his beard that is not flaxen, but aye of fiery glow, has grown through the marble table on which his chin doth rest.' But a far more serious question is this: Did the folk-tale about the hill-hidden hero who was to bring back golden days of Germany's power and glory, originally refer at all to Frederick the First, called the Redbeard?

This question must be decidedly answered with a 'No!' In so far, the recent celebration may be said to be founded on a mistake. Close researches in our older literature and popular legends, begun about twenty-five years ago, after the war with France, have proved this in the clearest manner possible. It was not to Barbarossa—as the Italians called the terrible Kaiser, who first fought against the Lombard League of Free Cities—but to his not less celebrated grandson, Frederick the Second, who in his third marriage had an English princess as his wife, that the popular legend originally applied.

This is important because Frederick the Second of Germany, in the early part of the thirteenth century, held in religious matters very advanced views-as much, if not even more so, than his Prussian namesake of the eighteenth century, Frederick the Second, called the Great. The early Hohenstaufen 'King of the Germans and Emperor of the Romans' anticipated, in fact, the views of modern science. And it was upon him—and not upon Barbarossa who had handed over Arnold of Brescia to the Pope, to be burnt as a 'heretic and rebel'-that the dreamy popular fancy set its expectant eyes as the future mythic hope of the German nation.

Frederick the Second had died somewhat suddenly. In the year before he had been thrown on a sick-bed in consequence of the shock given him by an attempt at poisoning. This murderous attempt was made by the medical adviser of his hitherto trusty Chancellor, Petrus de Vinea, who was suspected of being in collusion with Pope Innocent the Fourth. So, at least, it is stated by Matthew Paris. When the report of the Kaiser's death, in 1250, came over the Alps, few would believe it. The world had been so full of his fame that his disappearance was generally discredited among the people. Even the mendicant friars of the Franciscan Order, one of whose members had wrathfully preached against the corruption of the Church and predicted an awful fate for it, helped in spreading the belief in Frederick's continued existence. They looked upon him as the Antichrist, but as the inevitable avenger of clerical wickedness. An old Sibylline saw, He lives and yet he lives not,' was therefore applied to him. The common folk declared that nobody knew where he abideth,' says a contemporary Germanfchronicle.

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