Sterne is not suited to readers who are disheartened at irrelevancy. It is part of his charm, and it is at the same time his most whimsical habit, never to proceed with his story when you expect him to do so, and to be reminded by his own divagations of delightful side-issues which lead you, entranced, whither you had no intention of going. He did not merely not shun occasions of being irrelevant, but he sought them out and eagerly cultivated them. Remember that a whole chapter of _Tristram_ is devoted to the _attitude_ of Corporal Trim as he prepared himself to read the Sermon. Sterne kept a stable of prancing, plump little hobby-horses, and he trotted them out upon every occasion. But this is what makes his books the best conversational writing in the English language. He writes for all the world exactly as though he were talking at his ease, and we listen enchanted to the careless, frolicking, idle, penetrating speaker who builds up for us so nonchalantly, with persistent but unobtrusive touch upon touch, the immortal figures of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Yorick, the Widow Wadman, and so many more.
This, I am inclined to think, in drawing this brief sketch to an end, is Sterne's main interest for ourselves. He broke up the rhetorical manner of composition, or, rather, he produced an alternative manner which was gradually accepted and is in partial favour still. I would ask you to read for yourselves the scene of the ass who blocked the way for Tristram at Lyons, and to consider how completely new that method of describing, of facing a literary problem, was in 1765. I speak here to an audience of experts, to a company of authors who are accustomed to a close consideration of the workmanship of their _métier_. I ask them where, at all events in English, anything like that scene had been found before the days of Sterne. Since those days we have never been without it.
To trace the Shandean influence down English literature for the last century and a half would take me much too long for your patience. In Dickens, in Carlyle, even in Ruskin, the Shandean element is often present and not rarely predominant. None of those great men would have expressed himself exactly as he does but for Laurence Sterne. And coming down to our own time, I see the influence of Sterne everywhere. The pathos of Sir James Barrie is intimately related to that of the creator of Uncle Toby and Maria of Moulines, while I am not sure that of all the books which Stevenson read it was not the _Sentimental Journey_ which made the deepest impression upon him.