LAURENCE STERNE AND THE TRADITION
OF CHRISTIAN FOLLY

By

BYRON PETRAKIS

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO TIIE GR-\DUATE COUNCIL OF

THE UNI\ERSITY OF FLORIDA

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DECREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1968

Copyright by-
Byron Petrakis
1968

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance which I
have received from the members of my supervisory committee,
Professor George M. Harper, and Professor E. Ashby Hammond.

To Professor Thomas R» Preston, under whose guidance
this dissertation was begun, I owe the debt of inspiration and
encouragement. To Professor Aubrey L. Williams, I owe the debt
of the scholarly example and patient criticism which enabled me
to complete this dissertation.

Finally, I thank my wife, Gayle, for loving me enough to
avoid Mrs. Shandy's error of giving her "assent and consent to
any proposition" which her husband "laid before her."

iii

Preface

The subject of this study is Sterne's use of the Pauline con-
cept of Christian folly: that is, that wisdom in the eyes of the
world may be folly in the eyes of God, while folly in the eyes of the
world may lead to wisdom in the eyes of God.. Ity thesis is that the
various aspects of the concept of Christian folly which appear
throughout Sterne's work reflect traditional Christian attitudes toward
what this world calls wisdom and folly. Focusing particularly on
Tristram Shandy , I argue that several of the characters in the novel
personify various aspects of wisdom and folly, ranging from Walter
Shandy's obsession with worldly-wise hypotheses to Parson Yorick's
apparently "foolish" martyrdom to truth, and that the novelist-
preacher Sterne accomplishes a transvaluation of the terms "wisdom"
and "follyo" Because Sterne's employment of the concept of Christian
folly is rooted in earlier treatments of the idea of the wise fool in
Christ, Chapter I of this study traces the history of the idea of
Christian folly from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century.

Chapter I shows how early Fathers of the Church and medieval
mystics such as Thomas a Kempis shaped the idea of Christian folly
into two related, yet distinct strands. For members of what Etienne
Gilson has called the "Tertullian family," Christian folly took the
form of intellectual humility in order to combat the challenge of
gnosticism, while for members of the "Augustine family," notably St.

Iv

Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa, Christian folly took the form of
"learned ignorance" in order to meet the challenge of scholasticism.
With the advent of the Renaissance, and the work of the great Chris-
tian humanists, Erasmus and Rabelais, the idea of the wise fool in
Christ leaves the confines of Biblical commentary and polemical
theology, and enters the realm of imaginative literature. The wise
fools in Christ, praised by the medieval Church Fathers as personi-
fications of a theological idea or concept, become in the works of
Erasmus and Rabelais drgmatis personae , capable of acting as court
jesters, receptacles of divine truth, enemies of the proud and
worldly wise, and exemplars of charity and humility. In the person
of Sir Thomas More, these various facets of Christian folly combined
to give to the Renaissance and the world a living example of how folly
in the eyes of men leads to wisdom in the eyes of God. At the
conclusion of the Renaissance and up to the eighteenth century, the
idea of Christian folly was most evident in the form of Biblical
commentaries and sermons upon Pauline texts by Anglican divines,
such as Henry Hammond and Robert South.

Chapter II shows how the idea of Christian folly which appears
in Tristram Shandy is related to traditional Christian views of not
only the dangers resulting from man's obsession with worldly wisdom,
but also the temporal and spiritual benefits accruing from man's
recognition of his own foolishness. More specifically. Chapter II
attempts to demonstrate that the characters in Tristram Shandy comprise

a catalogue of fools, whose "folly" is sometimes "wisdom," depending
upon the perspective of the viewer. Because Sterne views Solomon's
observation that "the number of fools is infinite" from the sympathe-
tic point of view of Erasmian irony, he ridicules folly in Tristram
Shandy instead of inveighing against it in the manner of some of his
Augustan predecessors. While Sterne's narrator, Tristram, exposes
the foolishness of the novel's worldly wise men, particularly his
father's obsession with speculative hypotheses, he exhibits an Eras-
mian perspective on hwman folly by himself speaking as a fool. Parson
Yorick, Tristram's more "foolish," but paradoxically "wiser," counter-
part, complements Tristram's satire upon worldly wisdom by exposing
the foolishness of "vile canonists" and "polemic divines," In ridicul-
ing the pretensions and shortcomings of his clerical colleagues,
Yorick also reveals himself as "a man of infinite jest" and as a model
of Christian humility and charity, thereby personifying several of the
virtues eulogized by Renaissance praisers of folly.

Chapter III shows how Toby and Trim, often dismissed as
ineffectual simpletons or amusing eccentrics, illustrate the Pauline
paradox that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to con-
found the wise; and . - . the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty" (I Cor, 1.27), More particularly, the
first section of Chapter III attempts to demonstrate that Tristram's
uncle, Toby, functions as an unlearned instrument of divine wisdom
and resembles the "natural" fools praised by the medieval Fathers of

vi

the Church for their Christ-like simplicity and charity » Functioning
as a foil to the worldly wisdom of the novel's pedants, Toby also
exemplifies the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and trust in
divine providence, which Sterne expresses in The Sermons of Mr. Yorick .
The second section of Chapter III attempts to demonstrate that Corporal
Trim, as seen particularly in his funeral oration upon Bobby's death,
is Sterne's projection of the ideal preacher. Dramatizing the essence
of Sterne's concept of preaching, a direct appeal to the heart. Trim
rejects both the affectations of pre-Restoration pulpit eloquence and
the emotionless severity of the Restoration pulpit. Speaking in the
rich, but unaffected, language of the Scriptures, Trim demonstrates to
the Shandeans the wisdom of what St. Paul called "the folly of
preaching" (I Cor, 1.21).

Chapter IV shows how Parson Yorick 's Christian folly, in both
Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey , is the highest manifestation
of wise folly which appears in Sterne's writings. Sterne's allusions
to Hamlet and Don Quixote , throughout Volume I of Tristram Shandy ,
provide a context for establishing Yorick 's Christian folly as a norm
to test the various kinds of worldly wisdom represented in the novel.
Although Tristram praises Yorick 's quixotic martyrdom to truth in
Volume I of Tristram Shandy , he also blames his "Hero" for his lack of
discretion and prudence. Corresponding to his wavering, as a narrator,
between praise and blame for Yorick 's Christian folly, is Tristram's
failure, as a character, to achieve the perfect wisdom of Yorick' s
Christian folly. Chapter IV also shows how Yorick 's wise folly in
Christ becomes evident in his similarity to Paul's "New Man," who

vii

represents the Christian fool's joyful vision of death as the beginning
of life. In contrast, Tristram, like Paul's "Old Man," subverts the
moral and spiritual imperative of man's journey through this world to
the next by foolishly attempting to outrace Death in Volume VII of
Tristram Shandy c The "Sentimental Traveller" Yorick of A Sentimental
Journey concludes the program of wise folly in Christ which Sterne
presents throughout his writings.

Ify prefatory remarks would be incomplete without an acknowledg-
ment of my indebtedness to Walter Kaiser's Praisers of Folly , which
introduced me to the study of the wise fool in Christ, I am also
generally indebted to John Traugott's Tristram Shandy's World , John
Stedmond's The Comic Art of Laurence Sterne , and Gardner D. Stout, Jr. 's
edition of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick
for pointing out ways in which Sterne's use of the idea of Christian
folly could be developed and discussed.

viii

Contents

Acknowledgments
Pref ac e

One The Tradition of Christian Folly-
Two The Folly of Wisdom
Three The Wisdom of Folly-
Four The Transcendent Wisdom of lorick's
Christian Folly

Works Cited

iii

iv

1

k3

78

122

177

ix

One: The Tradition of Christian Folly

In his sermon "Advantages of Christianity to the World," based
upon Romans 1.22 ("Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools"), Laurence Sterne states that the wisdom of the learned Greeks
and Romans was "specious" and nothing "but a more glittering kind of
ignorance." In "Our Conversation \ in Heaven," whose text is
Fhillipians 3.20 ("For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also
we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ"), Sterne encourages
his readers to follow the example of St. Paul, who "accounted all
things but loss, that is, less than nothing, for the excellency of the
knowledge of Jesus Christ" (Sermons , II, 93) » These two quotations
from The Sermons of Mr. Yorick illustrate a Pauline concept or idea
which may be called "Christian folly." The essence of the idea of
Christian folly is Paul's teaching that the truly wise man rejects
this world's wisdom and becomes "a fool for Christ's sake" (I Cor.
li.lO), "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (I Cor.
3.19), argues Paul, and "the foolishness of God is wiser than men"
(I Cor. 1.25).

Expressed in various forms from the time of St. Paul, the idea

of Christian folly became a common place tradition in the Middle

2
Ages. For one large group of writers, hereafter called the "Ter-

tullian family,"-^ Christian folly demands that man imitate Cnrist's

meekness and humility and sacrifice his reason before God's omniscience.
For these praisers of Christian folly, including Tertullian, Saints
Jerome and Gregory, and the medieval mystics, Jacapone da Todi and
Thomas a Kempis, the idea of Christian folly is closely linked to the
idea of contemptus mundi o Writing in the fifteenth century, Kempis,
for example, instructs man "to conform his whole life to that mind of

Christ" so that he may "willfully and with true wisdom understand the

, k
words of Christ" ( Imitatio , loloU)» By imitating Christ, Kempis

argues, man will learn that the highest form of wisdom is to
"despis/ej . . . this world ^nd/ to draw daily nearer and nearer to
the kingdom of heaven" ( Imitatio , l.loU).

In contrast to the version of Christian folly advocated by the
"Tertullian family, " the members of the "Augustine family, " including
St. Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa, do not instruct man to renounce
all wisdom, but only to reject those kinds of worldly wisdom which
might prevent him from achieving the wisdom of Christ. In a letter,
Augustine wrote that "wisdom is not to be avoided because there is
also false wisdom, to which Christ crucified is foolishness." For
Augustine, and his intellectual heir, Nicholas of Cusa, the para-
doxical phrase "knowing ignorance" ( docta ignorantia ) expresses the
proper relation between human and divine wisdom, "There is in us a
certain knowing ignorance," Augustine writes, but it is "an ignorance
taught by the spirit of God which comes to the help of our weakness"
(Fathers, XVIII, 398), Exhibiting a kinship to the members of the
"Augustine family, " who taught that man should not renounce the world

so much as the wisdom of the world, the Renaissance humanists, Erasmus
and Rabelais, encouraged man's participation in the God-given joys of
creation and urged a rejection of only those kinds of wisdom which
prevented him from becoming a fit receptacle for the wisdom of Christ.
In a letter to Martin Dorp, who is called Erasmus' "first critic,"

Erasmus said about The Praise of Folly , that "to be ignorant of certain

7
things is a part of knowledge."

As I hope to show, the idea of Christian folly appearing

throughout Sterne's work is more similar to the Augustinian-

Renaissance version than to the Tertullian-medieval version of the

idea of Christian folly. As Sterne states in his sermon "Penances,"

one of the "many prejudices which at one time or other have been

conceived against our holy religion ... /is that/ it is our duty . .

to renounce the world, and abstract ourselves from it, as neither to

interfere with its interest, or taste any of the pleasures, or any of

the enjoyments of this life" ( Sermons , II, 175). For Sterne, as for

William Wycherley, in his poem "Upon the Discretion of Folly," the

Christian fool is happy in this world and the next:

Thus Fools are here, as likewise thought elsewhere.
But for their want of Thought much happier
Which is most Wisdom: Heav'nly Wisdom, whence
Men have their Faith, their Truth, and Innocence;
Whence Heav'n to Fools wise Turks in next Life give;
But Christian Fools are happy whilst they live.°

I
As the persona Stultitia observes in Erasmus' The Praise of
Folly , the Pauline paradox that human wisdom is foolishness with God

is rooted in Old Testament condemnations of the vanity of human learn-
ing. In the concluding section of her oration, Stultitia quotes
extensively from various Old Testament writers who maintain that, in
the final analysis, man's wisdom is folly in the eyes of God. Follow-
ing the rhetorical practice of quoting authorities, Stultitia
ironically argues that all wisdom is folly:

In his tenth chapter Jeremiah states « <. . 'Every
man is made foolish in his own wisdom. ' It is to God
alone that he attributes wisdom, relegating foolishness
to mankind. A little bit before this he says; 'Let no
man glory in his wisdom' .... But let us turn again
to Ecclesiastes. When he writes, 'Vanity of vanities,
all is vanity, ' what else does he mean other than , . .
that human life is nothing but a sport of folly?^

Stultitia 's transposition of the terms folly and wisdom early in her
oration prepares the reader for her serious, concluding argument that
the "Fool in Christ" is, in the eyes of God, the wisest of men.

While St. Paul's epistles to the Corinthians echo Old Testa-
ment condemnations of the vanity of human learning, his identification
of wisdom with Christ and Christ's suffering is, of course, a
radical departure from Solomon's teaching that wisdom lies in fearing
God and obeying His commandments. According to Earle Ellis, more-
over, Paul's identification of wisdom with Christ and His suffering
is also unique in terms of the New Testament:

There are no definite New Testament parallels with Paul's
Wisdom typology in which Christ and His Cross are declared
to be the true wisdom. But the apostle's several quotations
(I Cor, 1.19; 2.9,l6j 3.19f) describing the vanity of the
'wisdom of this world' and its barren and foolish goal
reflect somewhat the attitude of Christ: 'I thank thee,
Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these

things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto
babes' (Mat. 11.25; Luke 10.21). The thought in each is
that God reveals Himself not to the 'wise' but to the hurable^^
and simple; Paul, of course, carries the theme much further.

Paul's rejection of vain human wisdom in favor of the wisdom

of Christ does not, it should be noted, constitute a refutation of all

12
wisdom other than Christian Revelation, Francois Ajniot reminds us

that "Paul does not . . . condemn reason itself but only its abuse

and its refusal to accept supernatural enlightenment." Etienne

Gilson points out, however, that there have been writers, such as

Tertullian, St. Bernard, and Jacopone da Todi, who are "partisans of

exclusive otherworldliness in the order of knowledge" (Gilson, p. llU).

The contribution made by some of these "extremists in theology"

(Gilson, p. 5) to the concept of Christian folly merits examination.

Writing in the second century A.D., Tertullian, to use

Gilson 's words, expresses "absolute conviction in the self-sufficiency

of Christian Revelation" (Gilson, p. 8)« The concept of Christian

folly which emerges from Tertullian's writings reflects a dichotomy

between faith and reason, particularly as seen in passages from

Tertullian against Marcion and The Body of Christ ( Je Came Christi ),

where Tertullian argues that belief in the crucified Christ is

sufficient for man's knowledge and salvation:

Since, then, the man ... of /this/ world in his wisdom
knew not God, whom indeed he ought to have known (both the
Jew by his knowledge of the Scriptures, and all the human
race by their knowledge of God's works), therefore that God,
who was not acknowledged in His wisdom, resolved to smite
men's knowledge with His foolishness, by saving all those
who believe in the folly of the preached cross. ■'-^

In its simplest terras. Christian folly appears in Tertullian
as an act of faith in which the reason humiliates itself before the
omniscience of God,"'"^ Tertullian 's concept of faith as intellectual
humility is clearly seen in his belief in the crucifixion because it
is "absurd." The famous passage from De Came Christi illustrates what
James Edie calls Tertullian 's concept of faith as "an experience of
the absurd," a "decision to act before one 'knows,' to act, if
necessary, against the evidence, against the evident" (Edie,
Christianity and Existentialism , p« 29);

The Son of God was crucified | I am not ashamed
because men must needs be ashamed of it . And the
Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed,
because it is absurd o-^'

To Tertullian, man's only hope for salvation lies in rejecting
philosophy, which he calls "the material of the world's wisdom,"
in favor of the wisdom of Christ. While such a choice results in man's
being "a fool to the world," Tertullian argues, he paradoxically
cannot be wise unless he does become a fool to the world by believing
"the foolish things of God."-'"^ One of "the foolish things of God

/which/ is wiser than men," the Christian apologist explains in his

20
tract against Marcion, is the "cross and death of Christ."

It is no exaggeration, then, to say that Tertullian shapes the

Pauline paradox central to the idea of Christian folly — that wisdom

may lead to folly, and folly to wisdom — into a concept of intellectual

humility which entails, to use George Boas's terms, "a sacrifice of

human reason" (Boas, p. 121). Tertullian seems to demand this sacrifice

so that man will grasp the paradox of Christian folly, and unlike the

heretics and vain reasoners, understand why "God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise" (I Cor. 1.27)-

St. Bernard and Jacopone da Todi are two members of the "Ter-
tullian family" in whose works Christian folly appears in one form or
another. Bernard, George Boas points out, "is . . . clearly in the
tradition of Tertullian o <> . and seems indeed to be quoting the words
of some of /the/ members" of the "Tertullian family" (Boas, p, 12U).
In a passage from De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae ( On the Steps
of Humility and Pride ), Bernard distinguishes between various kinds
of ignorance. "Not all ignorance is to be condemned," he says, "for
there are . . . countless things which one may be ignorant of without
lessening one's chance of salvation" (On the Steps of Humility and
Pride , quoted by Boas, p. 12U).

After explaining that ignorance of neither the "mechanical

arts," such as carpentry, nor of the "liberal arts" of the university

would impede one's chance of salvation, Bernard reminds his readers

that

Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee and all their
fellow disciples were not taken from the schools of
rhetoricians and philosophers, and none the less the
Saviour through them wrought salvation upon the earth.
Not in wisdom, which in them was more than in all the
living . . but in their faith and meekness did He
save them and make them saints and masters ( On the Steps
of Humility and Pride , quoted by Boas, pp. 12U-25;.

Jacopone da Todi, the Franciscan poet and mystic of the

thirteenth century, was probably familiar with the works of St.

Bernard, as he was with the writings of other medieval theologians.

22
because of his studies at the convent of San Foninato. The first

five verses of Jacopone's poem entitled "How it is the Highest Wisdom

to be Reputed Mad for the Love of Christ" express a radical type of

Christian folly analogous to both Tertullian's and Bernard's:

Wisdom 'tis and Courtesy,
Crazed for Jesus Christ to be.

No such learning can be found
In Paris, nor the world around;
In this folly to abound
Is the best philosophyo

Who by Christ is all possessed.
Seems afflicted and distressed.
Yet is Master of the best.
In science and theology.

Who for Christ is all distraught,
Gives his wits, men say, for naught j
Those whom Love hath never taught.
Deem he erreth utterly.

He who enters in this school.
Learns a new and wondrous rule:
'Who hath never been a fool.
Wisdom's scholar cannot be. ' -^

In another poem, which illustrates what Gilson calls the

"radical theologisra" of the Spirituals, an extremist group in the

Franciscan Order (Gilson, p. 13)^ Jacopone expresses a mistrust of

philosophy similar to Tertullian's, For Jacopone, "only a pure and

simple mind" can find its way "straight to heaven . . . while far

behind/Lags the world's philosophy" (quoted by Gilson, p. 13).

Jacopone's stress upon the virtues of simplicity, purity, and

humility may be traced back to the first chapter of First Corinthians.

According to Evelyn Underbill, Jacopone's biographer, the "ruling

conception of Jacopone's first period— that of the 'fool for Christ's

sake '"--comes directly from St. Paul (Underhill, p. 227).

The Church Fathers Jerome and Gregory the Great, who may be

classified as "distant relations" of the "Tertullian family," merit

attention because their idea of Christian folly is less polemical than

Tertullian 's on the one hand, while still lacking, as we shall see,

the sophistication of Augustine's and Cusa's, on the other. In his

polemical tract The Dialogue Against the Pelegians , Jerome echoes the

theme of intellectual humility which appears in the works of Jacopone

and Thomas a Kempis^ In discussing the gulf between worldly and

divine wisdom, Jerome alludes to Ecclesiastes I.I8 to illustrate the

orthodox argument that man "lacks perfection and realizes how much he

does not know when he considers what he knows "( Fathers , LIII, 302).

To Jerome, man attains wisdom by recognizing his own limitations and

contrasting them to God's omnipotence. His commentary on Romans

16.27 in The Dialogue Against the Pelegians epitomizes his argument

that man must be humble before God's wisdom: "God alone is wise,

although both Solomon and many other holy men are called wise"

( Fathers , LIII, 30$). God's wisdom, moreover, manifests itself in His

providential plan, and man's duty is to trust the wisdom of the divine

architect:

We are God's tillage; we are God's building. Accord-
ing to His grace, God lays the foundation like a wise
architect. 'Do not deceive yourselves,' he says. 'If
any one of you thinks himself wise in this world, let him
become a fool, that he may come to be wise' (Fathers,
LIII, 307).

10

Jerome expresses the concept of Christian folly not only in
his polemical works, such as The Dialogue Against the Pelegians, but
also in his commentaries on St. Paul's epistles. Jerome does not
seek to denigrate worldly wisdom per se , but to indicate its preten-
tiousness and limitations. In his gloss of First Corinthians 3.18-19,
he stresses Paul's condemnation of the Corinthians for claiming to
be Christians while still clinging to worldly wisdom and the
retributive justice of the old law;

If anyone thinks that he is wise because, for the sake
of revenge, he has exacted an eye for an eye, let him be
reckoned a foolo For, in the opinion, of this world, the
fool is he who has tried to heed the teachings of the holy
gospel; and the man who turns his other cheek to his attacker
is a voluntary fool, but not a natural one.

No thing is as foolish as for one who is unable, to seek
revenge himself and not to leave to God the /repaying/ of the
wrong that has been done him. For thus will he /the spiteful
man/ lose the revenge of God for the wrong he has suffered,
and, also, the reward of patience. 2U

Although the seeking of revenge is wisdom to the world, Jerome argues
that it is foolishnes? before God. The man who willfully turns the
other cheek is, in the world's eyes, "foolish," but since his volun-
tary action implements Christ's teaching, his "foolishness" will earn
him justice in the court of God.

Jerome's contribution to the tradition of Christian folly,
then, lies in his further emphasis on the h\imility, meekness, and
charity of the fool for Christ. It is no coincidence that in his
textual notes to the Vulgate Jerome suggests a comparison between
First Corinthians 1,19 and Matthew 11.2$: "I thank thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from

11

25
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."

Much like Jerome, Gregory the Great (Gregory I), advocates

the humble simplicity of Christian folly as an alternative to the

sophisticated prudence of worldly wisdom. As Barbara Swain points

out in her study of fools and folly in the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance, Gregory's

o . . eloquent indictment of the wisdom of the world
denied that right conduct like that described in
Solomon's proverbs and the Gato would win man the
bliss of eternal life, and he pleaded for an opposite
way of life which it was only logical to call folly.

In leading the "innocent and pure life," however, man paradoxically

27
becomes, as Miss Swain suggests, a "heroic fool" (Swain, p. 36).

Gregory further develops his concept of the heroic fool by

distinguishing the Christian or "noble" fool from his worldly or

"base" counterpart:

It is right for us to know that some within the pale of
Holy Church are styled 'fools,' but yet 'noble,' whilst
others are 'fools,' and 'base.' For they are called
'fools,' but cannot be 'base,' who contemning the wisdom
of the flesh, desire foolishness that shall stand them
instead . . . who set at naught the foolish wisdom of
the world, and covet the wise foolishness of God , . »
But contrawise they are 'fools' and 'base' men, who while „
in following themselves , . . flee from the wisdom Above.

Both Jerome and Gregory, then, in their praise of the Christian

fool's humility, meekness, and innocence, manifest a kinship in

their views to the concept of wise folly which characterizes the

"Tertullian family."

Similar to the type of folly praised by Jerome and Gregory,

is Thomas a Kempis ' praise of a life dedicated to the imitation of

12

Christ. In his influential treatise entitled Of the Imitation of Christ ,

the fifteenth-century monk relates the idea of Christian folly to the

29
concept of contemptus mundi . Man exhibits the highest kind of wisdom,

Kempis writes in the first chapter of his treatise, by "despising . . .

this world /in order/ to draw daily nearer and nearer to the kingdom

of heaven" (Imitatio, l,l»U)o Like Jerome and Gregory, Kempis instructs

man to be humble: "thou mayst not right wisely think thyself learned

but oughtest rather to confess thine ignorance and folly" (Imitatio ,

1.2o6), for "if thou wilt be exalted in heaven, humble thee here on

earth" (Imitatio , 3»$6.207)o By imitating Christ, he argues, the

humble man will "receive in short time more perfectly the true wisdom

of God, than another that studieth ten years in schools and lacketh

meekness" (Imitatio, 3«U3<.17U)o

Emblematic of the entire Imitatio , the chapter entitled "That

we should eschew vain secular learning" indicates how Kempis' view

of Christian folly is both similar to, and different from, the kind

of Christian folly praised by Tertullian and his more theologically

radical disciples. After quoting First Corinthians U.20 ("For the

kingdom of God is not in word, but in power"), Kempis paraphrases

Psalm 9U<.10 ("I am He that teacheth man knowledge");

When thou hast read and understood many doubts, yet
nevertheless it behoveth thee to come to one who is the
beginning of all things, that is God himself, and else
thy knowledge shall little avail thee.

I am he that teacheth a man wisdom and giveth more
understanding to meek persons, than can be given by man's
teaching. And he to whom I speak shall soon be made wise
and much shall he profit in spirit (Imitatio, 3.U3.173-7U).

13

Kempis- assertion that the "natural wisdom" of "raeek persons" exceeds
the acquired learning of learned men echoes Matthew 11.25 and parallels
the arguments of Jacopone and Bernard that God rejects the learned in
favor of the simple-minded as receptacles of His wisdom. Deviating
from the idea of Christian folly praised by members of the "Tertullian
family," however, Kempis suggests that man achieves the wisdom of
folly after he has experienced the folly of wisdom ("when thou hast
read and understood many doubts"). In his deviation from the Tertul-
lian school, Kempis may be seen as a transitional figure among the
praisers of folly. While in agreement with those advocating Grace
alone as sufficient for salvation, Kempis, to an extent less than St.
Augustine and Nicholas of Gusa, anticipates the type of Christian
folly praised by Erasmus and Rabelais o For these two Renaissance
humanists, as we shall see, man chooses the wisdom of Christian folly
only after recognizing the limitations of worldly wisdom.

For Kempis, then, man becomes "wise in spirit" by imitating
Christ's humility and charity: "not to presume of himself, and
always to judge and to think well and blessedly of others, is a sign
and a token of great wisdom" (Imitatio, 1.2.6). Kempis' central
thesis that man should emulate the life of Christ because His teach-
ing is superior to that of the worldly wise is reflected throughout
the Imitatio and informs his statement of Christian folly. -^ Like
Gregory's "noble" fool, Kempis' neophyte in the school of true
wisdom sacrifices his reason before the omniscience of Christ the
teacher, while learning that the way to divine wisdom is through

lii

the folly of humility. Kempis ' importance to the tradition of
Christian folly should not be overlooked, Walter Kaiser reminds us,
for both "Kempis and Nicholas of Cusa gave the medieval world its
final theological apologies for the fool" (Kaiser, p. 9),

II
Thus far we have noted the general agreement among members
of the so-called "Tertullian family" concerning the type of Christian
folly which they praised as an alternative to worldly wisdom. We
have also seen that some members of the loosely related "Tertullian
family," such as Thomas a Kempis, have expressed a type of folly less
radical than that expressed by Tertullian or Jacopone. To a lesser
extent than his school companion at Deventer, Nicholas of Cusa,

Kempis anticipates the concept of wise folly which Kaiser shows is

31
peculiar to the Renaissance. A fuller understanding of the Renais-
sance concept of wise folly may be achieved by pointing out how it
emerged from the Augustinian concept of "learned" or "knowing ignor-
ance" ( docta ignorantia ).

Although Augustine's version of Christian folly is similar in
many minor respects to the version expressed by the "Tertullian
family," the Augustinian concept of Christian folly radically differs
from that of the "Tertullian family" in one major respect. Whereas
Tertullian would argue that the fool for Christ must sacrifice his
reason to be worthy of receiving divine wisdom, Augustine would main-
tain that man can be a Christian fool and still exercise his reason

15

in pursuit of temporal things (scientia) provided that he perceive
that the knowledge of temporal things is only a step on the ladder

leading to sapientia or wisdom — "the contemplation of things

32
eternal. "

Underlying Augustine's idea of Christian folly is his concept

of docta ignorantia , a paradoxical phrase which indicates the distinc-

33
tion between human and divine wisdom, ^^ As expressed in one of his

letters, "knowing ignorance /is/ an ignorance taught by the spirit of

God which comes to the help of our weakness" ( Fathers , XVIII, 398).

This "knowing ignorance" manifests itself in the believer's ability

to comprehend, to some degree, the mysteries of the faith. For

example, even though the trinity is "far removed from the hearts of

the prideful wise," Augustine writes in a letter entitled "On the

Presence of God," it is not removed "from Christian heartsj

consequently not from the truly wise" ( Fathers , XXX, 237).

Other statements expressing the Augustinian concept of

Christian folly appear in various sermons and commentaries on Pauline

texts. For example, the sermon entitled "On the Resurrection of the

Body, against the Pagans," develops the Pauline argument that folly

is a stepping stone to wisdom (I Cor. I.l8). "If the wisdom of this

world is foolishness in the eyes of God," Augustine argues, "then how

far from God is the true foolishness of the world?" ( Fathers , XXXVIII,

2U3) Christian folly is distinguished from the "true foolishness of

the world," however, because it is a "foolishness . . . which has led

to God, concerning which the Apostle says: 'since, in God's wisdom.

16

the world did not come to know God by "wisdom," it pleased God, by

the foolishness of our preaching, to save those who believe'"

( Fathers , XXXVIII, 253) »

The Augustinian concept of Christian folly becomes more

apparent in Augustine's correspondence with his boyhood friend Bishop

Evodius- In a letter to Augustine, circa ki-S, Evodius asks Augustine

to comment upon the various meanings of wisdom, such as "God is

wisdom, the wise mind is wisdomj and how it is spoken of as light,

as the wisdom of Beseleel , . . as the wisdom of Solomon or any other,

and how they differ from each other" ( Fathers , XX, 363). Augustine

replies that God has blessed "the clean of heart, for they shall see

/Hiir7, " and then comments upon the necessity for the foolishness of

preaching:

This foolishness of preaching and 'foolishness of God which
is wiser than men' draws many to salvation, and so, not
only those who are not yet able to perceive with sure under-
standing the nature of God which they hold by faith, but
also those who do not yet distinguish in their own mind
incorporeal substance from the common nature of the body,
and do not know how to live, know, and will, are still not
deprived of salvation which that foolishness, of preaching
bestows on the faithful (Fathers, XXX, 53 )o^^

The words "those who are not yet able to perceive with sure
understanding the nature of God which they hold by faith" epitomize
the distinction between Augustine's concept of Christian folly and
that of Tertullian and his disciples ,. The phrases "with sure under-
standing" and "hold by faith" express the Augustinian dictum that
whereas faith is a prerequisite to understanding, "understanding is
the reward of faith o" Summarizing the relationship between

17

understanding and faith in Augustinian thought, Gilson argues that,
for Augustine,

. , , we are invited by Revelation itself to believe,
that unless we believe we shall not understand; /and/ that
far from inviting us to do away with reason, the Gospel
itself has promised to all those who seek truth in the
revealed word the reward of understanding (Gilson, p. 20).

Unlike Tertullian, Gilson continues, Augustine encouraged the
"passionate effort to investigate the mysteries of Revelation by the
natural light of reason" (Gilson, p. l8)o Whereas Tertullian con-
demns all wisdom except faith in "the foolishness of God," Augustine
rejects only that misuse of wisdom which manifests itself in
condemning the cross:

I would say . . , that wisdom is not to be avoided
because there is also false wisdom, to which Christ
crucified is foolishness, though He is 'the power of
God and the wisdom of God' ( Fathers , XVIII, 30U-5).

Thus, although St. Augustine expresses several common aspects of the

idea of Christian folly, such as the contrast between worldly wisdom

and divine wisdom, he clearly does not exhibit the extremism of those

like Tertullian who demand that man completely humiliate his reason

in order to qualify as a receptacle of divine wisdom.

The fifteenth-century treatise-writer Nicholas of Cusa is

known not only as St, Augustine's spiritual descendant, but also, along

with Thomas a Kempis, as an instrumental figure in laying "the

philosophical foundations for the concept of the wisdom of folly" in

the Renaissance. In the Augustinian tradition, Cusa uses the para-
doxical concept of docta ignorantia, as F. Edward Cranz notes, to
"vanquish the proud spirit of reason" (Cranz, 131). In a passage from

18

De docta ignorantia , which first appeared in IhhO, one year after
Kempis' Imitatio ,-^"^ Cusa explains that the highest manifestation of
"learned ignorance" is its ability to comprehend the fact that God's

OQ

word is incomprehensible;

This knowledge of its incomprehensibility is the most
joyful and desirable comprehension, not as it relates to
the comprehender, but to the loveliest treasure of his
life. For if any man should love anything because it were
lovable, he would be glad that in the lovable there should
be found infinite and inexpressible causes of love <, o o .
This is the most joyful comprehension of the incomprehensible
and lovable learned ignorance; to know partially and yet to
have no perfect knowledge.-^"

In agreement with other advocates of Christian folly, Cusa
argues that God "cannot be apprehended within the context of this
world, /for/ here we are led by reason, opinion, or doctrine from
the better known to the less known by symbols; whereas he is grasped
only when movement ceases and faith takes its place," In the
eleventh chapter of Of Learned Ignorance , entitled "The Mysteries of
Faith," Cusa further develops the idea that only the simple and
humble are fit receptacles for God's wisdom by alluding to Matthew
llo25; "The greatest and profoundest nysteries of God, though hidden
from the wise, may be revealed to little ones and humble folk living
in the world by their faith in Jesus: for in Jesus are hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge, so that without Him no man can do
anything" (Cusa, p. l6l), Cusa's contribution to the tradition, how-
ever, lies neither in his similarity to the advocates of Christian
folly in general, nor to Augustine, in particular. Among the praisers
of Christian folly, Cusa is most important in providing the Renaissance

19

with an "oxymoronic concept of the wise fool,"

In light of Walter Kaiser's full-length treatment of the
Erasmian and Rabelaisian concept of wise folly, any attempt here to
expand upon what has already been so admirably done would be superflu-
ous. It may be useful, however, to summarize briefly what Kaiser has
said about the Renaissance concept of wise folly, particularly since
Sterne's Tristram may be seen as a maverick descendant of the Renais-
sance wise foolo It may also be useful to conclude the second section
of this chapter by seeing how Sir Thomas More, whom Erasmus con-
sidered the exemplary Christian fool, embodied the oxymoronic concept

of wise folly.

While Erasmus' persona, Stultitia, devotes the first part of
her oration to ironically praising the "foolish folly" (as distinct
from "wise folly") of her many followers~"the number of fools is
infinite," she reminds her audience by quoting Solomon—she laces her
satire with sympathy for mankind. Her equivocal attitude toward folly
is evident in her very appearance. Ridiculing human folly by ironi-
cally praising its many forms, Stultitia stands before her audience
dressed not in the lofty robes of the academician, but in the simple
garb of the fool. "Even when Stultitia turns her invective against
her followers," Walter Kaiser reminds us, "we are aware that it is
done out of pity for the victims of such fools — and not wholly without
pity for the fools themselves" (Kaiser, p, 99). Emblematic of her
attitude toward human folly is her observation that men listen to
"clowns and jesters" ( Folly , p. 101), but sleep through sermons.

20

because "to live in folly, to err, to be deceived, and to be ignorant
... is ,, o to be human" ( Folly , p. 122).

But if Stultitia ironically praises all kinds of folly, she
seriously praises one kind in particular — the wise folly of the fool
for Christ. In contrast to the foolish folly of the scholastics,
Stultitia holds up as a norm the wise folly of Paul, "who could
present faith . . . but . . . did not define it doctorally" ( Folly ,
p. liiU)o Significantly, Stultitia cites Paul as the great advocate
of wise folly, for, like Stultitia, Paul taught the lessons of wisdom
although he publicly claimed to "speak as a fool" (II Cor. 11,23;.
As soon as she quotes from Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, Walter
Kaiser observes, her "tone changes once more, /and/ a new and higher
seriousness enters her jest" (Kaiser, p. 8?).

Because she is a wise fool, Stultitia holds up the perfection
of St. Paul's Christian folly as a norm to gauge the foolishness of
this world's wisdom. The Christian basis of her concept of wise folly
is epitomized by her observation that "the whole of the Christian
religion seems to have a certain relationship with some kind of folly
but fails to agree at all with wisdom" ( Folly , p. 169), Some fools,
however, never make the distinction between foolish and wise folly
and thus fail to achieve the transcendent vision of the Christian
fool. One such imperfect fool is Rabelais' Panurge,

Like Stultitia, Walter Kaiser remarks, Panurge is "the fool
as court jester, the fool as companion, the fool as goad to the wise
and challenge to the virtuous, the fool as critic of the world"

21

(Kaiser, p. 12?)= However, "in the last analysis," Kaiser continues,

Panurge "is not so perfect a fool as she, for he lacks the ultimate

wisdom of folly. , . . That final wisdom is . » . reserved for

someone else. At the end of the book, as at the beginning, it is

Pantagruel, not Panurge, who possesses Stultitia's highest wisdom"

(Kaiser, p. 127 )» In Book III of The Histories of Gargantua and

Pantagruel , the Rabelaisian idea of Christian folly emerges from the

dialectical interaction of the two fools, Panurge and Pantagruel.

A "fool may well give lessons to a wise man," the wise fool Pantagruel

says to his foolish, but not as wise counterpart, and the entire third

Book may well be seen as "a story of 1' education du fou ."^-^

Rather than tell Panurge, Pantagruel attempts to show him

that Christian folly is the highest wisdom. At the beginning of Book

III, Panurge asks Pantagruel whether or not he should marry. Desiring

Panurge to reach his own decision, Pantagruel suggests that Panurge

must first know himself and that "all the rest is fortuitous and

depends on the disposition of the heavenly fates" (R. , 3.10.313).

Because he does not know himself, however, Panurge seeks the answer to

his question from various classical sources of truth, such as

Virgilian lots, the divination of his dreams, and a sibyl. The climax

of Panurge 's quest for truth comes in his meeting with a theologian,
a doctor, and a philosopher, all representing different kinds of

human wisdom. The failure of these representatives of human wisdom

in providing Panurge with a satisfactory answer is epitomized in the

dialogue between Panurge and the philosopher, "Words pinner. " The

22

dialogue begins as Pantagruel poses the questdon of whether I^nurge
should many or not.

'Both,' replied Wordspinnero

'What are you saying to me?' asked Panurge,

'What you heard,' replied Wordspinner.

'What did I hear?' demanded Panurge «

'What I said,' replied Wordspinner (Ro, 3"35»38h-85)»

As indicated by his conversation with "Wordspinner," Panurge

does not realize that self-knowledge is a necessary step on the road

to wisdom. Walter Kaiser reminds us that Panurge

o , . must accept the fact that he does not and cannot know,
and leave the rest to God; but God will not assist him until
he has achieved the wisdom of knowing that he is a fool.
As long as he rests in the doubt of worrying whether or not
he will be cuckolded, he is an unfit receptacle for the grace
of God. That is what Pantagruel had told him at the outset:
that he should make up his mind whether or not he wishes to
get married and then follow his will, prepared to leave the
question of cuckoldry to God and equally prepared to accept
whatever God determines. The problem is, of course, that he
cannot make up his mind and cannot be "assured of his will"
about getting married until he is able to accept his own
ignorance about the future. As long as he tries to deter-
mine the future, so long will the future worry him and
prevent his will from being free.

Panurge never learns the lesson that the events of the
Tiers Livre ought to teach him, however, and his final
appearance, when he confronts the fool Triboullet, is intended
to show us that (Kaiser, p. ITit).

Dissatisfied with the answers of the wise, Panurge is

rescued from despair by Pantagruel 's suggestion that he should "take

counsel of some fool" (R., 3.37.390). The argument that Pantagruel

offers for seeking wisdom from a fool echoes the teaching of the

wise fool Stultitia that man must reject this world's wisdom before

he can achieve the transcendent wisdom of Christian folly. In order

to be wise "in the estimation of the celestial spirits," Pantagruel

23

tells Panurge, a "man must forget himself ... rid his senses of all

earthly affection . . . and view everything with unconcern: all of

which are commonly supposed to be symptoms of folly" (R. , 3»37»390-9l) •

Unlike the answers given Panurge by the representatives of

worldly wisdom at the symposium, the cryptic answer of the fool,

Triboullet ("By God, God, mad fool, beware of the monkl"; carries

the weight of divine prophecy. As Walter Kaiser points out,

Triboullet

... is a "natural" fool, a witless individual with no
capacity for reason .... But ... he is capable of
being a receptacle for the wisdom of God — a potentiality
that Pantagruel made clear when he first suggested him,
explaining that a fool could be "not only sage, but /able/
to presage Events to come by Divine Inspiration" (Kaiser,
pp. 17h-75).

During his meeting with Panurge, Triboullet reveals his divinely

inspired prophetic abilities when, "with a violent wag of /hi£7

head," he denounces Panurge as a "mad fool" and warns him to

"beware of the monk" (R. , 3oU5»Ul2). Triboullet calls Panurge a

"mad fool" because Panurge pompously "expound/s7 his problem to

Triboullet in rhetorical and elegant language" (R., 3»U5«Ul2),

thereby indicating his desire "to receive some putative source of

wisdom" instead of "being prepared to receive the decree of

) 7

heaven."^' Paradoxically, then, the "fool" Triboullet wisely per-
ceives that the source of Panurge 's problem during his entire quest
for truth is his failure to know himself. Triboullet 's warning
about the monk is a direct response to Panurge 's often-posed question
a tout being cuckolded. Significantly, as Pantagruel reminds Panurge

2k

(R. , 3<,U6.Ulii), it is Triboullet, and not the worldly wise men, who
both exhibits the power of divine prophecy and provides Panurge with
an answer about the danger posed by the licentious monk.

The contrast between Pantagruel's ability to perceive the
wisdom of Triboullet's folly and Panurge 's failure to do so is further
suggested by the various interpretations which Pantagruel and Panurge
assign to Triboullet's violent head-wagging. Whereas Pantagruel main-
tains that Triboullet's epileptic movement was "caused by the invasion
and inspiration of the prophetic spirits which shook it" (R., 3»U5o
U12-13), Panurge dismisses it as a sign of Triboullet's unwise folly.
"He's a fool all right," Panurge says of Triboullet, "and I am a
perfect fool for explaining my thoughts to him" (R,, 3»U5<.Ul2). "To
be sure," Kaiser argues, both Panurge and Triboullet "are fools, but
they are quite different kinds of fools" (Kaiser, p, I76), Panurge
is a fool because, in his frustrated rage with the antics of
Triboullet, he refuses to accept Triboullet's judgment that he
(Panurge) is a fool. It is worth recalling Kaiser's observation that
"God will not assist /Panurge/ until he has achieved the wisdom of
knowing that he is a fool" (Kaiser, p. 17U)o Because Panurge rejects
Triboullet's judgment that he is a fool, he therefore becomes incapable
of accepting the possibility that the power of divine prophecy could
reside in a fool«

Unlike Panurge, Pantagruel knows that the wisdom of Christian
folly is reserved only for those who can perceive the limitations of
what this world calls wisdom. Whereas the depressed Panurge knows no

25

more about himself at the end of the Third Book than at the beginning
of his quest for truth, Pantagruel's knowledge of the wisdom of folly
enables him to become "the exemplar and paragon of perfect jollity"
(R., 3.51.U26). Because he knows that worldly wisdom is not a substi-
tute for self-knowledge, Pantagruel, and not Panurge, manifests what
Walter Kaiser calls "the true happiness , . . /of/ » • • Christian
folly" (Kaiser, p. l8l)o

Summarizing the similarity between the Rabelaisian and Erasraian
versions of Christian folly, Walter Kaiser cogently remarks that

... in Rabelais' hands, the Erasmian fool is split up.
By means of her irony, Stultitia was able simultaneously to
be the foolish and the wise fool; but when, in the drama of
Rabelais' narrative, these two contradictory types of fool
confront each other, each is personified by a separate
character. Foolish and wise folly are dynamically opposed
in the dialectic between Panurge and Pantagruel . » , .
Such a bifurcation does not, however, signify any substantial
difference between Erasmus' and Rabelais' concepts of the
fool: it is simply the artistic result dictated by two
different modes of presentation (Kaiser, pp. 127-28).

The Erasmian and Rabelaisian ideas of wise folly may become more mean-
ingful if they are presented in the light of the words and deeds of
Sir Thomas More, who personified for his age the humanistic concept
of wise folly.

The relationship of Sir Thomas More to Erasmus ' The Praise of
Folly is well known. More's family name literally means "fool" in
Greek, and, Walter Kaiser reminds us, "it was in More's house that
the Mori a e encomium was written; it was at his suggestion that it
was expanded; and it is to him that it is dedicated" (Kaiser, p. 27).
In his dedication to The Praise of Folly, Erasmus explains the nature

26

of More's proximity to folly: "your family name of More » o » is as
close to the Greek word for folly as you are far from the meaning of
the word" ( Folly , p« 99) ^

The irony of Erasmus' dedication is that while More was far
from being a foolish or worldly fool, he embodied the wise type of
Christian folly praised by his fellow humanist, Erasmus o Indeed,
More, who kept a fool as part of his household, seems to have exempli-
fied for Erasmus the perfect combination of wisdom and folly fitting
a Renaissance man of this world who did not neglect his duty to the
next. In one of his letters (Epist. Uii7, to Ulrich von Hulten, 1519),
Erasmus points out that More was "a second Democritus, always full of
gaiety, excelling in witty repartees, and conversing with ease with
men in every rank of life." More's public speeches, as recorded by
his biographer and son-in-law, William Roper, bear out his friend's
observation and secure More's reputation as a wise jester in public
office. For example, in a speech before Henry VIII soon after his
appointment as speaker of Commons, the learned More hoped that his

"simpleness and Folly" would not "hinder or impair" the "prudent

h9
devises and affaires" of Commons.

More's favor with Henry, who employed him as an adviser and
speech-maker because of his "wisdome and learninge" (Roper's Life ,
p. 22), waned as soon as More staunchly opposed the King's declara-
tion of supremacy as the head of the Church of England. His
opposition to Henry's means of validating his marriage to Anne Boleyn
first cost More the loss of public office and royal favor, and soon

27

led to his imprisonment and execution. More's actions and statements
during this period of his life merit attention because they dramatically
illustrate his stature as a fool for Christ,

Typical of More's reaction to his loss of political and social
prestige was his proclamation to his family of "what an happie and

blessed thinge it was, for the love of god, to suffer losse of goods,

... 50
imprisonment, losse of lands and life also" (Roper's Life , p. 56; o

To More, man's religious duty and the imminent possibility of martyrdom

were not matters for jesto His life-long dedication to the teachings

of the Church and his unpretentious personal faith exemplify the

highest standards of Christian folly.

During one of his wife's visits to the Tower of London, his

place of imprisonment. More demonstrated the high seriousness of his

religious conviction. Upon seeing a priest and three monks marching

to their execution for opposing Henry's Act of Supremacy, More envied

their cheerfulness in "goinge to their deathes as bridegroomes to

their Mariage" (Roper's Life , p, 80) <. More's envy of the condemned

men is characteristic of the spirit of Christian folly. Typical of

the cautiousness of worldly prudence is his wife's condemnation of

his course of action;

I mervaile that you, that have bine alwaies hitherto
taken for so wise a man, whill nowe so play the foole
to lye heare in this close, filthy prison , , . when
you might be abroade at youre libertye (Roper's Life,
p, 82),

In the eyes of his wife, as in the eyes of the world. More was

a fool because he refused to sacrifice his personal standards and his

28

faith for the rewards of this world o If More is judged not by worldly-
standards, but by the Pauline-Erasmian paradox that worldly wisdom is
folly, and Christian folly is wisdom, his apparently absurd actions
form the basis of a transcendent faith in God*s grace. Right up to
the last few moments of his life. More was the perfect wise fool. After
the death sentence was passed against him, he prayed for his Judges
and reminded them of Saint Paul who "consented to the death of St.
Stephen, and kepte their clothes /I.e., the clothes of St. Stephen's
attackers/ that stoned him to death" (Roper's Life , p. 96). There-
after, More fervently wished to die on the Eve of St. Thomas;
expressed sincere gratitude to the King for ridding him so soon "of
the miseries of this wretched woorld" (Roper's Life , p. 100); and
sent his executioner "one Angell of gold" (Roper's Life, p. 102).
All of More's actions set the stage for his final jest in
which the comic and the serious are perilously balanced in true
Erasmian fashion. Noting that the scaffold at the place of execution
was so weak that it was about to fall. More observed: "'I pray you,
master Leiuetenaunte, see me salf vppe, and for my cominge downe let
me shifte for my self" (Roper's Life, p. 103). A fool who goaded
vain authority on the one hand. More was simultaneously a profound
Christian on the other, for he desired that the crowd pray for him
and bear witness that he was dying "in and for the faith of the holy
catholik churche" (Roper's Life, p. 103). Only after his affirmation
of martyrdom did More "put his beard out of the way when he laid his
head on the block, remarking to the headsman, that it at least had

29

not committed treason."

More '3 jests do not negate the horror of his execution, but they
do make bearable the absurdity of its occurrence o By the same token,
his jests do not negate his martyrdom, for More provided the Renaissance
with the living example of Christian folly. In his life and death,
then, Sir Thomas More demonstrated the Pauline doctrine that the folly
of Christianity is the highest wisdom. In addition, More showed that
Christian folly was more than an abstract theological concept, for he
made it a concrete way of life in this world. The manifestation of the
tradition in this world is the legacy which More and the Renaissance
humanists provided to posterity, and it is to the way in which some
late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century writers treated this
legacy that we turn next.

Ill

In Book 7III of Paradise Lost , the angel Raphael expresses
a Miltonic version of the Augustinian concept of "learned ignorance"

when he instructs Adam to be "lowlie wise" and to "think onely what

53
concernes /Kim/ and /his/ being" (VIII, 173-7U). Echoing the words

of Paul in Romans 1,22 ("Professing themselves to be wise, they
became fools"), Milton's Raphael warns Adam in Book VII that the abuse
of carnal knowledge "soon turnsA'isdom to Folly" (VII, 129-30). One
of the strongest arguments for embracing one of the forms of Christian
folly, such as "learned ignorance" or "lowlie wisdom," is precisely
Milton's reminder that the pursuit of forbidden knowledge often leads

30

to folly in the eyes of God« Seventeenth-century Anglican divines,
such as Henry Hammond and Robert South, and the French moralist,
Nicolas Malebranche, also reminded man that while abuses in carnal
wisdom lead to folly in the eyes of God, Christian folly is the high-
est wisdom„ A brief examination of the expressions of the concept of
Christian folly appearing in the works of these late seventeenth-
century writers will provide a clearer understanding of Sterne's use
of Christian folly in the eighteenth century „

The form of Christian folly which appears in Milton's Paradise
Lost — the concept of "lowlie wisdom"— emerges from the contrast
between the two opposing conceptions of wisdom held by Satan and by
Adam, at the end of the poemo Even after the defeat of his rebellious
forces at the hands of God's angels, Satan feels that wisdom lies in
disobeying God by attempting to subvert His plan for mankind. As the
angel Gabriel scornfully warns Satan in Book IV, however, Satan's
"wisdom" in leaving Hell and attempting to subvert the divine plan is
sheer folly?

So judge thou still, presumptuous, till the wrath.

Which thou incurr'st by flying, meet thy flight

Sevenfold, and scourge that wisdom back to Hell (IV, 912-lU)«

For Satan, then, wisdom lies in the exercise of revenge and
forcBo On the other hand, Adam sees, at the end of the poem, that
wisdom is to "love with feare the onely God" (XII, 561).. By grasp-
ing the paradox of Christian folly— that God, "by things deem'd weak/
Subvert/!/ worldly strong, and worldly wise/By simply meek" (XII,

567-69), Adam attains nothing less than "the summe of wisdome"
(XII, 575-76).

31

In Paradise Lost , the idea of Christian folly, which appears
as Milton's concept of "lowlie wisdom," is a further example of the
continuation of the tradition of Christian folly in imaginative
literature. In general, however, the most common expressions of the
idea of Christian folly in the seventeenth century appeared in the
Biblical commentaries and sermons upon Pauline texts by Anglican
divines. The commentaries of Henry Hammond, Daniel Whitby, and
John Locke^^ are relevant to this discussion of Christian folly
because they contain some of the terms which preachers such as Robert
South and Sterne himself use in translating the idea of Christian
folly out of the realm of Scriptural exegesis and into the sphere of
seventeenth and eighteenth-century life. In his commentary upon
Paul's Epistles, Hammond, chaplain to King Charles I, glosses the
"wise" men and scribes mentioned in I Cor. 1.20 as the "philosophers

and learned or searching men » . ./whose/ deep wisdom of the world . .

60

is absolute folly" in comparison with "the doctrine of Christ."

To John Locke, the "wisdom of the world" which Paul denounces in First
Corinthians is "the knowledge, arts, and sciences attainable by man's
natural parts and faculties} such as man's wit could find out,
cultivate and improve," and to Hammond, the wisdom of the world
which Paul attacks in I Cor. 1.19 is "an habit of science or prudence"
(Hammond, p. 512). As Daniel Whitby sums up in his "Preface" to
A Paraphrase and Commentary upon St. Paul's First Epistle to the
Corinthians , "the Apostle spends the latter part of the first chapter
^.e., of First Corinthians/, from verse twenty to the end, in showing

32

the vanity of the wisdom which the philosophers pretended to, in
comparison to the wisdom discovered by the Grospel, preached by the
Apostles" (p, 101).

In a sermon preached at Westminister Abbey on April 30, I676,
Robert South presents the idea of Christian folly in terms of the
contrast between the worldly prudence of "policy . . . /which/ con-
sists in a certain dexterity or art of managing business for a man's
secular advantage" on the one hand, and the divine "folly of being
sincere, and without guile; without traps and snares in our converse"
(South, p. 371) J on the other. South points out that "the wisdom of
the world ... is taken in Scripture, in a double sense . . . that
sort of wisdom, that consists in speculation; called Philosophy . . .
/and/ such a wisdom as lies in practice, and goes commonly by the
name of policy" (South, p. 'h'hS)' To South, it is this latter kind of
wisdom which Paul "intended in the text; namely, that practical

cunning that shows itself in political matters, and has in it the

,x 63
nystery of a trade or craft" (South, p. 336).

The first part of South 's sermon consists of a discussion of

the four "principles" by which "policy or wisdom governs its actions"

(South, p. 336). The first is dissimulation; the second, the notion

"that conscience, and religion ought to lay no restraint upon men at

all, when it lies opposite to the prosecution of their interest"

(South, p. 336); the third, "that a man ought to make himself, and

not the public, the chief, if not the sole end of all his actions"

(South, p. 3U6); and the fourth, "that in showing kindness ... no

33

respect at all is to be had to friendship . . . sense of honor; but
that such favors are to be done only to the rich or potent, from whom
a man may receive a further advantage" (South, p. 3U6).

In the second part of his sermon. South demonstrates "the folly
and absurdity" of the four principles by which policy governs its
actions "in relation to God" (South, p. 352). From the perspective of
God, man is foolish for following these principles, for, in the first
place, he "pitches/ upon such an end /which/ is unsuitable to his
condition" and second, he "pitch/es/ upon means unsuitable to the com-
passing of his end" (South, p. 352). "There is folly enough in either
of these," South continues, "and my business shall be to show, that
such as act by the fore-mentioned rules of worldly-wisdom, are eminently
foolish upon both accounts" (South, p. 352 )« In opposition to these
principles for success in the world, which the world applauds as wisdom.
South exhorts his audience to embrace his version of the idea of
Christian folly:

Let us not be ashamed of the folly of being sincere,
and without guile; without traps and snares in our converse;
of being fearful to build our estates upon the ruin of our
consciences .... I say, let us not blush to be found
guilty of all these follies, (as some account them) rather
than be expert in that kind of wisdom, that God himself . . .
has pronounced to be earthly, sensual, devilish; and of the
wretched absurdity of which, all histories . . . have given
us such . . . convincing examples (South, p. 371).

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the idea of

Christian folly also took the form of a reaction against neo-stoicism.

Rae Blanchard reminds us that "the Stoic exaltation of reason had been

revived at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the

3U

seventeenth ... and was still a potent force at the tijne Steele
wrote." According to the neo-stoics, the wise man combats his
passions by means of his reasono In the words of one propagandist for
stoicism;

Reason is then Man's only benefit; he must use it to
cliiribe heaven, he must consult it to govern his Life, and
if he do but hearken unto her, he shall be vertuous, and
tame the most insolent of his Passions c05

For the advocates of such hyper-rationalism, the doctrines of

Christianity were all but worthless « As one writer suras up,

„ o o neo-stoicism /Is/ » « ■> made for rational people,
for intellectuals who rationalize everything; their faith
and the deeds which it prescribes for them, but who will
never have the folly of the cross » Neo-stoicism is finally
a Christian rationalism, in which Christianity does not
always appear as essential, but rather as superadded. °°

The reaction of Christian apologists to the dictums of neo-
stoicism may be viewed, in part, as an attempt to eulogize those who
possessed and rejoiced in "the folly of the cross." In The Christian
Hero (1701), for example, Richard Steele describes the primitive

Christians as "the most truly Gallant and Heroic k /raen7 that ever

67
appear'd to mankind," Another defense of Christianity, Nicolas

Malebranche ' s Treatise concerning the Search after Truth , rejects

the wisdom of the stoic's virtue in favor of the folly of the early

Christians' faith= In the chapter entitled "Of the Imagination of

Seneca," Malebranche states:

The Vertue of the Stoic ks could never render them
impregnable; since 'tis not inconsistent with true Vertue
for a Man to be Miserable, and pitiable at the time of his
Suffering some evil: St, Paul and the Primitive Christians,
had doubtless more Vertue than Cato and all the Stoicks: and

35

yet they confess 'd they were miserable through the Pains
they endur'd; though they were Happy through the Prospect
of an Eternal Retribution .... Alas, poor Cato! thou
fanciest thy Vertue raises thee above all things: whereas
thy Wisdom is Folly, and thy Magnanimity abominable before
God; whatever the Wise-Men of the World may think of it
(Malebranche, p. 9h) -

Similar to the Patristic writers, medieval theologians, and
Renaissance humanists who preceded them, then, some of the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth-century apologists for orthodox
Christianity utilized the idea of Christian folly to combat the par-
ticular evils of their age. Tertullian presented Christian folly in
the form of intellectual humility vs o gnosticism; Cusa, in the form
of "learned ignorance" vso scholasticism; Milton, in the form of
"lowlie wisdom" vs , forbidden knowledge; South, in the form of
sincerity and honesty vs. opportunism and "practical cunning"; and
Malebranche, in the form of piety and faith in providence vs,
stoical morality. Regardless of its various forms, the idea of
Christian folly is based upon the Pauline paradox that the foolish-
ness of God is wiser than the wisdom of this world. Both as a preach-
er and a novelist, Laurence Sterne incorporated some of these tradi-
tional forms of Christian folly into a norm against which he tested
the foolishness of this world.

Notes

1, The Sermons of Mr. Yorick , 2 vols., in The Writings of Laurence
Sterne, The Shakespeare Head Press edo (Oxford and New York, 1927),
Vol, II, po 56o Subsequent references are to this edition and will
be cited hereafter as Sermons .

2o In Praisers of Folly (Cambridge, MasSo, 1963), Walter Kaiser
points out that "all through the Middle Ages the tradition of the
Fool in Christ, whether articulated precisely as such or not, was
preserved by such figures as Gregory the Great, Scotus Erigena,
Francis of Assisi, Jacopone da Todi, and Raimond Lull" (pp. 8-9).

3. For a discussion of the distinction between the "Tertullian
family" and the "Augustine family" of Christian thought, see
Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York,
1938), ppo 8-33.

U. Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ , trans. Richard
Whitford, ed. Edward J. Klein (New York and London, 19Ul), Book I,
chap, 1, p. ko Subsequent references are to this edition and will
be noted in the text as Imitatio .

$. St, Augustine, "Letter No, 120," trans, in The Fathers of the
Church, ed, Roy Joseph Deferrari (Washington, D.C, 1965), vol.
XVIII, p, 30U. The title The Fathers of the Church will hereafter
appear as Fathers .

6. Kaiser, Praisers of Folly , p, 38,

7, Quoted by Kaiser, Praisers of Folly , p, 88,

8, William VJycherley, Works , ed, Montague Summers (Soho, 192^),
vol. III, p. 25,

9. Erasmus, The Praise of Folly , trans. John P. Dolan in The
Essential Erasmus (New York. 196U). pp. 162-63. Subsequent
references are to this edition and will be cited hereafter as
Folly ,

10» In The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass,, 1958),
Eugene F, Rice, Jr., observes that "since Paul named Christ 'the
power of God and the wisdom of God' /l Cor, 1.23-2l;7 « « » and
Augustine elaborated this suggestion~into coherent~doctrine in the
De Trinitate , this identification had been a Christian commonplace"
(P- 21J,

36

37

11. Earle Ellis, Paul's Use of the Old Testament (Edinburgh, 1957),
p. 92.

12. For a discussion of those who had "absolute conviction in the
self-sufficiency of Christian Revelation," see Gilson, pp. 8-lU.

13. Francois Amiot, The Key Concepts of St. Paul , trans. John
Dingle (New York, 1962}, p. 129.

lli. Tertullian, The Body of Christ , trans, in The Ante-Nicene
Fathers (Buffalo, N,Y., lbb5J, vol. Ill, p. h}9.

15. In his Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle
Ages (Baltimore, 19Ubj, George Boas points out that "it may very
well be that this famous Father maintained simply that man could
not completely hvimiliate himself before God, so long as he retained
his reasoning powers. The belief in the absurd is a belief in the
Incarnation and Resurrection, and the words « . . ' Certum est quia
impossibile est , ' and ' Prorsus credibile est quia inept\im est , '
may be taken as a sacrifice of human reason analogous to the
sacrifices demanded by the vows of chastity and obedience" (p. 121).

16. James M. Edie, "Faith as Existential Choice," in Christianity
and Existentialism , ed. William Earle et al (Evanston, 111., 1963),

17. Tertullian, The Ante-Nicene Fathers , III, 525.

18. Ibid .

19. Ibid ., p. 526.

20. Ibid. , p. UliO.

21. Quoted by Gilson, p. 8. Cf. Tertullian, On Prescription
Against Heretics . Chapter VII: "What indeed has Athens to do with
Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the
Church? what between heretic and Christians?" (quoted by Gilson, p. 9)

22. Gilson, p, 8. "~

23. Jacopone da Todi, "How It Is The Highest Wisdom To Be Reputed Mad
For The Love Of Christ," trans. Mrs. Theodore Beck, in Evelyn Underhill,
Jacopone da Todi: A Spiritual Bio^raph,v (London, 1919), p. 283.

2U. Saint Jerome, B. Pauli ad Corinthios prima, Patrologiae cur sus
completus . . . Series Latina , ed. J. P. Mjgne /Paris. l57H-lM9n^.
vol. XXX, col. 726:

38

Illic proprie mundi increpat sapientes, quos humana
sapientia non permittebat entire divina, Aliter: Si quis ad
reddendam vicem injuriae, si eadem fecerit, iputet se esse
sapientem, stultus fiat. In hoc enim saecula stultus est ,
qui evangelica voluerit implere praecepta: Qui enim
percutienti aleram praebat maxillam: voluntate stultus est ,
nonnatura.

Nihil stultius est, quam ut velit se, qui non potest ,
vindicare, et Deo suam non reservat injurium. Et ita de
contimelia vindictum apud Deum perdet, et de patientia
mercedem.

I am indebted to Professor Joseph Brunet, of The
University of Florida, for translating Jerome's commentary on
I Cor. 3.l8-19o

25. Bibliorum Sacrorum, luxta Vulgatum Clementinam . Nova Editio
(The Vatican, 1959), p. IO7O0 ~"~

26. Barbara Swain, Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance (New York, 1932), p. 36.

27 • Miss Swain cites the following passage from Gregory's Moralium
libri sive exposito in librum B. Job (PL, LXZV, col. 9i;7), in
which he describes the "innocent and pure life":

The wisdom of this world is, to conceal the truth of one's
heart by trickery, to veil one's meaning in words, to make those
things which are false appear to be true, to present the truth as
falsehood .... But on the other hand the wisdom of the just is,
to make no pretences for a show, to make plain one's meaning by one's
words, to pursue those things which are true, to shun the false, to
do good deeds gladly, to bear evil more willingly than to do it . . .
But this simplicity of the just is laughed to scorn, for worldly wise
men believe the virtue of purity to be foolish. Indeed all things
that are done innocently seem to them undoubtedly foolish (trans,
and quoted by Swain, pp. 198-99).

28. Gregory the Great, ¥L, LXXVI, col. I6I-62, trans, and quoted
by Swain, pp. 199-200.

29. For a study of the concept of "the contempt of the world" and
its relevance to fourteenth-century English literature, see Donald
R. Howard, "The Contempt of the World: A Study in the Ideology of
Latin Christendom with Emphasis on Fourteenth Century English
Literature," unpubl, dissertation, University of Florida, 195I4.

39

30. In Chapter XLIII, for example, Kempis becomes a mask for
Christ: "I teach without sound of words, without diversity of
opinions, without desire of honour, and without strife and argu-
ments. I am he that teacheth all the people to despise earthly
things, to loathe things that be present /and/ oo seek and to
savour eternal things" (Imitatio, 3.U3.17II).

31. For the influence of Kempis and Cusa on Erasmus, see Kaiser,
pp. 9-10.

32. In his article, "Saint Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa in the
Tradition of Western Christian Thought," Speculum , XXVIII (1953),
297-316, Fo Edward Cranz points out that "Augustine begins his
discussion of faith and wisdom by making a general distinction
between two types of knowledge. There are two offices of the mind,
the one higher and the one lower, and there are two corresponding
types of knowledge. In the first case, there is wisdom ( sapientia ),
devoted to the contemplation of things eternal^ in the second case,
there is science ( scientia ), devoted to action in things temporal"
(306).

In De Trinitate (Bko 13, chap. 19, para, 2li), St. Augustine
maintains that Christ "places within us the faith of things temporal;
He exhibits to us the truth of things eternal. We move through Him
to Him. We move through science to wisdom" (quoted by Cranz,
306-307).

33. For a discussion of Augustine's concept of wisdom, see Rice,
The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom , pp. 11-lU.

3h' Cf. St- Augustine, The Divination of Demons : "In truth, the

Christians' very foolishness of ignorance ... to the humble and

the holy and to those diligently devoted to it appears the lofty
and the only true wisdom" ( Fathers , XXVII, 1^39).

35. Gilson, p. 19.

36. Kaiser, p. 9.

37. Ibid .

38. For Cusa's identification of divine wisdom with the "incom-
prehensible word of God," see Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "Nicholas of
Cusa's Idea of Wisdom," Traditio , XIII (1957), 3U5-68.

39. Q.uoted by Rice, "Nicholas of Cusa's Idea of Wisdom," 363.
Cf. Cusa's "Sermon of ihSh" where, after quoting Rom, 1.20 ("For
the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
Clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse").

Uo

Cusa defines "knowing ignorance" as "'the sight of invisible things'"
(quoted by Cranz, "Saint Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa," 312).

Uo, Nicholas Cusanus, Of Learned Ignorance , trans. Germain Heron
(New Haven, Conn., 19$k) , P» 161.

III. Kaiser, p. 9.

ii2. Cf. I Cor. U.IO: "We /apostles/ are fools for Christ's sake."

k3' Kaiser, p. 12?.

UU. Rabelais, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel , trans.
J. M. Cohen (Baltimore, 1955), Book III, chapter 10, p. 313.
Subsequent references are to this edition and will be noted in the
text,

U5» As Walter Kaiser points out, "the subject of the Tiers Livre is
truth and not, as has so generally been said, marriage" (p. 125).

U6. Ro, 3.i;5»Ul2.

U7» Kaiser, p. 175»

U8. Quoted in The Dictionary of National Biography , ed. Sirs Leslie
Stephen and Sidney Lee (London, 1917), vol. XIII, p. 886.

U9. William Roper, Esq., The Life of Sir Thomas Moor^ Knight , ed.
Elsie Vaughan Hitchcock (London, 1935), p. 13. All subsequent
references are to this edition and will be noted as Roper's Life .

50. More may possibly have been thinking of Philippians 3-8, where
Paul states: "I count all things but loss for the excellency of
Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." In his
sermon "Our Conversation in Heaven," based on Phil. 3.20, Sterne
exhorts his congregation to imitate the Apostle Paul's wise and
exemplary life.

51. The day before his execution More sent his wife a letter
together with his hair-shirt, which he always wore, because he was
"not willinge to haue it seene" (Roper's Life , p. 99),

52. Quoted in The Spectator , No. 3h9, ed. George Aitken (London,
1898), vol. V, p. 155 n.l.

53. John Milton, Paradise Lost , in The Student's Milton , ed. Frank
Allen Patterson (New York, 1930), Book VIII, lines 173-7/i. Subse-
quent references are to this edition and will be noted in the text.

Ui

Sh' In reply to Boswell's question concerning which Biblical
commentators he should consult, Johnson replied: "I would recommend
Lowth and Patrick on the Old Testament and Hammond on the New"
(James Boswell, Life of Johnson , ed. L, F. Powell /Oxford, 193U7>
vol» III, p. $d)~. Hammond's A Paraphrase, and Annotations Upon All
the Books of the New Testament , first published in 165Uj had gone
through its seventh edition in 1702,

SS- Robert South was installed canon of Christ Church in I67O and
was known for his use of humor in the pulpit and for his "direct . . .
dealing with the vices of the age" ( DNB , XVIII, 6Qk-QS)-

$6. Malebranche's De la Recherche de la Verite first appears in
I67U and passed through six editions during the author's lifetime.
It was first translated into English by T, Taylor (Oxford, 169U)
as Father Malebranche's Treatise Concerning the Search after Truth .

57. Cf , I Cor, 1,27: "For God hath chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things
of the world to confound the things which are mighty.,"

58. Daniel Whitby's A Paraphrase and Commentary upon all the Epistles
of the New Testament (London, 1700) went through eight editions in

the eighteenth century.

59. Sterne's general indebtedness to the "sagacious" Locke whom he
praises in Tristram Shandy is well known, Lansing van der Heyden
Hammond cites Sterne's particular indebtedness to Locke's theological
works in Laurence Sterne's 'Sermons of Mr. Yorick ' (New Haven, 19hQ) ,
pp, 138-lir

60. Henry Hammond, A Paraphrase and Annotations Upon all the Books
of the New Testament (London, 1659). p. 511. All subsequent refer-
ences are to this edition and will be cited in the text by the
author's name. Cf Whitby's paraphrase of I Cor. 1.20: "What hath
been done by the wisdom of the philosopher, or by the Jewish doctor,
or by the searcher into Nature's secrets, to bring men to the true
knowledge of God, and of his will? Hath not God discovered their
wisdom to be but folly, in comparison of this way which he hath
chosen to bring men to the knowledge of himself?" (p, II3)

61. John Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on St. Paul's First Epistle
to the Corinthians , in The Works of John Locke (London. tHp^L

vol. VIII, p, 86-, ~

62. Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions
(London, 1715), vol I, p, 335, All references are to this edition
and will be cited in the text by the author's name.

U2

63. In his sermon on "The Advantages of Christianity to the World,"
Sterne expresses the falseness of worldly wisdom in terms similar to
South 's: "The politicians of this world . « .- admit of no other
claims of wisdom, but the knowledge of men and business . . =, the little
man of this world . . . thinks the main point of wisdom is to take
care of himself o o » to make use of opportunity whilst he has it"
( Sermons , II, 5U-5)=

61;. Rae Blanchard, edo, "Introduction" to Richard Steele's The
Christian Hero (London, 1932), pc xviio

65. Le Grand, Man Without Passion or the Wise Stoick (trans »

G. Ro, 1675)> P» 27, quoted by Blanchard, "Introduction," p. xviii.

66 » Translated from Leontine Zanta's La Renaissance du Stoicisme
au XVI Siecle (Paris, 191h)' " En resume, le n^o-stoicisme reste
tout proche d'un christianisme moyen, fait pour des gens raisonnables ,
pour des intellectuels qui raisonnent tout, leur foi et les acts
qu'elle leur dicte, mais qui n'auront jamais le folie de la croijc .
Le n^o-stoicisme est en definitive un rationalisme Chretien, dans
lequel le christianisme n'apparait pas toujours comme essentiel ,
mais plutot comme surajout^" (p» 337 J ..

67. Richard Steele, The Christian Hero, p^ 15 •

Two: The Folly of Wisdom

In Tristram Shandy , Sterne presents the idea of Christian
folly in terms of two general contrasts between foolish wisdom and
wise follyo The first contrast is between the folly of the novel's
worldly wise pedants, represented by Walter Shandy, and the wisdom
of the novel's fools, represented by Tristram the narrator, Toby,
Trim, and Parson Yorick. The second basic contrast between wisdom
and folly which Sterne presents is between the wisdom of Parson
Yorick's view of Death and the folly of Tristram's » Whereas Yorick
views Death from the perspective of the Christian fool — as the
beginning of life, Tristram foolishly fails to achieve the wisdom of
folly as a character in attempting to outrun Death in Volume VII even
though he exposes the folly of worldly wisdom as a narrator. Before
attempting to demonstrate how Sterne projects the idea of Christian
folly into the sphere of the Shandean universe, it may be helpful to
examine the confusing relationship between Sterne's two personae,
Tristram and Parson Yoricko This relationship, I hope to show, illu-
minates the concept of Christian folly which appears throughout
Sterne's work.

Since the publication of Tristram Shandy , there has been a
general tendency to associate Sterne with the "heteroclite" (TS,
1.11.25) Parson of Shandy Hall. Sterne's biographer, Wilbur Cross,

Ii3

1+U

contends that Sterne's "more ideal self o = « bears the name of Parson
Yorick."^ while James Work agrees by viewing Yorick as "a sublimated,
idealized Sterne" (TS, "Introduction," p. Iviii). In an article on
"The Laughter of Laurence Sterne," Norman N. Holland suggests that
"parson and jester are one , <> , jj-'^fj behind the face of piety, the
skull of Yorick laughs."^ As Henri Fluchere has recently summed up,
however, "the character of Yorick tends to be neglected. He is often
merely identified with Laurence Steme the parson, without any real
examination into the validity or consequences of such an identifica-
tion ." Fluchere 's observation that Yorick functions as a court jester
in "castigating the proud ... on the dim outskirts of Shandy Hall"
(Fluchere, p. UUU) indicates, I think, a way of grasping how Sterne
exposes the foolishness of worldly wisdom in order to present the
wisdom of Christian folly.

Sharing Yorick 's function in Tristram Shandy as a kind of court

7
jester is the narrator, Tristram, who likewise satirizes man's pride

in the "weakness and imbecility of human reason" (TS, 8, U, 514-3) »

By exposing the proud spirit of human reason, both Tristram and Yorick

develop Sterne's "plan" in Tristram Shandy , which he said was to

satirize not only "the weak part of the Sciences, in which the true

point of Ridicule lies— but every Thing else, which I find laugh-at-

P
able in ny way--" ( Letters, No. 36, p. Ih) <■ Unlike Tristram, however,

Yorick combines the court jester's satirical function with the Chris-
tian fool's dedication to the humility and wisdom of Christ. The
relationship between Tristram and Yorick is reminiscent of the

U5

9
relationship between Rabelais' Panurge and Pantagnielo Like Panurge,

Tristram fails to become a Christian fool because he is, paradoxically,

not "foolish" enough , Even though Yorick's perfect folly earns

Tristram's "esteem," it also earns his "blame" (TS, U'27o32U), thus

indicating his failure, like that of Panurge, to achieve the final

vision of Christian folly. The relationship between Tristram and

Yorick becomes less complex if both personae are seen as dramatic

representations of complementary aspects of Sterne's "foolish"

nature. If Cross' contention that Sterne's "more ideal self . , .

bears the name of Parson Yorick" is correct, we can, on the basis of

Tristram's actions in the novel, view him as representing a more

prudent and discrete Sterne, Although he personally condemned the

"understrapping Virtue of Prudence" (Letters, No, 3BL^ p. 76), Sterne

12
was both well aware and wary of the world's treatment of its fools.

In Tristram's eyes, Yorick's humility and his imprudent
refusal to abandon his "open war" against the affectation of "gravity"
(TS, 1,12,26) inform him with an "heroic cast" (TS, Ii.27,32li) which
reflects Sterne's praise of what the world calls "folly," Wilbur
Cross reminds us that "prudence, caution, discretion, the virtues that
smooth one's way through life, were ever classed by /^terne/ among the
evil propensities of human nature" ( Life , p, 61i), By examining cer-
tain biographical evidence which shows Sterne's impatience with
prudence, we may more clearly view Parson Yorick as an idealized
Sterne, In the summer of 1759, a few months before the publication
of the first installment of Tristram Shandy . Sterne replied to a

U6

friend who had advised him to exercise more prudence as a clergyman:

Mr, Fothergil, whom I regard in the Class I do you, as
Ify best of Criticks & will wishers — preaches daily to Me
Upon your Text— "get Your Preferment first Lory J he says —
& then Write & Welcome" But suppose preferment is long
acoming (& for aught I know I may not be preferr'd till the
Resurrection of the Just) and am all that time in labour —
how must I bear my Pains? ( Letters , NOo 38A5 p. 76)

Sterne's condemnation of the "unders trapping Virtue of Pru-
dence," expressed in the same letter as his "promise to be Cautious"
( Letters , No. 38A, p. 76), provides a larger context for understanding
the respective roles of lorick and Tristram in Tristram Shandy . In
his fearless castigation of the affectation of "gravity" (TS, loll. 26),
Yorick becomes an idealized Sterne who would never admit, as did
Sterne himself, under the pressure of public criticism, to having
"Bum'd More wit, then /sic/ I have publish 'd" ( Letters , Noa 38A,
po 77) » In his wavering between "esteem" and "blame" (TS, Uo27<.32U)
for Yorick »s indiscretion, then, Tristram may be seen as representing
Sterne's more cautious self in Tristram Shandy , for he is more aware
than Yorick of the penalties this world exacts upon its fools.

A further indication of Yorick 's role as an idealized Sterne

is revealed in a letter Sterne wrote to Elizabeth Montagu, shortly

before his death in March, I768. In a likely attempt to remind his

wife's cousin of Yorick's jest in the face of death (TS, 1.12.31),

Sterne expressed a desire to die laughing:

... I brave evils . - - et quand Je serai mort, on mettra
mon nom dans le liste de ces Heros, qui sont Morts en
plaisantant (Letters, No. 23U, p. U16).

hi

As I hope to show later on in this study, Sterne idealizes Yorick's
"jest in death" at the beginning of the novel in order to illustrate
a kind of folly which becomes increasingly more wise in Christ as the
novel unfolds

Like Erasmus' Stultitia, Sterne's Tristram shows that all men
are fools, but that the folly of some fools is wiser than that of

others. Tristram's ability to distinguish between kinds of folly is,

as we shall see, indicative of his own wisdom., In Tristram Shandy ,
Sterne's narrator, Tristram, participates in the Erasmian tradition

of imparting wisdom while speaking as a fool. Sterne's employment of
a "foolish" narrator indicates that the novelist heeded Stultitia 's
observation that men who are bored at sermons are responsive to fools.
By employing a foolish narrator in Tristram Shandy , Sterne not only
assured himself of a more captive audience, but a larger one as well.
On one occasion, Sterne recorded that his entire congregation con-
sisted of "one Bellows Blower, three singing men, one Vicar, and one
Residentiary," Samuel Richardson was hardly exaggerating when he
remarked to the Bishop of Sodor and Man that Sterne "passed unnoticed
by the world till he put on a fool's coat, and since that everybody
admires himJ"-^^

In Tristram Shandy , Sterne's Tristram reveals his "fool's
coat" whenever he claims to be a fool. Tristram's claim at the

U8

beginning of his story that he is not "a wise man" (TS, I080II;) echoes
Stultitia's remark at the beginning of her oration, that her outward
appearance reveals she is not "Minerva, or Wisdom" ( Folly , po 103),
Like Stultitia, moreover, Tristram's claim of folly is ironic, for
the folly which both of these fools appropriate to themselves paradoxi-
cally leads to wisdom. Unlike Stultitia, however, who states that her
outward appearance "tell/s/ well enough" who she is, Tris tram begs
the reader, at the beginning of his story, not to accept his outward
appearance at face value;

•MBMMWCMutMntlMK

. . o if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,
--or should sometimes put on a fool's cap with a bell to it,
for a moment or two as we pass along, --don't fly off, — but
rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom
than appears on my outside (TS, lc6oll)o

At the end of the story of his life and opinions, Tristram reminds the^

reader that a book must "keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and

folly" if it is to "hold together a single year" (TS, 9ol2o6lii)o

Tristram's praise of Yorick's wise folly demonstrates such a "Just

balance" insofar as Tristram, a foolish narrator, is wise enough to

praise the wisdom exhibited by Parson Yorick.

Tristram begins his praise of Yorick's wise folly early in

Volume I when he eulogizes the Parson of Shandy Hall as his "Hero"

(TS, lo 12. 28)0 The remainder of the novel indicates that the phrase

"my Hero" is more than a stock narrative formula, for it accurately

describes Tristram's esteem for Yorick's courage in refusing to

abandon the virtues of humility and righteous indignation in the name

of prudence and discretion. Observing that Yorick, unlike his famous

U9

Shakespearean ancestor/"^ was more than just "'a man of jesf" (TS,
U.27.32U), Tristram claims that his "hero's" character was "temper'd
with something which witheld ... him from . . . many . . . ungracious
pranks, of which he . . » undeservedly bore the blame" (TS, U.27.32U).
Because "his spirit was above it," Tristram adds, Yorick refused to
deny false accusations which "he could have explained , . . to hie
honour" (TS, U.27.32U). Instead of setting himself right in the eyes
of the world, Yorick "trusted to time and truth to do it for him"
(TS, U.27.32U). In telling the story of Yorick 's brief life, Tristram
may be seen as executing this trust, for like Erasmus' Stultitia, he
shows that what this world calls folly may well lead to wisdom.

t

f Not only does Tristram show that folly may lead to wisdom,

,but he also shows that false learning may pervert wisdom into folly.
Tristram is a wise fool because he sees both the wisdom in folly and
the folly in wisdom. In his "Author's Preface," which appears between
chapters twenty and twenty-one of Volume III, Tristram addresses him-
self to the issue of false learning when he says that "the main and
principal point I have undertaken to clear up . . . is. How it comes
to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most
judgment " (TS, 3,20.200). For Locke, wit lies "most in the assemblage
of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety,
wherein can be found any resemblance . . . judgment, on the contrary,
lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another,
ideas wherein can be found the least difference o" In disagreement
with Locke, Tristram argues that there is as little difference between

50

wit and judgment as there is between "farting and hickuping" (TS,
3.20ol93)o As Tristram indicates by his choice of similes, he wishes

to reduce to absurdity the claims of worldly wise men, such as

19
"Agelastes," "Triptolemus, " and Fhutatorius, " which forced Locke to

make his distinction between wit and judgment. Tristram's "Author's

Preface," which openly invites comparison to the "Author's Prologue"

20
in Book I of Rabelais, deals with Locke's distinction in order to

show how the practitioners of false learning can pervert wisdom into
folly. The object of Tristram's satire here is not "the great Locke ,"
who "free/d7 the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors"
(TS, 3o20.202), but the false learning and worldly wisdom of the
"graver gentry" (TS, 3 o 20, 201) who duped or "bubbled" (TS, 3 .20 ,202)
Locke into making his distinction.

In showing how Locke was "bubbled" into making his distinction
between wit and judgment, Tristram explains that since the "graver
gentry" realized that they lacked wit, they appropriated judgment to
themselves and successfully persuaded Locke to make his distinction
between wit and judgment in favor of the latter, Tristram's descrip-
tion of the manner in which the "graver gentry" beguiled Locke into
making his distinction indicates Tristram's low opinion of worldly
wisdom:

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with
. . . such cunning and artifice . , . . The cry /i.e., of
the "graver gentry,"/, it seems, was so deep and solemn a
one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and
other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one
against the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher
himself /I.e., Locke/ was deceived by it (TS, 3o20o202),

51

By discrediting the manner in which the distinction between wit and
judgment was made, Tristram discredits the distinction itself as
"one of the many vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have
to answer for hereafter" (TS, 3.20«202).

By recognizing that Locke's distinction between wit and judg-
ment resulted from the pressures brought to bear by the worldly wise
"graver gentry," Tristram shows that he is wiser than his cap and
bells might indicate. He also shows that he is a wise fool by avoid-
ing a "set dissertation" (TS, 3-20.200), such as Locke's distinction
between wit and judgment, because such a distinction would involve
"placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another . . .
betwixt /his/ own and /his/ reader's conception" (TS, 3-20.200).
Instead of relying upon the philosophical rhetoric of a "set disserta-
tion," Tristram utilizes the two knobs on the back of his "cane chair"
to illustrate that the isolated presence of either wit or judgment
merely emphasizes the absence of the other:

Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have
turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?
— nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this
plain question. Whether this one single knobb /sic/ which now
stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose
upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?
(TS, 3«20.201)

In order to justify his use of two knobs on the back of his chair as

a means of illustrating the extent to which Locke was fooled into making

his distinction, Tristram quotes from Book III of Rabelais: '"for

what hindrance . . . doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to

any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool ... or a cane

52

21

chair,'" (TS, 3.20.200). As indicated by his quotation from Rabe-
lais, Tristram is asking the reader to identify him with other wise
fools who have imparted lessons of wisdom.

Tristram's satire on Locke's distinction between wit and judg-
ment in his "Author's Preface" serves as a parable for the entire novel.
By showing how the "grave folks" (IS, 3.20.202) of this world can
beguile someone like the "sagacious Locke " (TS, l.^^?) into accepting
false reasoning as true wisdom, Tristram alerts the reader to the
dangers posed to society by false learning. His expose of "gravity
and grave folks" for beguiling Locke into distinguishing between wit
and judgment is a Shandean variation upon Milton's theme of the abuse
of carnal knowledge. More particularly, Tristram's warning to the
reader is analogous to Raphael's warning to Adam in Paradise Lost ,
that the abuse of carnal knowledge "soon tums/Wisdom to Folly"
(VII, 129-30). Tristram's "Author's Preface," then, reminds the reader
that the "knowledge" which emerges from the mouths of "grave folks"
may well be folly, whereas the knowledge which comes from "a fool"
(TS, 3.20,200) may well lead to wisdom.

Walter Shandy's hypotheses likewise demonstrate how worldly
wisdom may lead to folly. Tristram describes his father as a "philo-
sopher in grain--speculative — systematical" (TS, 1.21,68), whose way
"was to force every event in nature into an hypotheses, by which
means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did" (TS, 9.32.6UU).
Walter's theory of auxiliary verbs, which is part of his Tristra -
poedia , or "system of education" for Tristram (TS, 5.16.372),

53

exemplifies his "crucifixion" of truth. Hoping to salvage his son from
the misfortunes of his misconception, crushed nose, and misnaming,
Walter fabricates his theory that auxiliary verbs are "a North-west
passage to the intellectual world" (TS, 5.U2.UOU). The folly of
Walter's faith in his theory of auxiliary verbs is seen in his claim
that the "right use" of auxiliary verbs will allow Tristram to convert
"every word . . . into a thesis or hypothesis" (TS, 6.2.U09). "No one
idea can enter /Tristram's? brain how barren soever," Walter asserts,
"but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn from it"

(TS, 5.U3.U06).

Walter attempts to demonstrate his assertion that auxiliary
verbs are a short-cut to the intellectual world in the "white bear"
scene at the end of Volume V of Tristram Shandy . As John Stedmond
points out, Walter attempts to demonstrate "the efficacy of his method
by showing how Trim might discourse on a white bear without ever
having seen one" (Stedmond, p. 115) « In the first part of his demon-
stration, Walter runs through a partial conjugation of the verb to see,
using the auxiliary verbs have, be, ought, would, and should:

A WHITE BEAR I Very well. Have I ever seen one?

Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought

I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?

Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?)
If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If

I should never see a white bear, what then? (TS, 5-U3.U06-07)

In the second part of his demonstration, however, Walter
seems to disprove his assertion about auxiliary verbs. Whereas the
grammatical emphasis in the first part of Walter's discourse is upon

the auxiliary verbs have, be, ought, would, and should, the grammatical
emphasis in the second part shifts to a variation of adjectives (alive,
painted, described), nouns (father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers, and
sisters), and predicate adjectives (wild, tame, terrible, rough, and
smooth ) :

If I never have, can, must or shall see a white bear
alive; have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see
one painted? — described? Have I never dreamed of one?

Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or
sisters, ever see a white bear? What would they give? How
would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame?
Terrible? Rough? Smooth? (TS, 5»U3»U07)

In the conclusion of his discourse, Walter raises evaluative and
theological questions when he asks whether the white bear is "worth
seeing," whether there is any "sin" in seeing one, and whether seeing
a white bear is better than seeing "a BUCK ONE" (TS, 5-U3oi;07).
Because he has distorted a simple grammatical exercise in the use of
auxiliary verbs into an absurd philosophical discourse involving
questions of value judgment and theology, Walter has disproved his
assertion that auxiliary verbs are a short-cut to the intellectual
world; in spite of himself, he has succeeded in showing how his
worldly wisdom has perverted truth by imposing an untenable hypothesis
upon reality.

The failure of Walter's theory of auxiliary verbs, which con-
stitutes a chapter in his Tristra-poedia , is emblematic of the failure
of the Tristra-poedia as a whole. In spite of his expectations about
its educational value, Walter's "system of education" does not accom-
plish its task of redeeming Tristram from the ill effects of his

55

misconception, crushed nose, and misnaming^ Ironically, Walter spends

so much time on his Tristra-poedia that Tristram's education is left

to his mother, a woman whose lack of interest in intellectual pursuits

is suggested by her habit of "using a hard word /for/ twenty years

. . o and replying to it too . . . without giving herself any trouble

to enquire about it" (TS, 9=ll»6l3)» Furthermore, Tristram points

out, one half of Walter's system of education was outdated by the time

that it was ready to be used:

That is the best account I am determined to give of the
slow progress my father made in his Tristra-poedia ; at which
(as I said) he was three years and something more, indefatigably
at work, and at last, had scarce compleated /sic/, by his own
reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was,
that I was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my
mother; and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the
first part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most
of his pains, was rendered entirely useless, — every day a page
or two became of no consequence (TS, 5'l6.375).

The failure of Walter's Tristra-poedia epitomizes the foolish-
ness of worldly wise schemes which fail to square with the realities
of human experience. In his comment upon the failure of his father's
educational scheme, Tristram again reveals his wise foolishness by
recognizing the Tristra-poedia as a moral lesson in the dangers of
human pride: "Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride
of human wisdom. That the wisest of us all, should thus outwit our-
selves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of
pursuing them" (TS, 5.16.375) •

The Tristra-poedia 's lack of success also illustrates the
failure of the "speculative man" described in Sterne's sermon.

56

"Advantages of Christianity to the World," to make the Augustinian
distinction between wisdom and knowledge. In his sermon, Sterne
applies his Pauline text— "Professing themselves to be wise, they
became fools" (Rom. 1.22) — to those "pretenders /who/ think our
titles to wisdom built upon the same basis with those of our know-
ledge, and that they will continue for ever" ( Sermons , II, 55).
To the foolish "speculative man," Sterne continues, true "wisdom
dwells ... in finding out the secrets of nature; sounding the
depths of arts and science, measuring the heavens" ( Sermons , II, $S)'
Reminiscent of the Triboullet-Panurge episode in Book III of

Rabelais, Tristram's recognition of the foolishness of Walter's

22
worldly wisdom amounts to one fool calling another foolish. While

both Tristram and Walter are fools, they are different kinds of

23
fools. Tristram's comment upon the foolish vanity of Walter's

Tristra-poedia and his observation that Walter "crucified" truth

indicates that Tristram is a "wise fool" because he recognizes that

in worldly wisdom there is folly. As I hope to show in Chapter IV of

this study, Tristram's failure to achieve the transcendent wisdom of

Christ results, paradoxically, from his failure to be foolish enough.

Walter, on the other hand, has been made foolish by his useless,

pedantical learning. In Pauline-Era smian terms, Tristram professes

to be a fool and emerges with some degree of wisdom; Walter professes

to be wise, and becomes a fool.

In commenting upon his father's speculative schemes, Tristram

does not inveigh against them so much as he ridicules them with a

57

laughter moderated by sympathy. While pointing out that "where an
hypothesis was concerned," Walter gave more pain than he received,
Tristram at the same time observes that his father was "frank and
generous in his nature /and/ at all times open to conviction" (TS,
2.12.11ii), Sterne's sympathy for his characters in Tristram Shandy
and tolerance for their obsessions, ranging from Walter's speculative
flights to Tristram's hobby-horsical hypotheses about writing in his
"own way" (TS, l,6»ll), prevents him from engaging in the sharp
invective characteristic of the Augustan satirists. "The propensity
of ridicule to overreach itself," A. E. Dyson has pointed out, "is
exactly one of those things which Sterne's ridicule sets out to

check." In the tradition of Erasmus, whose "sense of humanity"

25
all but excluded the possibility for "railing satire," Sterne

loves and accepts his characters or "dear creatures" (TS, S'9.3^h)

for what they are. By accepting human nature, foolish as it may be,

Sterne calls attention to his greater wisdom in siding with the wise

fool Stultitia who claimed that "to live in folly ... is what it is

to be human" ( Folly , p. 122),

Far from viewing Walter's hypotheses as threats to society,

Tristram views them as signs of man's foolish, but natural attachment

to his hobby-horse, Man's attachment to his hobby-horse is so natural,

Tristram argues, that from "a clear description of /its/ nature," one

could "form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character" of its

rider (TS, 1.2U.77). Early in his story, Tristram observes that

58

. . the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Soloinon
himself, --have , . . had their HOBBY-HORSES j --their
running horses, — their coins and their cockle-shells . . .
— their maggots and their butterflies — and so long as a man
rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King's
highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,
— pray. Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

(TS, 1=7»13)

Soon after making his observation about the popularity of hobby-
horses among wise men, Tristram states that he himself is not
exempt from riding one:

Be it known to you, that I keep a couple of pads myself,
upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care who knows it)

1 frequently ride out and take the air; --tho' sometimes,
to my shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer journies
than what a wise man would think altogether right, — But
the truth is, — I am not a wise man (TS, loSolU).

Tristram's claim that he is "not a wise man" is offset by the
conclusion which follows from his statement about owning a hobby-
horse himself. Because he recognizes that he, like the "wisest of
men in all ages" has a hobby-horse, then he is not as foolish as he
may at first appear. Indeed, Tristram's observation that hobby-
horses are harmless as long as a man does not become obsessed with one
implies a distinction between the natural condition of possessing a
hobby-horse and the unnatural condition of being possessed by one.
Tristram later makes this distinction between possessing a hobby-horse
and being possessed by one explicit when he warns that "when a man
gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion, — or, in other
words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows head-strong, —farewell cool reason
and fair discretion J" (TS, 2o5.93) Tristram's observation that hobby-
horses, in spite of their apparent foolishness, have traditionally

59

been the natural possessions of wise men echoes what Walter Kaiser
has called Erasmus ' 'Taelief in the benevolence of the force of nature
in man" (Kaiser, p, 95) » Because Tristram shares Erasmus' conviction
that man's natural inclination toward folly is not an inclination

toward evil, he would support Stultitia's claim that "if it is . . .

27
natural to be a fool, to be a fool is also to be natural."

In spite of his Erasmian tolerance for man's natural foolish-
ness, Tristram ridicules his father's speculative hypotheses because
Walter has allowed them to become an unnatural obsession. In dis-
tinguishing his hobby-horse from his father's, Tristram says:

I must here observe to you, the difference betwixt
My father's ass

and my hobby-horse — in order to keep characters
separate as may be, in our fancies as we go along.

For my hobby-horse ... is no way a vicious beast; he
has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him — 'Tia
the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for
the present hour — a maggot, a butterfly, a picture . . .
or an any thing , which a man makes a shift to get a stride
on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life
— 'Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation — nor
do I really see how the world could do without it —

--But for my father's ass . . . mount him not: --'tis
a beast concupiscent--and foul befall the man, who does
not hinder him from kicking (TS, 8.31,58ij).

Walter is the wrong kind of fool, Tristram seems to be saying, not

because his hobby-horse is speculative hypotheses, but because he is

80 obsessed with his hobby that he has become its slave. Also

implicit in Tristram's statement distinguishing his hobby-horse from

his father's is an appeal to the reader to recognize that he, too,

will become a fool like Walter Shandy if he lets his hobby-horse

possess him. For Sterne, John Traugott has observed, hobby-horsical

60

schemes such as Walter's "can be the death of society , « o only when
men refused to recognize themselves as fools., His rhetoric, like that
of Erasmus, invites the reader to acknowledge himself as fool"
(Traugott, p^ 20) «

Although Tristram implies that man must recognize his natural
bent toward folly in order to prevent himself from becoming the wrong
kind of fool, Tristram does not assume that he is wise and everyone
else is foolish. Even if Tristram the narrator is wiser than Walter,
Toby, Trim, and the reader, he rarely forsakes the traditional garb
of the foolo Sitting in his study at the beginning of Volume IX, Tris-
tram informs the reader that on "this twelfth day of August , 1766,"
he, Tristram, is dressed "in a purple jerkin and yellow pair of slippers"
(TS, 9=1o600)„ Speaking as a fool among fools, Tristram asks
"Madam" the reader, "Pray reach me ray fool's cap — I fear you sit upon
it « , . 'tis under the cushion — I'll put it on — 'Bless mel you have
had it upon your head this half hour— There then let it stay" (TS, 7,26.
511). Because Tristram, like Stultitia, identifies himself with his
fellow fools, he can remain compassionate towards those whose folly
he ridicules.

II

In The Sermons of Mr^ Yorick , Sterne's appropriation of the

pseudonym Yorick, some ten years after nearly all of his sermons were

29
written, does not offset their didactic tone, Alan McKillop reminds

us that "it is in The Sermons of Mr, Yorick rather than in Shandy that

61

we find ourselves firmly established in the world of the eighteenth
century didactic novel. "^° Whereas Mr, Yorick of the Sermons often
castigates man's vain desire to achieve a reputation for wisdom,
Tristram, who speaks as a fool among fools, ridicules man's faith in

worldly wisdom.

"There is no one project to which the whole race of mankind is
so universally a bubble, as to that of being thought Wise," Yorick
says at the beginning of "Advantages of Christianity to the World."
Later in the same sermon, the preacher continues to castigate human
pride by asserting that "in general you will find it safer to tell a
man, he is a knave than a fool" ( Sermons, II, 53-U). In another ser-
mon, "The Ways of Providence Justified to Man," Yorick holds a mirror
up to the self -professed wise men of this world in order to expose
the limitations of worldly wisdom when seen against the standard of
divine wisdom:

Go then, — proud man 1 —and when thy head turns giddy
with opinions of thy own wisdom, that thou wouldst correct
the measures of the ALMIGHTY, —go then,— take a full view
of thyself in this glass j — consider thy own faculties, —
how narrow and imperfect; — how much they are checquered
with truth and falsehood; —how little arrives at thy
knowledge, and how darkly and confusedly thou discernest even
that little as in a glass (Sermons , II, 25U-55)»

In a third sermon, "Job's Account of the Shortness and Troubles of

Life, Considered," Yorick expresses the traditional Christian view

of human pride when he admonishes man to "cloath him/self/ with

humility, which is a dress that beat becomes a short-lived and a

wretched creature" (Sermons, I, 12[i).

62

In Tristram Shandy's World , John Traugott argues that Sto Paul's
warning to the Romans ("Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools") is "Sterne's text in the profane as well as sacred pulpit"
(Traugott, po 2^). Although Traugott 's argument is essentially
correct, it fails to point out the difference in tone between Tristram
Shandy and the Sermons o In Tristram Shandy , Sterne, through his
narrator, Tristram, not only exposes the folly in worldly wisdomj he
exhibits an Erasraian tolerance for folly as well» The more tolerant

tone of the novel is suggested by Tristram's emphasis upon his role as

31
a fool and de-emphasis of his actual profession as a priest « In

repeatedly referring to his fool's garb rather than his clerical robes,

Tristram indicates his desire to project himself as a fool instead of

as a clergyman o This emphasis upon his identity as a fool suggests

that the novel contains a greater tolerance for folly than the Sermons

do for the two basic reasons that we have seen; one, because Tristram

shows that a self-styled "fool" can be wisej and two, because he

shares Stultitia's conviction that to be foolish is to be natural.

Even though he may "preach" upon the same Pauline text as MTo Yorick

of the Sermons , then, Tristram's "preaching" is based upon a greater

sympathy for the follies of mankind «

Sterne's tolerance for the foolishness exhibited by his

characters distinguishes him from the Augustan satirists who preceded

him. In his comment upon the "white bear" scene at the end of Volume

V of Tristram Shandy , Martin Price compares Walter to the "priest of

Pope's Dulness" for succeeding in "confining the mind to words alone, "-^^

63

Price's comparison is correct only if one fails to note that neither
Sterne's compassion for his characters nor his tolerance for folly is
contained in Pope's savage attack upon the dunces in the Dunciad.
From the viewpoint of the Augustans, Walter's attempt to reduce
reality to words, as reflected in his theory of auxiliary verbs, would
represent the same danger to society as the schemes of the dunces in
Book IV of the Dune i ad , to separate words from ideas useful to the
whole man.-^-^ Walter's abuse of language would, for Pope, not be far
removed from that of the "school-master," who claims that "Since Man
from beast by Words is known/ Words are Man's province. Words we teach
alone" (IV, 1^9-50). While observing that " Tristram Shandy , in its
way, is an extension of Pope's vision" in the Dunciad, John Stedraond
argues that Sterne's

, . . approach is much more tentative, his attack much less
bitter — presumably because his positive beliefs are much
less surely held^ Swift's writings "express" ideas, or
communicate firmly held points of view, by attacking opposing
ideas. Sterne, on the other hand, is seeking to reveal
states of mind. Swift attacked the Grub Street hack by
parodying his style; Pope sallied against the pedantic dunce
by burlesquing his method; and Sterne, in his turn, donned
cap and bells in order to show up foolishness by playing the
fool (Stedmond, pp. Sk-S)'

In view of Pope's savage attack in the Dunciad upon the forces
of Dulness responsible for threatening to destroy the humanistic
tradition of western civilization, there is little cause for dis-
agreement with Stedmond 's argument that Sterne's approach is more
equivocal and his attack less bitter than that of his Augustan
predecessors. As we have seen, Sterne's method of ridiculing folly

6U

by speaking through a fool, Tristram, results in a less bitter tone
than if the novelist had chosen to satirize human folly virulently in
Tristram Shandy » On the basis of what has been shown about Tristram's
wise folly, however, there is reason to challenge Stedmond's assump-
tion that "show/Ing7 up foolishness by playing the fool" illustrates
that Sterne's "positive beliefs are much less surely held" than
Swift's and Pope's., Sterne's particular method of ridiculing folly
indicates that he accepts man's natural inclination toward folly
because he, Sterne, is wise enough to recognize that fools differ from
wise men only in degree. As Ernest Tuveson has succinctly pointed out,
"the pride satirized /in Tristram Shandy/ is not that which Swift or
Pope had attacked . o . /Sterne/ seeks to correct our smug assumption
that all within our heads is neat and orderly, and that the mad and
even the eccentric are different in kind from ourselves,"

For Sterne, "playing the fool" by speaking through his foolish
narrator, Tristram, reflects a positively held belief about the
universal existence of folly in all men, including himself. Sterne's
positive purpose in "playing the fool" by speaking through Tristram
sets him apart from the distrustful Augustan attitude toward foolish-
ness suggested in Pope's observation that although "a little /Tolly/

36
is excellent ... a whole Mouthful is justly call'd the Devil."

As seen in his statement that "the greatest advantage ... of being

thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom

37
of playing the fool," Pope considered "playing the fool" less a

positive virtue in itself than a useful advantage in a witty man. It

65

appears unlikely, then, that Pope would risk subjecting himself to the
charges of frivolity leveled against Sterne when, through both Tristram

and Yorick, he "played the fool" in Tristram Shandy in order to show

38
that fools may impart lessons of wisdom.

Sterne's tolerance for the kinds of worldly wisdom exhibited
by the Shandeans, however, did not extend to the kinds exhibited by
the canonical divines, Didius, Phutatorius, and Kysarciuso To Sterne,
the kinds of worldly wisdom exhibited by these "vile canonists" (TS,
U.23»302) at the canonical dinner in York represented a clearer danger
to man than the danger posed by Walter because, in perverting their
clerical function of preparing man for the next world, the "vile
canonists" could more easily prevent man from achieving the wisdom of
Christ. Together with Yorick, who is to deliver a sermon before the
visiting clergy, Walter and Toby attend the canonical dinner hoping
to annul Tristram's baptism. By bringing the Shandy brothers and
Yorick face to face with the learned canonical divines, Sterne creates
a symposium attended by spokesmen and critics of various kinds of
worldly wisdom. The York dinner brings the Shandy brothers and Parson
Yorick, the enemy of "vile canonist/s/" (TS, U. 23. 302), together with
such representatives of worldly wisdom as Didius, "the great church
lawyer" (TS, 3.20.193); Kysarcius, ("probably Sterne's translation of
Baise-cul , a 'great lord' in Rabelais, 2. 10-13" )j^^ and Phutatorius,
the licentious churchman. The York dinner-meeting is analogous to
the symposium in Book III of Rabelais to the extent that each is a
colloquy addressed to a major question concerning one of the characters:

66

Pantagruel calls the symposium in Book III to debate the issue of
Panurge's marriage, and the York dinner provides Walter with the oppor-
tunity to seek the annulment of Tristram's baptism. While the sympo-

Ul
sium in Rabelais dramatizes the limitations of worldly wisdom, the

York dinner in Tristram Shandy dramatizes the perversions in reason

which manifest themselves in what the world calls wisdom.

The canonical dinner at York begins with Yorick's tearing up
of the sermon he had planned to deliver, because it "came from /his/
head instead of /hlsj heart" (TS, lio26.317). Yorick's criticism of
abstract, pedantical preaching — "'tis not preaching the gospel — but
ourselves" (TS, U, 26. 317) — is interrupted when Phutatorius cries out
in pain after being burned by a hot chestnut. A humorous, almost
slapstick scene results, as the participating clergy debate whether
or not Yorick was responsible for having dropped a hot chestnut into
the opening in front of Phutatorius' breeches. For some, Yorick's
picking the hot chestnut up after it had fallen out of Phutatorius'
breeches implicates Yorick as the prankish wrongdoer. This circum-
stantial evidence about Yorick's guilt, in turn, provides ballast for
the churchmen's hypothesis that there was a "mystical meaning in
Yorick' s prank" (TS, U.27,323) of dropping the chestnut into Phuta-
torius' breeches, since Yorick held little respect for Phutatorius'
"filthy and obscene treatise" (TS, Uo27.32l) on the keeping of
concubines .

Tristram's comment that the conjecture of the learned divines
about the "n^ystical meaning" of Yorick's prank "was as groundless as

67

the dreams of philosophy" (TS, U«27.32U) indicates Tristram's low

opinion of the absurd uses to which the clergymen put their learning.

It is worthy of note that Tristram had earlier avoided direct comment

upon his colleagues' abuse of wisdom:

As for the clergy--No— If I say a word against them,
I'll be shoto —I have no desire,— and besides, if I had,

I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, — with

such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am
in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth,
to deject and centrist myself with so sad and melancholy
an account (TS, 3.20.199).

Tristram's cautiousness in refraining from direct criticism of his
fellow clergy epitomizes the more prudent, and thus, less "foolish,"
nature of his satire upon worldly wisdom. Whereas Yorick does not
hesitate to lash out at the foolishness of the worldly wisdom
exhibited by his colleagues at the canonical dinner, Tristram claims
that "'tis safer to draw a curtain across" (TS, 3.20.200) the Anglican
priesthood's misuse and abuse of human wisdom.

Both Fhutatorius' treatise on keeping concubines and the absurd
attempt of the canonical divines to impose a "mystical meaning /upon/
Yorick 's prank" thus dramatize the way in which Yorick 's fellow priests
have allowed worldly wisdom to pervert the proper duties of their
clerical office. For Yorick, such displays of worldly wisdom as
Fhutatorius' treatise on concubines had to be exposed "as thing/i7
which . , . had done hurt in the world" (TS, U. 27. 323). The abuses
in clerical learning exhibited by Fhutatorius ' treatise pale in com-
parison to the debate over the legality of Tristram's baptism, however.
Citing a pre-Reformation precedent, the Duchess of Suffolk's case, the

68

canonical lawyers rule that the wishes of Mr. and Mrs. Shandy concern-
ing their son's Christian name are irrelevant, since the parents are
not of kin to their child (TS, Uo29o328)o

Sterne castigates such abuses in learning for beguiling man
into believing in false wisdom at the expense of genuine learning.
One of his aims in writing Tristram Shandy , Sterne once remarked, was
"the hopes of doing the world good by ridiculing what I thought
deserving of it — or of disservice to sound learning" ( Letters , No. hi,
p. 90), The extent to which man is beguiled by false wisdom becomes
evident in Walter's reaction to the canonical debate about Tristram's
baptism. Although Walter is at first "hugely tickled with the subtle-
ties of these learned discourses" (TS, U. 31. 331) about the legality
of his son's baptism, his pleasure soon gives way to despair. Both
the symposium in Book III of Rabelais and the canonical dinner end
without resolving the issues proposed at the outset. Panurge's dis-
appointment at the end of the symposium, resulting from his failure
to find satisfaction in the counsels of the worldly wise, is similar
to Walter's disappointment at the end of the York visitation dinner.
While Panurge's expression reminds Pantagruel of "a mouse caught in a
trap" (Rabelais, 3. 37 » 390), Walter is bent over with "the weight of
his afflictions," which returned "upon him but so much the heavier"
(TS, Uo 31.331)0

Whereas Walter is temporarily stimulated by the "subtleties"
of the ecclesiastical court, Toby and Yorick expose the foolishness
of its worldly wisdom. Yorick 's reply to Toby's question about the

69

court's decision on Tristram's baptism indicates his contempt for the
worldly wisdom of the "vile canonists" (TS, U. 23- 302):

-And pray, Yorick , said my uncle Tob^, which way is this
said /sic/ affair of Tristram at length settled by these
learned men? Very satisfactorily, replied Yorick ; no mortal,
Sir, has any concern with it (TS, U»30'331)»

Wilbur Cross makes a good case for reading the canonical dinner
as "local satire," particularly upon Dr. Francis Topham, a Machiavel-
lian church lawyer, whose political machinations in the York parish

) 9

were unalterably opposed by Sterne. According to Sterne's biogra-
pher, "Topham surely appeared as Didius and shifted into Riutatorius
before the dinner was over" ( Life , pp. 261-62). In addition to being
read as "local satire," the canonical dinner may be seen as a concrete
illustration of Gregory's distinction between "noble" fools (those who
reject this world's wisdom for the wise foolishness of God) and "base"
fools (those who "flee from the wisdom Above" by following themselves).
The canonical dinner begins and ends with Yorick 's castigating the way
in which his fellow clergymen abuse their clerical office. We recall
that at the outset of the dinner, Yorick castigates his colleagues for
preaching themselves rather than the gospel (TS, U"26,317) and that he
exposes their pedantical practice of writing "from the head" instead
of from the "heart" by tearing up his own pedantical sermon into
shreds . Just as dramatic is his method of bringing the meeting to a
close. During the debate about the legality of Tristram's baptism and
the consanguinity of the parents to their child, Didius claims that
the prohibition in levitical law of copulating with one's grandmother

70

does not apply "in nature." In reply to Kysarcius' question— "But who

ever thought ... of laying with his grandmother?" (TS, U. 29. 330) —

Yorick cites a story recorded in John Selden's Table Talk ;

The young gentleman . . . whom Selden speaks of — who not only
thought of it, but justified his intention to his father by
the argument drawn from the law of retaliation— "You lay'd.
Sir, with my mother, said the lad— Why may not I lay with
yours?" — 'Tis the Argumentum commune , added Yorick, --'Tis
as good, replied Eugenius , taking down his hat, as they
deserve.

The company broke up— (IS, U»29. 330-31) .

Yorick 's function of castigating the proud again becomes
evident in his description of "polemic divines . " Wishing that there
"was not a polemic divine ... in the kingdom, " Yorick tells Walter
that "one ounce of practical divinity — is worth a painted ship load
of all their reverences have imported these fifty years" (TS, 5«28.
387). Yorick further ridicules "polemic divines" by comparing their
mental gymnastics to the tumbling feats of the Rabelaisian characters
Gymnast and captain Tripet. The point of Rabelais' story is to show
the irrelevancy of Gymnast's tumbling tricks to the battle he fights

with Tripet In his slightly altered version of the story, Yorick,
who carries a copy of Rabelais in his pocket, describes how the two
combatants "battle" without striking a blow. In the context of
Yorick's version of Rabelais' story, polemic divines are satirized for
their reliance upon pedantic and irrelevant mental gymnastics at the
expense of executing their proper function of "practical divinity" —
preparing man for the next world by teaching him right conduct in
this. Trim's frustration with Yorick's account of Gymnast's curious
way of doing battle--"Good GodJ . . . one home thrust of a bayonet is

71

worth it all" (IS, $,29.389)— corresponds to Yorick's contempt of
churchmen whose worldly wisdom lacks "one ounce of practical divinity."
Significantly, Yorick agrees with Trim's comment, while Walter is of
a "contrary opinion" (TS, 5.29.389) •

By reducing the canonical debate over the legality of Tris-
tram's baptism to absurdity, and by ridiculing the pretensions of
"polemic divines," Yorick thus exhibits what Henri Fluchere calls the
court jester's traditional function of "castigating the proud"
(Fluchere, p. UUU)o While the York dinner reveals Yorick functioning
in the satiric capacity of castigating the vain churchmen who preach
themselves instead of the gospel, it also reveals him as a model of
the type of humility traditionally praised by the exponents of Chris-
tian folly. Yorick, like the "noble" fools praised by Gregory, would
rather preach the gospel than himself, and his theory of preaching as
a direct appeal to the heart recalls the anti-scholasticism of Stul-
titia in The Praise of Folly .

Toby's humility and lack of intellectual pretension also
exposes the folly of the worldly wise debates taking place at the York
dinner. When Kysarcius pompously cites the Duchess of Suffolk's case
as the precedent establishing that "the moober is not of kin to the
child" (TS, U. 29. 328), Toby asks: "And what said the duchess of
Suffolk to it?" In "confound/ing/ Kysarcius more than the ablest
advocate" (TS, U. 29 = 330), Toby's question may be seen as a concrete
illustration of the warning enunciated by Paul and the Old Testament

prophets that the simple and unlearned shall destroy the wisdom of the
wise.

72

As will become more evident in Chapter III of the present study,
the corrective wisdom of the novel's simple, but wise fools, such as
Toby and Trim, complements the satirical ability of Tristram and Yorick
in their "open war" on the "affectation of gravity." Foils to the
worldly wisdom of the novel's pedants. Trim and Toby function as
unlearned instruments of divine wisdom and prepare us for the victory
of wise folly's most perfect form in Tristram Shandy — the transcendent
wisdom of Parson Yorick 's Christian folly. Like Tobias in the
apocryphal Book of Tobit, who brings the power of sight to his father,
Tristram's uncle, Toby, helps bring the illuminating power of wise
folly to Shandy Hall by showing that the proud spirit of reason must
be vanquished before man may become a receptacle worthy of the wisdom
of Christian folly.

Notes

1, In Yorick and the Critics; Sterne's Reputation in England, 1760-
1868 (New Haven, Conn,, 195^^ Alan B, Howes observes that "Yorick,
Tristram Shandy, and Laurence Sterne became hopelessly entangled in
the public mind" (p. 5) upon publication of the first installment of
Tristram Shandy in December, 1759^

2, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , ed-, James
A. Work (New York, 19U0;, Vol, II, chap, ii, p. 86. All subsequent
references are to this edition..

3, See Howes, pp, Uff, 9ff, and 2Uff, for a discussion of Yorick's
character by Sterne's contemporaries. According to Howes, the Royal
Female Magazine for February, 1760 described "the character of
Yorick to illustrate the 'consequences of indiscretion and the licen-
tious indulgence of satirical wit'" (p. k) -

h. Wilbur L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne , 3rd ed.
(New Haven, Conn., 1929), p. 2 — hereafter cited as Life.

5. Norman N. Holland, "The Laughter of Laurence Sterne," Hudson
Review , IX (1956), U30.

6. Henri Fluchere, Laurence Sterne; From Tristram to Yorick, an
Interpretation of "Tristram Shandy , " trans. Barbara Bray (London,
1965), p, 273,

7o For a brief discussion of Tristram as a court jester in the
Erasmian tradition, see John Traugott, Tristram Shandy's World
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 195U), pp. 39, 138-39.

8- Letters of Laurence Sterne , ed, Lewis P- Curtis (Oxford, 1935),
Number 36, p. 7a. AM subsequent references to Sterne's letters
are to this edition and will hereafter be cited as Letters.

9. See Chapter I, above, pp. 21-23.

10. In "Laurence Sterne, Apostle of Laughter," in The Age of

Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tin ker?^

i-'rederick W, Hilles (New Haven, Conn., 191^9), Rufus D. S. Putney
reminds us that Sterne "possessed an impulse to folly that had
driven him, while his reputation was merely local, to play the
fool agriculturally, politically, clerically, and domestically" (p. l66),

73

7h

11. In The Comic Art of Laurence Sterne (Toronto, 1967), John Sted-
mond points out that with the publication of the first selection of
The Sermons of Mr. Yorick "between the publication of the first two
volumes /of Tristram Shandy/ and the second two," Sterne "could now
count on~his readers to think of him as a clergyman, to some extent
equivalent to Yorick, and thus not to identify him with Tristramj or
only in so far as he could be imagined as deliberately donning cap and
bells for the performance" (p= 90) o

12 o William Warburton's relationship to Sterne is a case in point.
Although he patronized Sterne after the novelist's triumphant visit
to London in 1760 as the successful author of Tristram Shandy ,
Warburton soon became concerned about the effect of Sterne's "play-
ing the fool" upon his clerical reputation. Writing to David
Garrick, Sterne's friend and admirer, Warburton said of the novelists
"I have done my best to prevent his playing the fool in a worse
sense than, I have the charity to think, he intends. I have dis-
charged my part to him. I esteemed him as a man of genius, and am
desirous he would enable me to esteem him as a clergyman" (quoted
by Howes, pp. 6-7 )»

13' At the beginning of her praise of folly, Stultitia says to her
audience: "The reason why I appear today in this unusual garb you
will presently hear, if you listen to me with attention; not as you
do in sermons, but as you do to salesmen in the market, to clowns
and jesters" ( Folly, p. 101).

lU. According to Cross, Sterne endorsed a manuscript copy of his
sermon "Our Conversation in Heaven" with the following memorandum;
"Made for All Saints and preached on that Day 1750 for the Dean.
— Present: 1 Bellows Blower, 3 Singing men, 1 Vicar & 1
Residentiary" (quoted in Life , p= 620).

15 « Quoted by Cross, Life , pc 236.

16, Stultitia 's statement that her "face and visage . . , tell well
enough who I am" must be read in the ironic context of her next
remark; "As if anyone, who thought I was Minerva, or Wisdom, could
not easily be convinced otherwise by only looking at me" (Folly, pp.
102-03)= Like all wise fools, Tristram and Stultitia intentionally
confuse the categories of appearance and reality in order to achieve
their transvaluation of the ideas of folly and wisdom.

17. In Hamlet , V, i, 172-73, Hamlet says to Horatio as he picks up
Yorick 's skull, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow
of infinite jest,"

18 o John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , 2,11.2,
quoted by Work, IS, p. 193, n, 2. "

75

19. James Work points out that Agelastes means "one who never laughs";
Triptolemus, a "judge in the infernal regions"; and Phutatorius,
"copulator, lecher" (Work, TS, p, 193, n, l).

20. Work, TS, po 19Us n. U«

21 „ In Tristram Shandy's World , John Traugott observes that "for
Shandeans or Rabelaisians there may be a world of significance in a sot,
a pot, a fool, a stool" (pp. 70-71) »

22. Throughout this section, I am greatly indebted to Walter Kaiser's
discussions of the relationship between Panurge and Triboullet on

pp. 176-77 of his Praisers of Folly .

23. Of. Stedmond: "Most of the characters in Tristram Shandy are
'fools,' though they represent different kinds of folly" (p. 92).

2k' A. E, Dyson, "Sterne: The Novelist as Jester," Critical
Quarterly . IV (1962), 33 «

25o Kaiser, p. 99.

26. As Tristram reveals in the middle of his life and opinions, his
hobby-horse is his unique way of telling his story; "What a rate
have I gone on at, curvetting and frisking it away, two up and two
down for four volumes together, without looking once behind, or even
on one side of me, to see whom I trod uponS" (TS, U«20o298) In
"The Hobbyhorsical World of Tristram Shandy , " MLQ , XXIV (1963),
131-U3, Joan Joffe Hall points out that "the exaggeration of the
particular ideas in Tristram's train /i.e,, of thought/ and his
obsession with the reader define Tristram's own hobby" (139)=

27. As Kaiser has shown ( Praisers of Folly , p. 95), Stultitia's
belief that man is naturally foolish becomes explicit at several
points in her oration. One such time occurs when Stultitia disagrees
with the philosophers who say that "it is misery itself to live in
folly, to err, to be deceived, and to be ignorant." "On the contra-
ry," she argues, "this is what it is to be human. I cannot see why
they call this kind of life miserable when it is the common lot of
all men to be born, brought up, and constituted in such a way,.
Nothing is miserable that is constant with its own nature" (Folly.

p. 122). ^

28. Tristram refers to his fool's cap in TS, 3.29.236 and TS.
U. 20. 299.

29- In Laurence Sterne's 'Sermons of Mr Yorick . ' Lansing Hammond
theorizes that "all but one of Mr, Yorick 's sermons had been written
before 1751, and most of them probably several years before then"

76

(p« 58)0 The first two volumes of The Sermons of Mr. Yorick appeared
in May, 176O.

30. Alan Dugald McKillop, The Early Masters of English Fiction
(Lawrence, Kansas, 1956), p. 190.

31 o Tristram reveals that he is a priest when he claims to be worth
"two bad cassocks in the world" (TS, 3.11.179). The only other
indication of Tristram's clerical profession occurs during his grand
tour of the continent when he describes himself as "a person in black,
with a face as pale as ashes, at his devotions" (TS, 7.3U.527). In
spite of Tristram's statement about his "two bad cassocks," Alan Howes
is unwilling to accept the evidence that Tristram is a priest. "In
Tristram Shandy , " Howes writes, "the distinction between Tristram and
Laurence Sterne breaks down as early as Vol, 3 (ch. llj Work, p. 179),
unless we assume that Tristram is a clergyman too" (Howes, p. S, n, 7)

32. Martin Price, "Sterne: Art and Nature" in To the Palace of
Wisdom (Garden City, N= Y., 196U), p. 322.

33. For a discussion of Pope's treatment of the rupture between words
and thought, see Aubrey L. Williams, Pope's 'Dunciad'; A Study of its
Meaning (London, 19$S) , pp. 111-15.

3U. For a discussion of Pope's attack upon the threat to the humanis-
tic tradition of the west in the early eighteenth century, see
Williams' study of Pope's Dunciad , particularly chapter six, "The
Anti-Christ of Wit," pp. 131-50.

3>S^ Ernest Tuveson, "Locke and Sterne," in Reason and the Imagina -
tion; Studies in the History of Ideas, l600-l»00 (New York, 1962),
p. 265. ' ~ ~

36. Correspondence of Alexander Pope , ed. George Sherburn f Oxford,
1956), vol. II, p. 315,

37. Quoted by Rufus Putney, "Laurence Sterne, Apostle of Laughter,"
in The Age of Johnson, p. I66.

38. Alan Howes cites an informative example of the representative
Augustan attitude toward indiscretion in "playing the fool" in a
letter from Bishop Warburton to Charles York at the time of Sterne's
death: "'Poor Sterne ... was the idol of the higher mob . . ,
/and/ chose the office of common jester to the many. But what is
hard, he never will obtain the frivolous end he aimed at, the reputa-
tion of a wit, though at the expense of his character, as a man, a
scholar, and a clergyman ... He chose Swift for his model: but
Swift was either luckier or wiser, who so managed his wit, that he
will never pass with posterity for a buffoon; while Sterne gave such

77

a loose to his buffoonery, that he will never pass for a wif"
(p, 28, n, 5),

39. Work, TS, p 19U, n. 5^ In view of Sterne's satire in Vol, IV
of 'Tr istram Shandy upon abuses in clerical wisdom, it is worthy of
note that his brief Fragment in the Manner of Rabela is satirizes
the attempt of "Longinus Rabelaicus" to "compose a thorough-
stitch 'd system . , . of the art of making all kinds of your
theological, hebdomical, rostrummical, humdrummical" sermons (The
Writings of Laurence Sterne , IV, l83). Cross points out that "The
Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais . . . appears to have been a
discarded digression originally written for the fourth volume of
Tristram Shandy " ( Life , p. 522).

UOo See note 19, above.

Ul= For a full discussion of the meaning of the symposium in Book
III of Rabelais, see Kaiser, pp, 151-62.

U2. For a history of Sterne's quarrel with Topham, see Life,
pp, I66-7I4.

k3' See Chapter I, above, p., 11,

UU- James Work notes that "John Selden (l58h-l65U), English
jurist, antiquary. Orientalist, and author, relates this story in
his Table Talk" (TS, p. 330, n: 10)..

ii5 John Stedmond argues that the point of Yorick's story is to
satirize V/'alter, not the "polemic divines": "^.^'alter's theories
embody as many mental somersaults and caperings as any parabolized
by Rabelais in his fable of Tripet and Gymnast" (p. III4).

Three: The Wisdom of Folly

In Volume III of Tristram Shandy- ;, Walter Shandy claims that in
spite of the "worth" of his brother Toby's "honest ignorance," he will
attempt to replace this "honest ignorance" with "knowledge" (TS, 3=18.
189)0 We have seen in Chapter Two of this study that Walter's
worldly wisdom led to folly because, in Augustinian terms, he was
obsessed with knowledge (speculation about temporal things) to the
total exclusion of wisdom (contemplation of eternal things). Walter's
conviction that "knowledge, like matter . . . was divisible in
infinitum " (TS, 2.19olU$) epitomizes his failure to maintain a proper
balance between knowledge and wisdom which Augustine, among other
writers that we have considered, deemed necessary in man's quest to
achieve the wisdom of Christ.

Because of his "honest ignorance" and "common sense" (TS,
2,19 clSk) and because "of all men in the world, /he/ troubled his
brain the least with abstruse thinking" (TS, 3ol6,l89), Toby,
instead of Walter, is a fit receptacle for the wisdom of Christ. More
than any of the novel's other characters, Toby resembles the unlearned
"fool of nature." Walter Kaiser reminds us that the "fool of nature"
rejects "the Stoics . . . the philosophers, the metaphysicians, the
scientists, and the Schoolmen, because they employ anti-natural means

78

79

to understand nature" (Kaiser, p. 95) « Although Toby is not a wise
fool in the sense that Tristram and Yorick are (nowhere in Tristram
Shandy is Toby called a "fool"), the analogies between Toby and the
unlearned "natural fool" identify Toby as an instrument of Christian
wisdom. By exhibiting the gnomic wisdom of the "fool of nature,"
Toby, as we shall see, undercuts the foolish vanity of the worldly
wise.

Two signs of Toby's fitness as a receptacle of divine wisdom
are his child-like trust in God and his exemplary Christian charity.
In the eyes of the Walter Shandys of this world, Toby's simple faith
and charity are foolish because they lack the worldliness of human
wisdom, but we have seen in Chapter One that simple faith, humility,
and charity, instead of Walter's kind of worldly wisdom, enable man

to become a worthy receptacle of divine wisdom. Traditionally singled

2

out for praise by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commentators,

Toby's simple faith and charity have also been praised by recent
critics. A. Ro Towers, for example, eulogizes Toby as a "holy
innocent," and John Stedmond calls him "a comic version of the saint"
(Stedmond, p. 81 ).

In the second section of this chapter, we shall see that while
Trim shares Toby's function of undercutting the foolish wisdom of the
novel's worldly wise men, he employs somewhat different means of
executing this function. Representing Sterne's projection of the
ideal preacher. Trim demonstrates that the "foolishness of preaching"
(I Cor. 1.21) reveals wisdom far more rewarding than that reflected

80

in the "enticing words of man's wisdom" (l Cor. 2oU), In frustrating
the false wisdom of the worldly wise, both Toby and Trim remind us
that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise; and . « » the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty" (I Cor, 1,27) »

The ability of the simple-minded Toby, whose "brain was like

wet tinder" (TS, 3.39.2.36), to confound worldly wisdom is evinced when

he subverts the speculative foundations of Walter's hypotheses »

Walter's preoccupation with hypotheses about noses, indicated by his

having "collected every book and treatise which had been systematically

wrote upon noses" (TS, 3.3U-22U), provides a clear example of how Toby's

"honest ignorance" and "common sense" expose the foolishness of worldly

wisdom. Distraught because Erasmus' doctrine of noses (simply, that

the nose makes the man) was "laid down . . . with the utmost plainness

/and/ without any . . . speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of

argumentation upon it" (TS, 3.37.229), Walter takes his penknife and

literally tries to "scratch some better sense" into the humanist's

sentence. When Walter ludicrously attempts to distort a sentence from

one of Erasmus ' Colloquia Familaria by actually altering a word on the

printed page, Toby exposes the danger of man's foolish preoccupation

with useless learning.

I've got within a single letter, brother Toby , cried my
father, of Erasmus, his mystic meaning. --You are near

81

enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience o —
Pshawi cried my father, scratching on, --I might as well be
seven miles off. --I've done it, --said my father, snapping
his fingers o — See, ray dear brother Toby , how I have mended
the sense. — But you have marr'd a word, replied my uncle
Xoby. --My father put on his spectacles, --bit his lip, —
and tore out the leaf in a passion (TS, 3 o 37.230).

Functioning as an instrument of Sterne's satire upon useless
learning, Toby exposes the foolish "extravagance of /Walter's/
affliction" (TS, 3.30.217) — his obsession with "speculative sub-
tilty or ambidexterity of argumentation," as exemplified in his
ludicrous attempt to replace the literal meaning of Erasmus' doctrine
of noses with a "mystic and allegoric" (TS, 3.37»299) meaning. Writ-
ing to Stephen Croft about the section of Tristram Shandy dealing
with noses (Volume III, chapters 31-li2), Sterne remarked:

. . . the principal satire throughout that part is levelled
at those learned blockheads who, in all ages have wasted
their time and much learning upon points as foolish /i.e. ,
as foolish as philosophical speculations upon noses/ ( Letters ,
No. 70, p. 126). ~

In addition to functioning as an instrument of Sterne's satire upon

useless learning, Toby exhibits his natural or gnomic wisdom by

refusing to be taken in by his brother's claim that "learned men . . .

don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing" (TS, 3.37.229).

The extent of Walter's obsession with philosophical speculations ip

indicated in his belief that "heaven had bestow 'd /the ability to

speculate/ upon man on purpose to investigate truth and fight for her

on all sides" (TS, 3-37.229). While Walter foolishly attempts to

ascertain "the mystic and the allegoric sense" (TS, 3.37.229) of

Erasmus' doctrine of noses, Toby frustrates the attempt by reminding

82

Walter that he has distorted Erasmus' literal meaning. By preventing
Walter from marring a word, Toby has, in a small way, prevented his
brother from further "crucifying" truth (TS, 9.32.6Ui).

Besides undercutting the useless learning of Walter's specu-
lative hypotheses, Toby exposes what Sterne considered some of the
"abuses of religion" ( Sermons , II, 179) practiced in the Catholic
Church. In his sermon "Penances," for example, Sterne lashes out at
"such abuses of religion" as penances for making religion "consist in
something which it ought not":

How such mockery became a part of religion at first, or upon
what motives they were imagined to be services acceptable to
God, is hard to give a better account of than what was hinted
above; — namely, — that man of melancholy and morose tempers,
conceiving the Deity to be like themselves, a gloomy, dis-
contented and sorrowful being, — believed he delighted, as
they did, in splenetic and mortifying actions ( Sermons , II,
179). 5

The butt of Sterne's anti-Catholic satire in Tristram Shandy is the
Papist Dr. Slop, whose religion is the object of both Trim's and
Toby's satiric thrusts. During Trim's reading of Yorick's sermon upon
abuses of conscience in Volume II, Dr. Slop launches into an apology
for the Catholic doctrine of the seven sacraments. The brief conver-
sation between Toby and Slop on the subject of the seven sacraments
shows how Sterne utilizes Toby to expose what he, as an Anglican priest,
considered abuses in religion:

Pray how many have you in all, said my uncle Toby , — for I
always forget? —Seven, answered Dr. Slop . —Humph! --said
my uncle Toby; tho' not accented as a note of acquiescence,
— but as an interjection of . . . surprise . . . Humph!
replied my uncle Toby . Dr. Slop , who had an ear, understood
my uncle Toby as well as if he had wrote a whole volume
against the seven sacraments (TS, 2.17.129).

83

Sterne's utilization of Toby to expose what Sterne considered
the artificiality of Catholic doctrine is further exemplified when
Toby challenges Slop's assertion about the value of the sacrament of
confession. "Amongst us /i.e., Roman Catholic£7j a man's conscience
could not possibly continue /to be/ long blinded ," Dr. Slop asserts,
for "'three times in a year, at least, he must go to confession.'
'Will that restore it to sight?' quoth my uncle Toby " (TS, 2.17.130).
The effectiveness of Toby's rhetorical question illustrates the extent
to which "a plain man, with nothing but common sense" (TS, 2.19.15U)
can undercut the false learning espoused by such worldly wise men as
Walter Shandy and Dr. Slop.

Both Toby's function of exposing the folly of worldly wisdom
and the efficacy of his simple faith in God become more evident in the
sequence of scenes where Walter relates his theory of Christian names —
that "good or bad" names determine men's characters and conducts — and
his hypothesis that man can withstand adversity by relying totally on
his own resources. Although Walter laments the crushing of his son's
nose at birth as further proof of the "persecution against him" (TS,
1^.19.297), he draws comfort from the "one cast of the dye left for /his/
child" (TS, U. 19. 298) —fulfilling his theory of Christian names by
naming his son "Trismegistus. " Referring to the comfort afforded by
his "opinion of Christian names" (TS, U.8.279), Walter says to Toby:
"'tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is enabled to stand
it out, and bear itself up, as it does against the impositions laid
upon our nature" (TS, 1;.7.277). Exhibiting the simple eloquence of

8h

the wise fool, Toby reminds his brother that the truly wise man relies

upon God to assist him in meeting life's exigencies:

"Tis by the assistance of Almighty God, cried my uncle Toby,
looking up, and pressing the palms of his hands close
together — 'tis not from our own strength, brother Shandy — a
sentinel in a wooden centry-box, might as well pretend to
stand it out against a detachment of fifty men, — we are
upheld by the grace and the assistance of the best of Beings
(TS, U. 7. 277-78),

From the point of view of worldly wisdom, represented here by Walter

Shandy, Toby's unquestioning faith in God's grace is simple-minded and

characteristic of his "honest ignorance" (TS, 3.l8=l89). Walter's

condescending attitude toward his brother's lack of "knowledge" (TS,

3.18.189) is seen in his comment upon Toby's trust in divine providence:

"That /I.e., trusting in divine providence/ is cutting the knot . . .

instead of untying it. --But give me leave to lead you, brother Toby,

a little deeper into this mystery" (TS, U,7.278).

Unwilling to accept the traditional Christian view which Toby

articulates, that the Lord is man's shepherd in times of distress,

Walter characteristically tangles himself up in a web of distorted

speculations about human nature,. Describing man as a "most curious

vehicle," Walter asserts that man is able to withstand his "rugged

journey" through life only because of "a secret spring within him"

(TS, ii.8.278)„ Far from being the fool that Walter thinks he is,

Toby undercuts his brother's unnaturally contrived assertions about

the "mystery" of man's "secret spring" by identifying man's "secret

spring" as "Religion" (TS, 1^.8.278). Walter's reaction to Toby's

faith in religion reveals the degree to which Walter's speculative

85

hypotheses have prevented him from sharing his brother's fitness to
receive the wisdom of Christ:

Will that set my child's nose on? cried my father, letting
go his finger, and striking one hand against the other — It
makes every thing straight for us, answered my uncle Toby —
Figuratively speaking, dear Toby , it may, for aught I know,
said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that
great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil,
which like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though
it can't prevent the shock — at least it imposes upon our
sense of it (TS, U.8.279).

Several passages from two of Sterne's sermons illuminate the

superiority of Toby's natural wisdom to Walter's acquired learning by

showing that Toby is a spokesman for the Christian teachings expressed

in The Sermons of Mr, Yorick . In "Trust in God," for example, Yorick

recalls Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians "never to depend on any

worldly trust, but only on God" ( Sermons , II, 153), and concludes his

sermon by encouraging his flock to "learn this great lesson in the

text, in all thy exigencies and distresses, — to trust GOD" (Sermons,

II, 156). As seen in a passage from "On Enthusiasm," Toby's trust

in God and his recognition of the divine source of human fortitude

echo Yorick 's words in the Sermons ;

However firmly we may think we stand— the best of us are but
upheld, and graciously kept upright; and whenever this divine
assistance is withdrawn, --or suspended, --all history,
especially the sacred, is full of melancholy instances of what
man is, when God leaves him to himself, --that he is even a
thing of nought ( Sermons , II, 192).

The discussion between the Shandy brothers about the source of
man's ability to withstand adversity dramatizes the distinction
between the foolishness of Walter's "knowledge" and the wisdom of

86

Toby's "honest ignorance." Significantly, Toby's reminder to Walter
that man is "upheld by the grace and the assistance of the best of
Beings" (TS, Uc 7,278) echoes Yorick's warning in his sermon "Trust in
God J' "Without some certain aid within us to bear us up," the preacher
begins his sermon, "so tender a frame as ours, would be but ill fitted
to encounter what generally befals it in this rugged journey" ( Sermons ,
II, lli7). It is precisely because Toby "troubled his brain the least
with abstruse thinking" (TS, 3«l8.l89j that he is such an effective
instrument for imparting the Christian wisdom contained in Sterne's
sermon "Trust in God«"

Even though Walter recognizes the existence of a "secret spring"
within man which enables him to survive his "rugged journey" through
life (TS, ii.8.278), his short-sighted worldly wisdom prevents him from
perceiving the role of divine providence in assisting man in his
voyage through life. Not only does Walter's vain worldly wisdom blind
him to the workings of God's hand in providing man with a built-in
"secret spring"; it also prevents him from following Toby's advice to
seek "the assistance of the best of Beings" (TS, ii = 7.278) when man's
inner "secret spring" runs afoul of life's exigencies. Walter's foolish
blindness to Christian wisdom becomes more evident in light of Sterne's
expansion upon the theme of divine trust in his sermon "Trust in God."

Indicative of his greater wisdom, the preacher Yorick in
"Trust in God" sees through the apparent fortuitism of man's inner
springe Unlike Walter, Yorick perceives God's design in providing man
with an inner power which operates "like a secret spring in a well-

87

6
contrived machine" ( Sermons , II, lUS). The failure of Walter's worldly

wisdom to understand the workings of this "secret spring" is revealed
when Yorick not only identifies "the principle of self-love" as the
force generating man's secret spring" ( Sermons , II, lU7)j but also
assesses the limitations of this generating force. Describing self-
love as "one of the moat deceitful of human passions," Yorick argues
that it "too often disappoints in the end" ( Sermons , II, lU?), by in-
clin/in^ us to think better of ourselves, and conditions, than there is
ground for" ( Sermons , II, lh9)' By a process of induction, Yorick
arrives at the same conclusion reached by Toby's intuitive gnomic
wisdom — that "Religion" is ultimately man's only fool-proof "secret
spring." Since "we still find a necessity of calling something to aid
this principle" of self-love, Yorick argues, "reason and religion are
called in at length, and join with nature in exhorting us to hope; —
but to hope in God, in whose hands are the issues of life and death"
( Sermons , II, 1U9). In light of the similarity between Yorick 's
advice to his congregation and Toby's advice to Walter, then, Walter's
foolish rejection of God's assistance becomes more blameworthy, while
Toby's function as an instmment for imparting Christian wisdom
becomes more evident.

The short-sightedness of Walter's worldly wisdom is
epitomized in his attempt to "counteract and undo" the evil of his
son's crushed nose by naming him Trismegistus:

But alas; continued my father, as the greatest evil
has befallen him--I must counteract and undo it with the
greatest good.

88

He shall be christened Trismegistus , brother,
I wish it may answer--replied my uncle Toby , rising up
(TS, U.8.279).

The folly of Walter's trust in his "opinion of Christian names"
(TS, U»8c279), and the wisdom of Toby's skeptical view of worldly
wise hypotheses, become more evident in light of Walter's reasons
for relying on a name to undo "evilo" Because "there never was a
great or heroic action performed since the world began by one called
Tristram " (TS, U= 18.295), Walter believes that "there was a strange
kind of magick bias which good or bad names . o . irresistibly
impress 'd upon our characters and conduct" (TS, 1.19.l50)o For Walter,
Trismegistus is the most fitting name for his son because he was "the
greatest ... of all earthly beings . , , the greatest king — the
greatest lawgiver — /and/ the greatest philosopher" (TS, i;«ll»283-8U)«
Typifying his interest in religion, Toby reminds Walter that Tris-
megistus was also "the greatest priest" (TS, [i.llo28[i), thereby point-
ing to Walter's indifference to anything of an other-worldly nature.

Walter's comment upon Toby's reminder of Trismegistus' priestly fame —

7
"in course" (TS, U=11«28U) —confirms Walter's indifference to

religion in the order of things.

Compounding Walter's indifference to religion and religious

values is his selection of Trismegistus for his son's name in spite

of the name's pejorative connotations in patristic literature. The

"Greek name of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom" (Work, edo, TS,

p. 279, n. 2), Trismegistus (also called Hermes) is attacked by

several Church Fathers as a symbol of worldly folly. In The City

of_God, for example, St. Augustine devotes two chapters to denouncing

89

Trismegistus as a fool in the eyes of God. While pointing out that
Trismegistus revealed the error of his Egyptian forefathers in invent-

Q

/in^7 the art of making gods" ( The City of God , 8,2U.129), Augustine

condemns Trismegistus for bewailing the future destruction of the

pagan deities:

... he bears witness to Christianity by a kind of mournful
prophecy. Now it was with reference to such that the apostle
said, that "knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither
were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and
their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be
wise, they became fools" . . . For Hermes makes many such
statements agreeable to the truth concerning the one true God
who fashioned this world. And I know not how he has become so
bewildered by that darkening of the heart as to stumble into
the expression of a desire that men should always continue in
subjection to those gods which he confesses to be made by men,
and to bewail their future removal ( The City of God , 8.23.127-28).

It would seem unlikely that in the systematic pursuit of his
opinion of Christian names, Walter would be ignorant of Trismegistus'
reputation as a symbol of worldly folly in patristic literature.
Tristram reminds us that Walter, in his opinion "of the influence of
Christian names . . . was serious; —he was all uniformity; --he was
systematical, and, like all systematick reasoners, he would move both
heaven and earth, and twist and torture every thing in nature to sup-
port his hypothesis" (TS, 1.19.153)= In addition, Tristram points out
that his father "would lose all kind of patience whenever he saw
people ... who should have known better, —as careless and as indif-
ferent about the name they imposed upon their child, —or more so,
than in the choice of Ponto or Cupid for their puppy dog" (IS, 1.19.
53.51i). It would seem more in keeping with Walter's obsession with
worldliness to assume, then, that he would deliberately choose the

90

pagan god of worldly wisdom as the name of the son he was grooming to
succeed him as philosopher par excellence of Shandy Hall,

Just as Walter foolishly stressed worldly rather than religious
qualities in his choice of Tristram's name, so he did in his choice of
qualities for Tristram's tutor. The discussion about desirable quali-
ties in Tristram's tutor serves as another example of the superiority
of Toby's natural wisdom to the foolishness of Walter's worldly wisdom.
For Walter, Tristram's tutor must be "prudent, attentive to business,
vigilant, acute, argute, inventive, quick in resolving doubts and
speculative questions . . . wise and judicious, and learned" (TS, 6o5°
UlS)" Once again, Toby exhibits his gnomic wisdom by siding with the
wise fool, Yorick, to expose Walter's foolish obsession with worldly
wisdom: "And why not humble, and moderate, and gentle tempered, and
good? said Yorick ; — ^And why not, cried my uncle Toby, free and gener-
ous, and bountiful, and brave?" (TS, 6o5oUl5) In commenting upon Toby's
sense of humanity, John Stedmond reminds us that "Toby, . , . like the
traditional 'wise' fools, is on the side of nature against human attempts
to institutionalize man's instincts" (Stedmond, p. 92).

Walter's preoccupation with the muddled world of his hypotheses,
with their emphasis on material, this-worldly gains, prevents him from
realizing the folly of his faith in all abstract systems, epitomized
by his hypothesis of Christian names. Like his Tristra-poedia ,
Walter's theory of Christian names is foolish also in its irrelevance
to the reality of human experience. Whereas the wise fool Tristram
exposes the foolish wisdom of his father's educational system, the

91

unlearned Toby exposes the folly of Walter's obsession with naming his
son Trismegistus o "For my own part," Toby tells Trim> "I can see little
or no difference betwixt my nephew's being called Tristram or Tris -
megistus " (TS, U, 18. 291;). It is fitting that Toby's unlearned counter-
part Trim aids his master in puncturing Walter's theory of Christian
names :

Bless your honour! cried Trim , advancing three steps as he
spoke, does a man think of his christian name when he goes
upon the attack? — Or when he stands in the trench. Trim ?
cried my uncle Toby , looking firm — Or when he enters a breach?
said Trim, pushing in between two chairs --Or forces the lines?
cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch like a pike
--Or facing a platoon, cried Trim , presenting his stick like a
fire-lock — Or when he marches up the glacis, cried my uncle
Toby , looking warn and setting his foot upon his stool
TlS7 I4,l8o295)o

Tristram's successful narration of his life and opinions, in

spite of his name, disproves Walter's hypothesis about the "magic bies

which good or bad names irresistably /sic/ impress upon our characters

and conducts" (TS, U,8,279). Tristram's success, moreover, testifies

to Toby's wisdom in trusting in God, rather than man's irrelevant

speculative systems, as a means of confronting life's exigencies c

Typical of the failure of Walter's worldly wise schemes to stem the

overwhelming tide of adversity resulting from his son's misfortunes

is his "lamentation" after his son's baptism (TS, U. 19. 296-98).

Lamenting the subversion of his "last cast" for his son's success--

naming him Trismegistus--Walter cries out despairingly: "Tristram!

Tristram ' Tristram ! (TS, U. 19=298) Toby's advice to "send for Mr

Yorick" (TS, U =19 =298) once again illustrates his trust in a different

kind of wisdom which, Sterne seems to suggest, is net as foolish as

92

it may appear to those like VJalter, who place all their trust in

worldly wisdom^

The "wisdom" of Walter's attempt to counteract evil by relying

upon his hypotheses becomes more foolish when it is seen that his

deliverance from one misfortune results ironically from the arrival

of another. Soon after the "learned divines" at the visitation dinner

reject Walter's plea to annul Tristram's baptism, Walter receives a

legacy of a thousand pounds from Tristram's aunt, Dinah. Walter's

problem about whether to utilize the money on Bobby's grand tour of

the continent or on cultivating the unused common next to the Shandy

estate is an "evil" from which Walter is delivered only by the news

of Bobby's death, Tristram's comment upon his father's delivery from

this "evil" necessity of making a decision suggests the folly of man's

attempt to "undo" evil without God's help:

My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as
certainly as he had done under that of ray CHRISTIAN NAME—
had he not been rescued out of it as he was out of that,
by a fresh evil--the misfortune of my brother Bobby's death
(TS, ii„31 = 336),

Walter's attempts to combat life's adversities with hypotheses,
then, prove foolish in view of man's finite capabilities and the
characteristic irrelevance of hypotheses to human experience. Tris-
tram's observation that "the life of man < o = is ... to shift from
side to side--from sorrow to sorrow — to button up one cause of vexa-
tionl —and unbutton another!" (TS, U. 31 336) is a fitting testimony
to the wisdom of Toby's reliance on God's providence and the foolish-
ness of Walter's total reliance on man's works o

93

Thus far, we have seen that Toby's simple trust in God and his
skeptical attitude toward both Walter's speculative hypotheses and Dr.
Slop's attempts to impose abstract schemes upon religion are signs
that he is a receptacle of divine wisdom. Perhaps the most evident
sign of Toby's function as an instrument of Christian wisdom is his
exemplary charity and his all-suffering compassion for his fellow man.
We recall Thomas a Kempis ^ teaching that "to judge and to think well
and blessedly of others, is a sign and a token of great wisdom"
( Imitatio , 1.2.6>)t Toby's sense of charity and compassion is
evinced in his conversation with Dr. Slop at the time of Tristram's
birth. When Dr. Slop invokes "'all the angels and archangels, princi-
palities and powers, and all the heavenly armies'" (TS, 3.11-173) to
curse Obadiah, the Shandy servant who had knotted his instrument bag,
Toby exclaims: "Our armies swore terrible in Flanders , . . . but
nothing to this, --For my own part, I could not have a heart to
curse my dog so" (TS, 3 -11 =17$)= After Slop has completed reading
the excommunication curse, Toby, by showing compassion even for the
devil, illustrates the unrestricted kind of charity which has earned
him the praise of Hazlitt, among others, who eulogized him as "one of
the finest compliments ever paid to human nature":

I declare, ... my heart would not let me curse the
devil himself with so much bitterness- --He is the father
of curses, replied Dr, Slop . --So am not I, replied my
uncle. --But he is cursed, and dairn'd already, to all eternity,
—replied Dr Slop :

I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby (TS, 3.11.179).

Toby's charity and philanthropy become most evident in his
compassionate care of the dying Le Fever, and in his paternal kindness

9k

in raising Le Fever's orphaned son. Even though Toby's attempts to
save Le Fever are in vain^ his compassionate philanthropy earns Tris-
tram's esteem. "There was a frankness in my uncle Toby," Tristram
writes of his uncle's offers of kindness to Le Fever,

. o . which let you at once into his soul, and shewed you the
goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his
looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally
beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under
him (TS, 6olOol426)P

It is significant that previous commentators have singled out Toby's

conduct toward Le Fever as exemplary of man's ideal behavior towards

his fellow man. In 1777, an anonymous essayist wrote that in the

story of Le Fever Sterne "has taught us, that the human heart is

capable of the greatest improvement; and that nature never feels

herself more noble and exalted, than in the exercise of benevolence

12
and humanity." William Hazlitt, one of Sterne's most ardent

admirers, acclaimed the story of Le Fever as "perhaps the finest in

13
the English language »"

Toby's spontaneous offers of assistance to Le Fever, which
included not only the use of his house and provisions, but also Trim's
services as a "nurse" and his own services as a "servant" (TS, 6<,10,
U26), illustrate the ideal of Christian charity expressed in many of
Sterne's sermons. As Sterne points out in "Philanthropy Recom-
mended," a sermon based on the story of the Good Samaritan, Christ's
command to love one's neighbor as oneself is a divine injunction for
universal charity. Reminding his congregation that Christ told the
story of the Good Samaritan when asked, "who is my neighbor?" (Luke,

95

10.29), Sterne said: "Our blessed SAVIOUR, to rectify any partial and
pernicious mistake in this matter . . . place/^ at once this duty of

the love of thy neighbor upon its true bottom of philanthropy and

^^ 15
universal kindness ( Sermons , I, 26) <

For Sterne, who once feared that "there can be little left to
be said upon the subject of Charity, which has not been often thought,
and much better expressed by many who have gone before" ( Sermons , I,
5l), charity was as much a natural impulse as a Christian duty.
Nature has "deeply » . . sown the seeds of compassion in every man's
breast" ( Sermons , I, 6[i), Sterne asserts in his "Charity Sermon,"
"Elijah and the Widow," while in "Vindication of Human Nature," he
reminds his flock that

. c . God made man in his own image, — not surely in the
sensitive and corporeal part of him, that could bear no
resemblance with a pure and infinite spirit, — but what
resemblance he bore was undoubtedly in the moral rectitude,
and the kind and benevolent affectations of his nature
( Sermons , I, 82).

Toby's unselfish and spontaneous offer to provide for all of

17
Le Fever's needs and his exemplary upbringing of Le Fever's son

dramatize Sterne's description of man's natural benevolence in his

sermon "Philanthropy":

In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden
. . . that you would think the will was scarce concerned,
and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy
which her own goodness has excited = The truth is, —the soul
is generally in such cases so busily taken up and wholly
engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not attend to
her own operations, or take leisure to examine the principles
upon which she acts ( Sermons , I, 32).

The London Times reviewer, Desmond MacCarthy, was hardly exaggerating

96

when he remarked that the "Christianity Sterne preached was at bottom

18
that of Uncle Tobyo"

Toby's benevolence and charity would hardly be judged "foolish"

by an age which was exhibiting a renewed "sensitiveness to human need

19
and was developing fresh instruments for dealing with it." Henry

Fielding voiced this renewed "sensitiveness" in 17U9 when he pro-
claimed that charity "is the very characteristic virtue at this time.
I believe that we may challenge the whole world to parallel the

examples which we have of late given of this sensible, this noble, this

20
Christian virtue," However, in view of the worldly wisdom that

Robert South described as "a wisdom /which/ lies in practice, and goes
commonly by the name of policy" (South, p. 335 )> Toby's universal
charity would be considered foolish for not restricting itself to "the
rich or potent, from whom a man may receive a further advantage"
(South, p. 3U6). Tristram's "tribute" to his uncle's "goodness" (TS,
3.32.221;) suggests that, for Sterne, wisdom manifests itself neither
in "the knowledge of man and business . . . nor in mak/in^7 use of
opportunity whilst /one/ has it" ( Sermons , II, Sh-$) , but in an all-
suffering compassion:

Thou envied 'st no man's comforts, --insulted 'st no man's
opinion. — Thou blackened 'st no man's character, --devoured 'st
no man's bread: gently with faithful Trim behind thee, didst
thou gamble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling
no creature in thy way; --for each one's sorrows, thou hadst a
tear, —for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling (IS, 3.32.221;),

Two more examples of Toby's unrestricted charity toward and

his compassion for his fellow man will suffice to show the degree of

his Christian wisdom. Exemplifying the orthodox Anglican doctrine

97

that "charity is . . . to love every man, good and evil, friend and

foe,"^''' Toby admonished Trim for attacking clerical hypocrjsy ("God

22
only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not") and forgives Walter

for "wish/Tng7 the whole science of fortifications, with all its

inventors, at the devil" (TS, 2. 12, 113) - Tristram reports that after

Walter virulently attacked Toby's hobby-horse Toby looked at his

brother "with a countenance spread over with so much good nature; — so

placidj —so fraternal , . , it penetrated /Walter/ to his heart":

He rose up hastily from his chair, and seizing hold of
both my uncle Toby's hands as he spoke: — Brother Toby ,
said he, — I beg thy pardonj — forgive, I pray thee,
this rash humour which my mother gave me. — My dear,
dear brother, answer 'd my uncle Toby , rising up by my
father's help, say no more about itj — you are heartily
welcome, had it been ten times as much, brother (TS,
2.12.115).

In view of Hammond's assertion that "there is not a great deal

of evidence to show that /Sterne/ was particularly concerned with the

doctrines peculiar to or distinctive of the Christian religion"

(Hammond, p. 92), it is necessary to point out that Sterne's plea for

Christian charity in the Sermons , and his projection of Toby as the

personification of Christian charity in Tristram Shandy , underscore

the orthodox Anglican teaching that a truly charitable man must

extend his benevolence to all, and not just to a few. Emblematic of

the type of unselfish charity which we have seen Sterne advocate in

the Sermons are his remarks that "true charity is always unwilling to

find excuses," and that "in generous spirits, compassion is sometimes

more than a balance for self-preservation" (Sermons , I, 55).

98

In light of the emphasis on charity in The Sermons of Mr. Yorick ,
Sterne would hardly disagree with the anonymous author of "Homily of
Almsdeeds" for castigating "the manner of wise worldly men among us,
. . . /who/, if they know a man of meaner estate than themselves to be

in favour with the prince or any other noble man . « . , such a one

23

they will be glad to benefit and pleasure »" As we have seen, Sterne

would also support Robert South 's rejection of the calculated practice
of "showing kindness » . . only to the rich or potent, from whom a man
may receive a further advantage" (South, p. 336) o In his sermon on
the wisdom of Christian folly. South reminds his listeners that the
calculated practice of bestowing kindness upon a select few exemplifies
one of the four "principles" by which "policy or wisdom governs its
actions" (South, p« 3U6)« In his charitableness towards both friend
and foe, then, Toby personifies the ideal of Christian charity as found
in the sermons of Sterne and other orthodox Anglican divines ,

With regard to his liberal practice of Christian charity, Toby
may be called a "fool" in so far as he guilelessly practices what the
gospels preach. Toby's kind of "folly" exemplifies what Robert South
praised as the "folly of being sincere, and without guile; without
traps and snares in our converse" (South, p. 371). "Let us not blush
to be found guilty to all these follies," South continues, "rather than
be expert in that kind of wisdom /I.e., wordly wisdom/, that God him-
self ... has pronounced to be earthly, sensual, /ind/ devilish"
(South, p. 371),

99

Although it can never be proved that Sterne modeled the
character of Toby upon the Biblical character of Tobias, in the apocry-
phal Book of Tobit , it is interesting to note an analogy between Tris-
tram's uncle and his Biblical counterpart. Whereas Toby is the model
of charity in Tristram Shandy , King Tobias grooms his son of the same
name to be charitable:

Give alms of thy substance; and when thou givest alms,
let not thine eye be envious, neither turn thy face from
any poor, and the face of God shall not be turned away
from thee = 2'^

The analogy to the apocryphal story is instructive. Tristram's uncle
is like King Tobias in that both men set examples of charity for their
younger relatives: King Tobias for his son, and Toby, in his refusal
to "retaliate upon a fly," for his nephew Tristram, In commenting upon
his uncle's refusal to kill a bothersome fly, an event which took place
when Tristram was only ten, Tristram observes: "I owe one half of my
philanthropy to that one accidental impression" (TS, 2.12.11U). Tris-
tram's uncle is also like the son of King Tobias: while the young
prince literally brings the gift of sight to his father the King, the
unlearned and benevolent Toby symbolically brings the gift of sight
(Christian wisdom) to Shandy Hall, thereby revealing the distorted
vision of this world's foolish wisdom.

100

II

Like Toby, Corporal Trim also demonstrates the truth of Paul's
reminder that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to
confound the wise; and . c . the weak things of the world to confound

the things which are "mighty" (I Cor. 1.27) » More than just a

25 26

"mechanical man" or a "puppet, moved by unseen strings," Trim,

like his master Toby, demonstrates the raid-eighteenth-century
Anglican conviction, expressed by Bishop Butler, that Christianity was

essentially "a plain and obvious thing" that could be understood by

27
"common men." In his dramatic reading of Yorick's sermon at the end

of Volume II of Tristram Shandy and in his own eloquent funeral oration
upon Bobby's death, moreover, Trim becomes not just "a mask for
Tristram/' but Sterne's projection of the ideal preacher. His funer-
al oration, in particular, dramatizes the conviction of the praisers
of folly from the time of St. Paul — that the words of wisdom are often
uttered by those humble and unlearned men whom the worldly wise often
consider to be fools.

Trim, as I hope to show, is a "fool" in much the same way that
Toby is. Unlearned and unsophisticated in the eyes of the world.
Trim, like his master, is a receptacle of divine wisdom. Whereas Toby
manifests his wise folly primarily in his charity and compassion. Trim
manifests his wise folly primarily in his speech, particularly in his
extemporaneous funeral oration upon Bobby's death. Similar to the
speech of the "medieval idiot" which "for all its ignorance, at times
managed to pierce through the veils of convention and propriety to the

101

profound simplicity of Christlike truth, "^^ Trim's simple speech con-
tains a high degree of Christian wisdom lacking in the speech of the

worldly wise.

Trim's Christian wisdom is evinced in his ability to undercut

the foolishness of worldly wisdom as seen when he gives Walter a
lesson in what Yorick calls "practical divinity" (TS, 5.28.387). Dur-
ing a discussion between Walter and Yorick concerning a child's duty
to his parents, Toby informs his brother that Trim could "repeat every
word of /the Catechism/ by heart" (TS, 5.32.392). Although Walter did
not wish his speculations about "the natural relation between a father
and his child" to be "interrupted with Trim 's saying his Catechism"
(TS, 5. 31. 391; 32, 392), Toby leads Trim through a religious exercise
of repeating the Ten Commandments. After Trim has repeated the first
five commandments to Toby's satisfaction, Walter exclaims:

—SCIENCES MAY BE LEARNED BY ROTE, BUT WISDOM NOT. Yorick
thought my father inspired. — I will enter into obligations
this moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt Dinah' s
legacy, in charitable uses (of which, by the bye, my father had
no high opinion) if the corporal has any one determinate idea
annexed to any one word he has repeated. — Prythee, Trim ,
quoth my father, turning round to him, --What do'st thou mean,
by "honouring thy father and mother ; " (TS, 5.32.393)

Although Walter "abuses Trim with straight Lockean cant for his lack

of determinate ideas when the corporal recites the Ten Commandments,"

Trim nevertheless understands the divine injunction to honor his

parents more satisfactorily than Walter, whose only concern with Trim's

familiarity with the commandment is to expose him as a mechanical

puppet. When Trim tells Yorick that he fulfilled the divine injunction

102

by allowing his parents "three halfpence a day out of my pay, when they
grew old" (TS, 5.32.393), Yorick points out that Trim is not the kind
of fool Walter thinks he is:

Then, Trim , said Yorick , springing out of his chair, and
taking the corporal by the hand, thou art the best commentator
upon that part of the Decalogue ; and I honour thee more for
it. Corporal Trim , than if thou hadst had a hand in the
Talmud_it self "Its, $.32,393).

Unlike Walter, whose concern with determinate ideas about religion

reveals him as the wrong kind of fool, Trim exhibits the natural

wisdom of the common man by embodying the "practical divinity" which

Yorick had praised earlier:

I wish there was not a polemic divine, said Yorick, in
the kingdom; — one ounce of practical divinity — is worth
a painted ship load of all their reverences have imported
these fifty years (TS, 5.28.38?).

Trim's function as an instrument of divine wisdom becomes more
evident in his dramatic reading of Yorick 's sermon "The Abuses of Con-
science, Considered" to the Shandy brothers and Dr. Slop, Martin
Price has remarked that Trim's reading of Yorick's sermon manifests
a "power of sympathy /which/ breaks through all the forms of language
and achieves a terrifying immediacy" (Price, p. 323). When Trim comes
to the passage in the sermon dealing with the Inquisition, he inter-
jects a bitter denunciation of the institution which has kept his
brother Tom prisoner for fourteen years :

"Behold Religion , with Mercy and Justice chained down under
her feet, — there sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal,
propp'd up with racks and instruments of torment. Hark! —
hark J what a piteous groan.'" (Here Trim's face turned as
pale as ashes.) "See the melancholy wretch who utter'd it,"
--(Here the tears began to trickle down) "just brought forth

103

to undergo the anguish of a mock trial , . . . (D~n them all,
quoth Trim, his colour returning into his face as red as
blood .7^^ "Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his
tormentors o „ . ." —(Oh! 'tis my brother, cried poor Trim
in a most passionate exclamation, dropping the sermon upon
the ground, and clapping his hands together) (TS, 2.17.138) .

After praising Yorick's sermon for its "dramatic" quality (TS, 2.17.

lUl), Walter praises Trim's emotional delivery. When Trim

apologizes to Walter that his "full heart" prevented him from reading

the seniion more effectively, Walter says :

That was the very reason, Trim , . , which has made thee read
the sermon as well as thou hast donej and if the clergy of
our church « . . would take part in what they deliver, as
deeply as this poor fellow has done, — as their compositions
are fine: (I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop ) — I maintain it, that
the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to inflame
it, — would be a model for the whole world: — But alas!

and I own it. Sir, with sorrow, that, like the French

• • a

politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet
they lose in the field (IS, 2.17 olUl).

Through Trim's emotional reading of Yorick's sermon, Sterne projects
his image of the ideal preacher as being naturally versed in dramatic
arts. When Sterne remarks that "lessons of wisdom have never such power
over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-
work of a story which engages the passions" ("The Prodigal Son," Sermons ,
I, 227), he expresses a conviction similar to that contained in
Stultitia's observation that men pay more attention to clowns and
jesters than to sermons. In a letter to his wife, Sterne praises a
well-known Parisian preacher for his ability to captivate his
congregation:

I have been three mornings together to hear a celebrated
pulpit orator near me, one P^re Clement, who delights me much
. . . his matter solid, and to the purpose; his manner, more
than theatrical, and greater, both in his action and delivery.

lOii

than Madame Clarion, who, you must know, is the Garrick of
the stage herej he has infinite variety, and keeps up the
attention by it wonderfully j his pulpit « « » in short,
'tis a stage, and the variety of his tones would make you
imagine there were no less than five or six actors on it
together ( Letters , No. 8U, pp» l5h-55)=

Sterne's projection of Trim as the ideal preacher, wise in the

ways of the heart, becomes more apparent in Trim's funeral sermon to

the Shandy servants on the occasion of Bobby Shandy's death. Trim

begins his funeral sermon by dramatizing man's mortality:

"Are we not here now;" — continued the corporal, "and
are we not" — (dropping his hat plumb upon the ground — and
pausing, before he pronounced the word) — "gone! in a
moment?" The descent of the hat was as if a heavy lump of
clay had been kneaded into the crown of it. — Nothing could
have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was
the type and fore-runner, like it (IS, 5»8«362).

By using a gesture, Trim, whom Tristram describes as "no mean actor"
(is, 3.23.207), exhibits the ability of the wise fool to penetrate
the conventions of language and communicate directly to the heart.
In contrast to Trim's genuine expression of sorrow for the
death of Bobby is the unnaturalness of Walter's philosophical ora-
tion upon death. Although Walter "was by nature eloquent," his
eloquence, Tristram observes, was ironically "his weakness — for he was
hourly a dupe to it" (TS, 5«3.352). Instead of lamenting his son's
death, Walter embarks upon what Tristram calls the "entire set" of
"fine saying/s7" which "Philosophy has . . . for Death " (TS, 5.3.353).
An excerpt from Walter's oration will suffice to show the unnatural-
ness of his reaction to his son's death:

105

"There is not such great odds, brother Toby , betwixt
good and evil, as the world imagines" —(this way of setting
off, by the bye, was not likely to cure my uncle Toby's
suspicions , )

— "Labor, sorrow, grief, sickness, want, and woe, are
the sauces of life." —Much good may it do them --said my
uncle Toby to himself. —

"ffy son is dead; --so much the better; --'tis a shame
in such a tempest to have but one anchor" (TS, 5o3»355)-

In view of Tristram's account that Walter had become so enmeshed in
his philosophical consolations that "he had absolutely forgot my
brother Bobby" (TS, 5.3o356), few would disagree with Ernest Tuveson's
observation that Trim's "simple, perfectly managed gesture /of/
dropping his hat , . . produced/ a much greater effect on the heart
than did Mr. Shandy's rhetorical philosophizing" (Tuveson, p. 269).

As Trim continues his funeral oration, it becomes increasingly
evident that his simple appeal to the heart exposes the folly of
Walter's worldly-wise philosophical "sayings," Before further con-
sidering Trim's funeral oration, however, we should emphasize Sterne's
conviction that the method of the actor in the pulpit was the most
direct way of appealing to the heart. Although Sterne once claimed
that he did not "know . . . whether the remark is to our honour or
otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as
when they are wrought into the heart" ( Sermons , I, 227), he seems to
agree with Stultitia's observation that men will listen to those who
appeal to the "heart" rather than the "head." To see Trim as Sterne's
personification of a pulpit actor is to understand how Trim functions
as an instrument of divine wisdom and to understand Sterne's
concept of preaching.

106

Sterne reveals the essence of his concept of preaching--a

direct, emotional appeal to the heart— in a letter written to George

Whatley concerning Sterne's promise to deliver a "charity sermon" on

April S, 1761, at the Foundling Hospital in London s

o o o I will give you a short sermon, and flap you in my
turn: — preaching (you must know) is a theological flap
upon the heart, as the dunning for a promise is a political
flap upon the memory: — both the one and the other is
useless where men have wit enough to be honest ( Letters ,
No. 7U, p. 13U)=^^

Lansing Hammond has noted that "Sterne's 'definition' of preaching was

doubtless suggested to him by a passage in the third book of Swift's

Gulliver's Travels (chap« ii)" (Hammond, po 100, n. U)« While on his

travels in Book III, Gulliver observes that one of the curious customs

of the Laputians is their employment of servants to "flap" them with

bladders which are attached "like a Flail to the End of a short Stick"

33
( Travels . 3o2.132)o The function of these "flappers," Gulliver

learns, is to stimulate communication between the Laputians whose "Minds

. . . are so taken up with intense Speculations, that they neither can

speak, or attend to the Discourses of others, without being rouzed by

some external Taction upon the Organs of Speech and Hearing" (Travels,

3.2.132).

In Tristram Shandy , Trim theologically "flaps" worldly wise men
like Walter Shandy by appealing directly to their hearts in order to
remind them that man's "conversation is in heaven" (Phil. 3,20).
Trim functions as an instrument of divine wisdom by rejecting philo-
sophical arguments in favor of the simple language of the Scriptures.

107

In order to remind his listeners of their mortality, for example, he

35
utilizes a Biblical metaphor found in Jeremiah 2.2? and 3-9:

I said, "we were not stocks and stones" —'tis very well.
I should have added, nor are we angels, I wish we were,
—but men cloathed with bodies, and governed by our
imaginations (TS, 5-7.361).

To Tristram, Trim's description of man as neither a senseless image
nor an angel warrants the reader's careful attention:

Now as I perceive plainly, that the preservation of our
constitution in church and state, —and possibly the preser-
vation of the whole world . . . may in time to come depend
greatly upon the right understanding of this stroke of the
corporal's eloquence — I do demand your attention (TS, 5'7'36l).

The essence of Sterne's distinction between the "simple"

eloquence of preaching the gospels and the "false" eloquence of

flaunting man's wit is seen in Yorick's criticism of the sermon he

had intended to deliver at the church visitation dinners:

To preach, to show the extent of our reading or the
subtleties of our wit — to parade it in the eyes of the
vulgar with the beggarly accounts of a little learning,
tinseled over with a few words which glitter, but convey
little light and less warmth — is a dishonest use of the
poor single half hour in a week which is put into our
hands — 'Tis not preaching the gospel — but ourselves — For
my own part ... I had rather direct five words point
blank to the heart— (TS, U. 26. 317).

As seen in Yorick's praise of preaching "to the heart," then, Sterne

views the true function of pulpit eloquence as imparting the wisdom

of the Scriptures instead of broadcasting the preacher's personal

fame. To Sterne, moreover, good pulpit eloquence is not characterized

by witty turns of phrase, metaphysical arguments, and elaborate

diction, but by the simple, dramatic language found in the Scriptures,

108

whose emotional force is furthered through the use of gestures and
inflection. As Tristram points out in his comment upon Trim's dropping
of the hat:

Ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns
with the engines of eloquence, --who heat it^ and cool it,
and melt it, and mollify it, —and then harden it again
to your purpose —

Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass,
— and, having done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye
think meet —

Ye, lastly, who drive— and why not. Ye also who are driven
like turkeys to market, with a stick and a red clout — meditate
— meditate, I beseech you, upon Trim's hat (TS, 5o7<.362)o

The contrast between the true wisdom of Trim's eloquence,
modeled upon the direct language of the Scriptures, and the false wis-
dom of an eloquence modeled upon the convoluted rhetoric of the
worldly wise, who might consider Trim "foolish," becomes more mean-
ingful in light of the historical debate over the proper function of
eloquence in the English pulpits. In heated debates from roughly the
time of the Restoration, both Catholic and Protestant clergymen vied
to assess the proper function of pulpit eloquence. R. F. Jones reminds
us that:

Prior to the restoration of Charles II . . « the predominating
style of preaching was characterized by affectations, fanciful
conceits, metaphors, similes, plays upon words, antitheses,
paradoxes, and the pedantic display of Greek and Latin quota-
tions. After 1660 the scientific ideal of style--plainness,
directness, clearness— steadily gained ascendancy over the
older manner of expression. ^°

One of the first blows against the rhetorical affectations of
the pre-Restoration pulpit style was struck by Charles II in his 1662
directive to the Archbishops of England concerning "the extravagance
of preachers":

109

The extravagance of preachers has much heightened the
disorders, and still continues so to do, by the dilligence
of factious spirits , . , o Young divines, in ostentation
of learning, handle the deep points of God's eternal
counsels, or wrangle about gestures and fruitless
controversies .-''

The reaction against the "false" eloquence of the pre-Restoration pul-
pits was so acute, however, that it nearly stifled all forms of
eloquence in the Anglican pulpits. In I678, less than twenty years
after Charles II had issued his royal decree, the Anglican apologist
Joseph Glanvill pleaded for the return of some fonns of pulpit
eloquence.

Ironically, Glanvill had previously been one of the leading

39

exponents of "plainness" in the Established Church, but reversed his

position towards the end of his career upon realizing that all forms

of eloquence and displays of emotion were being suppressed from

Anglican pulpits. "It is not so much our want, that we do not know

our duty," he wrote in his Seasonable Defence of Preaching (I678), "as

that we are dead, and cold, and averse to practice what we are

UO
acquainted with." Reminding his fellow divines of the persuasive

function of rhetoric, Glanvill urged the restoration of eloquence in
order to "procure the affections to obey the reason," Glanvill 's
criticism of the emotionally sterile Anglican pulpits resembles
Sterne's complaint, expressed by Walter in Tristram Shandy , that while
Anglican clergymen write "fine compositions," they fail to "take part
in what they deliver" (TS, 2.17.1iil). As will be seen in the remainder
of this chapter, Sterne's concept of pulpit eloquence, which Trim
illustrates in his funeral oration, continues the trend established

110

by Glanvill in the late seventeenth century.

In his dramatic reading of Yorick's sermon upon abuses of con-
science and in the direct appeal to the heart of his funeral oration,
Trim exhibits neither the learned affectations of the pre-Restoration
pulpit style nor the coldness of what Ro Fo Jones called the "scien-
tific ideal of style" of the Restoration. Rejecting both the stylized
affectations of pre-Restoration pulpit eloquence and the unnatural
severity of the post-Restoration pulpit, Sterne projects Trim as the
ideal pulpit orator. Speaking in the rich but unaffected language of
the Scriptures, Trim imparts wisdom despite his appearance as an
intellectual simpleton. Alan McKillop reminds us of the effectiveness
of Trim's funeral oration compared to Walter's attempt to gloss over
death by uttering his "entire set" of "fine saying/s/" which "Philoso-
phy has o . . for Death " (TS, 5«3o353)j "The gestures and words of
Trim's oration . . . acquire by incremental repetition and elaborate
commentary a significance that Walter's learning never attains"
(McKillop, ppo 199-200). It remains for us to examine carefully the
"words" of Trim's funeral oration, for his language exhibits the
superiority of those wise in spirit to those learned in the false
wisdom of this world.

Although Trim's non-verbal gestures, such as dropping his hat
in order to illustrate man's mortality, exemplify what Martin Price
has called "spontaneous movements of psychosomatic wisdom" (Price, p.
330), his wisdom most clearly manifests itself in his selection of the
inspired "Word" of the Scriptures to convey the radical contingency

Ill

of human existence » In examining Trim's use of the Scriptures in his

funeral oration, we should keep in mind that Trim is no longer giving

a dramatic reading of Yorick's sermon upon the abuses of conscience

but is revealing both his dramatic and creative powers in his ability

to weave the powerful language of the Scriptures into his own prose.

For example, Trim paraphrases several Biblical texts, including I

Peter l,2li ("For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as

the flower of grass. The grass withereth; and the flower thereof

falleth away"), when he asks:

. . c are we not like a flower of the field — a tear of
pride stole in betwixt every two tears of humiliation
... is not all flesh grass? — 'Tis clay, — 'tis dirt
(TS, 5^9. 36h)^^

In rejecting philosophical formulas for the wisdom of the Scrip-
tures, Trim illustrates the Pauline concept of "the foolishness of
preaching." In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul explains
that he was sent "to preach the gospel: not with the wisdom of words"
(l Cor. 1.17). Since "the world by wisdom knew not God," Paul con-
tinues, "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them
that believe" (I Cor. 1,21). In explaining Paul's meaning, Thomas
Sherlock, one of Sterne's contemporaries in the Anglican priesthood,
argues that when Paul discarded the "Wisdom of the World . . . /It/
took its Revenge of the Gospel, and called it the Foolishness of
Preaching ." The world's judgment of the gospel notwithstanding,
Sherlock argues, "by this foolishness of Preaching God intends to
save them who believe: For this Method is of God, and not of Man;
and the Foolishness of God is wiser than Men," ^^

112

Henry Hammond, whom Johnson recommends to Boswell as the stan-
dard commentator on the New Testament, likewise explains that while
the substance of the Apostle's preaching--the belief in Christ cruci-
fied — "may seem a ridiculous thing to impenitent unbelievers," it is
"the most glorious evidence of the power of God" to those who "have
come in to Christ by repentance and faith" (Hammond, A Paraphrase, and
Annotations Upon All the Books of the New Testament , p, 511 )• For
Hammond, the "foolishness" of preaching Christ crucified was paradoxi-
cally "wise" because the apostles gained converts to the new faith in
spite of the oppositions of the worldly wise:

Let all the Philosophers and learned or searching men, . .
shew me so many men brought to reformation and virtuous
living by their precepts, as we have done by this
ridiculous way, as 'tis believed, of preaching the crucified
Saviour . . . Doth it not appear, that all the deep wisdom
of the world is become absolute folly in comparison with it?
(Hammond , p , 511 )

Paul's concept of the "foolishness of preaching" is not merely
a subject for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Biblical commenta-
tors. It is highly significant that Fenelon's influential rhetorical
treatise Dialogues on Eloquence (1679), which "spoke against scholas-
tic and ecclesiastical subtleties in the pulpit and recommended a flap
upon the heart and imagination," also advocates the "foolishness"
of preaching Christ crucified rather than the "wisdom" of relying upon
metaphysical arguments of philosophy. As speaker "A" points out in
the "Third Dialogue" of Fenelon's treatise, Paul's "preaching • . ,
was founded neither upon human arguments nor human persuasions, /for/
his was a ministry whose strength came from on high" (Dialogues,

113

3.127).^^ The essence of Paul's ministry, speaker "A" continues, was
"the unique power of /Christ's/ cross, /for/ philosophers had argued
without converting men and without being converted themselves"

( Dialogues , 3.128).

Fenelon's Dialogues merit at least passing attention here
because they illuminate the conviction of such traditional praisers
of folly as Thomas a Kempis that the unlearned impart the lessons of
Christian wisdom more effectively than the worldly wise because God
has given "more understanding to meek persons, than can be given by man's
teaching" ( Imitatio , 3.U3. 173). Like Sterne, Fenelon "recognized that

preaching is a phase of the larger enterprise of communication."

U8
For Fenelon (speaking through "A" in the "Third Dialogue"), the

"power of the cross," and not "the words of men," should inform the

ideal preacher's sermon:

Jesus Christ comes with his cross c . . in order to silence
our vain and presumptuous reason. He does not reason as
do the philosophers; but he makes judgment with authority
by means of his miracles and his mercy .... To confound
men's false wisdom he places before them the folly and the
shame of his cross .... What the world believes to be
folly ... is what must lead it back to God . . . Walking
in Christ's steps, his apostles preach him. They have
recourse to no human means . . . neither philosophy, nor
eloquence, nor statecraft, nor riches, nor authority ....
There you have human wisdom confounded and reproved. What must
be the inference we draw from this? That the conversation of
the peoples and the establishment of the church are not due
to reasoning and to the persuasive words of men ( Dialogues,
3.128-9).

Trim's use of Biblical language to remind man of the inherent

corruption of his flesh dramatizes the principle set forth in

Fenelon's "Third Dialogue" --that the ideal preacher rejects "the

llU

persuasive words of men" in favor of the inspired "Word" of the
Scriptures. It is significant that during Trim's funeral oration
Tristram observes that the corporal "was talking more like the chap-
lain than himself" (TS, 5»10o36[i). Tristram's observation about the
similarity of Trim's speech to the chaplain's (Yorick) is no idle
comment, for Trim's use of the flower image in his funeral oration is
modeled upon the traditional Anglican burial service. According to
"The Order for the Burial of the Dead" in The Book of Common Prayer ,
the priest shall read from Job lU»l>2 "whiles the corps is made ready
to be laid into the earth":

Man that is born of a woman, is of few days, and full
of troubles — He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut
down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

Because Trim functions as an instrument for imparting the wis-
dom of Christ, Tristram's comparison of Trim to "the chaplain" in
Volume V becomes more significant in light of the fact that Job l[i.l,2
provides Yorick with his text in "Job's Account of the Shortness and
Troubles of Life Considered," "The comparison which Job makes use of.
That man cometh forth like a flower, is extremely beautiful," Yorick
maintains, "and /is7 more to the purpose than the most elaborate proof"
(Sermons , I, 116-17). Because Volumes V and VI of Tristram Shandy
appeared in December, I76I, less than two years after Sterne published
his first two volumes of sermons (which included the sermon upon Job's
account of life), it appears possible that he intended Tristram's
comparison between Yorick and Trim as a specific reminder of the
similarity between The Sermons of Mr. Yorick and Tristram Shandy . In

115

making this comparison between the Sermons and Tristram Shandy
Sterne could very well, as John Traugott has remarked, be reminding
his readers that "he was never really out of the preacher's habit"
(Traugott, p. 99) when he was writing his novel.

Having demonstrated the brevity and contingency of human exist-
ence, Trim concludes his funeral oration by exhorting his audience to
face death bravely. As will be seen. Trim's remarks at the conclu-
sion of his funeral oration provide a frame of reference for the
subject of the present study's next chapter- -the contrast between
Yorick's wise folly in dying fearlessly as a jester, and Tristram's
unwise folly in fearfully attempting to flee from death. "I value not
death at all," Trim says snapping his fingers, "What is he? A pull of
a trigger--a push of a bayonet an inch this way or that--makes the
difference" (TS, 5.10.365). Despite the radical contingency of man's
life, Trim argues that"the best way is to stand up to him /I.e.,
Death/ --the man who flies, is in ten times more danger than the man
who marches up into his javis. --I've look'd him ... an hundred
times in the face, --and know what he is" (TS, 5.10.365). In effect,
both Trim's funeral oration and Yorick's sermon upon the brevity and
troubles of Job's life dramatize the perilous uncertainty of human
existence in order to remind man of his ultimately foolish attach-
ment to the things of this world. In the last paragraph of "Job's
Account of the Shortness and Troubles of Life Considered," Yorick
states :

When we reflect that this span of life, short as it is,
is chequered with so many troubles, that there is nothing

116

in this world springs up, or can be enjoyed without a
mixture of sorrow, how insensibly does it incline us to
turn our eyes and affections from so gloomy a prospect,
and fix them upon that happier country, where afflic-
tions cannot follow us, and where God will wipe away all
tears from off our faces for ever and ever? ( Sermons , I, 125)

In spite of the inevitablity of death, however, it is man's
nature to wish to escape from it. As Trim says in the concluding
sentence of his funeral oration, "And could I escape him by creeping
into the worst calf's skin that ever was made into a knapsack, I
would do it there , , . but that is nature" (TS, 5-10.365)= Whereas
Sterne would not have man reject this world, he would have him
recognize his folly in failing to realize his finiteness as a creature.

By speaking through the compassionate Trim to remind man of
his mortality and consequently of his foolish attachment to the things
of this world, Sterne once again demonstrates his Erasmian double
vision. Instead of philosophically inveighing against the ultimate
folly of man's attachment to this world in light of the eternal joy
afforded by the next, Sterne, through Trim, views man's natural
attachment to the world with compassion and understanding. Whereas
Sterne shares Erasmus ' hope that by recognizing his own folly man
will lead himself to wisdom, he also shares the humanist's conviction
that "if it is . . . natural to be a fool, to be a fool is also to

Ko

be natural." Emblematic of Sterne's total acceptance of human
nature, with all of its follies, is Tristram's comment upon an
exchange between Trim and the chambermaid, Susannah, during Trim's
funeral oration:

117

--What is the finest face that ever man looked at I
— I could hear Trim talk so for ever, cried Susannah , —
what is it J ( Susannah laid her band upon Trim 's
shoulder) — but corruption? — Susannah took it off.

— Now I love you for this--and 'tis this delicious
mixture within you which makes you dear creatures what
you are — and he who hates you for it — all I can say of
the matter, is — That he has either a pumkin for his head
— or a pippin for his heart, --and whenever he is
dissected, 'twill be found so (TS, 5»9o36U).

Thus far, we have seen that although various characters in
Tristram Shandy are foolish, their foolishness is of different kinds.
While Tristram claims to be a foolish narrator, professing ignorance
of what he is about, his foolishness is wise because it exposes a
different kind of foolishness--the foolish worldly wisdom exhibited
by the novel's pedants = In his genuine benevolence and almost child-
like trust in God, Toby demonstrates the wisdom of the "natural fool"
in contrast to the worldly affectations of the novel's systematizers .
Toby's constant companion. Trim, demonstrates the wisdom of the "fool-
ishness of preaching" by exhibiting a natural eloquence far more
effective than the stilted rhetoric of worldly wise orators such as
Walter Shandy, In the next chapter we shall turn to what Sterne
ideally viewed as the wisest folly of all in Tristram Shandy - -Pars on
Yorick's Christian folly.

Notes

1. For a discussion of the "fool of nature," see Kaiser, pp. 91-100.
"From the Stoic point of view," Kaiser argues, "nature is foolishj
from Stultitia's point of view, stoicism is folly because it denies
nature" (p. 95) •

2. Alan Howes points out that in the eighteenth century, "Uncle
Toby was certainly the most universally admired and loved of Sterne's
creations" (p. 25) and quotes Leigh Hunt's observation, in his "Essay
on Wit and Humour" (l8U6), that "even Shakespeare himself 'never
arrived at a character' like that of Uncle Toby" (p. 111).

3= A. R. Towers, "Sterne's Cock and Bull Story," ELH , XXIV (1957), 2i|.

U. For Sterne's hatred of the Church of Rome, see Life , pp. 86-7, 88.

5. Sterne's anti-Catholic sentiments echo those of Archbishop
Tilloston who condemned the Roman Church for its "gross follies of
superstition" (quoted by L. P. Curtis in Angican Moods of the
Eighteenth Century /^ew Haven, Conn., 1966/, p. k) ■>

6. Italics mine,

7. Walter was probably using the expression "in course" to mean "in
order" or "in turn" — that is, in order or in turn of decreasing
importance in a row or series ( O.E.D . ). Since Toby informed Walter
of Trismegistus ' priestly fame after Walter had praised the ancient
Egyptian's fame as the greatest king, lawgiver, and philosopher,
Walter's remark of "in course" shows Walter's desire to de-emphasize
Trismegistus' fame as a religious leader at the expense of his more
secular accomplishments.

8. I am indebted to Philip Overton James, The Relation of 'Tristram
Shandy' to the Life of Sterne (The Hague, 1966 j, for pointing out that
in addition to those in St. Augustine, references to Trismegistus
"can be found in the writings of . . . Clement of Alexandria, Lac-
tantiu, Cyril, Stobeus, and Philo Judaeus" (p. 60),

9. St. Augustine, The City of God , Book 8, chap. 2k, p. 129 in
"^"•^^ Basic Writings of St. Augustine , ed, Whitney J. Gates (New York,
19^48;, vol. II. All subsequent references are to this edition and
will be noted as above.

118

119

10. Quoted by Howes, p. 112.

11. In the chapter of his Sentimental Journey entitled "The Trans-
lation. Paris," Yorick eulogizes the "philanthropy" of "Captain
Tobias Shandy, the dearest of iry flock and friends" ( Journey , p. 170).
All references to Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and
Italy by Mr, Yorick are to Stout's edition.

12. Quoted by Howes, p. 59 •

13. Quoted by Howes, p. llU, n. 8.

Hi. For a discussion of Sterne's emphasis upon benevolence and
philanthropy in his Sermons , see Hammond, pp. 9U-98.

15. Sterne's remark that the divine injunction of loving one's
neighbor extends to all men would have reminded the members of his
congregation of their catechism, in which the baptismal candidate
states that his duty towards his neighbor "is to love him as myself,
and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me."

16. Sterne's remark is from his "dedication" of his "Charity Sermon"
to Richard Osbaldeston, the Dean of York.

17. The degree of affection between the young Le Fever and Toby is
indicated when the young man takes his leave of his foster parent
in order to serve in the military: "The greatest injury could not
have oppressed the heart of Le Fever more than my uncle Toby's
paternal kindness; — he parted from my uncle Toby , as the best of
sons from the best of fathers --both dropped tears--and as my uncle
Toby gave him his last kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up in an
old purse of his father's in which was his mother's ring, into his
hand, —and bid God bless him" (TS, 6.12.U31).

18. Quoted by Hammond, p. 96,

19. David Owen, English Philanthropy , I66O-I96O (Cambridge, Mass.,
196ii), p. 11.

20. Quoted by Owen, p. 11.

21. "A Sermon of Christian Love and Charity, in two Parts" (l57li)

in The Two Books of Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches (Oxford.
I859r Article XHV of the Articles of Religion of the Anglican
Church recommends both books of Homilies for "contain/ing/ a godly
and wholesome Doctrine . . . necessary for these times." The first
edition of the Second Book of Homilies appeared in 1563, but both books
were bound up as one volume from 1623.

120

22. T3, 6o7«U21.

23. "An Homily of Almsdeeds and Mercifulness Toward the Poor and
Needy," The Two Books of Homilies , p. 386»

2U0 Apocrypha (King James Version), edo Manuel Komroff (New York,
1937), P» 79.

25. Traugott, po 20,

26 » Stedmond, p. 8U«

27. Quoted by Curtis in Anglican Moods , p„ 28.

28. Stedmond, p. 83=

29. Kaiser, p. 8.

30. Traugott, p. $6.

31. As Hammond has pointed out, "nearly every critic who has written
about Sterne has called attention to the dramatic qualities inherent
in the Sermons " (p. 99 )'

32. Wilbur Cross has remarked of Sterne's love of the dramatic:
"Sterne was more than an actor. His best sermons are embryonic dramas,
in which an effort is made to visualize scene and character, as
though he were writing for the stage o . . . For setting forth the
character of . . c men in Scripture, Sterne frequently impersonated
them, spoke as he fancied they must have spoken, giving their points

of view, their reasons for their conduct, in conversation or in
monologue . . „ . Everywhere Sterne thus lets his imagination play
upon the few details furnished him by Scripture, building up scenes
and character just as Shakespeare knew how to do from an incident or
two out of Holinshed" (Life, pp. 2ii7-8).

33- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels , ede Robert A. Greenberg

(New York, I96I), Bk. Ill, chap, ii, p. 132. All subsequent references

are to this edition and will be noted as above.

3U^ Sterne's text for his sermon, "Our Conversation in Heaven,"
Sermons , II, pp. 92-100.

^^° I" A Critical Commentary and Paraphrase on the Old and New
Testament and the Apocrypha (Philadelphia and New York. l{Jli9^. vol.
Ill, Symon Patrick points out that in Jeremiah, as in other books of
the Old Testament, stocks and stones represent "senseless images,
which are . . , no better than what they appear to be, wood and
stone" (p. 382).

121

36. Richard Foster Jones, "The Attack on Pulpit Eloquence in the
Restoration: An Episode in the Developnent of the Neo-Classical
Standard for Prose," in The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the
History of English Thought and Literature froin Bacon to Pope , ed.
Richard Foster Jones (Stanford, Calif., 1951^ PP- 112-13.

37. Cited by Jackson I. Cope, Joseph Glanvill: Anglican Apologist
(St. Louis, 1956), p. 155.

38. Jones, p. 12ho

39. For a discussion of Glanvill 's position on the issue of pulpit
eloquence, see Cope, pp. lUi4.-69.

UO. Cited by Cope, p, l65.

I4.I. Cope, p. 153.

U2. Cf. Ps. 36.23 Ps. 102.15; Isa. 15.12; Isa. UO.6; Ecclus. lU.8j

and Jas . 1.10.

U3. Thomas Sherlock, D. D., Several Discourses Preached at the Temple
Church (London, 175U), p. 101.

kk' See Chapter One, above, p. [jl, n, 51^,

U5. Traugott, p. 8?,

U6. Fenelon's Dialogues on Eloquence , ed. Wilbur Samuel Howell
(Princeton, N. J., 1951), "Third Dialogue," p. 12?. All subsequent
references are to this edition and will be noted as above. On p.
37 of his "Introduction" to Fenelon's Dialogues , Howell points out
that while the Dialogues were probably written in 1679, they first
appeared in English in 1722.

hi' Howell, "Introduction," p. 1.

U8. Both speakers "A" and "C" believe in "rhetoric as a social
instrument, not as an instrument of a speaker's personal ambition"
(Howell, "Introduction," p. 5).

Ii9. Kaiser, p. 95.

Four: The Transcendent Wisdom of
Yorick's Christian Folly

The successes of Tristram as a foolish, but wise narrator and
Toby and Trim as unlearned instruments of divine wisdom anticipate the
victory of Parson Yorick's Christian folly. In Chapter II of this
study, it has been seen that Yorick, like Tristram, functions as a
court jester in puncturing the pride of the worldly wise. This chapter
will show that Yorick, in his capacity as a wise fool for Christ, goes
beyond the satirical function he shares with Tristram, Yorick's Chris-
tian folly, manifesting itself primarily in his acceptance of death
as the beginning of life, provides a norm against which Sterne asks
us to test the various kinds of wisdom and folly represented in the
novel. In particular, Yorick's Christian folly exposes Tristram's
foolish lack of Christian wisdom in attempting to flee from death in
Volume VII of his life and opinions.

The first section of this chapter will discuss the Christian
dimension of Yorick's wise folly, particularly through Sterne's
allusions to Hamlet and Don Quixote . Section two will discuss the
"dialectic" between Tristram's foolish wisdom in fleeing death, and
Yorick's wise folly in accepting death, in terms of such contrasting
Christian motifs as the "Old Man" and the "New Man," and the "Old
Dance" and the "New Dance," Section three will consider A Sentimental
Journey as Sterne's final vision of Christian folly.

122

123

I
One way in which Yorick's Christian folly becomes evident is
in his embodiment of the "foolish" Christian virtue of humility, instead
of the "wise" attribute of "affected gravity." Tristram points out
that Yorick was not opposed to

, . gravity as such; --for where gravity was wanted, he
would be the most grave or serious of mortal men for days
and weeks together; --but he was an enemy to the affectation
of it, and declared open war against it, only as it appeared
a cloak for ignorance, or for folly (TS, 1.11.26).

In contrast to the pretentious kinds of worldly wisdom exhibited by
Walter Shandy and by the polemic divines at the canonical dinner, Yorick
exhibits Christian humility, as we have seen, by refusing to preach
himself instead of the gospels and more generally, by choosing to "bear
the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter of his friends, /rather/
than undergo the pain of telling a story, which might seem a panegyric
upon himself" (TS, 1.10.22).

Yorick's humility can best be understood as a kind of intellec-
tual humility which exposes through contrast the pretentiousness of
worldly wisdom and which results from his ability to make the Augustin-
ian distinction between worldly knowledge ( scientia ) and true wisdom
( sapientia) .^ Although Yorick is "inquisitive after all kinds of
knowledge" (TS, 2.17.1U2), he avoids Walter Shandy's error of equating
worldly knowledge with the highest form of wisdom. An example of
Yorick's ability to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom occurs
when Walter is explaining part of his Tristrapoedia to Yorick, Toby
and Trim. Citing the "first book of the Institutes of Justinian " as
his authority, Walter argues that the "son ought to pay /his mother/

12U

respect" in spite of "the natural relation between a father and his
child" (TS, 5o31o39l). Yorick's reply--"I can read it as well . . .
in the Catechism" (TS, 5«31.392) --indicates his wisdom in regarding
the Scriptures as a superior source of wisdom. Unlike the "pretenders"
to wisdom whom Sterne castigates in his sermon "Advantages of Chris-
tianity to the World" for mistakenly assuming that "our titles to
wisdom /are/ built upon the same basis with those of our knowledge,
and that they will continue for ever" (Sermons , II, S^) , Yorick wisely
distinguishes between worldly knowledge and Christian wisdom o

The wisdom of Yorick's Christian folly becomes more evident in
light of Sterne's allusions to Hamlet and Don Quixote at the beginning
of Volume I of Tristram Shandy. Informing Yorick's satiric role in
Tristram Shandy with an allusive richness of meaning, the relationship
between Sterne's Yorick and Shakespeare's also points to the former's
normative role as a fool for Christ o Carefully establishing Parson
Yorick's Danish lineage, Tristram reports that the parson's ancestor
"could be no other than = . , the king's chief Jester; — and that Ham -
let's Yorick , in our Shakespear , , . « was certainly the very man"
(TS, lall<,2U)= Yorick's "open war" on the "affectation of gravity"
and his habit of "meditat/Ing/ . o o delightfully de vanitate mundi et
fuga saeculi " (TS, Iol0o20) probably corresponded to the satiric
functions performed by Hamlet's chief Jester, "Now get you to my lady's
chamber," Prince Hamlet addresses Yorick's skull, "and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh
at that" (Hamlet, V, i, 11.180-82). Like Hamlet's Yorick and other

125

professional court fools of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who

2
served as "commentators on the follies of mankind," Parson Yorick of

Shandy Hall reminded Sterne's readers of the vanity of human wishes.

The analogous functions performed by Parson Yorick, and his
Danish ancestor in Hamlet's court, extend to the symbolic implica-
tions of their respective deaths. Yorick 's skull in Hamlet recalls
to the youthful prince the vanity of human wishes in light of univer-
sal mutability. "Symboliz/Tn^ all his disillusionment," the skull
of Prince Hamlet's beloved court companion causes him to dwell upon the
"base uses /to which/ we may return." Addressing Horatio, Hamlet asks:
"Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till 'a find
it stopping a bunghole?" ( Hamlet , V, i, 11.190-92r Tristram's
account of Yorick 's fate at the hands of a vengeful world, together with
the Shakespearean epitaph on his grave ("Alas, poor Yorick.'"), and the
black page at the end of Chapter twelve, likewise provide a memento
mori for the reader about to commence his long journey through the
story of Tristram's life and opinions.

Significantly, Yorick 's grave with its Shakespearean epitaph is
placed near "a foot-way crossing the church yard" (TS, 1.12.32), thus
serving to remind all travelers of this world's mutability and vanity.
Tristram's reference to the "passengers" traveling by Yorick 's grave
underscores the traditional theme of life as a long journey, which
Tristram introduces to his story by referring to the "Homunculus" as
a "young traveller" (TS, 1,2.6). Strategically placing Tristram's
description of Yorick 's life and death at the beginning of the novel,

126

Sterne seems to be providing us with a norm to judge the actions of

7

the novel's other characters. Sterne's allusions to Shakespeare's

Hamlet reinforce the wisdom of Parson Yorick's acceptance of death as

a part of life. Dramatizing the message of Sterne's sermon upon

Phillipians 3.20, Yorick's death reminds us that "our conversation is

in heaven" :

... we must have our conversation in heaven, whilst upon
earth, --make it the frequent subject of our thoughts and
meditations, —let every step we take tend that way . . .
forgetting those things which are behind; — forgetting this
world, — disengaging our thoughts and affections from it,
and thereby transforming them to the likeness of what we
hope to be hereafter (Sermons , II, 97 )«

Although Yorick's function in Tristram Shandy is similar to his

ancestor's function in Hamlet , Parson Yorick's temperament differs

from that of his Danish ancestor. Parson Yorick "seem'd not to have

had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole crasis" (TS, 1.11,25),

Tristram informs us. "Instead of that cold phlegm and exact regularity

of sense and humours, you would have look'd for, in one so extracted,"

Tristram continues, Yorick "was, on the contrary, as mercurial and

sublimated a composition, — as heteroclite a creature in all his

declensions ... as the kindliest climate could have engendered and

put together" (TS, 1.11. 2U). The difference in temperament between

Parson Yorick and his Danish ancestor suggests the difference between

the Renaissance and the medieval versions of the Christian fool. Like

his Danish ancestor in the medieval court of King Hamlet, Yorick reminds

man of the vanity of the world and the swift passing of time. In his

ability to jest at death in the closing moments of his life, however.

127

Yorick is, as we shall see, more akin to the Erasmian fool for Christ
than to the medieval advocates of the idea of contemptus mundi . We
recall that at the end of her praise of folly, Stultitia eulogizes
the fool for Christ who manifests not a monastic withdrawal from the
world but an indifference to the external things of this world result-
ing from his anticipation of the eternal joys of the next.

Sterne's allusions to Don Quixote, whom Walter Kaiser calls
the "last of the great Renaissance fools" (Kaiser, p. 277),
further suggests Parson Yorick 's kinship to the Renaissance fools for
Christ. Early in the story of his life and opinions, Tristram claims
that "with all his /pon Quixote's/ follies," he loved the Don "more,
and would actually have gone further to have paid a visit to, than the
greatest hero of antiquity" (TS, 1= 10.22 )o Like Don Quixote mounted
upon Rosinante, the "spare . . . figure" (TS, 1.10,19) of Yorick mounted
upon his steed never failed to attract attention. In Yorick 's "sallies
about his parish," Tristram tells us, "he never could enter a village
but he caught the attention of both old and young" (TS, 1,10.19).
Tristram's comparison of Yorick and Don Quixote even extends to the
similarity between their horses, for the parson's steed "was full broth-
er to Rosinante ," and "was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade,
as HUMILITY herself could have bestrided" (TS, 1.10.18). In spite of
his hiomorous appearance, Yorick's "spiritual and refined sentiments"
earn Tristram's praise, for they compare to "any of the honest refine-
ments of the peerless knight of La Mancha" (TS, 1.10.22).

128

Tristram's references to Don Quixote are examples of "the

presence of Cervantes , » « /which/ is felt in one place or another

10
of every volume of Tristram Shandy ," Other well-known references

to Cervantes occur in Tristram's praise of his "dear Rabelais , and

dearer Cervantes" (TS, 3-19.191) and in his invocation to the " GENTLE

Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst didst sit upon the easy pen of my
beloved CERVANTES " (TS, 9o2Uo628)o Tristram's favorable comparison

of Yorick to Don Quixote, and the explicit references to the genius of
Cervantes in Tristram Shandy , support Stuart Tave's contention that
together with Fielding, Sterne "must have been a major influence in
teaching his readers to identify amiability with Cervantes."

Pope's observation that Don Quixote was "the perfection of the Mock-

12
Epick" epitomizes the earlier eighteenth-century view that Cervantes

was, in Tave's words, "primarily ... a satirist" (Tave, p. 153),

with Don Quixote the butt of his satire »

In his study of "the function of the norm" in Don Quixote ,

Oscar Mandel shows that beginning with the eighteenth century, readers

of Don Quixote have "tended to join one of two critical schools,

depending on their interpretations of the role played by the knight . "

According to the "hard school" of readers, Mandel argues, Quixote is

merely an object of satire for attempting to revive the chivalric code

in an unchivalrous age. To the "soft school," on the other hand, he

is a noble exemplar of Christian virtue, for he "begins /as/ a

Ik
buffoon, but , . , ends /as/ a martyr," Tristram's favorable com-
parison between Don Quixote and Yorick, and his eulogies to Cervantes

129

and Don Quixote, suggest that Sterne would fall into the so-called
"soft school" of readers in his evaluation of Cervantes' knight.

Similar to Don Quixote's dedication to the chivalric code of
honor and virtue, Yorick's practice of Christian virtues is misunder-
stood by a world which has ceased to practice them. A case in point
is the way in which the members of Yorick's parish maliciously distort
his charity into pride. Tristram reports that Yorick, at his own
expense, established a midwife in his parish, thereby saving his
parishioners from the hardship of riding "six or seven long miles"
(IS, 1.12.7) away in order to find one. Prior to his establishment of
a midwife in his parish, Yorick was continually lending his horse to
his parishioners to fetch the neighboring midwife. The upshot of
Yorick's unselfishness, Tristram adds, was that he "had every nine or
ten months a bad horse to get rid of" (TS, 1.10.21). Having established
a midwife in his own parish, Yorick decided to discontinue his
impractical and unnecessary custom of annually purchasing a new
horse, because it

a « o

confined all his charity into one particular channel,
and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted, namely, to
the child-bearing and child-getting part of his parish;
reserving nothing for the impotent, —nothing for the aged,
—nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called
forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness, and affliction
dwelt together (TS, 1.10.21).

As Tristram points out, however, the "world at that time was

pleased to determine the matter otherwise" (TS, 1.10.17). Instead of

appreciating Yorick's charity in providing them with a midwife, and

respecting his good sense in distributing his help where it was most

130

needed, his parishioners viewed Yorick's action as "a returning fit of
pride" (TS, lol0.22)= For Yorick's parishioners, "'twas plain as the
sun at noon-day, /that/ he would pocket the expense of the /midwife_|i7
license, ten times told the very first year" (TS, lolO«22). As with

Don Quixote, whose code of knight-errantry is mocked by the world while

15
he lived, but praised by the world as he lay on his deathbed, so

Yorick is misunderstood during his lifetime. It was "about ten years

ago," Tristram reports, that Yorick "had the good fortune to be made

entirely easy upon that score /his establishment of a midwife/, it

being just so long since he left his parish, —and the whole world at

the same time behind him, — and stands accountable to a judge of whom

he will have no cause to complain" (TS, Iol0o23)«

To a great extent, then, Sterne's description of Yorick as a

quixotic figure (TS, 1.10ol8-20,22) conforms to the "soft" school's

reading of Don Quixote as a hero who seeks the "eternal," but who

16
"falls afoul of the persecutors of the world." Sterne's description

of Yorick as a quixotic figure may be seen as an idealized projection
of the kind of life that Sterne, with understandable reservations, saw
himself leading. In a letter to Bishop Warburton, written in the sum-
mer of 1760, Sterne commented upon the consequences of his quixotic
redressing of wrongs:

These strokes in the Dark, with the many Kicks, Cuffs
and Bastinados I openly get on all sides of me, are beginning
to make me sick of this foolish humour of mine of sallying
forth into this wise and wicked world to redress wrongs, etc.
of which I shall repent as sorely as ever Sancha Panca did of
his in following his evil genius of a Don Quixote through
thick and thin — but as the poor fellow apologized for it, — so

131

must I: It was my vile fortune and my Errantry and that's
all that can be said on't (Letters, No. 63, p. 116).-'-''

As seen in his letter to Warburton, and other epistolary allusions to
his quixotic redressing of wrongs^ Sterne intended his readers to
associate his maltreatment at the hands of critics and fellow clerics,
idealized in Tristram's account of Yorick's life and death, with the
world's maltreatment of Don Quixote.

In spite of the censure which he accurately foresaw in 1760,
Sterne did, of course, continue his knight-errantry in Tristram Shandy,
by turning praise of worldly wisdom into blame, and blame of Christian
folly into praise. Yorick's courage in "choosing rather to bear the
contempt of his enemies . . . than undergo the pain of telling a story,
which might seem a panegyric upon himself" (TS, 1.10.22) reflects
Sterne's rejection of what he contemptuously called the "understrapping
Virtue of Prudence" ( Letters , No 38A, p. 76) Yorick's courage be-
comes more admirable in light of his disregard for Eugenius ' "lecture
upon discretion." Tristram reports that Eugenius, in his "lecture
upon discretion" (TS, 1.21.28), repeatedly had warned Yorick of the
vengeful "temper of the world":

. . . trust me, Yorick, IVhen to gratify a private appetite ,
it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless
creature shall be sacrificed, 'tis an easy matter to pick up
sticks enew from any thicket where it has strayed, to make
a fire to offer it up with (TS, 1.12.29).

The fulfillment of Eugenius' prediction, Tristram reports,

caught the unsuspecting Yorick completely by surprise. There was "so

little suspicion in Yorick , of what was carrying on against him, --

that when he thought . . . full surely preferment was o'ripining, —

/his enemies/ had smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy

132

man had fallen before him" (TS, lol2»30)» To a certain extent, Yorick's
early death, at the age of twenty-six, may be viewed in the same way as
A. R. Towers has aptly viewed the assortment of physical ills plaguing

Tristram; that is, as the price that "the fool or jester, like the

19
related figure of the holy simpleton, so often pays for his freedom,"

In spite of the price which he pays, however, Yorick achieves a victory
over this world and its transitory rewards o Not only does Yorick now
stand before "a judge of whom he will have no cause to complain" (TS,
1.10.23), but the "general pity and esteem" which travelers by-passing
his grave express for him "ten times in a day" (TS, lol2.32) when they
utter his Shakespearean epitaph justify Yorick's faith in "trust/Ing/
to time and truth" (TS, U.27.32U) to vindicate him in the eyes of an
unjust and ungrateful world.

The religious overtones of Eugenius ' "lecture upon discretion, "
with its warning to Yorick about the world's indifference in "sacri-
ficing" an innocent and an helpless creature," recall the martyrdom

20
to truth of the wise fool, Don Quixote, Although Don Quixote dies

completely disillusioned by the failure of the world to accept the
truth of his chivalric ideals, ^■'- the world belatedly sees that the
quest of Cervantes' knight-errant for truth has indeed led to the wis-
dom of Christ. After Don Quixote makes a dramatic deathbed renuncia-
tion of "those damnable Books of Knight-Errantry" which had cast "a

Cloud of Ignorance" over his "Understanding" (Don Quixote , 2.7J4.

22 ^— — —

930), his friends plead that he become a fool again and assure him

^^^^ "*^® Lady Dulcinea is dis-inchanted /iic/, " and that they

are

133

"upon the point of turning Shepherds, to sing, and live like Princes"
(Don Quixote, 2.7U.93l)« Although Don Quixote dies disillusioned,
Walter Kaiser argues, "his foolish life has caused the world to see
the wisdom of folly" (Kaiser, p. 296), The Christian wisdom of Don
Quixote's folly is evinced in his advice to Sancho Panza, given while
Don Quixote was still under the spell of knight-errantry: "First of
all, my Son, fear God; for the Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom
.... Secondly, Consider what thou wert, and make it thy Business
to know thy self, which is the most difficult Lesson in the World"
( Don Quixote, 2o52.719)o If Quixote is mad, his madness is that of
the divine foolo Ironically, the bachelor Samson, who had been the
spokesman of this world's contempt for Quixote's kind of folly, utters
the final eulogy to the wisdom of folly, in the form of his epitaph on
Quixote's grave:

The Body of a Knight lies here,

So brave, that, to his latest Breath,

Immortal Glory was his Care,

And makes him triumph over Death,

His Looks spread Terror every Hour:

He strove Oppression to controul;
Nor cou'd all Hell's united Pow'r

Subdue or daunt his Mighty Soul,

Nor has his Death the World deceiv'd

Less than his wondrous Life surpriz'd;
For if he like a Madman liv'd,

At least he like a Wise One dy'd
( Don Quixote, 2o7Uo935)e

To say that Yorick, like Don Quixote, dies completely dis-
illusioned with the world, however, would be to misrepresent Yorick's
role as an Erasmian fool for Christ, While both Don Quixote and

13U

Yorick are fools in the Renaissance tradition, Yorick does not exhibit
the "mournful countenance" which is associated with Cervantes' protag-
onist, Yorick, Tristram reminds us, exuded "as much life and whim, and
gaite de coeur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engen-
dered and put together" (TS, 1.11.25), In assessing Quixote's place
in the Renaissance tradition of fools, Walter Kaiser writes: "In the
close of the Renaissance, the fool's laughing face takes on an aspect
of tragedy and sadness, and the last of the great Renaissance fools is
known to the world for his mournful countenance" (Kaiser, p, 277),
Although Yorick 's dying words to his friend Eugenius suggest his dis-
enchantment with the world, we shall see that both the tone of Yorick 's
words and the glint in his eyes inform his deathbed speech with an air
of hopeful anticipation concerning his passage into the next world.
"Take a view of my head," Yorick asks Eugenius, and

. , . let me tell you, that 'tis so bruised and mis-shapen 'd
with the blows which . . , have so unhandsomely /been/ given
me in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Panca, that
should I recover, and "Mitres thereupon be suffer 'd to rain
down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of 'em would fit
it" (TS, 1,12, 31), 23

Tristram's observation that Yorick uttered his last speech "with
something of a cervantick tone" (TS, 1.12.31), however, mitigates our
sorrow over Yorick' s death because Tristram's observation suggests a
distinction between quixotic disillusionment and Christian hope that
the injustices of this world will be rectified in the next world. We
recall that when Don Quixote returns to his senses and makes a death-
bed renunciation of his books of knight-errantry, "the world prays
him to become a fool again and assures him that his illusions were

135

indeed realities."^ Quixote's inability to perceive either the fickle-
ness of this world or the irony of hoping to achieve truth in such a
fickle world is evinced in his solemn reply to the pleas and assurances

of his friends:

No more of that, I beseech you , . . ; all the Use I
shall make of these Follies at present, is to heighten my
Repentence; and though they have hitherto prov'd prejudicial,
yet by the Assistance of Heaven, they may turn to my
Advantage at my Death: I find it comes fast upon me, there-
fore, pray Gentlemen, let us be serious ( Don Quixote , 2.7ii-93l).

Unlike Don Quixote, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance,
Yorick "saw himself in the true point of ridicule" (TS, 1.10.19), and
his ability to see the folly of his own actions prevents him from fall-
ing into quixotic disillusionment. Yorick 's ability to perceive the
irony of hoping to achieve truth and justice in a deceitful and unjust
world is not only evinced in the " cervantick tone" of his dying words,
but also in the "stream of lambent fire" which Eugenius observed
"lighted up for a moment in /Yorick 's7 eyesj — faint picture of those
flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakespeare said of his ancestor) were
wont to set the table in a roarJ" (TS, 1.12.31,^ By describing the
tone of Yorick's last speech as " cervantick " rather than "quixotic,"
Tristram seems to suggest that in his final moments Yorick exhibits a
degree of perception about the world which Don Quixote does not exhibit
in his final moments. At the end of Don Quixote , in other words,
Cervantes makes the reader see what the character, Don Quixote, does
not: the irony of the world's encouragement of the very knight-errantry
which it had previously condemned. At the end of Yorick's life, how-
ever, both the reader and Yorick are aware of this world's injustice

136

and inconstancy and perceive the wisdom of preparing for the immutable
joys of the next world.

Thus, while Tristram's placement of Yorick's death at the begin-
ning of the novel reminds man of mutability and the transitoriness of
life, his description of Yorick's manner of accepting death suggests
Yorick's role as a Christian fool» From the point of view of the Chris-
tian fool, Walter Kaiser has argued, "external things become in them-
selves indifferent, neither good nor bad except as our mind or heart
deems them good or bad" (Kaiser, p. 180), The Christian fool's ulti-
mate perception of the indifference of external things is his last
jest. While the conventional clown has traditionally viewed death as
life's last joke, the fool for Christ has the last laugh, because
only he sees death as the beginning of a more meaningful life.

II

While the allusions to Hamlet and Don Quixote illuminate Parson
Yorick's normative function as a Christian fool, the analogy between
the Tristram- Yorick relationship in Tristram Shandy and the Panurge-
Pantagruel relationship in Book III of Rabelais is particularly
instructive in distinguishing Tristram's imperfect folly from Yorick's
perfect folly in Christ. Sterne's debt to his "dear Rabelais " (TS,
3.19.191) has often been considered deeper than his debt to Cervantes.

In his Dictionnaire philosophique (1771), Voltaire went so far as to

27
refer to Sterne as "le second Rabelais d'Angleterre. " Alan B. Howes

notes that the anonymous reviewer for the Critical Review II (April,

137

1761) summarized a general view of Sterne's debt to Rabelais when he
contended that "Rabelais rather than Cervantes has furnished the
'pattern and prototype' for Tristram Shandy 'in the address, the manner,

and colouring'" (Howes, p. lU).

Functioning as a foil to Parson Yorick, Tristram, like Panurge,
fails to achieve the wisdom of Christian folly even after experiencing
the folly of worldly wisdom. We recall that Panurge fails to achieve
Pantagruel's Christian folly in his inability to accept God's will in
determining the future. "As long as he tries to determine the future,"
Walter Kaiser says of Panurge, "so long will the future worry him and
prevent his will from being free" (Kaiser, p. 17U)» Tristram exhibits
a striking similarity to Panurge 's inability to accept God's will in
determining the future when he vaunts to Eugenius at the beginning of
Volume VII that he "will lead /Death/ a dance he little thinks of" (IS,
7.1.U80). Tristram's vaunt is occasioned by Death's unexpected knock
upon his door, "There is no living," Tristram tells Eugenius, . . .
at this rate; for as this son of a whore has found out my lodgings . . .
and as thou seest he has got me by the throat . . . and that I am no
match for him in the open field, had I not better, whilst these few

scatter 'd spirits remain, and these two spider legs of mine o . . are

28
able to support me . . , fly for my life? (TS, 7.1.U80) Tristram's

inability to defer his will to the divine will in this matter of his
death prevents him from achieving the wisdom of Parson Yorick 's Chris-
tian folly, just as Panurge 's inability to defer to God's will prevents
him from achieving Pantagruel's Christian folly.

138

Tristram's failure in Volume VII to follow Yorick's example
has been prepared for in Volume IV where Tristram wavers between
"esteem" and "TDlame" (TS, U»27o32U) of Yorick's refusal to abandon
his quixotic redressing of wrongs in the name of prudence and discre-
tion.. "All I blame him for," Tristram says of Yorick, "or rather, all
I blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of his
temper, which would never suffice him to take pains to set a story
right with the world, however in his power" (TS, U»27o32i;). To Tris-
tram, for whom Yorick's fate at the hands of the world is another
example of this world's maltreatment of its fools, Yorick's flaw was
his chronic lack of discretion. "He was a man unhackneyed and un-
practised in the world," he writes of Yorick, "and /he/ was altogether
. . = indiscreet and foolish on every . » » subject of discourse where
policy is wont to impress restraint" (TS, lollo26-27)o

Tristram's failure to become wise in the foolishness of Christ
becomes evident in his failure to prepare for the next world while
journeying through this one, Tristram's failure to prepare himself
for what Sterne called, in his sermon, "The House of Feasting and the
House of Mourning Described," man's "main errand" in "Jerusalem"
( Sermons , I, l5) is seen in Tristram's inability to maintain a proper
balance between the houses of feasting and of mourning in his journey
through France in Volume VII« Sterne's sermon, which he described in
a letter as "one of the best" of his efforts ( Letters , No, l83, p, 301),
is based upon Ecclesiastes 7,2,3: "The heart of the wise is in the
house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

139

Carefully attempting to impart a sense of balance between the houses
of feasting and of mourning, Sterne observes that although we are
"mournful traveller/s/" on a "weary pilgrimage," 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" ( Sermons, I, II4-I5). Not to amuse
ourselves in this way "would be a nonsensical piece of saint errantry"
Sterne adds, " 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"
(Sermons, I, 15).^^ As if to emphasize the importance of his qualifi-
cation to man's enjoyment of worldly pleasure, Sterne reminds his
congregation in the very next paragraph of his sermon that man's "main
errand" is to prepare for the next world:

Let us remember, various as our excusions are, — that
we have still set our faces towards Jerusalem , . . and that
the way to get there is not so much to please our hearts, as
to improve them in virtue; — that mirth and feasting are
usually no friends to atchievements /si£7 o^ this kind — but
that a season of affliction is in some sort a season of
piety . o , because our sufferings . , . allow us what the
hurry and bustle of the world too often deny us, — and that
is, a little time for reflection, which is all that most of
us want to make us wiser and better men (Sermons , I, 15-16).

As in his sermon, Sterne employs the journey motif in Volume

VII of Tristram Shandy „ Tristram's prediction at the beginning of the

novel that his "life and opinions . . . will . . , be no less read

than the Pilgrim's Progress itself" (TS, l.h-l) indicates Sterne's

intention of employing the journey motif in Volume VII in its medieval

and Renaissance sense, as "a form of pilgrimage . . . from this world

to the next," as well as in its typically eighteenth-century sense.

lUo

31
as "an occasion for /a/ kind of Lockean discovery."-^ Although T^is-

tram Shandy is by no means a solemn imitation of Bunyan's Christian
allegory, Tristram's allusion to Pilgrim's Progress at the beginning
of his story announces Sterne's intention of writing a Shandean
version of the "pilgrimage of the soul" theme » He presents his version
of the pilgrimage of the soul theme by contrasting Yorick's Christian
folly in preparing for "Jerusalem" to Tristram's unwise folly in "for-
getting the main errand we are sent upon" in his flight to France to
escape Death .

One way in which this contrast between the kinds of folly
exhibited by Tristram and Yorick may be viewed is by analogy to the

distinction between the Pauline figures of the "Old Man" and the "New

32
Man" (Colo 3»9-10j Eph, i;,22-U; and Rom^ 6,6), In summarizing the

distinction between the "Old Man" and the "New Man," Robert P. Miller

points out:

As an aspect of the nature of man, the vetus ho m.o
represents the flesh and its manifold lusts, opposed to the
novus homo ; that is, the spirit and reason, by which these
are subdued » In terms of the Biblical history of man, the
Old Man in any human being, is the image of fallen Adam,
unregenerate in accepted grace and unredeemed by Christ, Who
is called the "New Man." As the result of original sin, all
men are said to be born in the image of the vetus Adam . By
baptism, however, we are said to die to sin and to be reborn
in the image of Christ; and he who adopts this image is
termed the New Man,^^

In his deathbed indifference to the rewards of this world and in his

anticipation of the immutable joys of the next, Yorick may be likened

to Paul's "New Man." It remains for us to identify the links between

Tristram and Paul's "Old Man,"

lUi

One of the possible links between Tristram and the Biblical
"Old Man" is evinced in Tristram's interest in gambling throughout his
flight from Death in Volume VII. One step in the "Old Man's" "pro-
gression along the road to spiritual death," D. W. Robertson, Jr. has
pointed out, is "the submission to Fortune implied by gambling."
In spite of Tristram's frantic flight from Death, epitomized in his
observation that he was "pursued , . . like a hundred devils" (TS,
7.7.287), Tristram remains long enough in Boulogne with two of his
fellow "debtors and sinners before heaven" to comment upon their
throws in a dice game: '¥ell thrown size-ace . . . well thrown,
size-Ace , again'" (TS, 7'7=U87) Tristram's interest in gambling is
further indicated in his use of terms from piquet, a two-handed card
game, to describe an inn-keeper's daughter named Janatone to the
reader: "She has a little of the devote ; but that, sir, is a terce
to a nine in your favour" (TS, 7=9oU9l)^ Commenting upon his own

infatuation with Janatone, Tristram adds:

— L help me I I could not count a single point:

so had been pigued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil
(TS, 7 = 9.1;91).^^

Although the evidence presented in the three passages above does not
in any way prove that Sterne was overtly comparing Tristram to the
Biblical "Old Man," the evidence does indicate enough similarity
between the two figures to justify further examination of the rela-
tionship between them.

Another example of Tristram's kinship with Paul's "Old Man"
is evinced in Tristram's invocation to the pagan deities. Predicting

1)42

that the phallic rites of classical antiquity will replace the prac-

37
tice of Christianity in "half a century" (TS, 7,lh'h9S), Tristram

regrets that he will not live long enough to participate in them:

Blessed Jupiter 1 and blessed every other heathen god
and goddess! for now ye will all come into play again,
and with Priapus at your tails — what jovial times! — but
where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I
rushing? I — I who must be cut short in the midst of my
days, and taste no more of 'em than what I borrow from my
imagination (IS, 7 = li;.ii95)«

Unlike Yorick, whose " gaite de coeur " (TS, 1,11,25) did not manifest
itself in an obsessive attachment to the joys of this world at the
expense of his ultimate duty toward the next, Tristram becomes more
and more associated with the "Old Man" who, D. W. Robertson points
out, traditionally represents "the inherited evil habit of the flesh"
(Robertson, p. 12?).

A less conclusive but no less admissible piece of evidence in
the case for linking Tristram with Paul's "Old Man" appears in Tris-
tram's promise, made while he is traveling through Calais, that "naked"
as he is, he will not burden the reader with a fifty-page account of
the siege of Calais in 13U6:

. . . ere I would force a helpless creature upon this hard
service, and make thee pay, poor soul I for fifty pages which
I have no right to sell thee, —naked as I am, I would browse
upon the mountains, and smile that the north wind brought me
neither my tent or my supper (TS, 7.6,1486-87).

In the passage quoted above, Tristram seems to be using "naked" to refer
figuratively to the physical hardships of hunger and poor living quar-
ters traditionally experienced by authors because of their unstable
incomes. Within the context of the analogies already presented between

1U3

Tristram and the "Old Man," however, Tristram's admission of nakedness
may also refer to his moral bankruptcy before God in foolishly attempt-
ing to flee Death. D, Wo Robertson reminds us that in traditional
Christian iconography, the "Old Man" is seen as "a naked fool, or man
without the spiritual clothing of virtue" (Robertson, p. 132).

Sterne uses both the physical and the moral senses of nakedness
in his sermon "The Prodigal Son" when he observes that the young man
who leaves his homeland for foreign parts at too early an age "may . . .
be said to escape well— if he returns to his country, only as naked,
as he first left it" (Sermons , I, 235)^ For Sterne, one of the chief
potential advantages of traveling is that by "seeing the difference
of so many various humours and manners," we may "look into ourselves
and form our own" ( Sermons , I, 235)^ However, Sterne continues, "the
impulse of seeing new sights . , . carries our youth too early out, to
turn this venture /I.e., traveling/ to much account" ( Sermons , I, 235).
In view of Sterne's use of nakedness in "The Prodigal Son" to suggest
a lack of moral growth, then, Tristram's admission of nakedness in
Volume VII may well be taken not only as an admission of his physical
hardships but also as an admission of a moral failure before God similar
to that of the "Old Man."

Perhaps the most striking example of Tristram's association with
Paul's "Old Man" is seen in the salacious nature of his journey through
France. We recall his observation in Chapter nine that he had been
"piqued . . . repiqued, and capotted to the devil" by Janatone. A
similarly implicative experience occurs in Chapter forty-three when he

conducts an "affair of trade" with a Provencal "gossip" for a basket

of figSc Upon purchasing the figs, Tristram discovers that "there were

two dozen eggs cover 'd over with vine leaves at the bottom of the

basket" which he "had no intention of buying" (TS, 7.h3«535)» A "short

contention" ensues between buyer and seller because Tristram has no

intention of parting with the basket, which he needs to carry the very

ripe figs, and the woman wants the basket back in order to hold her

eggs. Commenting upon the outcome of their "contention," Tristram says

to the reader:

— How we disposed of our eggs and figs, I defy you, or
the Devil himself, had he not been there (which I am per-
suaded he was) to form the least possible conjecture
(TS, 7.ii3.536).

In spite of Tristram's defiant challenge to the reader, one may well

conjecture, in view of the sexual connotations of eggs and figs,

that Tristram's "affair of trade" was concerned with more than just

eggs and figs.

Still another example of Tristram's salaciousness is evinced

in his flirtation with a " chere fille " whom he compliments as she

emerges from matins in Boulogne: "Ah I ma chere fille i . . . you look

as rosy as the morning . . . (she made a curt'sy to me — I kiss'd my

39
hand)." In this particular incident, Tristram exhibits not only his

attachment to the "house of feasting" but also the spiritual impoverish-
ment to which his preoccupation with that house alone has led him, for
he suggests that the " chere fille " is responsible for the figure of
Death whose shadow stalks him throughout his journey through France.
He says to her:

Il45

—How can you be so hard-hearted, MADAM, to arrest a poor
traveller going along without molestation to any one, upon
his lawful occasions? do stop that death-looking, long-
striding scoundrel of a scare-sinner, who is posting after
me— he never would have followed me but for you (TS, 7.7.U87).

On the one hand, Tristram's words might indicate a perception that his
obsession with the flesh, of which this girl becomes merely a symbol,
has actually hastened his physical decline and perhaps has even con-
tributed to his spiritual death. Since there is no other real indica-
tion that Tristram does perceive his folly in these matters, however,
it might be more to the point to interpret Tristram's absurd sugges-
tion that the "chere fille " is responsible for the stalking figure of
Death as a failure either to recognize or accept the role of divine
will in determining matters of life and death »

Furthermore, this failure to recognize and defer to the will
of God and the inevitability of death is indicative of Tristram's
failure to meet his responsibility of properly preparing himself to
enter Jerusalem by keeping a balance between the houses of feasting
and mourning. As Sterne points out in his sermon, the "house of mourn-
ing" is a "more instructive school of wisdom" than the "house of
feasting" because, by revealing to a man the "miseries and misfortunes,
the danger and calamities to which the life of man is subject . . .
/the "house of mouming_|]7 forces /him/ to see and reflect upon the
vanity, — the perishing condition and uncertain tenure of everything
in this world" ( Sermons , I, 22), Unlike Yorick who sat "mechanically"

on his horse in order to meditate . . , delightfully de vanitate mundi

UO
et fuga saeculi " (TS , 1.10.20), Tristram has neglected the "house

1U6

of mourning" on his journey since he has not gained a clearer percep-
tion of the "uncertain tenure" of humanly ordered affairs than that
indicated by his suggestion that the " chere fille " rather than God is
responsible for his impending death. Tristram has failed to achieve
the Christian wisdom necessary to enter Jerusalem because, Sterne
points out in the same sermon, he has not allowed "a little time for
reflection, which is all that most of us want to make us wiser and
better men" ( Sermons , I, 15-16).

Tristram's lack of Christian wisdom is further indicated in
this same scene by his assertion, in connection with his desire to
remain and court the " chere fille " that he has "no debt but the debt
of NATURE" (TS, 7.7.U87). "I want but patience of her," Tristram adds
about his "debt of nature," and "I will pay her every farthing I owe
her" (TS, 7.?. 1(87). In not only failing to recogni7e God's disposition
of these matters of life and death, but also in foolishly believing
that he can exercise some measure of control himself, Tristram further
exhibits a kinship with Paul's "Old Man."

Tristram's sexual desire for Nannette, whom he meets at the
end of his journey in southern France, epitomizes the salacious
nature of his journey and his kinship with Paul's "Old Man." While
traveling by mule between Nismes and Lunel, Tristram stops and
dismounts when he sees Nannette, "a sun-burnt daughter of Labour"
(TS, 7.U3.537), and a group of peasants preparing to dance.
Sterne's description of Tristram's stay with Nannette and the
peasant dancers abounds with images of sexual suggestiveness, from
the "cursed slit" (TS, 7.^3-537) in Nannette's petticoat, to the oath
uttered by Tristram's mule to "saint Boogar, and all the saints at the

Ih7

back side of the door of purgatory" (15, 7.U3.537).^' Observing that
the peasants are "running at the ring of pleasure," Tristram tells his
mule that he will "take a dance" (TS, 7.U3.537). In noting Sterne-s
use of the phrase "running at the ring of pleasure" in A Sentimental
Journey , Gardner Stout points out that "'running at the ring- /is?
a chivalric exercise in which a rider attempted to pass the point of
his lance through a suspended ring," while "ring" is "a slang term
for the female pudendum" (Stout, ASJ, p. l56, n. lU). Sterne's use of
the phrase "running at the ring of pleasure" in A Sentimental Journey
to connote participation in the joys of the flesh suggests that his

employment of the phrase in Tristram Shandy was intended to underscore

Tristram's attachment to the pleasures of this world.

After leading him by the hand to the group of dancers, Nannette,

all of whose hair, but for a tress, was bound up in a knot, infatuates

Tristram with her "self-taught politeness" and natural ease:

Tie me up this tress instantly, said Nannette , putting a piece
of string into my hand-- It taught me to forget I was a
stranger— The whole knot fell down— We had been seven years
acquainted (TS, 7 =U3. 537-38).

The sexual connotations of "Boogar," "slit," and "knot"*!^ all suggest,

then, that Tristram's desire to "take a dance" is a symbolic expression

of his sexual desires.

Tristram's preoccupation with the flesh throughout Volume VII,

epitomized in his desire to end his days dancing with Nannette, may be

viewed in terms of the "Old Man's" desire to participate in the sexual

pleasures of what was known in medieval art as the "Old Dance" rather

me

than in the spiritual joys of the "New Dance, "^"^ In his "preface" to
the study of Chaucer, D, W= Robertson points out that the Pauline
tradition of the "New Man" versus the "Old Man" is related to the
medieval traditions of the "New Song" (charity) versus the "Old Song"
(cupidity) and the "New Dance" versus the "Old Dance" (Robertson, p.
127)= Pictorial representations of the "Old Dance" often depicted the
devil leading a group of dancers, Robertson informs us, while repre-
sentations of the "New Dance" often featured "an angel leading some
saints . . « in a dance" (Robertson, p. 130) » The "Old Dance is the
dance of fornication, spiritual or physical," Robertson adds, and "this
is the sense in which it appears in the Roman de la Rose " (Robertson,
p. 131). While we cannot prove that Sterne was alluding to or even
barely hinting at the tradition of the "Old Dance" in his depiction
of Tristram's dance with Nannette, we can, on the basis of the links
between Tristram and the "Old Man," view Tristram's desire to end his
days dancing with Nannette in terras of the sexual symbolism of the
"Old Dance."

In the middle of his dance with Nannette, Tristram becomes even
more linked with Paul's "Old Man" when he addresses an impossible
petition to heaven:

— ^Why could I not live and end my days thus? Juat disposer
of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit
down in the lap of content here--and dance, and sing, and
say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut brown
maid? (TS, 7.U3.538)

Tristram's petition to heaven exemplifies his kinship with Paul's "Old
Man" because it reveals the foolishness of his hope to earn salvation

Hi?

after actively participating in the transitory joys of this world without
contemplating the necessity of preparing himself for the eternal happi-
ness of the next world. As indicated by his references to the figure of
Death throughout his travels in France, and in his references to various
symptoms of his mortal sickness, such as the "vile cough" which he dreads
"worse than the devil" (TS, 7,l>h79), Tristram should, particularly as
an Anglican priest, be directing his thoughts toward preparing himself
for his imminent state,

Tristram's failure to fulfill the spiritual imperative of the
journey — preparing himself for the next world — may be measured by the
standards for "spiritual traveling" which Sterne himself set forth
in his sennon "The House of Feasting and the House of Mourning Des-
cribed." As seen in his desire to spend the remainder of his days
dancing with Nannette, Tristram is a fool from the perspective of God
because he has neglected his "main errand" in Jerusalem, as reflected
in his failure to maintain a proper balance between the houses of
mourning and of feasting. As we have seen, through the links between
Tristram and the Biblical "Old Man," Tristram has become obsessed wjth
the "house of feasting" throughout his journey through France in
Volume VII, In his sermon upon Ecclesiastes 7.2,3., Sterne warned that
even "the most cautious" and the "most circumspect" of men are not free
from the danger of committing "indiscretion- -perhaps , . . folly" while
visiting the "house of feasting" ( Sermons, I, 19). Even though Tris-
tram is far from cautious or circumspect, as seen in his desire to
"live and end /Ris/ days" in "the lap of content" with Nannette, he

150

still thinks he can "go to heaven with /his,/ nut brown maid" (TS,

7.143-538). According to the precepts expressed in Sterne's sermon,

Tristram cannot have the best of both worlds until he demonstrates an

awareness that his "main errand" is in Jerusalem. Tristram's failure

to maintain a proper balance between the houses of mourning and of

feasting has rendered him incapable of amusing himself "without

reproach" ( Sermons , 1, 15) with the pleasures of this world and

perhaps has even rendered him unworthy of entering Jerusalem.

Up to this point, I have suggested, through the analogies

between Tristram and Paul's "Old Man," that Tristram's flight from

physical death has ironically hastened his "progression along the road

to spiritual death." Tristram's progress along the road to spiritual

death, characterized by a pre-occupation with the "house of feasting"

to the exclusion of the "house of mourning," becomes increasingly more

evident in Sterne's allusions to La Danse Macabre , or the "Dance of

Death" in Tristram Shandy . In his study of the Dance of Death, James

M. Clark informs us that:

By the Dance of Death we understand literary or
artistic representations of a procession or dance, in which
both the living and the dead take part. The dead may be
portrayed by a number of figures, or by a single individual
personifying Death. The living members are arranged in
some kind of order of precedence, such as pope, cardinal,
archbishop, or emperor, king, duke. The dance invariably
expresses some allegorical, moral or satirical idea.'^'

The first reference to the Dance of Death in Tristram Shandy occurs
in Walter's philosophical oration upon Bobby's death when Walter re-
minds Toby that "'monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us'"
(TS, 5.3.353). While La Danse Macabre, which Barbara Swain has called

151

a "pageant of human folly" in medieval art and literature (Swain, p.
65), is unrelated to the traditions of the "Old Man" and the "Old
Dance," it merits our attention here because of its significance in
placing Tristram's attempt to avoid death within a context of human
folly.

As Walter's reminder to Toby about "monarchs and princes" sug-
gests, one of the ideas which La Danse Macabre has traditionally

) fi
conveyed is the equality of all men before death. In the famous

painting of the "Dance" which embellished Old Saint Paul's in London,
for example, Death led a row of dancers comprised of "the King, the
beggar, the old man, the child, the wise man, /and/ the fool." In
other representations of La Danse Macabre , such as the Holbein wood-
cuts, the "Dance" consisted of "a series of isolated groups," in which

Death is depicted in the process of escorting individuals, one at a

50
time, from every social level. One of the individuals whom Death

was often depi:;ted leading away from this world was the fool. In one
such striking pictorial representation, probably from the early
Renaissance, Death is wearing the fool's cap and bells as he sar-
donically leads his foolish victim away.

Within the context of the above information about La Danse
Macabre , Tristram's vaunt of leading Death on "a dance he little
thinks of ... to the world's end (TS, 7.1.U80) accrues a dimension
of folly even greater than that apparent in his association with the
"Old Man." Because Tristram is, by his own admission, a fool, his
place in the line of dancers in La Danse Macabre should be behind, not
in front of, Death. Yet, throu.^hout his Journey throuj^h France.

152

Tristram maintains the original vain assumption, expressed to Eugenius
in the first chapter of Volume VII, that he. Tristram, was going to

"lead" (TS, 7.I.I18O) Death on a dance in order to gain more time in

52
which to write his life and opinions and in order to enjoy the "house

of feasting." Tristram's foolishness in attempting to flee from Death

in order to gain time is seen in two of his direct references to the

figure of Death. Before his arrival in Ailly au clochers , Tristram

laments that he "must be cut short in the midst of my days" (TS, 7-11;.

U95) and then begs Death to let him continue his journey: "Peace to

thee, generous fool! and let me go on" (TS, 7.11| = l495)= The irony of

Tristram's description of Death as a "generous fool" is that Tristram,

not Death, is the "fool" for presuming that he as worthy of any special

dispensation from Death.

Another example of Tristram's foolish vanity in presuming that

he can avoid Death occurs toward the end of his journey in southern

France. After slowing down the frantic pace which has characterized

his journey in France, Tristram observes:

— for I had left Death, the lord knows--and He only--how far
behind me — "I have followed many a man thro' France, quoth he —
but never at this mettlesome rate" --Still he followed, --and
still I fled him--but I fled him cheerfully — still he pursued —
but like one who pursued his prey without hope--as he lag'd,
every step he lost, softened his looks — why should I fly him
at this rate? (TS, 7,h2.^3h)

Tristram's foolishness here is evinced in his failure to act wisely in

accordance with his realization that only the "lord knows" how far

Death is trailing behind him. As we have seen in the case of Parson

Torick, the Christian fool wisely defers his will to God's, thereby

achieving freedom from anxiety about such humanly indeterminable issues

153

as life and death. Tristram, on the other hand, is like the unwise fool

Panurge because he continually wants to determine the future. "As long

as he tries to determine the future," Walter Kaiser says of Panurge, in

a statement which could just as easily have been made about Tristram,

"so long will the future worry him and prevent his will from being free"

(Kaiser, p, 17l).

The foolishness of Tristram's attempt to determine the future

may be measured in terms of Sterne's praise for the Biblical figure of

Jacob in his sermon "The History of Jacob Considered." Praising Jacob

for trusting in God during the "few and evil" days of his earthly

pilgrimage, Sterne speaks to his congregation as he fancied Jacob

might have prayed to his creator:

--Grant me, gracious God! to go cheerfully on, the road which
thou hast marked out; — I wish it neither more wide or more
smooth: — continue the light of this dim taper thou hast put
into my hands j — I will kneel upon the ground seven times a
day, to seek the best track I can with it — and having done that,
I will trust myself and the issue of my journey to thee, who
art the fountain of joy, --and will sing songs of comfort as I
go along ( Sermons , II, 8-9).

Tristram's failure to trust in God's gracious plan for the duration of

his temporal journey prevents him from achieving the blissful calm

exhibited by Jacob in his prayer and the fearless acceptance of death

exhibited by Yorick in his dying speech to Eugenius.

Failing to trust God, Tristram is imprisoned by a mood of

anxiety throughout most of his journey. Ironically, he has never

really "led" Death as he boasted he would, but has run from Deathj

thus, Death has been the master all along — an inevitability suggested

in all the representations of La Danse Macabre. The anxiety- ridden

15U

nature of Tristram's journey is evident in his words which continually
indicate that he is a man pursued rather than a free man in command of
his fate. For instance, he says that he left his study "like a can-
non" (TS, 7.3,1;82), and calls himself a "man in haste" (TS, 7.3.1;82),
and says he "wrote galloping" while being "pursued like a hundred
devils" (TS, Y-T.iiS?). Even towards the end of his journey in Southern
France he says of Death, "still he followed, — and still I fled him"
(TS, 7.a2.53U).

In such haste, Tristram's journey becomes frustrating to the
extent that he never manages to see all the sights he had planned on
seeing, such as the thirty-volume history of China contained in the
Jesuit library in Lyons. When Tristram claims that "nothing can pre-
vent us /Trom/ seeing" the Chinese history, his servant Francois
replies: "except the time . . . for 'tis almost eleven--then we must
speed the faster, said I, striding it away to the cathedral" (TS, 7.39.
^31). Francois' reminder about the time proves correct because in real-
izing that "my time was short" (TS, 7 '39. 532), Tristram loses interest
in seeing the Chinese history:

Now it is with the project of getting a peep at the
history of China in Chinese characters--as with many others
I could mention, which strike the fancy only at a distance;
for as I came nearer and nearer to the point- -iry blood
cool'd--the freak gradually went off, till at length I would
not have given a cherry-stone to have it gratified — The
truth was, my time was short (TS, 7.39.532).

This incident typifies the effect of Tristram's anxiety about his lack

of time in this world on his ability to enjoy his journey.

Another example of the effect of Tristram's anxiety on his

ability to enjoy himself is that he is unable to enjoy fully even those

155

pleasures of the flesh with which he is so obsessed. In the cases of

the three young women previously discussed as objects of Tristram's

desires, he abbreviates his visits because he feels compelled to keep

running from Death. His haste prevents him from remaining with either

the "chere fille" or Jan atone (he tells the reader that his "reason

for haste" in fleeing from her is a "bad" one--i.e., Death). Even

in the case of Nannette his anxious haste is evident in his reaction

to her nearly successful attempt to seduce him into spending the rest

of his days with her "in the lap of content" (TS, 7.Ii3-538).

Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance
up insiduous--Then 'tis time to dance off, quoth I; so
changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from
Lunel to Monpellier --from thence to Pescm!S_, Beziers--
I danced it along through Narbonne , Carcasson, and Castle
Naudairy, till at last I danced myself into Perdrillo 's
pavillion, where pulling a paper of black lines, that I
might go on straight forwards, without digression or
parenthesis, in my uncle Toby's amours —
I begun thus-- (TS, 7.U3.538).

The final irony of Tristram's flight from Death, then, is that
it becomes a flight from life. In attempting to win more time for
himself in this world, Tristram, at the end of Volume VII, has para-
doxically lost time by wasting it in frantically racing from the " son
of a whore " Death. Freedom from the fear of death, and consequently,
freedom to enjoy this world and use his allotted time to its fullest
advantage, would have resulted from deference to God's will and from
contemplation of the eternal joys of the next world. But Tristram
has not even allowed himself enough time for "reflection" (Sermons,
I, 16) in the "house of mourning." In rejecting the spiritual
imperative of his journey Tristram has failed to achieve the

156

Christian wisdom which would have given him that freedom. In his folly,
then, Tristram has not only come nearer to spiritual death, but has
even lost this world in the process. In A Sentimental Journey , as we
shall see in the concluding section of the present chapter, the
"Sentimental Traveller" Yorick is able to participate in the pleasures
of the "house of feasting" without losing sight of his main errand in
Jerusalem. Like the Christian fool. Parson Yorick of Shandy Hall,
the "Sentimental Traveller" Yorick likewise demonstrates that folly
in the eyes of man may lead to wisdom in the eyes of God.

Ill

According to Richard Griffiths, the editor of the Monthly Review,
Sterne referred to A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy By
Mr. Yorick as his "Work of Redemption." "Perhaps," Gardner Stout
has recently noted, "Sterne's reference to A Sentimental Journey as
his 'Work of Redemption' was not simply a jesting expression of hope
that the book would redeem his reputation and fortune" ( Journey ,

Introduction," p. UO, n. h3) , both of which were suffering from the

56
lukewarm critical reception of Volumes III-VIII of Tristram Shandy .

In his Sentimental Journey , the "Sentimental Traveller" ( Journey , p.

83) Yorick, unlike Tristram in his flight from Death, redeems the time

that is his in this world by cultivating "all the benevolent sentiments

widely regarded during the eighteenth century as the essence of

57
virtue." Because he cultivates these benevolent sentiments, Yorick

fulfills Paul's exhortation to the Ephesians to "walk circumspectly,

not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time" (Eph. $.15,16). By pro-
perly utilizing his time in this world to help prepare himself for the
eternity of the next world, moreover, the "Sentimental Traveller"
Yorick continues the program of wise folly in Christ initiated by Parson
Yorick of Shandy Hall.

Yorick 's achievement of Christian folly in his Sentimental Jour -
ney becomes evident when seen against the background of Tristram's

59
foolish flight from Death in Volume VII of Tristram Shandy . Unlike

Tristram, who travels to flee Death, Yorick views travel "as one step

towards knowing himself" ( Journey , p. 83). At the end of Volume I of

the Journey, Yorick meets an old French officer at the Opera Comique,

who tells him that "the advantage of travel, as it regarded the scavoir

vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught

us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration . . . taught us mutual love"

( Journey , p. l8l). Commenting upon the French officer's advice, Yorick

says "'twas my own way of thinking— the difference was, I could not

have expressed it half so well" ( Journey , p. l8l). We may recall that

Tristram, in order to maintain his furious pace, "cannot stop a moment

to give . . . the character of the people--their genius— their manners

—their customs— their laws" (TS, 7.19.502), Only towards the end of

his journey, when it is too late to redeem all the time he has wasted,

does Tristram slow his pace to seize "every handle . . . which chance

held out to me in this journey" (TS, 7.13.536).

In the first chapter of Volume II of his Journey, Yorick says

that the French officer's advice upon traveling reminds him of

158

Polonius ' advice to Laertes upon the same subject in Shakespeare's Hamlet :
"This above all, to thine own self be true" ( Hamlet , I, iii, 78).
Yorick's recollection of Polonius' advice to his son is a reference to
the theme of self-knowledge which runs throughout A Sentimental Journey .
As Gardner Stout has pointed out, "Yorick's Sentimental Journey can
... be regarded as a kind of 'parable' or 'fable' illustrating the
perplexities, and the possibility, of fulfilling the eighteenth-
century moral imperative to know thyself " ( Journey , "Introduction,"
p. U3)» Unlike Tristram, whose lack of identity is indicated by his
inability to identify himself to the French tax collector (TS. 7.33.
525)j Yorick describes himself as a "Sentimental Traveller," thereby
fulfilling his conviction that determining one's "own place and rank
in the catalogue /of travelers/ • • » will be one step towards knowing
himself" ( Journey , pp. 82-83).

As Alan McKillop and Gardner Stout have recently shown, however,
Yorick is not only a benevolent sentimentalist, or ''man of feeling,"
but also, like his Shakespearean ancestor, and like Yorick of Shandy
Hall, a man of infinite jest. Yorick's jesting nature is perceived
by the lover of Shakespeare, "the Govnt de B-k-5h<-^, " during Yorick's
interview with the Count in Versailles. The purpose of Yorick's inter-
view is to solicit the Count's help in applying to the Duke of Choiseul,

who has the legal authority to deny or grant Yorick a passport allow-

61
ing him to continue traveling in France without fear of imprisonment.

At the start of the interview, Yorick indicates his jesting nature when

he introduces himself by opening the Count's copy of Hamlet and placing

his own finger upon the name of Yorick in the grave-digger's scene in

159

Act V, " Me, Voici l" Yorick exclaims ( Journey , p. 221). The Count,
in spite of Yorick 's protestations, literally takes Yorick at his
word, refusing to distinguish between the flesh and blood Yorick with
whom he is talking and the "king's chief jester" in Hamlet . "'Twas
all one," the Count insists ( Journey, p. 227).

The Count de B-»hh«-» probably insists that his guest and the
character Yorick in Shakespeare's Hamlet are "one" because of the
unorthodox and entertaining manner in which Yorick introduces himself
and because of the reason which Yorick gives for desiring to remain in
France. "I have come laughing all the way from London to Paris," he
explains to the Count, "and I do not think Monsieur le Due de Choiseul
is such an enemy to mirth, as to send me back crying for my pains"
( Journey , p. 2l6). Because the Count considers Yorick a jester, like
his Shakespearean namesake, he is able to persuade the Duke of Choiseul
to grant Yorick a passport permitting him to remain traveling in France.
"Un homme aui rit," the Duke tells the Count, " ne sera jamais dan -
gereus" ( Journey , p. 226).

Gardner Stout's suggestion that "perhaps the Count is right in
replying ''Twas all one'" ( Journey , p. 223 n) has important implications
for the concept of Christian folly as it appears in Yorick 's Sentimental
Journey . The fact that Yorick is " un homme qui rit ," as we shall see
in the love-feast he shares with a peasant family near Lyons, is a
sign that he possesses the spirit of joy in the creation which is akin
to the ardor of the early Christians whom Stultitia praised at the
end of her Praise of Folly;

160

Take the example of the first founders of religion.
Embracing simplicity they became the most severe enemies
of learning. And, finally, what fool could possibly act
more foolishly than those whom the ardor of religion has
totally consumed? They throw away their wealth, they
neglect injuries, permit themselves to be deceived, fail
to discriminate between friend and foe .... What is
this other than insanity? It gives credence to the fact
that the Apostles appeared drunk on new wine and Paul
seemed mad in the eyes of the Judge Festus" ( Folly , p. l69).

Having been allowed by the Duke to continue his "quiet journey
of the heart in pursuit of NATURE, and those affections which rise
out of her, which make us love each other — and the world, better than
we do" (Journey, p. 219), Yorick is able to put into practice his
thesis that a man should travel as "one step towards knowing himself"
(Journey , pp. 82-83). For example, in the chapter entitled "The
Temptation. Paris," he exhibits an admirable degree of self-knowledge
by admitting to carnal desire for a young fille de chambre who has
come to his hotel room to enquire about him on behalf of her mistress.
As Yorick sits next to the young girl on his bed, he says, in refer-
ence to an earlier lecture he had given her about virtue ( Journey,
p. 189), "I felt the laurels shake which fancy had wreath 'd about my
head" (Journey, p. 236). Like Yorick in Tristram Shandy , who "saw
himself in the true point of ridicule" (TS, 1.10.19), the "Sentimental
Traveller" Yorick exhibits the potential to achieve Christian wisdom
because he knows himself and thus can view objectively the foolishness
of his own pretentions to wisdom.

By knowing himself, Yorick, unlike Tristram, is able to utilize
his time in this world to his best advantage in preparing for the
eternal joys of the next world. This does not mean, however, that

161

Sterne intended life's traveler to renounce the God-given joys of the
world while undertaking his journey through life. On the contrary,
Gardner Stout points out:

Parson Yorick consistently affirms his belief that partici-
pation in the God-given joys and pleasures of our present
state is a redemptive process, in two principal senses:
first, it enables us to achieve a measure of temporal
blessedness and, thereby, to strengthen the virtues which
will enable us to participate in the joyful beatitude of
eternal blessedness. And second, it saves us from the vices
which can deprive us of the joys of this world and even,
perhaps, of the next ( Journey , "Introduction," pp. 30-31)=

As we shall soon see, Yorick 's ability to maintain a proper balance
between the houses of "feasting" and "mourning" sharply contrasts with
Tristram's failure to maintain such a balance, thereby further under-
scoring the distinction between the former's wise folly and the latter 's

foolishness.

Among the virtues cultivated by Yorick on his Journey , which
will enable him to "participate in the joyful beatitude of eternal
blessedness," are benevolence and compassion for all forms of creation.
In a manner reminiscent of Toby, the exemplar of Christian charity in
Tristram Shandy , Yorick exhibits compassion for the starling trapped
in its cage, the dwarf at the Opera Gomique, the beggars who invariably
surround his coach when he stops at an inn, the distinguished recipi-
ent of the Order of St. Louis who was reduced by circumstance into
selling pastries on a Paris street comer, and the peasant weeping for
the death of his faithful donkey. The analogy between the "Sentimental
Traveller" Yorick and Tristram's uncle Toby is instructive here,
because in his Sentimental Journey , Yorick refers to "Captain Tobias
Shandy /as/ the dearest of my flock and friends, whose philanthropy

162

I never think of at this long distance from his death- -but my eyes gush
out with tears" ( Journey , p. 170).

While Yorick's "heart" may be "as erratic as Tristram's head,"
Rufus Putney points out, it is, nonetheless, a compassionate one.
Yorick's compassion for all who suffer confinement is initiated by his
hearing the plaintive lament of the starling trapped in its cage —
"'I can't get out— I can't get out'" ( Journey , p^ 197 )» "I never had
itQT affections more tenderly awakened," he says as he reflects on the
"bitter draught" of slavery which "thousands in all ages" have been
made to swallow ( Journey , p« 199) « Yorick's reflections on the
universality of human suffering "within this little span of life" ( Jour -
ney , Po llU) cultivates the virtues of benevolence and compassion
within him, thereby inspiring him to go "like the Knight of the Woeful
Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures" ( Journey , p. 270).

Yorick's description of himself as a quixotic knight-errant
not only recalls Tristram's description of Parson Yorick's quixotic
cast in Tristram Shandy , but also provides a context for establishing
the wisdom of the "Sentimental Traveller's" folly. For some readers
of the Journey , represented most notably by Rufus Putney, Yorick's
self-portrait as a quixotic knight-errant underscores his role as the
butt of Sterne's "comic purpose," According to Putney, "Yorick is
a Cervantic hero led into ludicrous extravagances by the hyper-sensi-
bility of his heart." In view of Stuart Tave's statement that
together with Fielding, Sterne "must have been a major influence" (Tave,
p. 159) in transforming Don Quixote from a satiric butt to "a noble
symbol" (Tave, p. 155)> Yorick's "ludicrous extravagances" may be

163

viewed as another illustration of the Pauline paradox that what appears
to be folly in the eyes of man is really wisdom in the eyes of God.

In support of Tave's contention about Sterne's attitude toward
Don Quixote, Gardner Stout has recently shown that Yorick's quixotic
search for melancholy adventures indicates his interest in cultivating
those "virtues which will enable /hiny^ to participate in the joyful
beatitude of eternal blessedness" ( Journey , "Introduction," p, 31).
Yorick most clearly exhibits these virtues, particularly those of com-
passion and benevolence, when he digresses from his established route
and seeks out the deranged Maria, the same "luckless maiden" ( Journey ,
p. 276) whom Tristram encountered in Volume IX of his life and opinions
The reactions of Tristram and Yorick to the plight of Maria epitomize
the differences between their two journeys. As Tristram points out
to his "dear Jenny " towards the end of his story, "Time wastes too
fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows
my pen" (TS, 9.8.6IO). Still haunted by the spectre of Death which
followed him in Volume VII, Tristram is unable to spend more than a
few passing moments listening to the "tale of woe" which Maria plays
to him on her pipe: "Adieu, Maria ! --adieu, poor hapless damsel! --
some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips"

(TS, 9.2U.631).

In contrast to Tristram, who chanced upon Maria on his way to
Moulins, Yorick deliberately seeks her out, "like the Knight of the
Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures "( Journey , p.
270), Ordering his servant and his postilion to go on without him,
Yorick compassionately shares the maiden's grief for the loss of her

16U

faithless lover and of her father, who died "of anguish for the loss
of /his daughter '^7 senses" ( Journey , p. 270).

Maria's physical appearance and her description of her pil-
grimage to Rome suggests that Sterne intended Maria to serve as an
analogue of the "lamb of God." "She was dress 'd in white," Yorick
observes, and attached to "a pale green ribband . . . hung a pipe"
( Journey , p. 271), with which she "play'd her service to the Virgin"
( Journey , p. 27i;). Maria's description of her pilgrimage to Rome
explicitly identifies her as a "lamb of God":

She had . .. . stray' d as far as Rome, and walk'd roxrnd
St. Peter's once — and return 'd back--that she found her
way alone across the Apennines --had travell'd over all
Lombardy without money — and through the flinty roads of
Savoy without shoes — how she had borne it, and how she
had got supported, she could not tell--but God tempers the
wind, said Maria, to the shoni lamb ( Journey , p, 272TI

Because simple-minded innocents like Maria were considered by the
Middle Ages to be under the special dispensation and protection of
God, Yorick 's solicitous care for her suggests his role as an agent
of Christian charity and of divine providence.

Yorick 's compassionate desire to "shelter" Maria and his will-
ingness to have her "eat of /his/ own bread, and drink of /his/ own

cup" ( Journey , p. 273), illustrates the idea of the Good Samaritan

69
which informs Sterne's sermons. Yorick 's realization of the ideal

of the Good Samaritan is particularly evident in his farewell

remarks to Maria, which are paraphrased from Luke 10.33-314 5

Adieu, poor luckless maiden! — imbibe the oil and
wine which the compassion of a stranger, as he journieth
on his way, now pours into thy wounds — the being who has
twice bruised thee can only bind them up for ever
(Journey, p. 276).'°

16$

Unlike Tristram, then, Yorick cultivates the virtues of compassion
and benevolence, thereby enabling himself to maintain an ideal balance
between the houses of "feasting" and of "mourning." As epitomized by
his first remark upon leaving Maria, a curious ejaculation about the
"excellent inn at Moulins ! " (TS, 9.2h.63l), Tristram is incapable of
the kind of compassion exhibited by the "Sentimental Traveller" Yorick,
Rufus Putney's comments upon the Maria episode in A Sentimental
Journey illustrate the argument of those who view Yorick 's displays
of sentiment as ludicrous and foolish. For Putney, the Maria episode
"has given /the/ most offense to those who have thought Sterne serious,"

for it is "the one in which the extravagance of Yorick 's feelings and

71

the pseudo- solemnity of his comments render him most humorous." As

I have tried to show in this concluding section of ity study, however,
the foolishness of Yorick 's sentiments is indicative less of the
ludicrous excesses of a self-deluded fool than of the wise folly of
the Stemean fool for Christ. As he passes through the province of
Bourbonnais at the height of the harvest season, Yorick cannot forget
the impression left upon him by Maria's sufferings: "in every scene
of festivity I saw Maria in the back-ground of the piece, sitting
pensive under her poplar" ( Journey , p. 277). Unlike Tristram, upon
whom Maria's sufferings make no visible impression, Yorick cannot
forget the "house of mourning," as represented by "this gate of
sorrow," through which he has passed in his "journey in the vintage"
(Journey , p. 277).

166

The fact that Yorick's famous apostrophe to "the great — great
SENSORIUM of the world!" ( Journey , p. 278) occurs during his trip
through the Bourbonnais, further indicates his ability to cultivate
those "virtues which will enable /him/ to participate in the joyful
beatitude of eternal blessedness" ( Journey , "Introduction," p. 31)-

In his apostrophe, which is partially "adapted from Matthew 10:

72
29-31} " Yorick recognizes that his compassion for his fellow man

reflects God's infinite love for all of His creation:

--Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's
precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou
chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw — and 'tis
thou who lifts him up to HEAVEN — eternal fountain of our
feelings! — 'tis here I trace thee — and this is thy divinity
which stirs within me — not, that in some sad and sickening
momen t s , " iry soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles
at destruction " — mere pomp of words! --but that I feel
some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself — all
comes from thee, great — great SENSORIUM of the world!
which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon
the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation
(Journey, pp, 277-78).

By recognizing that his compassionate feelings for his fellow man

manifest the divinity within himself, Yorick exhibits the perfect joy

of the Christian fool. Like the patriarch Jacob in Sterne's sermon

on "The History of Jacob," for whom "gracious GOD" is "the fountain

o^ joy" ( Sermons , I, 8-9), and, like the wise fool, Stultitia, Yorick

73
recognizes Christ as "the flowing fountain of eternal happiness."

This perfect joy in Christ is emblematic of the spirit of joy
in the creation which characterizes the concluding section of Yorick's
Sentimental Journey. Exhibiting the happiness of the primitive Chris-
tians who, Stultitia points out, "appeared drunk on new wine" ( Folly ,
p. 169), Yorick shares a supper of bread and wine with a peasant family

167

in the Bourbonnais. His description of the supper is reminiscent of

the feast of agape , practiced among the early Christians as a symbol

7h
of affection and brotherhood:

They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soupj
a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table; and a
flaggon of wine at each end of it promised joy thro' the
stages of the repast— 'twas a feast of love ( Journey , p. 281).

Yorick's participation in the love feast, in the chapter significantly
entitled "The Supper," recalls an earlier instance of his reference
to another practice of the early Christians. While departing from
the young fille de chambre who has accompanied him from the Parisian
bookseller's shop, Yorick expresses a desire to seal their departure
"with a kiss of charity, as warm and holy as an apostle" (Journey,
p. 191). Although his desire to revive an established practice of the
early Christians may only mask less exalted motives, his previous
questions to the fille de chambre — "Tut! ... are we not all rela-
tions?" ( Journey, p. 191) -captures the spirit of the "natural bond

of brotherhood" between men which Sterne praises in Christ's

75
disciples .

In the next chapter of his Sentimental Journey , entitled "The

Grace," Yorick once again exhibits the perfect bliss of the Sternean

fool for Christ in the God-given joys of creation. As he watches the

festive dance of the children and grandchildren of the peasant couple,

he shares with the dancers a kind of transcendent joy in the creation:

It was not till the middle of the second dance, when,
from some pauses in the movement wherein they all seemed to
look up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of
spirit different from that which is the cause or the effect
of simple jollity. --In a word, I thought I beheld Religi-

on

168

mixing in the dance — but as I had never seen her so engaged,
I should have look'd upon it now, as one of the illusions of
an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the
old man, as soon as the dance ended, said that this was
their constant way; and that all his life long he had made
it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to
dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a cheerful and
contented mind was the best sort of thanks to heaven that
an illiterate peasant could pay —

Or a learned prelate either, said I ( Journey , pp, 283-8U).

Yorick's passionate expression of joy as he watches the peasants give
thanks to heaven exemplifies Sterne's observation in his sermon "The
Prodigal Son" that "when the affections . . . kindly break loose, Joy,
is another name for Religion" ( Sermons , I, 233) and Stultitia's
description of the happiness of the primitive Christians. In his
comment upon Yorick's description of the peasant dance, Gardner
Stout even suggests "that there is a vital correspondence between the
spirit of temporal blessedness which invests the supper and the grace,
and the kindred spirit which presides over the Lord's Supper"
( Journey , "Introduction," p. 39 )«

Unlike Tristram, whose frantic flight from Death does not leave
him time to participate without anxiety in the God-given joys of
creation, and whose kinship to Paul's "Old Man" results in his imposing
a prurient cast upon innocent pleasures, Yorick illustrates the Chris-
tian fool's conviction that, "with God's wisdom, external things become

. . . neither good nor bad except as our mind or heart deems them good

77
or bad." "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," Paul

exhorts the Romans (Rom. \\x.^), in a phrase which, Walter Kaiser has

7fi

pointed out, is echoed in Book III of Rabelais and Hamlet . So, too,
in Yorick's Sentimental Journey, the achievement of self-knowledge

169

enables the "Sentimental Traveller" to attain the greater knowledge

that his cultivation of the virtues of compassion and benevolence,

while appearing to be foolish in the eyes of men, is wisdom in the

eyes of God, As Gardner Stout reminds us at the conclusion of his

"Introduction" to A Sentimental Journey ,

Yorick's Sentimental Journey illustrates the truth of
St. Paul's observation that by "professing themselves to
be wise, /men become/ fools," and also demonstrates that
by professing themselves fools, men can become wise.
( Journey , p. U6).

Because he is both a "man of infinite jest" and a "Sentimental
Traveller," then, Yorick is distinctively a Sternean fool for Christ,
personifying a combination of some of the various aspects of Chris-
tian folly exhibited by Sterne's other characters: Parson Yorick's
ability to laugh in Tristram Shandy , and Toby and Trim's benevolence
and compassion for the sufferings of their fellow men. Yorick's
Sentimental Journey thus demonstrates the redeeming force of benevo-
lence and compassion, virtues traditionally dismissed by worldly wis-
dom as foolish in their failure to profit man in his temporal pursuits.
One of the truths which we have seen reverberate throughout all of
Sterne's writings, however, is that "the foolishness of God is wiser
than men" (I Cor. 1.25).

Notes

1. See Chapter I, above, p. 29, n. 32.

2. Enid Welsford, The Fool; His Social and Literary History
(London, 1935), P» 12». ~~~

3. Kaiser, p, 273.

U. VJilliam Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Prince Hamlet of Deninark
edo William Farnham (Baltimore, 1957).

5. In "Tristram Shandy's Wit," JEGP, LXV (January 1966), Eugene
Hnatko points out that "of all the recurrent similitudes, the two
most often resorted to are those centering on the journey and
those about military action. Some forty similitudes come from the
nexus of journey, road, travel" (53')-

6. For a full discussion of Sterne's use of the "Homunculus , " see
Louis Landa, "The Shandean Homunculus: The Background of Sterne's
'Little Gentleman'" in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century
Literature , ed. Carroll Camden (Chicago, 1963), pp. U9-6tl.

7. "We seem to have in Yorick," John Stedmond argues, "the closest
thing to a 'norm' against which to test the clown-hero's world"

(p. 69), Stedmond does not develop his suggestive insight =

8. Cf. Sterne, "Our Conversation in Heaven," Sermons, II, 9h'
"It is observable, that Stc Peter represents the state of Chris-
tians under the same image, of strangers on earth, whose city
... is heaven: — he makes use of that relation of citizens

of heaven, "

9. See Kaiser, pp, 277-96, for his discussion of Don Quixote as
"the last of the great Renaissance fools."

10, Life , p. lUO, For a catalogue of Sterne's borrowings from
Cervantes, see Gardner D. Stout, Jr., "Some Borrowings in Sterne
from Rabelais and Cervantes," ELN, III (1965), 111-17.

11. Stuart M. Tave, The Amiable Humorist; A Study in the Comic
Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth
Century (Chicago, I960), p. 139.

170

171

12. Quoted by Tave, p. 153-

13. Oscar Mandel, "The Function of the Norm in Don Quixote ,"
MP, LV (1957-58), 153.

Ih. Mandel, 15U.

15. I am generally indebted in this section to Kaiser's discussion
of Don Quixote as the last Renaissance fool, particularly pp. 295-96.

16. Mandel, 15U.

17. In "Some Borrowings in Sterne from Rabelais and Cervantes,"
Gardner Stout has shown that Sterne, in his letter to Warburton,
was paraphrasing Sancho Panza's admission of folly in following

his foolish master, Don Qurxote: "'I am a Fool that's certain, for
if I'd been wise, I had left, my Master many a fair Day since; but
it was my Luck and my vile Errantry, and that's all can be said
on't'" (116). As we have seen, Sterne's fears about the outcome
of his role as knight-errant were not ill-founded. Notwithstanding
his claim to "have Burn'd More wit, then /sic/ I have publish 'd"
(Letters, No. 38A, p. 77), he retained a sufficient amount of wit
in Tristram Shandy to guarantee the censure of both critics and
fellow clerics, including Warburton himself.

18. Letters , pp. 386, UO6.

19. A. R. Towers, "Sterne's Cock and Bull Story," I8.

20. Kaiser, p. 280.

21. As Kaiser points out, "the final disillusionment of Don
Quixote actually does kill him" (po 295).

22. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote , Ozell's revision
of the translation of Peter Motteux (New York, 1930), Part II,
chap. Ixxiv, p^ 930. All subsequent references are to this
edition.

23. Yorick's references to "mitres" allude to his frustrated hopes
for preferment and may well reflect, as Wilbur Cross has suggested
( Life , pp. 93-110), Sterne's own bitterness in being discriminated
against in ecclesiastical circles because of his refusal to
continue supporting his uncle's political aspirations in the
Church of York.

21;. Kaiser, p. 296.

25. In discussing Tristram's "preoccupation with Death," John
Stedmond argues that "Death, in the clown's sense, is life's
last joke" (p. 123).

172

26. See Alan Howes, pp. h, 13ff., 20ff., 25, 37f., 50, 53, 56f.,
71f., 77, 81, 82-83, 86, 91, 103, llU, llU, 121, 125, 127, 136,
lii2, lii5, 151, 15U, 171.

27" Quoted by Howes, p. 83, n, 1,

28. The above reference to Death is one of the many which, John
Stedmond points out, "weave a sober counterpoint" (p« 122) through
Tristram's journey to Franceo During his voyage across the English
channel, for example, Tristram asks the ship's captain if "a man /Ts7
never overtaken by Death in this passage"(TS, 7 = 2. U8l). At Montre'uil,
Tristram says that "Death . <. , might be much nearer me than I
imagined" (TS, 7 = 10. Ii9l), and at Boulogne he refers to that "death-
looking, long-striding scoundrel of a scare-sinner who is posting
after me" (TS, 7. 7.^87).

29. Italics mine.

30. Bishop Joseph Hall (157U-1656), to whose Occasional Meditations
and Self-Conferences Tristram refers in TS, 7.13.1i93, and whom Lansing
Hammond cites as an important influence on Sterne's sermons (Hammond,
pp. 125-32), offers a similar reflection on the houses of mourning
and feasting: _^And why should it be better to go to the house of
mourning then /sic/ to the house of feasting? . . The house of
mourning hath here principally respect to a funerall ... a man is

. . . thus put feelingly in mind of his mortality, which in an
nouse of feasting and jollity is utterly forgotten" ( Contemplation
on tne Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments , quoted by
Hammond., p. 131). For notes on Sterne's borrowings from Bishop Hall,
see Gardner D. Stout, Jr., "Sterne's Borrowings from Bishop Hall.'s
Quo Vadis , ELN , II (1965), 196-200,

31. Paul Fuss ell, The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism
(Oxford, 1965), pp. 2 63-61; o

32. As I hope to show, the analogy of Tristram to Paul's "Old Man,"
together with Sterne's allusions to La Danse Macabre , should justify
the extensive treatment accorded Volume VII of Tristram Shandy in
this study. In his study of Sterne's critical reception, Alan Howes
has shown that Sterne's contemporaries often dismissed Volume VII as
a biographical account of his first journey to the Continent from
January, 1762 to June, 176U (Howes, p. l8). One eighteenth-century
reviewer, anonymously writing in the Critical Review (January 19,
1765), summarily dismissed Volume VII as "an unconnected, unmeaning,
account of our author's journey to France" (quoted by Howes, p. I8).
In the twentieth century, as James Work has pointed out (TS,
"Introduction," p. Ixiii and TS, p. h^h, n. l), Volume VII has
traditionally been read as a satiric "burlesque" upon the kind of
Grand Tour proposed by the authors of the popular eighteenth-century
guide-books. Both Work and Cross (Life, pp. 355-56) share Curtis'

173

contention that Volume VII "is in substance a burlesque of the French
guide-book of this period, the Nouvelle Description de la France , by
Piaganiol de la Force" ( Letters, p, 232 j. To read Volume Vii strictly
as a biographical account of Sterne's first trip to the Continent,
or as a satiric "burlesque," however, is to neglect Sterne's motto
to the title page of Volume VII: "For this is not an excursion from
it, but is the work itself,"

33. Robert P. Miller, "Chaucer's Pardoner, The Scriptural Eunuch, and
the Pardoner's Tale," reprinted in Chaucer Criticism, Vol. I (Notre
Dame, Indiana, I960), p, 230. Miller's essay ipp ;^;^1-22U) informa-
tively discusses the Pauline tradition of the "Old Man" versus the
"New Man . "

3ii. D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, N. J.,
1963), p. 333.

35. Work notes that these are terms from piquet "indicating a slight
advantage" (TS, p. Ii91, n. 3).

36. Work notes that these are "terms from piquet signifying complete
defeat" (TS, p. h9l, "• 'O-

37. Cf. TS, 7. 9. 190: Tristram here wonders aloud "if the belief in
Christ " will continue for "these fifty years to come."

38. In A Dictionary of Slang and unconventional English , I (London,
1961), Eric Partridge points out that one of the meanings of "fig"
is the female pudendum (27U).

39. TS, 7.7.h87.

UO. "On the vanity of the world and the swift passing of time,"
Work, TS, p. 20, n. 6.

hi. Work notes that "the verb bouger , to move, budge, /as in the
act of copulation/ was not in polite usage during the eighteenth
century" (TS, p."5l0, n^ l), Cf. English "bugger." '"Boogar," Work
notes, is a "phonetic coinage from the French bougre /bouger/ or
English bugger " (TS, p. 537, n. 2).

h2. Partridge lists "to coit" as one of the meanings of the verb
knot, and John S. Farmer and W. E. Henly in Slang and its Analogues
(London, 1890-190U), IV, 130 cite "to copulate" as an "old" meaning
of the verb knot. Farmer and Henly give the following passage from
Othello as an example of the sexual meaning of knot: "Keep it as a
cistern for foul toads to knot and gender in!" (IV, ii, 60-61 )

li3. See D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer , pp. 130-32, 382, and
U8U, for a brief treatment of the "Old Dance" and the "New Dance,"
and the "Old Song" and the "New Song" traditions.

17U

IiU. It is interesting to note Robertson's observation that "variations
on what may be thought of as a New Dance to accompany the 'New Song'
and what was actually called the 'Old Dance' were common in late
medieval art" and that this "theme . . . remained prominent in art
well into the eighteenth century" (p. 132).

U5. Cf . TS, 7.3U.527 where Tristram describes himself as a "person
in black with a face as pale as ashes."

k6. D. W. Robertson, p. 333-

U?. James M. Clark, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance (Glasgow, 1950 J j ?• 1«

li8. Clark points out that "poet and artist alike intended to portray
in allegorical form the inevitability of death, and the equality of
all men in death" ( Ibid ., p. 111).

h9' Swain, p. hS.

$0. James M. Clark, Hans Holbein's The Dance of Death (London, 19li7),
p. 27. Clark's "Introduction" to these Hans Holbein woodcuts entitled
The Dance of Death , provides a briefer and more general survey of the
Dance of Death tradition than does his book-length study noted above
(n. U7).

51. Bodleian Library, Douce Portfolio 137, Leaf 14^3, No. hhli
(Frontpiece to Welsford, p. 129).

52. Tristram makes clear that his main purpose in fleeing Death is
to gain more time in which to continue his life and opinions when
Death knocks on the door of his study at the beginning of Volume VII.
After Eugenius concurs with his observation that Death is a "son of
a whore" because he entered the world by sin, Tristram says: "I care
not which way he enter 'd . . . provided he be not in such a hurry to
take me out with him — for I have forty volumes to write, and forty
thousand things to say and do" (TS, 7.I.U8O).

53. TS, 7.9.U91.

5U. Throughout this last section, I will use the abbreviated titles
" A Sentimental Journey , " "Yorick ' s Sentimental Journey , " and " Jour -
ney , " interchangeably.

55. Quoted by Stout, p. I8.

56. See Howes, pp. 12-15, 17-19.

57. Stout, "Introduction," p. 25.

175

58. It should be made clear at this point that the "Sentimental
Traveller" Yorick is the same character as Parson Yorick in Tristram
Shandy insofar as they are both dramatic representations of aspects
of Laurence Sterne's character. As Gardner Stout has recently
shown, Yorick in A Sentimental Journey is related to what R. S.
Crane in "Suggestions Toward a Genealogy of the 'Man of Feeling,"'
ELH, I (193U), 205-230, has called the "man of feeling." Not only
does Yorick display what Crane has called most of the "benevolent
sentiments" of "most of the representative 'men of feeling'"
(Crane, 229-30), but he displays them with what Stout calls
"manifest self -approval" (ASJ, "Introduction," p. 25). In the final
analysis, the difference between Parson Yorick of Shandy Hall and
the "Sentimental Traveller" Yorick as masks of Sterne is, I think,
one of degree not kind: the former is a more jestful than "senti-
mental" dramatic representation of Sterne; the latter, a more
"sentimental" than jestful dramatic representation of the novelist.

59. While this entire section of my study is greatly indebted to
Stout's "Introduction," I disagree with his contention that "by
sending Tristram on a Shandean variation of the Grand Tour governed
by the principles of laughter and good humor, rather than by
spleen, Sterne took an important step toward Yorick 's Journey "
("Introduction," p. 11).

60. McKillop, The Early Masters of English Fiction , pp. 215-16;
Stout, "Introduction," pp. 2U-2b.

61. As Stout points out in an explanatory note, "England and France
were . . . engaged in the Seven Years War" at the time of Yorick 's
journey through France, thereby necessitating his procurement of a
passport in order to continue traveling and avoid imprisonment

(p. 192 n).

62. "Instituted in l693 by Louis XIV, the Order of St. Louis was
awarded to Catholic officers for distinguished military service"
(Stout, p. 209 n).

63. Putney, "Laurence Sterne: Apostle of Laughter," p. I68.

6U. Cf. Sermons , I, 122: "Consider slavery--what it is, --how
bitter a draught, and how many millions have been made to drink of
it; --which if it can poison all earthly happiness when exercised
barely upon our bodies, what must it be, when it comprehends both
the slavery of body and mind?" (cited by Stout, p. 199 n).

65. Rufus D. S. Putney, "The Evolution of A Sentimental Journey ,"
PQ, XIX (19U0), 367.

66. Ibid. , 368.

67. Kaiser, p. 8.

176

68. Stout notes that Sterne paraphrased this passage from II
Samuel 12.3 (Stout, p. 275 n).

69. See Hammond, pp. 9l;-98.

70. Stout notes that Sterne paraphrased here from Luke 10.33-3Uj
"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and
when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and
bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine" (quoted by Stout,
p. 276 n).

71. Putney, "The Evolution of A Sentimental Journey, " 365-

72. Stout, p. 278 n.

73. Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, p. 172.

7k. For a study of the feast of agape in the primitive Church, see
Richard Lee Cole, Love-Feasts; A History of the Christian Agape
(London, 1916).

75. "Follow Peace," Sermons , II, 223= I am again indebted to Stout
for pointing out the similarity between Yorick's question to the
fllle de chambre and Sterne's declaration about the "natural bond

of brotherhood" between men in the Sermons ( Journey , pp. 190-91 n).

76. See p. l60, above.

77. Kaiser, p. l80.

78. In chap. 7 of Book III, Pantagruel says to Panurge: "Everyone
is full of his own ideas, especially on external, peripheral, and
indifferent matters, that are neither good nor bad in themselves
because they do not proceed from our hearts and minds, which are the
factory of all good and all evil" (R. , 3.7.306). Cf. Hamlet , II,
ii, 255-57: "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes
it so" (quoted by Kaiser, p. l80).

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Vita

Byron Petrakis was bom in Haverhill, Massachusetts on
September 2, 19iil- After graduating from Haverhill High School
in June, 1959j he entered Colby College, Waterville, Maine in
September of the same year. In 1963 he received his B.A. degree
from Colby and entered the University of Florida to do graduate
work in English. He worked as a graduate assistant in the
Department of English until April, 196^, when he received his M.A,
degree in English from the University of Florida. From 1965 to
1967 he was an interim instructor in English at the University of
Florida while pursuing his work toward the degree of Doctor of
Philosophyo In September, 196?, he became an Instnactor of English
at the University of Kentucky,

Byron Petrakis is married to the former Gayle Speliotis.

This dissertation was prepared under the direction of
the chairman of the candidate's supervisory committee and has
been approved by all members of that committee. It was sub-
mitted to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and
the Graduate Council, and was approved as partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

August, 1968

Dean, Colleg

Dean, Graduate School

Supervisory Committee:

^T^

60 15