[Footnote 1: Morley: _Diderot and the Encyclopaedists_, ii. 305.]
Another, and it is to be guessed a too congenial, acquaintance formed by Sterne in Paris was that of Crébillon; and with him he concluded "a convention," unedifying enough, whether in jest or earnest: "As soon as I get to Toulouse he has agreed to write me an expostulatory letter upon the indecorums of _T. Shandy_, which is to be answered by recrimination upon the liberties in his own works. These are to be printed together--Crébillon against Sterne, Sterne against Crébillon--the copy to be sold, and the money equally divided. This is good Swiss-policy," he adds; and the idea (which was never carried out) had certainly the merit of ingenuity, if no other.
The words "as soon as I get to Toulouse," in a letter written from Paris on the 10th of April, might well have reminded Sterne of the strange way in which he had carried out his intention of "wintering in the South." He insists, however, upon the curative effects of his winter of gaiety in Paris. "I am recovered greatly," he says; "and if I could spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I should be fortified in my inner man beyond all danger of relapsing." There was another, too, for whom this change of climate had become imperatively necessary. For three winters past his daughter Lydia, now fourteen years old, had been suffering severely from asthma, and needed to try "the last remedy of a warmer and softer air." Her father, therefore, was about to solicit passports for his wife and daughter, with a view to their joining him at once in Paris, whence, after a month's stay, they were to depart together for the South. This application for passports he intended, he said, to make "this week:" and it would seem that the intention was carried out; but, for reasons explained in a letter which Mr. Fitzgerald was the first to publish, it was not till the middle of the next month that he was able to make preparation for their joining him. From this letter--written to his Archbishop, to request an extension of his leave--we learn that while applying for the passports he was attacked with a fever, "which has ended the worst way it could for me, in a _défluxion (de) poitrine_, as the French physicians call it. It is generally fatal to weak lungs, so that I have lost in ten days all I have gained since I came here; and from a relaxation of my lungs have lost my voice entirely, that 'twill be much if I ever quite recover it. This evil sends me directly to Toulouse, for which I set out from this place directly my family arrives." Evidently there was no time to be lost, and a week after the date of this letter we find him in communication with Mrs. and Miss Sterne, and making arrangements for what was, in those days, a somewhat formidable undertaking--the journey of two ladies from the North of England to the centre of France. The correspondence which ensued may be said to give us the last pleasant glimpse of Sterne's relations with his wife. One can hardly help suspecting, of course, that it was his solicitude for the safety and comfort of his much-loved daughter that mainly inspired the affectionate anxiety which pervades these letters to Mrs. Sterne; but their writer is, at the very least, entitled to credit for allowing no difference of tone to reveal itself in the terms in which he speaks of wife and child. And, whichever of the two he was mainly thinking of, there is something very engaging in the thoughtful minuteness of his instructions to the two women travellers, the earnestness of his attempts to inspire them with courage for their enterprise, and the sincere fervour of his many commendations of them to the Divine keeping. The mixture of "canny" counsel and pious invocation has frequently a droll effect: as when the advice to "give the custom-house officers what I told you, and at Calais more, if you have much Scotch snuff;" and "to drink small Rhenish to keep you cool, that is, if you like it," is rounded off by the ejaculation, "So God in Heaven prosper and go along with you!" Letter after letter did he send them, full of such reminders as that "they have bad pins and vile needles here," that it would be advisable to bring with them a strong bottle-screw, and a good stout copper tea-kettle; till at last, in the final words of preparation, his language assumes something of the solemnity of a general addressing his army on the eve of a well-nigh desperate enterprise: "Pluck up your spirits--trust in God, in me, and yourselves; with this, was you put to it, you would encounter all these difficulties ten times told. Write instantly, and tell me you triumph over all fears--tell me Lydia is better, and a help-mate to you.