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The ten letters that have survived bore when written no date except the hour of the day or the day of the week, and they were published by Mrs. Draper without any indication of date whatever. The first brief note, sent with a present of the Sermons and Tristram Shandy, evidently belongs to January, perhaps to the last week of the month when appeared the ninth volume of Shandy. And very soon afterwards, no doubt, Sterne dispatched the second note in which he would persuade Eliza to admit him as physician in her illness, notwithstanding “the etiquettes of this town say otherwise.” The succeeding eight letters were daily missives from Sterne to Eliza while she was at Deal waiting for the signal of embarkation from the Earl of Chatham, which was to bear her to India. On her departure the blood broke from poor Yorick’s heart.

INTRODUCTION

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THESE manuscripts are by far the most important Sterne discovery of the nineteenth century. They are named from their former owner, Thomas Washbourne Gibbs, a gentleman of Bath, into whose possession they came midway in the century. How this piece of good fortune happened to him, we leave to his own pen to relate: