to do with our story, that this in the interests of grammar, young prince died at Monaco and another start made :of a fever in 1767, at the early age of twenty-eight.

How strange to think on pompous would, remembering the gay

I've got,

That gives to ev'ry Man his lot,
A heart and head for musing fit,
With levity, sure sign of wit;
A little spark of fancy's fire
Whose wings excursive seldom tire;
A decent faculty to chime,
And put my foolish thoughts in
rhime."

All certainly good marks of a poet. But what follows is better. He is a poet, forsooth, because Sterne told him so! This little scrap of paper, closely written and criss-crossed, contains several lines of perhaps the worst poetry in the whole Epistle, but worth all the rest of it put together as biography, for they give us a wholly new and brilliant picture for our gallery of eighteenth century portraits: the youthful Boswell holding Sterne up in the Mall to read "The Cub at Newmarket" to him, at which Sterne "capered," patted him on the shoulder, and called him a second Prior! Thackeray might have put such a scene into a novel, but it is almost too good really to have happened:"My verses, be they good or bad, Have been-do, Critics, call 'em sad

For Fame I wou'd not tell a lie,
So don't endeavour to deny ;
For this bid Mem'ry backwards
post,

The day she'll show if not quite
lost.

Have you not caper'd at my Cub,
Like puritanic priest in tub,
And did you not my shoulder pat
And call me child of Dorset's Mat?"

It is greatly to be regretted that Boswell did not have a chance to see more of Sterne. But if any one will take the trouble (as I have just done) to arrange the chronology of the lives of the two men in parallel columns, he will see at a glance why the intimacy never progressed farther. After this meeting in 1760 their ways were destined never to cross again. Boswell went back to Scotland, and did not get to London again until the very end of 1762. In January 1762 Sterne left England for the Continent. He stayed in Paris until July, and then left for the South of France. Boswell, in his turn, left England for Holland in August 1763. He remained in Holland until the next summer, then made a tour of Germany, and was at Val de Travers at the end of 1764. Meanwhile, in March 1764, Sterne had come back to Paris, stayed there a month or two, and returned to England while Boswell was still in

1 Author of two lyric epistles; an old acquaintance-indeed a quondam chum at college and particular friend of Tristram.-Boswell. This note in the original manuscript proves that Boswell had something more than a mere introduction to Sterne and his friends. This gentleman is better known as Hall-Stevenson.

Holland. From Switzerland, friendship between James BosBoswell travelled south into well and Laurence Sterne. Italy. It is interesting to note There was not much of it, and that Wilkes, with whom he perhaps it hardly deserves to renewed his acquaintance in be called a friendship at all, Turin, Rome, and Naples, came but it is our great misfortune straight from an intimacy with that it did not come to more. Sterne at Paris. From Italy, Certainly we cannot afford to in the autumn of 1765, Boswell lose what of it we have. They made his tour to Corsica, re- were different in a great many turning to England in Febru- ways; perhaps in most ways, ary 1766. Sterne had been in but that would have been no London and Yorkshire up to let to Boswell. He could always October 1765, when he de- find at least one common symparted on his tour of Italy. pathy with any one. And whoOn his way down to Rome ever doubts that these two he almost crossed trails with men had one great passion in Boswell coming up from Corsica, common should read the two but even here the two man- following extracts from two aged to miss each other. When letters written at almost preBoswell landed at Genoa on cisely the same date in the the first day of December summer of 1761: the first 1765, Sterne had only three from Boswell in Edinburgh to days before left Turin for Milan. his friend Temple, the other Sterne returned to England in from Sterne at Coxwold to his May 1766. At that time Bos- friend Hall-Stevenson :— well was hard at work in Scotland on his Latin thesis for admission as an advocate, which took place in July. He did not visit London again until the spring of 1768. It looked at last as though Fate intended to bring Bozzy and Yorick again within the bounds of a single city. Sterne had been in London since November 1767. On 28th February 1768 there appeared in the Public Advertiser' the following little note (sent, as we now know, by Boswell himself): "James Boswell, Esq., is expected in town." He should have hurried. When he arrived on 23rd March, Sterne had been dead five days. So began and so ended the

"I grant you that my behaviour has not been entirely as it ought to be. A young fellow whose happiness was always centred in London, who had at last got there, and had begun to taste its delights, who had got his mind filled with the most gay ideas,getting into the Guards, being about Court, enjoying the happiness of the beau monde and the company of men of genius, in short, everything that he could wish,-consider this poor fellow hauled away to the town of Edinburgh, obliged to conform to every Scotch custom or be laughed at,Will you hae some jeel? oh

fie! oh fie!'-his flighty im- I have been here but a few, agination quite cramped, and to satisfy me I have not he obliged to study Corpus managed my miseries like a Juris Civilis, and live in his wise man-and if God, for my father's strict family; is there consolation under them, had any wonder, Sir, that the un- not poured forth the spirit of lucky dog should be some- Shandeism into me, which will what fretful? Yoke a New- not suffer me to think two market courser to a dung-cart, minutes upon any grave suband I'll lay my life on't he'll ject, I would else, just now lie either caper and kick most con- down and die-die-. . .. O foundedly, or be as stupid and Lord! now are you going to restive as an old battered post- Ranelagh to-night, and I am horse." sitting, sorrowful as the prophet was, when the voice cried

Thus Boswell, and, in like out to him and said, 'What vein, Sterne

"I rejoice you are in London -rest you there in peace; here 'tis the devil.-You was a good prophet.-I wish myself back again, as you told me I should. . . I should have walked about the streets of York ten days, as a proper medium to have passed through, before I entered upon my rest. -I staid but a moment, and

dost thou here, Elijah?'-'Tis well the spirit does not make the same at Coxwould-for unless for the few sheep left me to take care of, in this wilderness, I might as well, nay better, be at Mecca.-When we find we can, by a shifting of places, run away from ourselves, what think you of a jaunt there, before we finally pay a visit to the vale of Jehosaphat?"

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN IVAN KORAVITCH.

LATE OF THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN ARMY.

BY VICTOR L. WHITECHURCH.

VII. HOW THE CAPTAIN CARRIED A LETTER FROM YI YONG IK.