For my final essay, I chose to read A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy by Laurence Sterne. A quote from A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy that made me want to discuss it in my final paper:

“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 moments,”my 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. Touch’d with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou giv’st a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the bleakest mountains he finds the lacerated lamb of another’s flock This moment I beheld him leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking down upon it Oh! had I come one moment sooner! it bleeds to death his gentle heart bleeds with it

Peace to thee, generous swain! I see thou walkest off with anguish but thy joys shall balance it for happy is thy cottage and happy is the sharer of it and happy are the lambs which sport about you.”

The reason I chose this quote is because of how theatrical it is. I find Sterne’s comments on Sentiment to be extremely obtuse and laughable, I cannot take him serious in the slightest. By referring himself as a unique sentimental traveler I find that he ends up doing the opposite, only showing how much of a fool he actually is, along with anyone that finds Sterne to be genuine in this story.