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 Sterne's character defies analysis in brief space. It is too subtle and individual to be conveyed in general terms. For comments upon him from points of view more or less diverse the reader may be referred to Thackeray's Humourists, Professor Masson's British Novelists (1859), and H. D. Traill's sketch in the " English Men of Letters " Series. The fullest biography is Mr Percy Fitzgerald's (1864). But the reader who cares to have an opinion about Sterne should hesitate till he has read and re-read in various moods considerable portions of Sterne's own writing. This writing is so singularly frank and unconventional that its drift is not at once apparent to the literary student. The indefensible indecency and overstrained sentimentality are on the surface; but after a time every repellent defect is forgotten in the enjoyment of the exquisite literary art. In the delineation of character by graphically significant speech and action, introduced at unexpected turns, left with happy audacity to point their own meaning, and pointing it with a force that the dullest cannot but understand, he takes rank with the very greatest masters. In Toby Shandy he has drawn a character universally lovable and admirable; but Walter Shandy is almost greater as an artistic triumph, considering the difficulty of the achievement. Dr Ferriar, in his Illustrations of Sterne (published in 1798), pointed out several unacknowledged plagiarisms from Rabelais, Burton and others; but it is only fair to the critic to say that he was fully aware that they were only plagiarisms of material, and do not detract in the slightest from Sterne's reputation as one of the greatest of literary artists.

A revised edition of Mr Percy Fitzgerald's Life of Sterne, containing much new information, appeared in 1896. There is also a valuable study of Sterne by M. Paul Stapfer (1870, 2nd ed., 1882) ; and many fresh particulars as to Sterne's relations with his wife and daughter, and also with the lady known as " Eliza " (Mrs Elizabeth Draper), are collected in Mr Sidney Lee's article in the ''Dict. Nat. Biog.'' Sterne's original journal to Mrs Draper (" The Bramine's Journal "), after she had gone back to India, and extending from the 13th of April to the 4th of August 1767, is now in the department of MSS., British Museum (addit. MS. 34,527). A convenient edition of Sterne's works, edited by Professor George Saintsbury, was issued in six volumes in 1894. See also Wilbur L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne (New York, 1909) ; and Walter Sichel, Sterne: a Study (1910).

STERNE, RICHARD (c. 1500–1683), English divine, archbishop of York, was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and was educated at the free-school in that town and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was elected fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1620; in 1633 he became chaplain to Archbishop Laud and in 1634 master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and rector of Yelverton, Somerset. For his zeal in helping the royalist cause with college plate he suffered imprisonment at the order of parliament and lost his appointments. He attended Laud at his execution, and during the Commonwealth kept a school at Stevenage, Hertfordshire. At the Restoration he was reinstated as master of Jesus College and soon after was made bishop of Carlisle. With George Griffith, bishop of St Asaph, and Brian Walton, bishop of Chester, he was appointed by Convocation to revise the Prayer Book. In 1664 he was raised to the arch- bishopric of York. He had impoverished Carlisle, and in his new see, according to Burnet (who calls him " a sour ill-tempered man "), " minded chiefly the enriching of his family." For his regard to the duke of York's interests he was suspected of leaning towards Roman Catholicism. He died on the 20th of June 1683. He helped Brian Walton with the Polyglot Bible and wrote a book on logic, Summa logicae (London, 1685).

He has also been credited with The Whole Duty of Man, which must, however, be assigned to the royalist divine Richard Allestree (1619–1681), provost of Eton College, whose original was considerably altered by his literary executor, John Fell (1625–1686), bishop of Oxford.

STESICHORUS (c. 640–555 ), Greek lyric poet, a native of Himera in Sicily, or of Mataurus a Locrian colony in the south of Italy. According to Suïdas, his name was originally Tisias, but was changed to Stesichorus (" organizer of choruses "). His future eminence as a poet was foretold when a nightingale perched upon his lips and sang (Pliny, Nat. Hist.,x. 43). We are told that he warned his fellow-citizens against Phalaris, whom they had chosen as their general, by relating to them the well-known fable of the horse, which, in its eagerness to punish the stag for intruding upon its pastures, became the slave of man (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). But his warnings had no effect; he himself was obliged to flee to Catana, where he died and was buried before the gate called after him the Stesichorean. The story that he was struck blind for slandering Helen in a poem and afterwards recovered his sight when, in consequence of a dream, he had composed a palinode or recantation (in which he declared that only Helen's phantom had been carried off to Troy), is told by Plato (Phaedrus 243 A.), Pausanias (iii. 19, 13), and others. We possess about thirty fragments of his poems, none of them longer than six lines. They are written in the Doric dialect, with epic licences; the metre is dactylico-trochaic. Brief as they are, they show us what Longinus meant by calling Stesichorus " most like Homer "; they are full of epic grandeur, and have a stately sublimity that reminds us of Pindar. Stesichorus indeed made a new departure by using lyric poetry to celebrate gods and heroes rather than human feelings and passions; this is what Quintilian (Instit., x. 1, 62) means by saying that he " sustained the burden of epic poetry with the lyre." Several of his poems sung of the adventures of Heracles; one dealt with the siege of Thebes, another with the sack of Troy. The last is interesting as being the first poem containing that form of the story of Aeneas's flight to which Virgil afterwards gave currency in his Aeneid. The popular legends of Sicily also inspired his muse; he was the first to introduce the shepherd Daphnis who came to a miserable end after he had proved faithless to the nymph who loved him. Stesichorus completed the form of the choral ode by adding the epode to the strophe and antistrophe; and " you do not even know Stesichorus's three " passed into a proverbial expression for unpardonable ignorance (unless the words simply mean, " you do not even know three lines, or poems, of Stesichorus "). He was famed in antiquity for the richness and splendour of his imagination and his style, although Quintilian censures his redundancy and Hermogenes remarks on the excessive sweetness that results from his abundant use of epithets.

Fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci, iii.; see also S. Bernage, De Stesichoro lyrico (1880); O. Crusius, "Stesichorus und die epodische Composition in der griechischen Lyrik," in Commentationes Philologicae, dedicated to O. Ribbeck (1888).

STETHOSCOPE (Gr. στῆθος, chest, and σκοπεῑν, to look, examine), a medical instrument used in (q.v.). The single stethoscope is a straight wooden or metal tube with a flattened bell, the surface of which is usually covered with ivory or bone at the end which is placed against the body of the patient, and a small cup at the other to fit the ear of the observer. In the " binaural " stethoscope, which has the advantage of flexibility, the tube is divided above the bell into two flexible tubes which lead to both ears.

 STETTIN, a seaport of Germany, capital of the Prussian province of Pomerania, on the Oder, 17 m. above its entrance into the Stettiner Haff, 30 m. from the Baltic, 84 m. N.E. of Berlin by rail, and at the junction of lines to Stargard-Danzig and Küstrin-Breslau. Pop. (1885), 99,475; (1890), 116,228; (1900)—including the incorporated suburbs—210,680; (1905) 224,078. The main part of the town occupies a hilly site on the left bank of the river, and is connected by four bridges, including a massive railway swing-bridge, with the suburbs of Lastadie (" lading place " from lastadium, " burden,") and Silberwiese, on an island formed by the Parnitz and the Dunzig, which here diverge from the Oder to the Dammsche-See. Until 1874 Stettin was closely girdled by very extensive and strong fortifications, which prevented the expansion of the town, but the steady growth of its commerce and manufactures encouraged the foundation of numerous industrial suburbs beyond the