Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/567

 S T E S T E 543 Tristram. The Sentimental Journey throu<jh France and Italy was intended to be a long work : the plan admitted of any length that the author chose, but, after seeing the first two volumes through the press in the early months of 1768, Sterne's strength failed him, and he died in his London lodgings on the 18th of March, three Aveeks after the publication. The loneliness of his end has often been commented on ; it was probably due to its unexpectedness. He had pulled through so many sharp attacks of his "vile influenza" and other lung disorders that he began to be seriously alarmed only three days before his death. 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 Humorists, Prof. Masson's Novelists, and Mr II. D. Traill's sketch in the " English Men of Letters " series. The fullest biography is Mr Percy Fitzgerald's. 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 achieve- ment. Dr Ferriar, in his Illustrations of Sterne (published in 1812), 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. (w. M.) STESICHOPtUS of Himera, a very famous lyric poet, lived between 630 and 550 B.C. His name was originally Tisias, if we may trust Suidas, but it was changed to Stesichorus on account of his eminence in choral poetry. He was famed in antiquity for the richness and- splendour of his imagination and his style, although Quintilian censures his redundancy and Hermogeues remarks on the excessive sweetness that results from his abundant use of epithets. 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 and the stag. The story that he was struck blind for slandering Helen in a poem, and afterwards recovered his sight when he had sung a recantation, is told first by Plato, and afterwards, with many additions, by Pausanias and others. We possess some fragments of the former poem, censuring the daughters of Tyndareus, who "wed two, nay three husbands, and leave their lords " (Fr. 26), and three lines from the palinode, " This is no true tale, nor yet wentest thou in the strong benched ships, or earnest to the tower of Troy " (Fr. 32). It seems probable that Stesichorus did really write his recantation in consequence of a dream which he had soon after composing his poem on Helen ; and his is not the only case in literature where an apparently miraculous cure is said to have followed some such act of atonement. We possess about thirty fragments of his poems, not counting single words, pre- served in Athenaeus and elsewhere. None of them is longer than six lines. They are written in the Doric dialect, with epic licences and occasional yEolisms; 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 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 to which the Tabula Iliaca (see Otto Jahn's Griechische Bilderchroniken, ed. A. Michaelis) is a sort of commentary possesses an interest for us as the first poem in which occurred that form of the story of ^Eneas's flight to which Virgil afterwards gave currency in his JZneid. Stesichorus also completed the choral ode by adding to the strophe and antistrophe the epode ; and not to know " Stesichorus's three" passed into a proverbial expression for unpardonable ignorance. Bergk, Podse, Lyrici G-rstxi, vol. iii. pp. 205-234, Leipsic, 1882. STETHOSCOPE. See AUSCULTATION. STETTIN, the chief town of Pomerania, and the leading seaport in Prussia, is situated on the Oder, 17 miles to the south of the Stettiner Haff and 30 miles from the Baltic Sea. The main part of the town occupies a hilly site on the left bank of the river, and is connected by four bridges (includinga mass- ive railway swing-bridge) with the suburbs of La- stadie ("lading place," from lastadium, " bur- den,") and Silberwiese, on an island formed by the Parnitz and Dunzig, which here diverge from the Oder to Dammsche- See. Until 1874 Stettin was closely girdled by very extensive and strong fortifications, which pre- vented the expansion of the town proper, but the steady growth of its commerce BALTIC SEA Environs of Stettin. and manufactures en- couraged the foundation of numerous industrial suburbs beyond the line of defence. Some of these are themselves "towns," as Grabow, with 13,672 inhabitants in 1880, and Bredow with 11,255 inhabitants ; but all combine with Stettin to form one industrial and commercial centre. Since the removal of the fortifications their site has begun to be built upon. Apart from its commerce, Stettin is a comparatively uninteresting city. The church of Sts Peter and Paul, originally founded in 1124 and restored in 1816- 17, was the earliest Christian church in Pomerania. St James's church, dating from the 13th and the two follow- ing centuries, is remarkable, like several other Pomeranian churches, for its size. The old palace, now occupied by Government offices, is a large unattractive edifice, scarcely justifying the boast of an old writer that it did not yield in magnificence even to the palaces of Italy. Among the more modern structures are the theatre and the new town-house, superseding an earlier one of 1245. Statues of Frederick the Great and of Frederick William III. adorn one of the five open squares of the old town. As a prosperous commercial town Stettin has numerous educa- tional, benevolent, and scientific institutions. The manufactures are very important; many of the largest factories are in the neighbouring villages, beyond Stettin proper. The shipbuilding yards (among which