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What LeMay and Zall oficr us here, however, is not an edited dear text of 7^ Autobiography, but a literal transcript of Franklin's much-altered holograph manuscript, including all his deletions, and indicating by means of arrows, and so on, whether his numerous alterations were interlinear, columnar (that is written in columns left blank for the purpose), or overwritten. The resulting genetic text is frequently obscure, as thefollowingsample shows: [^. 5i,n)B(,]In<the> f our i House <withus>the{ir}relodg'd<twosingle> f a young J. Wom{e}an; <that had some one a Mantua-maker who one of them> a wGllener, <{a}ofc who I think had a Shop in the Cloisters. <Ralph rcad> She <was a> "{ had been i genteel t 'y i <Person>, "f bred; i was sensible & lively, <an> and of most pleasing Converaation. Ralph read Plays to her <of an> | in the i Evening t s i , they grew intimate, <and at length> she took another Lodging, and <they remov'd together> he follow'd her. This cannot be read fluently, even if the reader knows what the sigla mean. Nevertheless, we do now have a thorough transcript of an important and difficult literary manuscript. The question is, who and what is it for? The editors tell us that their purpose in offering the text in this form is to give 'a basis for every future conscientious edition of a clear text of the autobiography'; and herein lies the curiosity, for, although they do not say so here, LeMay and Zall are themselves, apparently, the conscientious editors for whom the genetic text was constructed. They are currently preparing a Norton critical edition of The Autobiography and, what is more, they have already released a version of their edited clear
text of the book in Tke Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume i (1979),

pp. 288-423. Thus what we have here appears to be the textual evidence and textual apparatus belonging to LeMay's and Zall's forthcoming critical edition of Franklin s Autobiography. It is a thoroughly professional job, tdthough there are obvious disadvantages in separating the critical edition from its textual basis. What is, perhaps, doubtful is whether it was worth the considerable expense ofprinting and publishing the full genetic text at aU, since the few other scholars who are likely to need to consult it could have managed well enough with films, ficbes, or photocopies of LeMay's and Zall's typescript deposited in a handful of major libraries.
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE PHILIP GASKELL

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, GentUman. By LAURENCE STERNE. Edited by

IAN CAMPBELL ROSS. Oxford: Clarendon Press; London and New York: Oxford University Press. 1983. xxx+595 pp. 25.00 (paperbound 3.95). In a note to the 1965 English translation of his study of Laurence Sterne, Hend Fluchere wished for a fully-annotated critical edition of Tristram Shandy. It would be 'very instructive', he considered, and 'still remains to be made, in spite of the useful work already done by Professor Work'. Wisbful thinking aside, after over forty years, James A. Work's edition of Tristram Shandy (New York, 1940) has yet to be sumassed. Ian Campbell Ross presents his readera with the first single-volume edition to take as copy text for Vdumes 1 and n the York edition of Sterne s work. Not only does the York edition predate the London edition, but Sterne himself put great sigtiificance on the purity of his provincial text. 'As I Live at York, and shall correct every proof mywir, he boasted, 'it sball go perfect into the world'. Sterne's personal involvement in the York edition, in spite of its human imperfectiotis, makes its publicatioa worthwhile. We are close to receiving the text as Sterne originally intended it, for Dr Ross has placed his notes at the back of the text,freeingthe reader

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from distracting allusions to Sterne's frequently eccentric raids on the tradition o[ learned wit. We are distracted only when Sterne wants to distract us with his typographic trickery, his blank and marbled pages, and the odd reference to Romish baptismal rites. This edition is not the first to take the York edition as copy text. The Florida edition, edited by Joan and Melvyn New (Gainesville, 1978), also follows the York edition, but in two heavy volumes it is better suited to the library than to the classroom. Its notes have been allocated to a third volume, tartly described by Dr Ross as 'announced as forthcoming'. Such scepticism may be fair enough after five years. The Oxford edition exists to serve the scholar and student in the here and now in botb paperbound and hardback copy, complete with notes promised to be 'fresh and detailed'. Too often, however, the notes turn out to be relatively stale versions of Work's original annotations. It is somewhat depressing to compare Work's notes with those of the later editions of Ian Watt (Riverside; Boston, 1965), Howard Anderson (Norton; New York, 1980), and now with the work of Dr Ross. (Oddly enough, neither Watt's nor Anderson's edition is included in the 'select' Oxford bibliography.) Whether tracing references to sailing chariots, St Radagunda, animal spirits, or John Burton, Work got there first. Watt's comprebensive critical introduction and Anderson's valuable inclusicm of contemporary and modem critical responses to St.eme distinguish their editions from Work's. The redeeming virtues of Dr Ross's edition are less obvious. Occasionally 'fresh' information is added. 'The line of beauty' is more sharply defined in reference to Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty (n. 17); 'the lean and slipper'd pantaloon' ofman's 'second childishness' is traced to Sterne's conflation of the sixth and seventh ages of man as described by Jacjues in J4J YouLike It (n, 19). But for the most part the Oxford notes add little that is new, and even take away from what Work has already provided. The character Eugenius, for itistance, is quite rightly identified with John Hali-Stevenson, Sterne's lifelong friend who attended him in his last illness. 'The name derives from the Greek, implying "well-bom" or "noble"' (i. 12). What is missing from such a note is the irony implicit in Sterne's characterization. In his note on Hall-Stevenson, Work hints brojwily at irregularity and sends the reader back to his introduction where he discusses Sterne's transformation of the 'Demoniac' master of 'Crazy Castle' into the discreet, admonitory Eugenius. But then, nothing odd will do long. So Samuel Johnson grumbled about Steme's accomplishment. In his biographical sketch of the author, Dr Ross manages to make the early Sterne downright dull. The 'odd' aspects of his life simply disappear. Steme's Uncle Jacques, for instance. Archdeacon of Cleveland and Precentor of York, get points for aiding his nephew in the making of 'a modestly successful ecclesiastical career' (p.xi). This same unde also contrived to spread rumours suggesting that Sterne's lack of filial andfinancialsupport sent his widowed mother to tihe poorhouse. The slur stuck long enosagh to inspire Byron, for one, to sneer about 'that dog Steme, who preferred whirling over a dead ass to relieving a living mother'. Steme's wife Elizabeth also settles into a cotnmonplace respectabiUty. Ross refers to a late deterioration in the marriage, but omits mention of her career as the self-styled Queen of Bohemia: those giddy moments when Steme, treating his wife 'with all the supposed respect dtie to a crawjiI head', took her 'coursiiw' as theydid in Bohemia, tying bladders filled with beans to the wheels ofher single horse chiaise. Rattling over stubblefields.Queen and carriage tc^tho- alarmed die hares. The quirkiness of the author and ^ e man beconu oddly regularized in this edition. Was he 'scabby', as Whitefield feared, 'exeea3.ble', as Ricaidscn insisted, or merely, as Leavis footnoted, guilty of'irresponsible (and nasty) triHing'w Dr Ross airs such 'hc^tile and persistent critidsm' only to r ^ s u r e us ^ a t for SH Steme's

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bawdy, his work is genuinely moral. To rescue his author from detractors, he explains away Steme's sensibility by alluding all too briefly to 'the cult of feeling (sentimentaJism) which exploited the indivitfual's capacity for sympathetic identification with another person, actual or imaginary, not least in their misfortunes'. Ian Watt devotedfivepages, James Work six, to the same crucial subject. Dr Ross attends effectively to the formal aspects of Tristram Shandy. His Steme appears to be the most modem of writers, as easily oampared to Cafvino, Borges, and Beckett as he is to Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Battling against the demands of linear narrative, Tristram both depends upon and resists the medium of language, which always in the end falsifies experience. His battle is waged against time and death itself, yet in thisfinalbattle Ross sees Steme as above all a Christian moralist, and finally a contemporary to that 'fellow-Anglican Samuel Johnson'. Johnson's judgement ofthe odd company he is made to keep would be worth having.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY CAROL HOULIHAN FLYNN

Bibliography of William Hazlitt. Revised by GEOFFREY KEYNES. (St Paul's Bibliographies, 4) Godalming: St Paul's Biblit^apbies. Second Edition. 1981.
XX -I- 152 pp. 16.00.

Since the late Sir Geoffrey Keynes's Bibliography ofWilliam Hazlitt wasfirstpublished by the Nonesuch Press in 1931 it has been a standard tool for literary scholars and bibliographers. Nevertheless, as Sir Geoffrey anticipated in his original preface, a number of errors have been pointed out by colleagues, and many nuggets of additional information have come to light. The work now appears, therefore, extensively revised in a new format, with updated references and terminology, more than half the items having received some attention in the process. In general the alterations and additions will be found to render it yet more valuable, though not quite all the errors have been expunged and a few small ones have found their way in. At the heart of the revision are several emended collations, notably for no. i (An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, where the first two leaves [A]'' are conjugate and replace the first leaf Bi of the text and there is a cancel), no. 3 (Tucker's An Abridgment of the Light ofNature Pursued, with a newly-discovered singleton), and nos 44, 57, 95, and 102 (which have one or more freshly-noted cancels apiece). Sir
Geoffrey has retained his 1931 txAliiXion of Lectures on tke English Poets at 1^1^ (no. 34),

[a]^ B-Y', but has changed the number of leaves from 178 to 170. However, the BritishLibraxy'scopy (11860. fr. 66) has [a]*, consisting of i blank, 2a balf-title and imprint, 2 J advertisement, 3 tide, and 4 ConiCTif, contributing to a leaf count of 172. Among the most interesting items of additional information included in the revised Bibliography are: a newly-discovered first printing of A New and Improved
Grammar (no. 8) in The Christ's Hospital Dictionary of the English Tongtu in 1809, the

year before its separate appearance, and an inscription by Hazlitt in the editor's personal copy (reproduced): 'A Christmas PresentfromA Father to his Son. 1822'; an inscription in a copy of the Political Essays (no. 49): 'Mr Godwin with the author's
best respects'; an incomplete sentence in Sketches of the Principal Pictare-Galleries in

England (no. 76) and a copy with an insertai 'Cataic^ue of the Angerstein Collection' ; an embossed-leather binding of Select British Poets (no. 77) apparently supplied by the publisher 'for, at any rate, part of the edition of what was intended to be an important book'; and further details of the curious history of Sir Geoffrey's own
Selected Essays ofWilliam Hazlitt iTj8: 1830 (no. 138). Some erf the plentiful illustra-

tions are not quite as well reproduced as in 1931, but there is an important addition: the \mique syllabus for the 1818 'Lectures on the British Poets' discovered by Seymour Adelmaa. American editions are now listed, though unfortunately, with