In April 1764, Laurence Sterne, who is in France for a cure, is invited by Lord Hertford, the new English ambassador to France, to preach a sermon at the opening of the new embassy in Paris.Sterne accepts the invitation and chooses a text that is perceived as a shocking discourtesy to the diplomatic and political authorities.The dinner that follows, to which the most distinguished members of the British society are invited, is the Spiral Heater Element occasion of a unique encounter between three of the most famous figures of the cultural and political world of the Great Britain eighteenth century: Laurence Sterne, the Irish clergyman and novelist, David Hume, the Scottish diplomatist and historian, and John Wilkes, the English radical politician and journalist.This essay focuses both on the encounter between the three compatriots of Great Britain in the peaceful Miscellaneous atmosphere of Paris one year after the Treaty of 1763 and on the ideological and political implications, between liberal, sceptical, and radical perspectives.
It aims to demonstrate that this affair, although not yet sufficiently researched, shows aspects of great cultural and historical-political interest.