John Hall-Stevenson John Hall-Stevenson John Hall-Stevenson (1718–1785), in his youth known as John Hall, was an English country gentleman and writer. He is memorialised as "Eugenius" in Laurence Sterne's novels "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy". Hall-Stevenson was the son of Joseph Hall of Durham by his marriage to Catherine, sister and heiress of Lawson Trotter of Skelton Castle at Skelton-in-Cleveland, Yorkshire. On 16 June 1735, at the age of seventeen, he matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge as a fellow-commoner. He quickly struck up a close and lifelong friendship with Laurence Sterne, who was five years older. They
Denis Diderot Dressing Gown") up to the heady "D'Alembert's Dream" ("Le Rêve de d'Alembert") (composed 1769), a philosophical dialogue in which he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. "Jacques le fataliste" (written in 1773, but not published until 1792 in German and 1796 in French) is similar to "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey" in its challenge to the conventional novel's structure and content. The dialogue "Rameau's Nephew" (French: "Le Neveu de Rameau") is a "farce-tragedy" reminiscent of the "Satires" of Horace, a favorite classical author of Diderot's whose