Augustan prose other novelists should be mentioned, for they, like Fielding and Richardson, were in dialog through their works. Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett held a personal dislike for one another, and their works similarly offered up oppositional views of the self in society and the method of the novel. Laurence Sterne was a clergyman, and he consciously set out to imitate Jonathan Swift with his "Tristram Shandy" (1759–1767). "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman" was a stylistic and formal revolution for the novel. Like Swift's satires, it begins with radical skepticism and a willingness to break apart figurative language
USS Tristram Shandy (1864) an attempt to take Fort Fisher and thus close the Confederacy's last major seaport, Rear Admiral David D. Porter deployed a large fleet of gunboats, ironclads, and transports off the fort and commenced laying down a heavy shore bombardment. Army forces slated to take part in the operation, under General Benjamin Franklin Butler, arrived from northward too late to commence operations on the first day. Ill feeling resulted between Butler and Porter, with the former officer returning to Washington, D.C., and the operation temporarily shelved. After participating in the initial December bombardments of Fort Fisher, "Tristram Shandy" took part in