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
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Sterne incorporated into "Tristram Shandy" many passages taken almost word for word from Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Francis Bacon's "Of Death", Rabelais and many more, and rearranged them to serve the new meaning intended in "Tristram Shandy". "Tristram Shandy" was highly praised for its originality, and nobody noticed these borrowings until years after Sterne's death. The first to note them was physician and poet John Ferriar, who did not see them negatively and commented: Victorian critics of the 19th century, who were hostile to Sterne for the alleged obscenity of his prose, used Ferriar's findings to defame Sterne,