The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics)

by Laurence Sterne

  12. Te Deum: Te deum laudamus (We praise thee, O God), the title and first words of a hymn attributed to St Ambrose and sung following a victory; and also in the Anglican morning service.

  13. Surely, Madam… sex: Cf. Jean de la Bruyère, The Characters, or the Manners of the Age (1699): ‘There may be a Friendship between persons of different Sexes, which may subsist without Enjoyment; yet a Woman will always look upon a Man as a Man, and so will a Man still look upon a Woman as a Woman.’

  14. sentimental: More than any other author of the eighteenth century, Sterne has been credited with the introduction of the word sentimental to English literary consciousness; see Mullan inFurther Reading. While Sterne’s usage varies, the gist of this passage is captured in a letter he wrote from France in 1765: ‘I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—“l’amour” (say they) “n’est rien sans sentiment”—Now notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annex’d to it…’ In ASJ, Sterne offers a neat turn on his French motto: ‘Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour ’ (Love is nothing without sentiment. And sentiment is even less without love).

  CHAPTER XIX

  1. Christian names: Walter’s theory provides occasion to suggest associations evoked by the names of the Shandy household.

  ‘Shandy’ in Yorkshire dialect lies somewhere between ‘boisterous’ and ‘crack-brained’. ‘Tristram’ recalls the hero of Arthurian legend, whose difficult birth kills his mother, Elizabeth; before dying, she names him ‘Tristram’, meaning a ‘sorrowful birth’. Sterne may also have had in mind a Renaissance tradition in which the name identified a libertine.

  In French, the equivalent of ‘Merry Andrew’ (i.e. a clown) is ‘Merry Walter’. ‘Toby’ was used during the eighteenth century for the posteriors, the buttocks; cf. Tickletoby, which Sterne borrows from Rabelais in III.xxxvi. ‘Elizabeth’ was not only the name of the Arthurian Tristram’s mother, but also of Sterne’s wife. Finally, ‘Trim’, in addition to being the villain’s name in A Political Romance (playing on sycophant, i.e. a trimmer), also had connotations more in keeping with the Corporal, particularly being fit, competent, neat, in good order – a good name for a soldier or a servant; see also the suggestion by Ian Campbell Ross and Noha Saad Nassar that the name alludes to a bit of doggerel: ‘Trimtram, / Likemaster, likeman’ (N&Q 36(1989)).

  2. DULCINEA’s: Dulcinea del Toboso is the imaginary mistress of Don Quixote; he dedicates his rare successes to her, and his many misconceptions to necromancers or magicians, who can make an army appear like a flock of sheep.

  3. TRISMEGISTUS: Hermes Trismegistus, the name given to the Egyptian god Thoth, reputed author of the Hermetica, a compilation of mystical and alchemical writings from the first to the third centuries. For Sterne, hermetic lore probably connotes esoteric and useless knowledge.

  4. ARCHIMEDES: Greek mathematician (c. 287–212 BC).

  5. NYKY and SIMKIN: Nicknames for Nicholas and Simon or Simeon.

  6. NICODEMUS’D: Sterne may have been looking at a note to a passage in Rabelais’s ‘Author’s Prologue’ (Volume I) while writing this section: ‘Certain proper names have particular ideas affix’d to them for ridiculous reasons. For instance… Nicodemus is a foolish fellow or ninny-hammer, from Nigaut and Nice…’ Sterne might also be referring to the Pharisee Nicodemus, whose actions in John 3:1–13 and 7:45–53 led to connotations of faintheartedness and weakness.

  7. prejudices of education: A term used during the period by freethinkers in their attacks on established religion.

  8. piano: Softness.

  9. argumentum ad hominem: Argument addressed to the man, i.e. to the character of one’s opponent, rather than the issues.

  10. Θεοδὶδαχ: Theodídaktos: Taught of God; see 1 Thessalonians 4:9.

  11. that NATURE… eloquent: Cf. Antony’s ‘This was the noblest Roman of them all’ speech, Julius Caesar, V.v.73–5: ‘His life was gentle, and the elements / So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the world, “This was a man!”’

  12. Cicero… commentator: Sterne’s list includes some standard reading in rhetorical studies, beginning with the great Roman orators, Cicero (see n. 5 to I.ii) and Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 35–c. 95), author of the Institutio Oratoria. He then lists some earlier Greek authors, Isocrates (436–338 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC), whose Rhetoric was still standard fare in the eighteenth century. Longinus is the name Sterne’s age gave to the author of On the Sublime (first century), a work Sterne returns to several times in TS. In his ‘Rabelaisian Fragment’, the central character is named Longinus Rabelaicus – the would-be author of a parodic treatise on writing sermons.

  Gerhard Johann Voss (1577–1649), Francis Burgersdyk (1590–1635), Caspar Schoppe (1576–1649) and Petrus Ramus (1515–72) were continental rhetoricians (the first two were Dutch), while Thomas Farnaby (c. 1575–1647) and Richard Crakanthorpe (1567–1624) were English. Although such lists usually import dead learning, these authors were still read in the universities. Dutch commentator, commonplace for a verbose and weighty scholar.

  13. argument ad ignorantiam: Argument that relies on the ignorance of one’s opponents or their inability to offer a good counterargument.

  14. Jesus College: Sterne took his BA degree from Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was in residence from 1733 to 1737; his MA degree was awarded in 1740. Sterne’s great-grandfather, Archbishop Richard Sterne, had been Master of the college during the Civil War. See Cash, EMY, 41–62.

  15. vive la Bagatelle: Long live trifles (foolery). The phrase was closely associated with Swift, as in Pope’s Imitations of Horace, Ep. I.vi: ‘And Swift cry wisely, “Vive la Bagatelle!” / The Man that loves and laughs, must sure do well.’

  16. Epsom: Presumably visited for the medicinal waters.

  17. Numps… Nick: OED defines Numps as a ‘silly or stupid person’. The Devil was referred to as Nick or Old Nick.

  18. in rerum naturâ: In the nature or order of things.

  19. EPIPHONEMA… EROTESIS: Classical rhetorical terms, the first meaning a striking concluding statement, and the second, a rhetorical question.

  CHAPTER XX

  1. Pliny: Pliny the Younger (c. 61– c. 112) did say this in his Epistolae, but he was talking about his uncle, Pliny the Elder (23/24–79), the Roman naturalist.

  2. Parismus and Parismenus: Popular figures of chivalric romance.

  3. Seven Champions of England: Probably a slip for The Seven Champions of Christendom, tales of the national saints of England, France, Spain, Italy, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, recounted in countless oral and written versions.

  4. *The Romish Rituals: Sterne found the ‘Memoire’ in Heinrich van Deventer’s Observations Importantes sur le Manuel des Accouchemens (1734) and provided a footnote citation in the second edition. He found there as well the information offered in this footnote, Aquinas’s verdict that ‘A child still in the womb can in no way be baptized.’ The question asked of the Sorbonne doctors was whether a child in the womb, where no bodily part was visible and the mother unable to deliver, could be baptized by means of a ‘little injection-pipe’ that would not harm the mother (‘par le moyen d’une petite canulle… sans faire aucun tort à la mere’). In the ‘Reply’, the doctors note Aquinas’s belief that the thing is impossible, since the second birth by baptism in Christ presupposes a first birth, but go on to suggest that the issue be reopened, by appeal to the Bishop and the Pope, since means now exist to conduct the baptism (sous condition: conditionally) without harm to the mother. Watt (47, n. 4), noting that ‘conditional baptism’ was the official term for baptizing an infant under unusual circumstances (e.g. when the ‘conformation is so monstrous’ as to cast doubt on its being human), suggests that to say someone was ‘baptized conditionally’ was a ‘jocular reference’ to extreme ugliness or stupidity. For a discussion of Sterne’s source for the ‘Memoire’, see Appendix 6 in the Florida Text; for a translation, see the Florida
Notes.

  5. sans faire aucun tort a le pere: Sterne’s elaborate joke culminates in a sentence artfully, if ungrammatically, parallel to the key phrase of the ‘Memoire’: sans faire aucun tort à la mere. His proposal: baptize the homunculi while they are still in the male, by means of ‘a little injection-pipe’, if it can be done without harm to the father!

  CHAPTER XXI

  1. I think… sentence: Tristram recalls his uncle later in this chapter, but does not allow him to finish his sentence until II.vi. The Russian formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky calls attention to this and similar interruptions in his famous essay: ‘A Parodying Novel: Sterne’s Tristram Shandy’ (1929) reprinted in Laurence Sterne, ed. John Traugott (Prentice-Hall, 1968).

  2. Dryden: The ‘long preface’ is probably John Dryden’s Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668), in which he celebrates the triumph of English over French comedy, though not in climatic terms; nothing in Dryden comes closer, but note that the date of composition was twenty years before William’s reign (1688–1702) began.

  3. Addison: Joseph Addison (1672–1719), along with Richard Steele, published the Spectator from 1711 to 1714. Sterne may have in mind numbers 179 or 371, or both. That the British climate created the exceptional eccentricity of British character was a commonplace throughout the century.

  4.Αχμὴ: Akmè: Acme, pinnacle. Sterne’s endorsement of the progress of the ‘moderns’ is almost certainly ironic, in the manner of Swift in A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books.

  5. Aswar… peace: A song or catch traced as far back as the sixth century. The full verse has a bearing on TS: ‘War begets Poverty, / Poverty Peace: / Peace maketh Riches flow, / (Fate ne’er doth cease:) / Riches produceth Pride, / Pride is War’s ground, / War begets Poverty, &c. / The World goes round.’

  6. the females… all: Cf. Pope, ‘Epistle to a Lady’, lines 1–2: ‘NOTHING so true as what you once let fall, / “Most Women have no Characters at all.” ’

  7. DINAH: Walter’s comment on her name suggests the biblical story of Dinah’s rape in Genesis 34:1–31.

  8. Fescue: Teacher’s pointer.

  9. Tacitus: The Roman historian Tacitus (c. 55– c. 117) had a reputation throughout the eighteenth century for excessive subtlety.

  10. modesty of nature: Don Quixote was also distinguished by his extreme modesty (II.III.44). Wayne Booth (‘Did Sterne Complete Tristram Shandy?’, MP 48 (1951)) points to this and similar passages in the first four volumes to argue that Sterne knew the end of his story would come – whatever else intervened – with the telling of Toby’s amours.

  11. siege of Namur: See II.i.

  12. retrogradation of the planets: Apparent backward or westward movement of a planet in the zodiac; Sterne shows some comprehension of astronomical theory inthat Copernicus’s argument for aheliocentric universe was indeed ‘fortified’ by the observation of retrogradation.

  13. Amicus Plato… sister: Plato is my friend, but truth is a greater friend. The saying may be traced to Plato’s Phaedo or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

  14. in Foro Scientiæ: In the forum of science (or knowledge); Sterne’s coinage, by analogy with in Foro Legis (the outer forum, i.e. in the eyes of the law) and in Foro Conscientiæ (the inner forum, i.e. in the eyes of God, the conscience).

  15. ’tis only DEATH: The anti-militaristic idea that ‘he who kills one man is a murderer, while he who kills a thousand is a hero’ seems to have been a commonplace; the distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murder’ on the basis of malice is a legal principle.

  16. Lillabullero: Immensely popular song originating in Ireland in 1687 or 1688 as an anti-papist ballad, supposedly written by Thomas Wharton; according to Anthony Collins (A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729)): ‘King James II and Popery were laugh’d or Lilli-bullero’d ’ rather than argued out of Ireland. The music and lyrics are reproduced in the Florida Notes.

  17. Argumentum ad Verecundiam: Argument addressed to one’s modesty or reverence for authority.

  18. ex Absurdo: Argument which dismisses a proposition by demonstrating the absurdity of its consequences.

  19. ex Fortiori: Argument which offers a more conclusive proof than hitherto had been offered.

  20. Ars Logica: Art of logic.

  21. end of disputation: Sterne’s attitude toward formal argumentation is paralleled by Locke’s in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.17, where he reflects on modes of argumentation that ‘Men in their Reasonings with others do ordinarily make use of, to prevail on their Assent; or at least so to awe them, as to silence their Opposition’ (ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Clarendon Press, 1975)).

  22. Argumentum Fistulatorium: Argument of one who plays upon a pipe, i.e. in the present instance, one who whistles. This and the remainder of the terms are not traditional.

  23. Argumentum Baculinum: Argument of the stick, i.e. violence. Sterne may have borrowed it from Spectator 239.

  24. Argumentum ad Crumenam: Argument directed to the purse (avarice or need) of one’s opponent.

  25. Argumentum Tripodium: Argument addressed to the third leg. Taken with Argumentum ad Rem, an argument addressed to ‘the thing ’, we are clearly in the realm of Shandean bawdy.

  CHAPTER XXII

  1. Bishop Hall: The work so carefully cited has never been located, although John Beale did publish some works by Joseph Hall (1574–1656), Bishop, successively, of Exeter and Norwich. Hall was a prolific author and one of Sterne’s primary sources when composing his sermons. Kenneth Monkman supplied Florida Notes with the sentence Sterne possibly had in mind, from Hall’s Meditations and Vowes (1624): ‘It is a vaine-glorious flatterie for a man to praise himselfe.’

  2. digressive skill: Many eighteenth-century authors praised digression in a similar manner, including Swift in ‘A Digression in Praise of Digressions’ (A Tale of a Tub, sect. VII) and Fielding in Tom Jones, I.2.

  3. like a bridegroom: See Psalm 19:5 and Joel 2:16.

  4. brings in variety… fail: Perhaps recalling Shakespeare’s famous description of Cleopatra’s ‘infinite variety’; Antony and Cleopatra, II.ii.234–7.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  1. Momus’s glass: Momus is the Greek personification of mockery and fault-finding. Sterne alludes to the story told by Lucian in Hermotimus or Concerning the Sects, although his direct source may have been Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’: ‘How would Democritus have been moved, had he seene the secrets of their hearts? If every man had a window in his breast, which Momus would have had in Vulcans man…’ According to Lucian, Momus found fault with Hephaestus (Vulcan) for creating man without such a window. Burton (1577–1640) is another author of whom Sterne was particularly fond, but unlike his open acknowledgements of Rabelais, Montaigne and Cervantes, he never mentions him (although the second motto to Volume V, acknowledging Democritus, is a hint to the learned); while Anatomy (1621) is considered a classic today, in Sterne’s day it was deemed esoteric.

  2. window-money: Tax on house windows, in effect in England from 1696 until the middle of the nineteenth century.

  3. dioptrical: Capable of being seen through, and usually, as here, connected to see-through windows on beehives.

  4. the planet Mercury: Had Sterne consulted Chambers, he would have learned that by Newton’s computations the heat on Mercury was seven times greater than on Earth.

  5. efficient cause… final cause: Terms from Aristotelian logic, used here with typical Sternean facetiousness. The ‘efficient cause’ is that which produces an effect, and the ‘final cause’, the end for which any act is taken; both terms were subject to endless debate over definition and significance.

  6. more: mere ?

  7. play the fool… house: Cf. Hamlet, III.i.131–2: ‘Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in’s own house.’

  8. Virgil… Æneas: In Aeneid, IV, Virgil describes the many tongues of Fame (Rumour) as she spreads the report of Dido and Aene
as. The illustration of the passage in Dryden’s translation (1697) shows Fame in her traditional posture of blowing one trumpet while holding another. Samuel Butler, in Hudibras, II.i.69–74, describes Fame’s instruments with the same bawdy implications as Sterne: ‘Two Trumpets she does sound at once, / But both of clean contrary tones. / But whether both with the same wind, / Or one before, and one behind, / We know not; onely this can tell, / The one sounds vilely, th’other well.’

  9. the Italians: Allusion to the Italian castrati, whose appearance on the English opera stage at this time was causing considerable stir; see, e.g., Charles Churchill, The Rosciad (1761), lines 721–2: ‘But never shall a Truly British Age / Bear a vile race of eunuchs on the stage.’

  10. forte or piano: Loud (strong) or soft (low).

  11. ad populum: To the people.

  12. Non-Naturals: Work’s definition (76, n. 8) is good: ‘A term formerly used by physicians to indicate the six things which because they do not enter into the composition of the body are not “natural” yet which are essential to animal life and health and which by accident or abuse often cause disease: air, meat and drink, excretion and retention, sleep and waking, motion and rest, and the affections of the mind.’ The examination of waste matter, a part of diagnostic medicine from ancient times, was always vulnerable to satire, as in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Book III.

  13. Pentagraphic: Sterne’s definition may have come from Chambers.

  14. in the Camera: Sterne plays on in camera, ‘in a private room or chamber’ (a legal term, in contrast to ‘in open court’), and camera obscura, defined in Chambers as ‘a machine, or apparatus representing an artificial eye; whereon the images of external objects received through a double convex glass, are exhibited distinctly…’ As did the pentagraph, it allowed people without artistic talent to reproduce objects accurately.