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

by Laurence Sterne

  4. That we… of India: Typically enough, Sterne’s citation of Flavius Josephus (37– c. 95), author of The Jewish Wars, is misleading, since his source was almost certainly John Donne’s Biathanatos. Sterne misread Donne’s reference to the Indian philosophers, attributing to them a sentiment not found in Josephus. See W. G. Day, N&Q 215 (1970).

  5. died at Babylon: Alexander’s death in 323 bc is recorded by Plutarch; Alexander returned to Babylon despite omens presaging his death.

  6. from Greece… round: Sterne mocks the growing mythology of the ‘progress’ of western civilization from the Middle East to Greece and westward.

  7. By water… Coptos: The journey begins where the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal, proceeds south around the tip of India, and then north-west into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez at its northern end. Tor isat the southern end of the Gulf, Suez at the northern. Joddah (Jidda) is the port city of Mecca, on the eastern shore of the Red Sea; Coptos was a trade centre south of Tor. Sterne’s geography is not absolutely clear. For the Alexandrian library, see n. 38 to IV.S.T. Karrawans: i.e. caravans.

  CHAPTER XIII

  1. in case… man: Sterne again baits Warburton, since a primary argument of the Divine Legation is that the Book of Job was written after the patriarchs (by Ezra), and was an allegory of the Captivity, an argument countered by Bishop Robert Lowth and others who believed Job to be historical rather than allegorical. For Sterne’s original plan to ‘run up’ an allegory on the ‘Writers on the Book of Job’, and its implications for TS, see Zimmerman in Further Reading; see also Jonathan Lamb, ‘The Job Controversy, Sterne, and the Question of Allegory’, ECS 24 (1990).

  CHAPTER XV

  1. a farce: In the ‘Life of Rabelais’ prefixed to Ozell’s edition, Rabelais’s last words are reported: ‘Let down the curtain, the farce is done.’ The sentiment has been attributed to others as well.

  2. Calliope: Muse of epic poetry; in creating his oppositions, Sterne contrasts the lightest and freest of musical forms with the most dignified of the muses, similar to the contrast between a Cremona (for a town in Lombardy where Amati and Stradivari violins were made) and a Jew’s trump (or Jew’s harp, played with the mouth and one finger).

  CHAPTER XVI

  1. Xenophon: Xenophon (c. 428– c. 354 BC), Greek philosopher and historian, set out his ideas on education primarily in Cyropaedia. Cornelius Scriblerus, before the birth of his son, ‘composed two Treatises of Education’ (Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus).

  2. collecting… adolescence: See n. 12 to III.xii. Sterne begins his parody of Obadiah Walker’s Of Education (1673) with a glance at Walker’s prefatory comment: ‘I have therefore rather chused to gather up disorderly, and bind together, such scattered Counsels and Notions, as have occurred either in Observation, or in some Italian Writers, not ordinary amongst us.’ See John M. Turnbull, ‘The Prototype of Walter Shandy’s Tristrapaedia’, RES 2 (1926).

  3. Tartaglia: See n. 9 to II.iii.

  4. hussive: I.e. housewife: pocket-case for needles, pins, thread.

  5. John de la Casse: From a few facts – Giovanni della Casa (1503–56) was the Archbishop of Benevento and did write a famous Renaissance conduct book called the Galateo (1558) – Sterne spins an elaborate fictional web. In all likelihood, he never read the Galateo, but rather found references to della Casa in Burton, Bayle, and Rabelais, all of whom mention his youthful celebration of sodomy. Sterne seems to have confused this with the Galateo, which, in IX.xiv, he calls della Casa’s ‘nasty Romance’. No evidence exists that della Casa held the theory of composition attributed to him.

  6. Rider’s Almanack: Usually no more than twenty small pages, while the Galateo is perhaps four or five times that size.

  7. fed… famous: Cf. p. 181 and n. 34 to III.xx.

  8. Term-time: When the law courts are in session.

  9. life of a writer: Sterne may again be parodying Warburton, Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections (1744): ‘The state of Authorship, whatever that of Nature be, is certainly a state of war: in which, especially if it be an holy war, every man’s hand is set, not against his enemy, but his brother.’ Pope had called the life of a wit a ‘warfare upon earth’ (preface to Works, 1717).

  10. retrograde: Backward, slow.

  11. Prejudice… milk: Cf. n. 7 to I.xix and n. 5 to III.xxxiii. And see Montaigne’s ‘Of Custom’ for a similar account, including the observation that ‘by Reason that we suck it in with our Milk, and that the Face of the World presents itself in this Posture to our first Sight, it seems as if we were born upon Condition to pursue this Practice…’

  12. drawing a sun-dial: Proverbial for useless activity.

  CHAPTER XVII

  1. some men… wires: Proverbial, importing the making of mountains from molehills.

  2. August the 10th, 1761: In June, Sterne wrote to Hall-Stevenson that he was beginning Volume V and on 21 September, to another acquaintance, that he was ‘scribbling away’ at the work.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  1. all… principals: True of high treason, but not of murder in English law.

  CHAPTER XIX

  1. prevented: Forestalled, anticipated.

  2. like Lewis… &c.: The armies of the day considered church-bells as war-booty because the metal was valuable for recasting into ordnance.

  3. the lead… too: Proverbial; to be cut into pieces like meat for the pot; to be ruined or destroyed.

  CHAPTER XX

  1. Steenkirk: Sterne’s account of the allied defeat at Steinkirk (24 July 1692) is taken, often verbatim, from Tindal.

  2. count Solmes: Heinrich Maastricht, Count Solms (1636–93), commanded the main body of allied troops in the battle; according to Tindal, he held back his troops because he was jealous that the Prince of Wirtemberg had command of the entire attack; his failure to engage caused the allied defeat.

  3. made… to it: Michael O. Houlahan, N&Q 217 (1972), notes that Sterne parodies the advice Warburton gave him in June 1760: ‘You say you will continue to laugh aloud. In good time. But one… would wish to laugh in good company, where priests and virgins may be present…’ His giving this advice seems to have been public knowledge.

  CHAPTER XXI

  1. picquetted: A military punishment, one hand being tied as high as possible, while the victim stands with the opposite toe on a pointed stake.

  2. Cutts’s… Leven’s: All listed in Tindal. In Le Fever’s story (VI.vii), we are told that Toby and Trim served in Leven’s regiment (David Melville, third Earl of Leven (1660–1728)), while Le Fever was a lieutenant under Angus (James Hamilton, Earl of Angus, killed at Steinkirk). In all, the Allies suffered 2,000 men killed and 3,000 wounded or taken prisoner. For useful accounts of eighteenth-century warfare, see David Chandler, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marl-borough (Hippocrene, 1976), and David McNeil, The Grotesque Depiction of War and the Military in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (University of Delaware Press, 1990).

  3. Landen: For a description of this battle (July 1693), in which Trim received his wound, see n. 12 to VIII.xix. Solms’s injury was fatal, a fact Trim omits.

  CHAPTER XXV

  1. *Confucius: Florida Notes suggests a trap for allusion-hunting by annotators, and then offers a possible allusion to Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘Chinese philosopher’, Lien Chi Altangi, who had attacked TS in numbers 51 and 53 of Citizen of the World (1760).

  CHAPTER XXVI

  1. Fifty… devils: Cf. Rabelais, ‘Author’s Prologue’ to Vol. II: ‘even as I give myself fairly to an hundred thousand panniers full of devils’; and again, III.22: ‘his soul goeth infallibly to thirty thousand panniers full of devils’.

  2. bitter Philippick: Cf. n. 2 to III.xiv.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  1. lint and basilicon: For excellent readings of Mrs Shandy’s role in TS, see Ehlers, Loscocco and Ostovich in Further Reading. Basilicon: an ointment.

  2. Spencer: Sterne’s source is John Spencer’s De Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus (On the Ritual Laws of
the Hebrews) (1685). One section (I.iv.3), entitled ‘De sede vel subjecto Circumcisionis’ (‘On the foundation or subject of circumcision’), provides the first two Greek footnotes; the next section, the list of practising nations and the last two footnotes. Spencer provides Latin translations for his Greek.

  3. Maimonides: Moses ben Maimon (1135–1204), the greatest Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages; cited by Spencer.

  4. as follows: Sterne uses the device of the lacuna again, pp. 352, 391, 393, 418, 425, 475, 567, 570, 582. Swift employs it frequently in A Tale of a Tub.

  5. Capadocians: As is his practice, Sterne adds an additional name to Spencer’s list; perhaps these remote societies reminded him of the biblical list in Acts 2:9 (see n. 1 to VI.xxx). Cappadocia and Colchis were territoriesin Asia Minor. Troglodytes isa name applied to various ancient tribes.

  6. Solon and Pythagoras: Sterne read about Pythagoras (c. 582–c.500 BC) in Spencer, but his reason for including Solon (c. 638–c. 559 BC) among the circumcised is unknown; Sterne had listed both together as ‘lawgivers’ in IV.xvii.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  1. the trine… genitures: Sterne parodies legitimate catch-phrases from the vocabulary of astrology.

  2. *apothecaries… washer-women: Each Greek footnote calls forth one of Yorick’s associations; hence, the first refers to ‘a terrible disease, hard to cure, called anthrax’, and Yorick thinks of ‘apothecaries’; the second remarks that circumcised nations are the ‘most prolificandpopu-lous’, hence ‘statesmen’; and the third is simply the phrase ‘for the sake of cleanliness’, calling forth Yorick’s ‘washer-women’. Sterne miscites the source of this third note, reading the wrong marginal citation; it is from Herodotus, historian of the Persian Wars. The first two are from Philo Judaeus (c. 20 bc–c. ad 40), the Jewish philosopher.

  3. Ilus: Again Sterne borrows from Spencer, including this note, which Spencer translates into Latin, and Sterne paraphrases in this sentence. Sanchuniathon is an ancient Phoenician authority. The history of Pharaoh-neco (reigned 610–594 BC) is told in 2 Kings 23:29, 24:1–7, etc.; he was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in 604, and retired into Egypt for the rest of his reign. If Ilus lived at all, he did so in the fourteenth or thirteenth century bc and hence could not have served in Neco’s army.

  4. polemic divines: One year after the publication of Volumes V and VI, Warburton delivered a strong defence of polemical divinity in the closing pages of Doctrine of Grace (1763), lamenting, in particular, ‘any well-meaning Clergyman of affected taste and real ignorance’ who ridicules polemic divines just to be in fashion when, in reality, the term simply means those who study the doctrines of their faith.

  5. practical divinity: Sterne’s division between polemic and practical divinity appears throughout his sermons; despite Warburton, it marks no abatement of religious commitment, but rather is the legacy of seventeenth-century latitudinarians, who argued that, because polemical divinity had underwritten a century of religious warfare in England, it was time to eschew doctrinal disputes. This was the position of mainstream Anglicanism throughout the eighteenth century.

  6. Gymnast and captain Tripet: Sterne borrows the passage, describing Gymnast’s antics to convince the opposing army that he is insane, from Rabelais (I.35); in Sterne’s hands, it is potent ridicule of religious polemicists.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  1. en croup: On the crupper or rear of a horse, behind the saddle.

  2. demi-pommadas: The pomada is a vault on or over a horse by placing one hand on the pommel of the saddle; a demi-pomada is a half-vault. Sterne takes the term from Rabelais.

  CHAPTER XXX

  1. clear… Euclid: Probably a commonplace; see p. 290. Euclid (fl. c. 300 BC), Greek mathematician; his Elements contains the fundamentals of all geometrical demonstration.

  2. scrutoir: Escritoire, desk.

  3. snuff ’d the candle: Trim is not putting out the candle, the meaning of snuff most familiar to modern readers, but brightening its flame by freeing the candle from its excess wick, either by pinching or cutting off its snuff (the part of the wick partially consumed in burning).

  CHAPTER XXXI

  1. CHAP. XXXI: Watson (see n. 11 to I.xviii) argues the presence of Filmerian thought in this chapter and the next, both in the discussion of the origins of government and in the arguments concerning the ‘natural relation between a father and his child’ and the meaning of the fifth commandment. Specifically, Locke had undercut Filmer’s interpretation of the fifth commandment as endorsing absolute patriarchal authority by reminding him that the commandment says ‘honour thy father and thy mother’.

  2. Politian: Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), noted Italian scholar and poet, tutor in the household of Lorenzo de Medici. Although it is probable he somewhere expresses this often-repeated idea of society’s conjugal origins, Sterne’s most likely source is the opening section of Aristotle’s Politics, which includes the quotation from Hesiod’s Works and Days (c. 700 BC). Yorick’stranslationiscorrect: ‘First and foremost a house and a wife and an ox for the ploughing.’

  3. origin of fortification: Toby’s argument is traditional, a staple of contemporary works on fortification.

  4. argutely: Sharply, shrewdly.

  5. not the principal agent: Filmer’s opinion.

  6. Institutes of Justinian: As Work notes (392, n. 5), The Institutes, I.xi.10, supports only Walter’s first statement, that the mother has no power; for Justinian, see n. 12 to III.xii.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  1. Every thing… out: Cf. George Herbert, ‘The Church-porch’, lines 239–40: ‘All things are bigge with jest: nothing that’s plain, / But may be wittie, if thou hast the vein’; noted by Herbert Rauter (Anglia 80 (1962)).

  2. bear-leaders: Tutors for young men on tour.

  3. Sciences may… not: Cf. Walker, Of Education: ‘to be learned is not to be wise… Besides, Sciences are easily learned, being taught by rote and course; but Wisdom requires greater Advertency…’

  4. determinate idea annexed: Locke defines ‘determinate idea’, acentral concern in Essay, in his prefatory ‘Epistle to the Reader’. Basically, he means words definitively attached to single and consistent (‘clear or distinct’) objects or ideas.

  5. Decalogue… Talmud: The Ten Commandments, and a collection of post-biblical writings based on academic discussions of Jewish law by scholars and jurists over several centuries and in several countries.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  1. O Blessed… treasure: Cf. Burton, 1.2.4.7: ‘O blessed health! thou art above all gold and treasure’; cf. Ecclesiasticus 30:15.

  2. radical moisture: See n. 13 to II.iii and n. 4 to IV.xix.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  1. CHAP. XXXIV: In this chapter and the next, Sterne again borrows from Mackenzie, The History of Health, including the allusions to Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam), the epithet ‘nostrum-mongers’, the famous first aphorism of Hippocrates (‘art is long, and life is short’), and the entire discussion of the causes of a shortened life. He did not need to consult Bacon’s Historia Vitæ et Mortis (1623) at this point.

  2. stage-loads: Unrecorded in OED; Sterne alludes to the stage on which medical quacks and mountebanks exhibited themselves and their medicines.

  3. glisters: Enemas. Succedaneums: inferior substitutes, but often misused, as here, to mean remedies.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  1. spicula: Small splinter-like bodies.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  1. Van Helmont: Sterne seems to have borrowed his entire discussion from the Duchess of Newcastle’s Life of William Cavendish (1667), as noted by Wilfred Watson, ‘Sterne’s Satire on Mechanism: A Study of Tristram Shandy’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1951). Jean-Baptiste van Helmont (1577–1644), Flemish physician and chemist, quoted extensively by the Duchess.

  2. Quod omne… triste: After coition, every creature is dejected. The maxim, commonly attributed to Aristotle, is usually followed by bawdy exceptions, e.g. ‘except women’, or ‘
except priests’.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  1. siege of Limerick: In August 1690; an account, including the flooded trenches, is given by Tindal.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  1. phimosis: Contraction of the foreskin so that it cannot be retracted.

  CHAPTER XL

  1. I infer… death: John Pringle, Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752), devotes many pages to dampness and dysentery (flux), frequent concomitants of siege warfare. He supports both the drinking and burning (vaporizing) of spirits (gin) to take off dampness and as a general indulgence because of the hardships of soldiers. ‘Vapours’ may mean both moisture in the air and low spirits.

  2. Slop had not forgot: An allusion to Trim’s remark, five years earlier, that the ‘Abuses of conscience’ was ‘wrote upon neither side… for ’tis only upon Conscience’ (II.xvii), a tribute to Slop’s memory or a slight slip on Sterne’s part.