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

by Laurence Sterne

  3. consubstantials… occludents: Chambers, s.v. Life, summarizes Bacon’s opinions and concludes: ‘this mollifying of the parts without, is to be performed by consubstantials [similar substances], impri-ments [piercing substances], and occludents [closing substances]. See Longævity.’ The phrase appears in Bacon’s Historia Vitæ et Mortis, canon 26; for Bacon, whatever hardens the body moves towards death; whatever softens (mollifies) it, lengthens life.

  4. emperic discourse: Based on experience and practice, rather than learning and doctrine. According to Chambers, ‘empiric’ was equivalent to ‘charletan, or quack’.

  CHAPTER XLI

  1. Come… land: A sentence attributed to Diogenes, as in Spectator 582: ‘I have often admired a humorous Saying of Diogenes, who reading a dull Author to several of his Friends,… finding he was almost come to… the end of it, cried, Courage, Lads, I see Land.’

  CHAPTER XLII

  1. Christ-cross-row to Malachi: I.e. from learning the alphabet, always preceded in horn-books by a cross, to reading the last book of the Old Testament.

  2. Seven… Latin: The Greek, τυπω, tupto: pounding, slogging away (and perhaps a bilingual pun: tiptoe-ing), was used as a paradigm of the Greek verb. Probations and negations are terms in logic.

  3. the fine… block: Commonplace, sometimes traced to Aristotle, but more likely Michelangelo’s notion of the statue that the sculptor discovers within the marble block.

  4. Scaliger… Baldus: Cf. Walker: ‘Jul. Scagiler [sic] began not to learn Greek till 40 years old, and then mastered it in a very few months… Pet. Damianus learned not to read till Mans Estate… Baldus entred so late upon the Law, that they told him he intended to be an Advocate in the other World.’ Baillet provides very similar information in a section on ‘contrary examples’ to his discussion of prodigies. Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), Italian author and philosopher; St Pietro Damiani (c. 1007-72), Benedictine monk; Baldus (see n. 12 to IV.xxix). Walker does not indicate that Damianus was Bishop of Ostia; the name was probably unfamiliar to Sterne, and required some ‘index-learning’, perhaps from Bayle.

  5. when Eudamidas…of it: Plutarch tells the story in his Moralia (‘Sayings of Spartans’). Eudamidas (King of Sparta, fl. c. 330 BC), son of Archidamas (King of Sparta, c. 361-338 BC). Xenocrates (396-314 BC) headed the Platonic Academy at Athens.

  6. North west passage: ‘A passage for vessels along the north coast of America, formerly thought of as a possible channel for navigation between the Atlantic and the Pacific’ (OED, which records figurative usage from 1670).

  7. auxiliary verbs: The theory of auxiliary verbs parodies Walker’s reliance on them as a pedagogic instrument, the use of which he explains at interminable length in Of Education, ch. 11. The full extent of Sterne’s borrowing is recorded in the Florida Notes. Sterne’s citations of ‘Lullius’ (Raymond Lull, c. 1232–1315, Spanish theologian and author of a mechanical learning aid similar to Pellegrini’s) and ‘Pelegrini’ (Matteo Pellegrini, 1595–1652, Italian humanist, whose system of predication forms the basis of Walker’s chapter) are almost surely derived from Walker, rather than from a direct reading of either.

  Walker illustrates his method with a ‘Battel’, which Sterne alters because the subject must be ‘barren’ for Trim. What ‘white bear’ signifies is undecided; one possibility is an allusion to Pope’s Imitations of Horace, Ep. II.i.320–23: ‘With laughter sure Democritus had dy’d, / Had he beheld an Audience gape so wide. / Let Bear or Elephant be e’er so white, / The people, sure, the people are the sight!’ Democritus and the white elephant are Horace’s, but the white bear is Pope’s invention. Another is suggested by Thomas Sharp, also a Yorkshire cleric, in his ‘Second Discourse on Preaching’ (1756): ‘As I remember we had, at the university, a peculiar term for extravagant conceits of this kind in the compositions of preachers. I think we called them white bears; meaning thereby, such emblems, or similes, as were too bold and striking to be easily forgotten; and yet, from some strange impropriety or oddness in them, could not be remembered but with discredit to the brains that formed them’ (see James Gow and Mark Loveridge, N&Q 47 (2000)).

  8. Virgil’s snake: Cf. Aeneid, Book II, where Virgil describes the reaction of the Greek warrior Androgeos when he discovers himself amidst the enemy.

  9. elder Pelegrini: Walker makes no mention of there being an ‘elder’ or ‘younger’ Pellegrini; one always suspects parodic invention when Sterne’s ‘learning’ goes beyond his source.

  10. versability: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘aptness or readiness to be changedorturned (round)’. The word occursin Walker, but differently defined: the speedy comparison of all circumstances as a function of wit.

  11. And your honour… corporal: The second edition of Volume V adds these two sentences to the discussion of the Danish auxiliaries, the only major substantive variation from the first edition of TS in subsequent lifetime editions. Its significance is not known, but since the addition entailed rewriting the next sentence as well, it was not simply omitted by the compositor’s oversight. According to OED, s.v. roll, citing a military dictionary, ‘to roul’ was used for officers of equal quality, engagedinsimilar duties; one would not ‘[en]roul’ with inferior officers. Hence, Sterne compliments the Danes, whose auxiliaries did play a gallant part at Limerick, according to Tindal.

  VOLUME VI

  CHAPTER I

  1. Jack Asses: The representation of hostile critics as asses has a noble lineage; e.g. see Don Quixote, II.III.25 (the aldermen’s braying contest); Swift, A Tale of a Tub, ‘A Digression Concerning Criticks’; and Pope, Dunciad (B), II.247ff.

  2. G-sol-re-ut: Designates the fifth note of the diatonic scale of C major in the hexachord system of notation invented by the eleventh-century monk Guido of Arezzo; it came to signify a particularly shrill sound, as in Rabelais, e.g. II.31, IV.19.

  CHAPTER II

  1. ten predicaments: Aristotle’s ten predicaments represented the categories of all knowledge: substance, quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, time, place, situation and habit (the nine ‘accidents’ of ‘substance’). According to Chambers, s.v. Category, they are ‘now almost out of doors; and, in effect, are of little use’. Walker’s system is based on them.

  2. Quirino… Tostatus: Sterne’s survey of prodigies interweaves details from Walker’s Of Education and Adrien Baillet’s Des enfans c élèbres; see the full extent of these borrowings in Florida Notes. Vincenzo Quirino, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, and Alfonso Tostado were learned figures of the fifteenth-and early sixteenth-century European Renaissance; who they were was of little concern to Sterne, however, since he was copying illustrative examples more or less randomly.

  3. Piereskius: See n. 1 to II.xiv. The story of Peireskius’s becoming a tutor for his younger brother is told by Baillet.

  4. knowlege: A consistent misspelling in the first edition of Volume VI and thus retained.

  5. Grotius… Cordouè: Baillet has entries on each of these learned figures, including the report that Ferdinand de Cordouè (1422– c.1480), Spanish theologian and physician, must ‘necessarily have been the Antichrist and that he had been born of no other father than the Devil’, so wise was he at an early age.

  6. substantial forms: Like the ten predicaments, this was another exploded Aristotelian attempt to classify knowledge that came under severe attack throughout the seventeenth century, culminating in Locke’s Essay, III.6.10: ‘Those therefore who have been taught, that the several Species of Substances had their distinct internal substantial Forms… were led yet farther out of the way, by having their Minds set upon fruitless Enquiries after substantial Forms, wholly unintelligible…’

  7. Servius… Capella: Sterne is looking in Walker and Baillet; the famous Dutch jurist Grotius (1583–1645) wrote on Martianus Capella, a fifth-century author; the Italian classicist Philippe Beroaldi (1453–1505) on Marius Servius Honoratus (fl. 400), himself a commentator on Virgil.

  8. Lipsius: Sterne’s foot
note quotes part of Baillet’s entry on Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), Flemish philologist and critic; Baillet suggests that in order to understand what is meant by Lipsius’s having composed a work ‘the first day of his life’ we must understand the phrase (as Nicius Erythræus did) as figurative, the first day in which he used his reason, suggested to be when he wrote a poem at the age of nine.

  CHAPTER III

  1. cataplasm: Application of a warming medicinal compress to the injured part, as is ‘a fomentation’.

  2. destruction… nose: Allusion to the damage inflicted on the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth by the use of mercury in the treatment of venereal disease.

  CHAPTER V

  1. Marcus Antoninus: Sterne borrows the anecdote from Walker. Commodus (161–92) was a vicious emperor despite the efforts of his father, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–80), whose Stoicism guided his own reign.

  2. the person: Sterne borrows his discussion of a proper tutor from Walker; Florida Notes quotes the relevant passages. Sterne’s note, ‘Vid. Pellegrina’, is a deliberate misdirection, since the Italian humanist (see n. 7 to V.xlii) has nothing to do with the list.

  3. according to Erasmus: In the first of his Familiar Colloquies.

  CHAPTER VI

  1. Dendermond was taken: By Marlborough, in September 1706.

  2. Ask my… not it: Cf. Sterne’s letter written in 1767 to a friend: ‘Now, I take heav’n to witness, after all this badinage my heart is innocent—and the sporting of my pen is equal, just equal, to what I did in my boyish days, when I got astride of a stick, and gallop’d away—The truth is this—that my pen governs me—not me my pen.’

  3. your death: I.e. ‘your death of cold’, equivalent to the colloquial ‘catch one’s death (of cold)’.

  CHAPTER VII

  1. death-watch: Any of the wood-boring beetles, the clicking sound of which, particularly audible in the silence of a sickroom, was thought to presage death.

  2. Leven’s… Angus’s: Both regiments served at Steinkirk; see V.xxi.

  3. Breda: Town in the Netherlands where prisoners were held, probably also used for winter quarters by the allies.

  CHAPTER VIII

  1. a natural… law: Natural law is derived by the use of human reason; positive law is revealed by divinity.

  2. siege… blockade: Tindal notes that Marlborough turned the blockade of Dendermond into a siege; Toby here reverses the action. In a blockade, one does not construct trenches or carry on an attack. Marlborough’s retaking of Dendermond (Louis XIV captured it in 1701) was a minor skirmish; Ramillies was the campaign’s decisive victory in 1706.

  3. The ACCUSING… ever: The idea of a book of deeds probably derives for Sterne from Revelation 20:12, although it is also in the Jewish tradition (e.g. the ‘book of remembrance’ in Malachi 3:16). The passage won immediate acclaim from those who admired Sterne’s sentimental vein; see, e.g., his letter to an admirer in early 1762: ‘the thought of the accusing spirit flying up [to] heaven’s chancery with the oath, you are kind enough to say is sublime—my friend, Mr. Garrick, thinks so too…’

  CHAPTER X

  1. the wheel… circle: Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:6: ‘the wheel broken at the cistern’; the entire twelfth chapter is about death. Sterne seems to have borrowed important elements of Le Fever’s death scene from John Norris, Practical Discourses… Volume Two (1691), as noted by J. T. Parnell, privately to the editor.

  2. wistfully: The first edition’s ‘wishfully’ is emended, based on the manuscript Sterne presented to Lady Spencer (see A Note on the Text).

  CHAPTER XI

  1. WATER-LANDISH knowlege: Sterne’s coinage, based on Daniel Waterland (1683–1740), prolific Anglican polemicist and chancellor of York Cathedral in the period immediately before Sterne’s arrival in the area.

  2. tritical: Cf. Swift’s ‘A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind’, which makes clear OED’s definition ‘of a trite or commonplace character; trite, with play on critical’.

  3. For this… thief: Cf. Sterne’s ‘Rabelaisian Fragment’, where the preacher Homenas is caught in the act of plagiarizing. Sterne’s own sermons frequently contain passages from the works of Tillotson, Hall, Norris and others. Eighteenth-century preachers, however, were encouraged to borrow from more successful sermon-writers rather than risk leading their congregations into error – or sleep. The Florida Sermons offers considerable evidence of this aspect of Sterne’s sermon-writing. Paidagunes, i.e. a pedagogue; more correctly, Paedagunes.

  4. Altieri’s Italian dictionary: Ferdinando Altieri’s English–Italian dictionary (1726) was the standard until Baretti published his in 1760. Sterne’s Italian, however, seems derived from his knowledge of music, not a dictionary.

  5. Yorick’s dramatic sermons: In the first advertisement for Volumes I and II of the Sermons (York Courant, 4 March 1760), Sterne entitled them The Dramatick Sermons of Mr. Yorick; ‘Dramatick’ was dropped from the London notices.

  6. lentamente: Slowly; tenutè: sustained; grave: slow, solemn; adagio: gracefully; a l’octava alta: in the high octave; Con strepito: boisterously; Scicilliana: slow (as for a Sicilian dance; Sterne means ‘Siciliana’, but his spelling is consistent with his practice – i.e. ‘Scicily’ (p. 191)); Alla capella: without instrumental accompaniment; Con l’arco: with the bow; Senza l’arco: without the bow (also pizzicato).

  7. dirty blue paper: Work (429, n. 4) suggests a ‘sly jab at the blue-covered Critical Review, which had given Sterne unfavorable reviews, and at its contentious editor, Tobias Smollett’, who was trained as a doctor. Actually, CR was more favourable to Sterne than the Monthly Review; Florida Notes suggests the swipe is Sterne’s response to CR’s attacks not on himself, but on Hall-Stevenson’s writing and anti-Bute politics.

  8. small Italian hand: I.e. the handwriting used in Europe and America today, as opposed to Gothic.

  9. ritratto: Picture, portrait.

  10. Blonederdondergewdenstronke: A parody, obviously, of a ‘Dutch commentator’ (see n. 12 to I.xix).

  CHAPTER XII

  1. the emperor’s… Turks: Sterne chose a perfect campaign for Le Fever’s son; Prince François Eugène of Savoy’s campaign against the Turks in the Balkans (1716–18) was seen as a modern crusade, and attracted volunteers from all over Europe. Prince Eugène (1663–1736) was Marlborough’s ally in the War of the Spanish Succession; they shared honours as the age’s greatest generals.

  CHAPTER XIII

  1. defeat… Belgrade: August 1717.

  CHAPTER XVI

  1. beds of justice: Based on the lit de justice, the throne on which the King of France sat when attending some sessions of parliament.

  CHAPTER XVII

  1. THE ancient… Bugians: Sterne cites Philip Cluwer (i.e., ‘Cluverius’) (1580–1623), German geographer and historian, butheprobably had an English source not yet identified – perhaps, at least for some portion, William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1663), as Work (434, n.1) suggests. Sterne’s ‘Herculi’ and ‘Bugians’ are errors; the correct tribal names are Heruli and Rugians. One might suspect parodic intent, however, and the Florida Text retains the spellings of the first edition.

  2. half full… fasting: Cf. Rabelais, Prologue to Volume III: ‘Ennius drinking wrote, and writing drank… . Homer never wrote fasting, and Cato never wrote till after he had drank.’

  3. understrapping: Of a subordinate or inferior character.

  CHAPTER XIX

  1. CHAP. XIX: This chapter owes something in spirit to ch. 5 of Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, in which Martin’s father establishes the classical antecedents of his playthings. It is worth recalling that throughout the century boys and girls wore dresses until the age of four or five.

  2. Albertus Rubenius: Sterne’s citation of Rubenius (Albert Rubens (1614–57), son of the great painter and author of De Re Vestiaria Veterum, Præcipue de Lato Clavo [Of the Clothing of the Ancients, Particularly of the Latus Clavus]) is deceptive.
Although he may have glanced at its table of contents and first chapter, he also had an English source, possibly Lefèvre de Morsan’s The Manners and Customs of the Romans. Translated from the French (1740). It, and similar works, served as school textbooks throughout the century, so that terms esoteric to us were common schoolboy fare; e.g. the debate over the Latus Clavus is mentioned by Lefèvre: ‘The Senators had under [the Prætexta] a tunic ample enough, called Latus-clavus, which was long taken literally for an habit adorned with large studs of purple like nail-heads, but has since been discovered to signify only a stuff with large stripes of purple.’

  3. even: ever?

  4. ancient dress: Lefèvre points out that the toga was to be properly tied, since a ‘loose gown’ was a ‘mark of dissolute manners’. Chlamys: like the Paludamentum, a military robe worn over other clothes. Ephod: probably Sterne’s joke, since it is the robe worn by Jewish priests, not discussed in works on Roman costume. Tunica: sleeveless, knee-length vest worn under the toga. Synthesis: large robe or cloak, for festivals and banquets. The Pænula: short, thick woollen or leather coat, worn in cold or rainy weather and for travelling. Lacerna, with its Cucullus: cloak for bad weather, with its hood. The first edition has ‘Lacema’, but that seems to be a compositor’s error; the Florida Text repeats the error, which is here corrected. Prætexta: robe trimmed with purple, worn by magistrates. Sagum: vest worn by soldiers. Trabea: a little shorter than the toga and striped with purple and white. The reference to Suetonius (second-century Roman biographer, historian and author of De Genere Vestium) may have been taken from Rubens, but it also appeared in textbooks.