The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

  CHAPTER XXVI

  1. Savoyard’s box: Possibly a hurdy-gurdy, but more likely a ‘raree-shew box’ also associated with Savoyards (see n. 1 to VIII.xxiv).

  CHAPTER XXIX

  1. hit the longitude: Methods to determine longitude at sea occupied scientific minds throughout the century, culminating in success in Sterne’s day.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  1. the word Nose: That ‘nose’ does not simply mean ‘nose’ is obvious, but in addition to its phallic implications, there is a classical tradition wherein the length of one’s nose is equated to the extent of one’s wit. Of his ‘chapter of noses’ Sterne wrote to a friend in late 1760: ‘I am not much in pain upon what gives my kind friends… so much on the chapter of Noses—because, as the principal satire throughout that part is levelled at those learned blockheads who, in all ages, have wasted their time and much learning upon points as foolish—it shifts off the idea of what you fear [excessive bawdiness?], to another point.’

  CHAPTER XXXII

  1. island of ENNASIN: In Rabelais, IV.9, Pantagruel and his company arrive at the island of Ennasin, where the ‘men, women, and children, have their noses shap’d like an ace of clubs’. The word itself suggests ‘noseless’ or ‘flat-nosed’.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  1. saving the mark: Proverbial, from ‘God save the mark’; used by way of apology when something obscene or horrible has been mentioned.

  2. Michaelmas and Lady day: Michaelmas is celebrated on 29 September and Lady-day (Feast of the Annunciation) on 25 March; in England, they are two of the four quarter-days on which rents and various other fiscal responsibilities are discharged.

  3. cawl: I.e. caul, the netted substructure of a wig.

  4. lay down in their tents: Perhaps an echo of Numbers 16:26 or Psalm 84:10.

  5. mother’s milk: The idea is as old as Cicero’s observation that we take in the errors and prejudices of our world at the breast (Tusculan Disputations).

  6. turn’d up trumps: From whist, where the final card dealt is turned up to establish the trump suit. Clubs were considered unlucky.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  1. ex confesso: Confessedly.

  2. The apple… could: Sterne closely borrows from Locke’s chapter on property in Of Civil Government, 2.5.27–8.

  3. Tribonius: See n. 12 to III.xii.

  4. Gregorius… Des Eaux: Cf. Chambers, s.v. Code:

  In 506, Alaric, king of the Goths, made a new collection of the Roman laws, taken from the three former Codes, the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian, which he likewise published under the title of the Theodosian Code…

  There have been various other later Codes, particularly of the ancient Gothic, and since of the French kings; as the… Code Louis… Code des Eaux, &c.

  See n. 12 to III.xii. Sterne misread ‘des Eaux’ as a person; it is a code governing rivers and forests, as noted by Work (222, n. 3).

  5. exsudations: I.e. exudations, oozings.

  6. wafted: The first edition’s ‘wasted’ makes no sense in context and has been emended.

  7. service: Work (224), following the 1780 edition, emends to ‘sorrows’, but ‘service’, the reading of the first edition, is abundantly meaningful.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  1. Bruscambille’s prologue: Sterne probably did not read Bruscambille (the theatrical name of le Sieur Deslauriers, comedian and author of Prologues tant sérieux que facécieux (1610)), but simply lifted the reference from Ozell’s note to Rabelais, I.40: ‘Bruscambille has repeated it in his prologue on large noses.’ Two other ‘authorities’ cited by Walter are found in another of Ozell’s footnotes to I.40:

  Bouchet [Guillaume Bouchet (c. 1513–93), publisher of a collection of witty domestic conversations] in his 24th serée (which I take to mean his evenings conferences, for I never saw the book) says that friar John’s answer is not altogether a joke; for that the famous surgeon, Ambrose Paræus [Ambrose Paré (1510–90), French surgeon, considered the ‘father of modern surgery’], has maintain’d, that the hardness of a nurse’s breast may make the child have a flat nose.

  Sterne’s ‘Andrea’ is either a slip for ‘Ambrose’ or belongs with Scroderus (cf. p. 211), but was poorly marked in the manuscript. Prignitz and Scroderus seem to be comic names, related to the authorities cited in a footnote to ‘Slawkenbergius’s Tale’, i.e. ‘J. Scrudr.’, ‘J. Tubal’ and ‘Von Jacobum Koinshoven’. Hafen Slawkenbergius is also invented, based on German words for chamber-pot and pile of offal (manure).

  2. Coleman-street: In the heart of London’s financial district in the mid eighteenth century, and today (EC2).

  3. he solaced… mistress: Walter’s enjoyment bears comparison to Toby’s decampment for the bowling-green: ‘Never did lover post down to a belov’d mistress, etc.’ (II.v).

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  1. celebrated dialogue: ‘De Captandis Sacerdotiis’ (‘Of Benefice-Hunters’) from the Colloquia Familiaria of Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), author of Praise of Folly (1509), a work comparable to TS in significant ways.

  2. Tickletoby’s mare: Rabelais tells the story of Francis Villon’s vengeance on Friar Tickletoby in IV.13; Sterne shortens the passage, and avoids the outcome, where Tickletoby has his brains ‘dash’d out’. Tickletoby is a cant term for ‘penis’ or ‘a wanton’, according to Partridge, Dictionary; cf. Toby = buttocks.

  3. ab urb. con.: Events in Roman history were dated ‘from the founding of the city’ (ab urbe condita) of Rome in 753 BC. The second Punic War began in 218 BC, or 535 ab urb. con.

  4. reader! read: Cf. p. 254, where we are told to read Longinus with similar insistence; the parallel is interesting in view of the main character, Longinus Rabelaicus, in Sterne’s ‘Rabelaisian Fragment’.

  5. saint Paraleipomenon: See OED, s.v. Paralipomena: things omitted from the body of the work and appended in a supplement; Cervantes uses the singular (as does Sterne), in II.III.40, where ‘Sir Paralipomenon, Knight of the three Stars’ is mentioned.

  6. penetrate the moral: Cf. Political Romance, where Sterne talks about the meanings found under the ‘dark Veil of its Allegory, [as many] as ever were discovered in… Gargantua and Pantagruel’. He is recalling Motteux’s preface: ‘THE ingenious of our age… have been extreamly desirous of discovering the truths which are hid under the dark veil of allegories in that incomparable work.’

  7. motly: The obvious meaning, ‘variegated, parti-coloured’, should not make us forget the word’s association with the costumes of court jesters and clowns. On the preparation of the marbled leaf for the first edition, see W. G. Day, ‘Tristram Shandy: The Marbled Leaf’, Library 27 (1972); and Diana Patterson, ‘Tristram’s Marblings and Marblers’, Shandean 3 (1991); the most important point is that every marbled page is unique.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  1. NIHIL me… fail: Sterne quotes from Erasmus’s dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles and translates (loosely) as he goes. The line on which Walter sets to work is ‘Conducet excitando foculo, si desuerit follis’ (If you haven’t a bellows, it [a nose] will serve to stir the fire). Work (229, n. 3) suggests that Walter’s emendation of focum to either ficum (fig) or locum (place) would provide additional bawdiness, both words having sexual connotations.

  2. ambidexterity: OED cites this passage as its first illustration of figurative use: ‘superior dexterity or cleverness’.

  3. nautical uses: Erasmus suggests use as a grappling-hook in a sea-fight and as an anchor.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  1. Disgrázias: Unpleasant accidents, misfortunes.

  2. Whitfield’s disciples: George Whitefield (1714–70), along with John Wesley, a founder of Methodism and a fiery preacher. Sterne directs several sermons against excesses he perceived in the movement. See New, ‘Swift and Sterne’, in Further Reading.

  3. to gird up myself: Scriptural; e.g. Job 38:3, Jeremiah 1:17.

  4. dilucidating: I.e. elucidating.

  5. charnel houses in Silesia: In so far as three-quarter
s of the population of Silesia (presently divided between Poland and the Czech Republic) was said to have been killed during the Thirty Years War, its charnel houses a century later might well be singled out.

  6. Crim Tartary: Cf. Chambers, s.v. Nose: ‘The Crim-Tartars break the noses of their children while young, as thinking it a great piece of folly to have their noses stand before their eyes.’ This perhaps explains why the hero of ‘Slawkenbergius’s Tale’ will return to ‘Crim-Tartary’ (Crimea) after his journey to Frankfort.

  7. bating… heaven: A commonplace observation of travellers to Turkey was the reverence given to fools and madmen as inspired by God.

  8. Ambrose Paræus: Paré served several kings, but not Francis IX – who never existed. He attributed to Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545–99) an operation for the restoration of the nose (its loss usually the effect of the mercury used to treat venereal disease) by grafting skin from the arm. Although Tagliacozzi responded on several occasions that the procedure was not his, the eighteenth century, on the basis of Paré’s testimony, made Tagliacozzi a subject of ridicule, as in Butler’s Hudibras and Tatler 260. That Sterne knew Paré was in error indicates he read more deeply on this issue than was his usual practice.

  9. efficient cause: Sterne elaborates on Friar John’s explanation for his long nose (Rabelais, I.40): ‘according to the true monastical philosophy, it is because my nurse had soft teats, by virtue whereof, whilst she gave me suck, my nose did sink in, as in so much butter’. It is to this passage that Ozell adds the footnotes quoted above.

  10. puisne: Puny (legalism for inferior).

  11. ad mensuram suam legitimam: At its proper size.

  12. refocillated: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘to revive, refresh, reanimate, comfort’.

  13. ratios: Rations.

  14. crucifix’d: OED’s last illustration is dated 1635; Sterne uses the far more common crucified in IX.xxxii.

  15. Ponocrates and Grangousier: Ponocrates is Gargantua’s tutor; Grangousier, his father. Along with Friar John, they attempt to answer Gargantua’s question: ‘What is the cause… that friar John hath such a goodly nose?’ Friar John’s answer is quoted in n. 9 to this chapter; Grangousier’s is given at p. 217. Ponocrates’s solution may have inspired ‘Slawkenbergius’s Tale’: ‘Because… he came with the first to the fair of noses, and therefore made choice of the fairest and the greatest.’

  CHAPTER XL

  1. syllogize by their noses: According to Montaigne (‘Apology for Raimond de Sebonde’), a dog syllogizes by his nose in this manner: ‘I have followed my Master by the Foot to this Place, he must of necessity be gone one of these three Ways, he is not gone this Way, nor that, he must then infallibly be gone this other.’

  2. Locke… juxta-position: Sterne paraphrases Locke, Essay, IV.17.18: ‘the principal Act of Ratiocination is the finding the Agreement, or Disagreement of two Ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third. As a Man, by a Yard, finds two Houses to be of the same length, which could not be brought together to measure their Equality by juxta-position.’ Sterne’s alterations set up several bawdy possibilities. Medius terminus: term in a syllogism not appearing in the conclusion.

  CHAPTER XLI

  1. quære: Query; common Latinism.

  2. Grangousier’s solution: Cf. Rabelais, I.40: ‘What is the cause… that friar John hath such a goodly nose? Because, said Grangousier, that God would have it so…’

  CHAPTER XLII

  1. contrited and attrited: OED cites this passage as its last example of contrited (crushed, ground to pieces); and its first example of attrited (worn down by continued friction).

  VOLUME IV

  SLAWKENBERGIUS’S TALE

  1. FABELLA: Sterne’s Latin is quite accurate and almost certainly his translation of his own invented tale.

  2. Strasburg: The setting of Strasbourg exploits its surprise capture by the French in 1681 and the fact that within its history are not only the varying fortunes of French and German (Austrian) masters, but of Lutheran and Catholic theologians as well, a perfect focus for the scholastic arguments Sterne ridicules.

  3. scabbard: Sterne’s humour is served by the Latin vaginam.

  4. Crepitare: Sterne may have been aware of an additional meaning, ‘to fart’.

  5. Kern penitus exploraba: The bawdiness of ‘I’ll know the bottom of it’ is abetted by the association of penitus (as an adverb) with penis, and the usual play on rem, i.e. thing.

  6. Benedicity: Bless me!

  7. saint Nicolas: Patron saint of Russia and of children, sailors and, more generally, travellers.

  8. Περιζομὲ: perizomatè: Girdle worn round the loins as in Jeremiah 1:17; cod-piece, an or namented flap for the crotch areaoftighttrousers, is not, as Sterne well knew, an equivalent.

  9. saint Radagunda: St Radegund (c. 520–87), founder of the monas tery of Our Lady of Poitiers in 552, known to Sterne in her role as patroness of his alma mater, Jesus College, Cambridge.

  10. Minime tangetur: ‘It never shall be touched’ is too strong; more accurately: ‘It shall be touched as little as possible.’

  11. turpentine: Sterne was probably aware that the turpentine of Strasbourg was the most commonly used in England; and perhaps, also, that turpentine was used for clearing blocked urinary passages.

  12. queen Mab: Usually considered an invention of Shakespeare; cf. Romeo and Juliet, I.iv.54, 70–71, where she is described as the ‘fairies’ midwife’ who ‘gallops night by night / Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love…’

  13. abbess of Quedlingberg: Sterne perhaps chooses Quedlingberg (in Saxony) because the women of the famous abbey located there were at one time governors of the city as well. Here, as elsewhere, inconsistencies in the spelling of names are preserved in the belief that Sterne was self-consciously nonchalant about spelling them ‘correctly’; this decision does, at times, preserve compositors’ errors, but the alternative, to normalize Sterne’s erratic spellings, seems the greater violation of his text in most instances.

  14. placket holes: Openings in the outer skirt, giving access to the pocket within; obscene connotations adhered to them from the beginning of the seventeenth century.

  15. third… Francis: Lay order of men and women, the first and second orders being fully professed men and women. It was founded by St Francis in 1221.

  16. nuns of mount Calvary: Benedictine order, founded in 1617 at Poitiers.

  17. Præmonstratenses: Augustinian order founded in 1120.

  18. Clunienses: Benedictine order founded in 890. St Odo (879–942) was the second Abbot of Cluny (927–42). A nunnery was not established by the order until 1056; where Sterne garnered his misinformation is not known.

  19. Carthusians: Contemplative order founded at Chartreuse in 1084.

  20. flead: Flayed.

  21. saint Antony… fire: Erysipelas, marked by inflammation of the skin; also known as St Anthony’s fire, from the belief that his intercession is efficacious.

  22. nuns of saint Ursula: Either the Ursulines, founded at Brescia in 1535, or the Society of the Sisters of St Ursula of the Blessed Virgin, founded in 1606. Ursula was accompanied in martyrdom by 11,000 other virgins.

  23. capitulars: Members of an ecclesiastical chapter.

  24. domiciliars: Canons of a minor order having no voice in a chapter.

  25. butter’d buns: Cant expression for a woman who has intercourse with several men in quick succession, or, more simply, a whore.

  26. Chrysippus and a Crantor: Chrysippus was second only to Zeno in establishing the Stoic philosophy; see n. 7 to II.xix and n. 2 to III.iv. The Stoics derived their name from the Greek word for porch or portico, the covered arcade in Athens where they gathered. Crantor (c. 335– c. 275 BC) was the first commentator on Plato.

  27. bottom of the well: See n. 5 to II.xix.

  28. faculty: I.e. medical doctors.

  29. It was… time: Chambers notes that the foetus is first ‘head upwards’ but
after eight months, as the head becomes heavier than the body, it ‘tumbles in the liquor which contains it’, and turns head downwards; Sterne’s ‘statical’ seems a foreshortening of hydrostatical, alluding to the pressures of this ‘liquor’ or fluid.

  30. stamina: Cf. Chambers: ‘those simple, original parts, which existed first in the embryo, or even in the seed…’ In the following discussion about sanguification, Sterne again seems to gather his ‘learning’ from Chambers.

  31. petitio principii: Begging the question – a fallacy in logic consisting of arguing from a premise that depends on the conclusion it is used to prove.

  32. Now death… blood: Cf. Chambers: ‘generally considered as the separation of the soul from the body…. Physicians usually defined death by a total stoppage of the circulation of the blood…’

  33. civilians: I.e. practitioners of civil law as opposed to commissaries, practitioners in the ecclesiastical courts. For Sterne’s career as a commissary, see Cash, EMY, 243–61.

  34. ex mero motu: Of his own accord.

  35. *Nonnulli… Idea: Sterne’s meaningless footnote imitates the nonsensical argumentation of Bridlegoose in Rabelais, III.39–42, though the actual legalisms may have been borrowed from Henry Swinburne’s A Briefe Treatise of Testaments and Last Willes (1590), cited in IV.xxix.

  36. two universities: Whether the University of Strasbourg was founded by Jacobus (1489–1553) or Johannes (1507–89) Sturmius was in doubt in Sterne’s day, although the year, 1538, was agreed on. Sterne or his source guessed correctly: Jacobus, a leadingfigurein Strasbourg’s senate, was the more instrumental. There was no ‘Popish’ university in Strasbourg until some twenty years after the French victory when the Catholic University at Molsheim was moved there by Louis XIV; Archduke Leopold (1586–1632), Bishop of Strasbourg and Passau, had been an early patron. Sterne’s source is unknown.