The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

  Orgues ‘Thick long pieces of wood pointed and shod with iron, and hung each by a separate rope over the gateway of a city, ready on any surprize or attempt of the enemy to be let down to stop up the gate.’ See above, n. 5 to VI.xxii.

  Out-works ‘All those works made without side the ditch of a fortified place, to cover and defend it.… Outworks, called also advanced and detached works, are those which not only serve to cover the body of the place, but also to keep the enemy at a distance, and prevent his taking advantage of the cavities and elevations usually found in the places about the counterscarp.… Such are, ravelins, tenailles, hornworks.’

  Ouvrage de corne See Horn-work.

  Paderero (s.v. Pedrero in Chambers) ‘A small piece of ordnance, used on board ships for the discharging of nails, broken iron, or partridge shot on an enemy attempting to board.’

  Palisado (s.v. Palisade in Chambers) ‘An inclosure of stakes, or piles driven into the ground, six or seven inches square, and eight foot long; three whereof are hid under ground.… Palisades are used to fortify the avenues of open forts, gorges, half-moons, the bottoms of ditches, the parapets of covert-ways; and in general all posts liable to surprize, and to which the access is easy.’ See plate.

  Parallels ‘Deep trenches 15 or 18 feet wide, joining the several attacks together; they serve to place the guard of the trenches in, to be at hand to support the workmen when attacked. There are generally three in an attack; the first is about 300 toises from the covert-way, the second 160, and the third near or on the glacis’ (Muller, 227–8).

  Parapet ‘A defence or skreen, on the extreme of a rampart, or other work, serving to cover the soldiers, and the cannon from the enemy’s fire.… Parapets are raised on all works, where it is necessary to cover the men from the enemy’s fire; both within and without the place, and even the approaches.… The Parapet of the wall is sometimes of stone.—The Parapet of the trenches is either made of the earth dug up; or of gabions, fascines, barrels, sacks of earth, or the like.’

  Petard ‘A brass pot fixed upon a strong square plank, which has an iron hook to fix it against a gate or palissades; this pot is filled with powder, which when fired, breaks every thing about it, and thereby makes an opening for an enemy to enter the place’ (Muller, 228).

  Place ‘A general name for kinds of fortresses, where a party may defend themselves.’

  Portcullice ‘An assemblage of several great pieces of wood laid or joined across one another, like an harrow; and each pointed at the bottom with iron.… These formerly used to be hung over the gate-ways of fortified places, to be ready to let down in case of a surprize, when the enemy should come so quick, as not to allow time to shut the gates. But now-a-days, the orgues are more generally used, as being found to answer the purpose better.

  Rampart ‘A massy bank, or elevation of earth raised about the body of a place, to cover it from the great shot; and formed into bastions, curtins, &c.’ See plate, figure r.

  Ravelin ‘A detached work, composed only of two faces, which make a salient angle, without any flanks; and raised before the curtin on the counterscarp of the place.… Its use before a curtin, is to cover the opposite flanks of the two next bastions. It is used also to cover a bridge or a gate; and is always placed without the moat. What the engineers call a ravelin, the soldiers generally call a demi-lune, or half-moon.’ See plate, figures 5 (top) and i.

  Redans (s.v. Redens in Chambers) ‘A kind of work indented in form of the teeth of a saw, with saliant and re-entering angles; to the end that one part may flank or defend another.’

  Redoubt ‘A small square fort, without any defence but in front; used in trenches, lines of circumvallation, contravallation, and approach; as also for the lodging of corps de garde, and to defend passages.’ See plate, figure 4 (bottom).

  Returning angle (s.v. Angle, Re-entering in Chambers) ‘That whose vertex is turned inwards, towards the place.’

  Salient angle (s.v. Angle, Saillant in Chambers) ‘That which advances its point toward the field.’

  Sap ‘A work carried on under ground, to gain the descent of a ditch, counterscarp, or the like.’ See plate, figure 5 (bottom).

  Scarp ‘The interior slope of the ditch of a place; that is, the slope of that side of a ditch which is next to the place, and faces the campaign.’

  Sods See Gazons.

  Talus ‘The slope or diminution allowed to [a bastion or rampart]; whether it be of earth, or stone; the better to support its weight… The exterior Talus of a work, is its slope on the side towards the country… The interior Talus of a work, is its slope on the inside, towards the place.’

  Tenaille ‘A kind of out-work, consisting of two parallel sides, with a front, wherein is a re-entering angle… ‘In strictness, that angle, and the faces which compose it, are the tenaille…

  ‘Double, or flanked tenaille, is a large out-work consisting of two simple tenailles, or three salians, and two re-entering angles…’ See plate, figures 8, 9, e.

  Terrace (or Terras) ‘An earth-work usually lined, and breasted with a strong wall, in compliance with the natural inequality of the ground.’

  Toise ‘A French measure, containing six of their feet, or a fathom.’

  Traverse ‘A trench with a little parapet, sometimes two, one on each side, to serve as a cover from the enemy that might come in flank.’

  Notes

  (New readers are advised that the Notes make details of the plot explicit.)

  These annotations are based on Volume 3 of the Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy: The Notes, ed. Melvyn New, with Richard A. Davies and W. G. Day (University Press of Florida, 1984); I gratefully acknowledge their kind permission to use materials in that volume. Readers interested in further pursuing information in the notes below are advised to consult the Florida Notes, since many details therein have necessarily been omitted here.

  All annotators of Tristram Shandy must also pay homage to Sterne’s first textbook annotator, James A. Work (Odyssey, 1940). Many of Work’s identifications of historical persons are repeated verbatim in these notes, as they were in the Florida Notes.

  All journals are abbreviated as in the PMLA Bibliography. Classical quotations and translations are taken from the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press), unless otherwise indicated. Shakespeare is quoted from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, et al. (Houghton Mifflin, 1974). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. In quoting Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, Burton, Chambers and other sources, I have used the translation or edition cited in the Florida Notes, but have not provided the detailed page references available in that volume.

  Sterne’s letters are quoted from the valuable edition of Lewis Perry Curtis (Clarendon Press, 1935). His forty-five sermons are cited by their sequential number in the seven volumes published between 1760 and 1769; the scholarly edition of the Sermons is the Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne, Volumes 4 and 5 (1996).

  Assertion that a phrase is ‘proverbial’ is based on its appearance in The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd edn., rev. F. P. Wilson (Clarendon Press, 1970) or Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (University of Michigan Press, 1950).

  Conjectural alternative readings are indicated by an italicized question mark. Terms of fortification are defined in the Glossary of Terms of Fortification (pp. 589–95).

  Titles often referred to have been given short titles as follows:

  ASJ [Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick, ed. Gardner D. Stout, Jr. (University of California Press, 1967).

  Burton Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 5th edn. (Oxford, 1638).

  Cash, EMY Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Early and Middle Years (Methuen, 1975).

  Cash, LY Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Later Years (Methuen, 1986).

  Chambers Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia: or, an Universal Dictiona
ry of Arts and Sciences, 5th edn., 2 vols. (1741, 1743).

  Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Peter Motteux, rev. John Ozell, 7th edn., 4 vols. (1743).

  Montaigne Michel de Montaigne, Essays, trans. Charles Cotton, 5th edn., 3 vols. (1738).

  OED Oxford English Dictionary.

  Pope John Butt, general ed., The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope (Methuen, 1939–69).

  Rabelais The Works of Francis Rabelais, M.D., trans. Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux, with notes by John Ozell, 5 vols. (1750).

  Spectator The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Clarendon Press, 1965).

  Tindal Paul Rapin de Thoyras, The History of England, trans. and continued by N. Tindal, 3rd edn., 4 vols. in 5 (1743–7).

  Watt [Sterne], Tristram Shandy, ed. Ian Watt (Riverside Editions, 1965).

  Work[Sterne], Tristram Shandy, ed. James A. Work (Odyssey, 1940).

  VOLUME I

  Frontispiece: First published in the second edition, engraved by Simon François Ravenet (c. 1706–74) after a drawing by William Hogarth (1697–1764). Almost immediately upon his arrival in London in the spring of 1760, Sterne wrote to an acquaintance asking him to solicit Hogarth for an illustration to ‘clap at the Front of my next Edition…’ A second state of the engraving, to which a grandfather’s clock and a three-cornered hat have been added, is on p. 119, facing the passage it illustrates.

  Motto: From the Enchiridion of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55– c. 135): ‘We are tormented with the opinions we have of things, and not by things themselves.’ Donald Greene offers an alternative translation important for understanding TS: ‘Not practicalities trouble human beings, but dogmas concerning them’ (‘Pragmatism versus Dogmatism: The Ideology of Tristram Shandy ’, in Approaches to Teaching ‘Tristram Shandy’ (Modern Language Association, 1989)).

  DEDICATION

  1. Mr. PITT: Dedication added to the second edition, published on 2 April 1760. William Pitt (1708–78) was enjoying particular popularity at this time for his political leadership during the Seven Years War.

  2. bye corner: I.e. the village of Sutton-on-the-Forest, eight miles north of York, where Sterne lived from 1738 until 1760, when he was awarded the living of Coxwold (thirteen miles north of York); his home in Coxwold, which he called Shandy Hall, has been restored and is open to visitors.

  3. ill health: Sterne was consumptive and troubled by ill-health during much of the writing of TS.

  CHAPTER I

  1. I Wish… me: That the conditions of conception determined the future of the child was a commonplace idea.

  2. temperature: I.e. temperament; the two words were interchangeable throughout the eighteenth century.

  3. humours: Sterne alludes to the medieval notion that character was determined by the balance of the four elements (earth, air, water and fire) in the body; imbalance created four character types: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric or melancholic.

  4. animal spirits: According to Chambers, Sterne’s favourite source for arcane learning, the animal spirits were conceived as a ‘fine subtile juice, or humour’ intended to account for the interaction of mind and body; in the eighteenth century, the concept was under considerable sceptical scrutiny.

  CHAPTER II

  1. scattered… reception: Cf. Rabelais, III.31. Sterne was familiar with Rabelais (c. 1494– c. 1553) in the free-wheeling translation by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux, with notes by John Ozell. The word ‘Homunculus’ (‘little man’) and the subsequent discussion reflect an ongoing eighteenth-century debate concerning procreation. The ‘ani-malculists’ believed male sperm contained the complete human being in miniature, the female egg merely providing nutriment for nine months; the ‘ovulists’ suspected the woman’s egg had a more central role in procreation.

  2. minutest philosophers: The phrase harks back to Cicero and connotes ‘petty’, rather than ‘careful’ or ‘precise’.

  3. skin… articulations: Sterne’s list is borrowed from Rabelais, V.9.

  4. Lord Chancellor: Chief administrator of justice in England.

  5. Tully, Puffendorff: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), Roman orator and statesman; Samuel Pufendorf (1632–94), German jurist and philosopher. It is doubtful that Sterne had specific passages in mind; the names are invoked as typical legal authorities.

  CHAPTER IV

  1. Pilgrim’s Progress: First published in 1678, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was the most popular Protestant work of piety throughout the eighteenth century.

  2. Montaigne: Sterne alludes to ‘Upon Some Verses of Virgil’ in the Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1533–92). Like Rabelais and Cervantes, Montaigne (in Charles Cotton’s translation) was a favourite author of Sterne.

  3. as Horace says, ab Ovo: As Sterne – and all educated readers – well knew, Horace praises Homer for not beginning ab ovo (from the egg), but rather in medias res (in the middle of things); see Ars Poetica, lines 146ff. Cf. Tristram’s comment: ‘write as I will, and rush as I may into the middle of things, as Horace advises…’ (p. 257). Horace (65– 8 bc), masterly Roman odist and satirist, taught Sterne much about writing satire that stings rather than bites.

  4. now made public: Stock bookseller’s phrase.

  5. Turky merchant: Member of the Turkey or Levant Company, trading in that area of the world.

  6. Locke: Sterne alludes to John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), in which Locke glances at the association of unconnected ideas in a negative light; see, e.g., II.33.5 and II.33.9. Locke (1632–1704), the great English empiricist, had an influence on TS, but its extent and nature have been much debated, ranging from those who believe TS is structured on Lockean principles to those who believe it is written contra Locke. To begin to explore this question, see W. G. Day, ‘Tristram Shandy: Locke May Not Be the Key’, in ‘Tristram Shandy’: Riddles and Mysteries, ed. V. G. Myer (Vision, 1984).

  7. Lady-Day: Popular name for the Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March.

  8. Westminster school: Favourite place for educating the sons of the aristocracy during the eighteenth century.

  9. Sciatica: Pain in the lower back, buttocks, hips, etc.

  CHAPTER V

  1. ON the fifth… expected: The first of several playful, and probably meaningless, hints in TS that Walter may not be Tristram’s father, since the gestation period is eight rather than nine months, assuming this version of the conception is accurate. November 5th was Sterne’s deliberate choice: it is Guy Fawkes Day, officially celebrated in England until 1859 with bonfires and processions commemorating the discovery of the so-called gunpowder treason (1605), a Roman Catholic plot to blow up Parliament, and the inauguration of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 with the landing of William III in Torbay.

  2. disasterous: As Watt (7, n. 1) notes, Sterne’s misspelling of ‘disastrous’ reminds us that the word means ‘ill-starred’ from an astrological viewpoint; the analogy continues to the end of the chapter.

  3. misadventures and cross accidents: A favourite and important expression of Sterne.

  CHAPTER VI

  1. O diem præclarum: ‘O glorious day’, a Latin commonplace.

  CHAPTER VII

  1. midwife: Sterne enters the ongoing debate in his age regarding midwives and male doctors, clearly on the side of the former. See Jean Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men (Schocken, 1977), and Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, ‘Of Forceps, Patents, and Paternity: Tristram Shandy’, ECS 23 (1990).

  2. rights… whatsoever: A legitimate legal phrase.

  3. Didius: Traditionally associated with Dr Francis Topham (1713– 70), a leading York lawyer who plays a central role as the villain (named Trim) in Sterne’s pamphlet satire on the local ecclesiastical establishment, A Political Romance, written and suppressed at the end of 1758. The work triggered Sterne’s creative juices, the first two volumes of TS appearing one year later. When Didius reappears in Volumes III and IV, he has lost all local representation and is a generalized
representative of the legal profession. The name may refer to Julianus Didius, who, in 193, purchased the Roman Empire from the praetorian guards.

  4. whim-wham: While the word may denote ‘fantastic notion, odd fancy’ (OED), Sterne found his purport in Ozell’s note to Rabelais, IV.32: ‘whim-whams, men’s pissing tools’.

  5. Dr. Kunastrokius: Sterne alludes to Richard Mead (1673–1754), an eminent London physician whose private sexual conduct became the subject of public comment. Sensitive to possible criticism for his recognizable satiric targets, Sterne prepared a defence in a letter to an unknown correspondent in late January 1760: ‘If Kunastrokius after all is too sacred a character to be even smiled at… he has had better luck than his betters:—In the same page… I have said as much of a man of twice his wisdom—and that is Solomon, of whom I have made the same remark “That they were both great men—and like all mortal men had each their ruling passion.”’

  The name Kunastrokius bears comparison to Voltaire’s Cunegund; Sterne invokes Voltaire in the next chapter.

  6. HOBBY-HORSES: Among the meanings that come into play in Sterne’s usage throughout TS are hobby, foible, pastime, amusement, obsession, ruling passion, child’s toy (a stick with a horse’s head attached, also used in country dances) and, as used in the seventeenth century, a wanton or prostitute. See David Oakleaf, ‘Long Sticks, Morris Dancers, and Gentlemen: Associations of the Hobby-horse in Tristram Shandy ’, ECLife 11 (1987).

  7. running horses: Possibly bawdy, since the term was used in the eighteenth century for a venereal affliction.

  8. pallets: Palettes.

  9. maggots: Whimsical fancies, but also, possibly, an allusion to the growing scientific interest in insects and microscopic organisms, which may have appeared to Sterne – as to Pope and Swift – hobby-horsical.