The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [272]
4. Hamlet’s Yorick, in our Shakespear: Sterne had used “Hamlet” as a pseudonym for a newspaper article in 1747, and he could have seen a performance of the play in York that year. See Kenneth Monkman, “Sterne, Hamlet, and Yorick: Some New Material,” The Winged Skull: Papers from the Laurence Sterne Bicentenary Conference (Methuen: London, 1971), ed. Arthur H. Cash and John M. Stedmond, 112–23. Shakespeare’s name was often spelled as Sterne has it here.
5. Saxo-Grammaticus’s Danish history: Had Tristram read it, he would not have found Yorick mentioned. See the previous note that suggests he was just drawing on Theobald’s edition.
6. Noddy’s … in the progress of this work: A noddy is a simpleton; one of a number of promises (unfulfilled) that Tristram will travel as tutor. This seems to have been part of a plot development including a European tour that would have satirized Bishop William Warburton (see Ross, pp. 224–25), though Sterne denied that to David Garrick.
7. “That nature … share”: Florida suggests that this passage parodies Robert Molesworth’s An Account of Denmark (1694).
8. goods and chattels: legal phrase meant to cover all personal property.
9. crasis: temperament.
10. heteroclite: Bishop William Warburton used this metaphorical application of the term for an irregular part of speech to characterize Sterne himself as irregular and eccentric (Letters, 114, n. 5). The word had been used in this way for many years.
11. gaité de cœur: gaiety of heart (French).
12. bubbled: tricked.
13. French wit … mind: François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80). New identifies the translation Sterne used as the anonymous Moral Maxims (1749), no. 205. Rochefoucauld was a favorite of one of Sterne’s favorites, Swift. Viz. is an abbreviation of videlicet, Latin for “it is easy to see,” “clearly.”
14. bon mot: witty saying (French).
15. gibes and … jests: Hamlet to Yorick’s skull: “Where be your gibes now?” (5.1.189).
CHAP. XII
1. scholiasts … all-four: a defective argument (obsolete form of “all fours”).
2. As the reader (for I hate your ifs): Sterne may have in mind a favorite formula of Henry Fielding’s; e.g., “If the Reader pleases” (Tom Jones, 7.9.359), though the locution is found in the works of other novelists and nonfiction authors.
3. Eugenius’s frequent advice: The name, meaning well-born or noble, is often given to the friend who offers a different view in dialogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by such authors as the third earl of Shaftesbury, John Dryden, and David Hume. Eugenius is generally taken to stand here for Sterne’s dissipated friend John Hall-Stevenson (1718–85).
4. When to gratify … with: Ferriar (2:37) identifies this passage as closely following Archbishop Thomas Tenison’s Baconiana, or, Certain Genuine Remains of Sr. Francis Bacon (1679), 16. “Enew” is “enow” (“enough”). This passage and Yorick’s history have often been taken as Sterne’s version of his clerical career.
5. tit: little horse.
6. that when … him: an adaptation of Wolsey’s speech in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (3.2.356–59), as Watt notes.
7. Sancho Pança … fit it: See Don Quixote (1.1.7; 1:58). Both Yorick and Sterne identify with Sancho rather than Quixote.
8. cervantick tone: primarily, in Yorick’s own terms, against the affectation of gravity. In a letter (1759), Sterne defines “Cervantic humour” as “describing silly and trifling Events, with the Circumstantial Pomp of Great Ones” (Letters, 77). He uses the adjective a number of times in Tristram Shandy and elsewhere in his work.
9. flashes … table in a roar: Hamlet (5.1.190–91).
10. Alas, poor YORICK!: Hamlet’s apostrophe to his father’s jester’s skull (5.1.184). Although Sterne did not need anyone to point his way to Shakespeare or this popular scene, the anonymous Life and Memoirs of Mr.