The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [275]
2. The Hero of Cervantes … Necromancy … DLCINEA’s name: Quixote’s concern that he has been tricked by magicians occurs frequently (e.g., 1.1.7; 1:54). Dulcinea del Toboso is the noble name Quixote bestows upon an unattractive young peasant under the delusion that she is his mistress (1.6).
3. TRISMEGISTUS: The name, meaning “Thrice Great,” is that of Hermes Trismegistus, Greek philosopher reputed to have invented hieroglyphics and made discoveries in many fields. See Moreri.
4. ARCHIMEDES: Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 285–212 BCE), the most famous Greek mathematician, who claimed that with a long enough lever and a place to stand, he could move the world.
5. NYKY: Nicholas, hence Nick, also disparaged below.
6. SIMKIN: a simpleton.
7. POMPEYS: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106 BCE–48 CE), statesman and general of the Roman Republic, ruled along with Julius Caesar and later unsuccessfully opposed him.
8. NICODEMUS’D: made “a foolish fellow or ninny-hammer” (Ozell, 88).
9. piano: mildness.
10. argumentum ad hominem: argument to the man; a character attack (Latin).
11. : (Greek); taught by God.
12. Persuasion hung upon his lips: The source is the Epistles of Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger, c. 61–c. 113), consul and author: “The comic writer Eupolis … mentions it in praise of that excellent orator Pericles, that “On his lips Persuasion hung” (1.20; The Letters of Pliny the Counsul, trans. William Melmoth [1747], 1:51). Sterne explicitly quotes Pliny below, xx, 44, and the epigraph to VII.
13. the elements … eloquent: “the elements / So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up, / And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’ ” (Julius Caesar, 5.5.73–75).
14. Cicero … Dutch logician: Those named are among the best known of ancient and modern rhetoricians and logicians. The Romans, more influential in Sterne’s time, are mentioned first. Marcus Tullius Cicero’s book was De Oratore (Of the Orator); Marcus Fabius Quintilian (35–c. 96) wrote Institutio Oratoria. Isocrates (436–338 BCE) influenced Cicero’s ideas about oratory. Aristotle was the author of Rhetoric (c. 340 BCE). Putatively by Longinus, Peri Hupsous (On the Sublime, first century CE) became even more popular in the wake of Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). The Dutch Gerhard Johannes Voss (1577–1649), author of Elementa Rhetorica, the German Kaspar Schoppe (“Scioppius,”?1542–1607), and the French Pierre de la Ramée (1515–1572), best known as a logician, were all rhetoricians. Thomas Farnaby was the English author of the Index Rhetoricus (1625), which remained popular into the early eighteenth century; his countryman Richard Crakanthorpe produced Logica Libri Quinque (Logic in Five Books), 1641. Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1629) wrote Logic (1626?), translated into English in 1697.
15. ad ignorantiam: an argument dependent upon the ignorance of the opponent (Latin).
16. Jesus College: Sterne himself matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1733 and graduated A.B. in 1737.
17. names of his tools: “For all a Rhetorician’s Rules / Teach nothing but to name his Tools.” Samuel Butler, Hudibras, ed. Zachary Grey (Cambridge, 1744), 1.1.89–90.
18. vive la Bagatelle: long live the trifle (French); Swift’s motto.
19. Ponto: popular name for a dog.
20. Epsom: probably for the medicinal waters, not the horse racing.
21. Andrew: probably for “Merry Andrew,” a quack’s assistant, a clown.
22. Numps: a simpleton.
23. Nick … DEVIL: usually “Old Nick,” from Niccolò Machiavelli.
24. rerum naturâ: in the nature of things (Latin).
25. EPIPHONEMA … EROTESIS: The first of these rhetorical terms is an exclamatory conclusion (see