The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [276]
CHAP. XX
1. Pliny the younger: Pliny speaking in his Letters (3.5) of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who had adopted him. For Pliny, see above, ch. xix, n. 12, and the epigraph to VII.
2. Parismus … England: prose fictions, presumably in chapbook form. See below, VI, xxxii, n. 1. Sterne undoubtedly meant The Seven Champions of Christendom.
3. par le moyen d’ une petite Canulle.—Anglicé: by means of a syringe—anglicized (French).
4. St. Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas (1224/5–1275), the greatest medieval theologian. He will come up in the midst of a scholastic argument in “Slawkenbergius’s Tale” (IV, 208).
5. pruriency for fresh adventures: The word “adventures” often had sexual overtones when used in reference to women. See David A. Brewer, “Scholia” 29–30 (1997): 294–95.
6. Vide Deventer: See Hendrik van Deventer, Dutch obstetrician: from his book Observations importantes sur le manuel des accouchmens (Important Observations on the Manual of Childbirth, French trans. 1734). Given as “Henry” in the French edition. For a full account of the differences between Sterne’s text and the original, see Florida, Appendix 6 (2:939–45). This passage is translated fully on this page.
7. sous condition: conditionally (French).
8. par le moyen d’une petite canulle … tort a le pere: by means of a syringe without doing any harm (wrong) to the father (properly père) (French). Sterne’s joke substitutes “father” for “mother.” In the second edition the grammar was corrected somewhat to “au pere,” muting the joke.
CHAP. XXI
1. air and climate … odd and whimsical: The notion that the English climate caused eccentricity was widespread. Corbyn Morris, Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire and Ridicule (1744), considers “Humor” as “any whimsical oddity or foible” in “temper or conduct,” and he finds that humorists in this sense are generally to be found in England (12).
2. Dryden … prefaces: Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668) opposes French and English plays on the basis of the English as “sullen” and the French as “ayery and gay” (17:48).
3. Addison … Spectators: In No. 179, for example, Addison claims that the English often require “such little Incitements to Mirth and Laughter, as are apt to disperse Melancholy, and put our Faculties in good Humour. To which some will add, that the British Climate … makes Entertainments of this Nature in a manner necessary” (Spectator, 2:205).
4. A: Acme; highest point (Greek). As Florida notes, Tristram sounds like Jonathan Swift’s narrator in A Tale of a Tub here.
5. As war begets poverty, poverty peace: proverbial. The series of statements begins and ends with this claim. The allusion undercuts any claim to reach a pinnacle through its suggestion of historical cycles.
6. no character at all: an allusion to Alexander Pope’s “To a Lady: Of the Characters of Women” in which the speaker quotes the Lady as saying “Most Women have no Characters at all” (Epistles to Several Persons, ed. F. W. Bateson, Twickenham [“Ep. 2,” line 2], 3.2:46).
7. DINAH: The rape of Dinah in Genesis 34:1–31 explains Walter’s comment on her name.
8. Fescue: a teacher’s pointer.
9. Tacitus: The conciseness of the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 56–c. 117) was often criticized as obscure.
10. modesty: Don Quixote was very modest (2.3; 2:44), and some characters in English novels, such as Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, were chaste or feminized.
11. Namur: Namur was a fortress named for the city in modern Belgium. It fell after a bloody siege, July 3–15, 1695. See II, i below.
12. in grain: deep-dyed.
13. retrogradation … Copernicus: In the heliocentric astronomical system of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), planets sometimes go backward but in a simpler way than in the system of Ptolemy.
14. Amicus Plato; … sed magis amica veritas: Plato is my friend, but truth is a greater friend (Latin). This saying, which became proverbial, can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (1.4.1096a, 16). See Don Quixote, 2.9, 18. Pope quotes a version in A