The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [278]
18. in the Camera: in the room, but with a play on “camera obscura,” a device which enabled anyone to trace the upside-down image projected into a room or box through a pinhole to be copied (therefore “in some of your most ridiculous attitudes”).
19. pencil: paintbrush.
CHAP. XXIV
1. the sceptic … walking: This argument, known as the solvitur ambulando, is attributed to Diogenes the Cynic.
CHAP. XXV
1. exfoliations … oss pubis … coxendix … oss illeum: separations of parts of the innominate bone (coxendix): the pubic bone (properly os), and the ileum.
2. history of a soldier’s wound: In Spectator No. 371, Addison describes a veteran of the siege of Namur who spends the whole day retelling the event. The nostalgic soldier was something of a stock figure.
VOL. II
CHAP. I
1. King William’s wars: Sterne took almost all of the military terms from the Cyclopædia of Chambers, whose definitions will be used sometimes (see Glossary). King William’s wars began following the “Bloodless Revolution” that brought him to the English throne in 1688, and ranged from Ireland to the Continent, where the recapture of Namur from the French marked the shift in English fortunes. The wars concluded with the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. Sterne’s knowledge of the battle comes from Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England, translated by Nicholas Tindal (London, 1732–47), which at times he follows closely, as he does in this passage.
2. the gate of St. Nicolas: See Tindal (3:293): “After this success the besiegers carried their trenches to the village of Bouge, towards St. Nicholas’s Gate.…”
3. water-stop: The OED does not give this word in the sense of “sluice,” which is first used in Tindal’s translation (3:293).
4. St. Roch: verbatim from Tindal (3:293).
5. Maes and Sambre: The Meuse (or Maes) and the Sambre are two of the three main rivers of Belgium. Again, verbatim from Tindal (3:293).
6. Hippocrates, or Dr. James Mackenzie: Hippocrates of Cos (460?–377? BCE) was the most esteemed of Greek doctors; Dr. James Mackenzie had recently published the compendious History of Health, and the Art of Preserving It (1758).
7. digestion … dinner: pun on the process of maturing a wound (OED).
8. toises: A toise is a French measure equal to 6.395 English feet.
CHAP. II
1. Locke’s Essay upon the Human Understanding: Locke, who elsewhere attacks the use of figurative language, develops an elaborate metaphor concerning sealing wax to account for the “obscurity” of ideas, corresponding roughly to Tristram’s three causes. See Essay, 2.29.3.
2. a history: echoing Voltaire’s Letters Concerning the English Nation (Lettres philosophiques, 1733), 80: “Such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the soul, a sage [Locke] at last arose, who gave … the history of it.” Voltaire’s l’âme (“soul”) could also be translated “mind.”
3. Dull organs: Sterne has seized upon Locke’s words to lead the reader’s associations in a different direction (2.29.3, 363).
4. cap and bell: part of the costume of the court jester or fool.
5. Malbranch: Nicolas de Malebranche, French philosopher (1638–1715), mentioned by Voltaire just before he begins discussing Locke (see n. 2 above).
6. eke: also; one of Sterne’s many archaisms.
7. brass-jack: a turn-spit. The sense is that this machine used in roasting little resembles the man (“Jack”) whose place it takes.
8. Arthur’s: a London club known for its gambling.
9. ’yclept: called; a Spenserian archaism. Possibly the use of “logomachies,” word-battles, accounts for its mock-heroic usage.
10. consider’d … how much of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation … pestered and disordered … What a pudder: language drawn from Locke, Essay, 3.5.16 (“Of Words”). A “pudder” is a “bother.”
11. and : ousia and upostasis (Greek); essence and substance.
CHAP. III
1. feet of the elephant: Maps often contained decorative images of elephants or fish.
2. Gobesius’s … pyroballogy: The first of Toby’s many military experts is fictional: “Gobesius” translated from the Flemish is a