The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [285]
33. Corps de Garde: body of soldiers deployed as sentinels in the charge of a corporal (French).
34. Coup de main: literally, a blow of the hand; a sudden attack intended to effect the immediate capture of a position (French).
35. Corporal’s Guard: a small armed detachment.
36. two tables: an allusion to the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments (Exodus 32:15), which are often interpreted as divided into religious and moral precepts.
37. moral honesty: From the eighteenth century on, this sermon has been compared to Jonathan Swift’s “On the Testimony of Conscience.”
38. instrumental parts of religion: The instrumental duties (the phrase Sterne used in the 1750 publication of this sermon) are required, but may amount to no more than show and lip service. They are not sufficient in themselves to achieve the ends of Christianity.
39. is a sore evil … sun: Ecclesiastes 5:13.
40. examine the history: This account of the inquisition draws, sometimes verbatim, on William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722). See Hammond, 181–82 and n. 2.
41. saint-errant: a typical bit of Anglican jocularity, modeled on the knight-errant in quest of adventures.
42. tricker: trigger.
43. Portugal: a byword in Great Britain for inquisitional cruelty.
44. nature can bear … take its leave: This follows Richard Bentley’s “A Sermon upon Popery” (1715) almost verbatim (see Hammond, 105), and more of the account of the Inquisition may be modeled on it. Like Trim’s reading of the sermon, it was delivered on Guy Fawkes Day (see I, v, n. 1 above), a major occasion of anti-Catholicism.
45. By their fruits ye shall know them: Matthew 7:20.
46. Asiatick Cadi: mainly in Muslim countries, a civil judge.
47. dramatic: Sterne originally thought to publish his sermons as The Dramatic Sermons of Mr. Yorick, and they were advertised that way.
48. a priori … a posteriori: two methods of argument, the deductive and the inductive (Latin).
49. MANES: the souls of dead ancestors regarded as familial deities requiring homage or propitiation.
50. sermon of Yorick’s … Yorick’s death: Sterne, who was prebendary of York from 1747, had published this sermon separately on August 7, 1750, having preached it on July 29, and he would publish it again in vol. 4 of The Sermons of Mr. Yorick (1766). For the variants, see Florida vol. 2, appendix 7. For the later republication, see Florida 4:255–67 and 5:283–98. In republishing this sermon, Sterne claimed that it “had already appeared in the body of a moral work, more read than understood” (Sermons 4:255). Yorick died in 1748, which would make him around eighty at that time, if Sterne has not slipped. See John Chalker, “The Death of Sterne’s Yorick,” Notes and Queries 42 (Dec. 1995): 461–62.
51. Yorick’s ghost … still walks: In this Hamlet-obsessed volume, a reminder of old Hamlet’s ghost “doomed … to walk the night” (1.5.9–10).
52. sample … Shandy Family: This puff conveys Sterne’s original intention for the publication of his sermons: as Yorick’s sermons edited by Tristram Shandy.
CHAP. XVIII
1. en Soveraines: as sovereigns.
CHAP. XIX
1. What … here than elsewhere: one of numerous similarities to Swift’s Tale of a Tub: “I ought in method to have informed the reader about fifty pages ago of a fancy Lord Peter took.… Now this material circumstance having been forgot in due place, as good fortune hath ordered, comes in very properly here …” (135).
2. stage … second childishness: drawn from Jaques’s “All the world’s a stage” speech (As You Like It, 2.7.139–66, esp. 139, 143, 158, 165).
3. steel-yard: a weighing instrument; a balance scale.
4. in infinitum: to infinity (Latin).
5. truth … bottom of her well: proverbial location of truth.
6. out of joint: seems to echo Hamlet (1.5.188–89).
7. ruined, undone people: Florida notes echoes in this paragraph, including the use of the sorites, of Bishop George Berkeley’s “Essay towards Preventing