The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [286]
8. sorites or syllogism of Zeno and Chrysippus: arguments used by the Stoics Zeno of Citium (c. 335–263 BCE) and Chrysippus (280–207 BCE), one of his successors. The sorites links arguments in a chain; the syllogism consists of a major and a minor premise followed by a conclusion.
9. our poverty, and not our wills, consent: Adapted from Romeo and Juliet (5.1.75).
10. sheet anchor: the largest anchor on a ship, used only in an emergency.
11. ounce of … wit … worth a tun: proverbial formula, usually ending “a pound of,” as in Benjamin Franklin’s “An ounce of wit that is bought,/ Is worth a pound that is taught” (Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1745). A tun is, roughly, a beer barrel.
12. Des Cartes … pineal gland: Tristram’s account comes from Chambers. The pineal gland was Descartes’s way of accounting for the link between body and soul. The entries for “soul,” “brain,” “sensory,” and “conarium” provide the material, including the names. See Florida and B. L. Greenberg, “Laurence Sterne and Chambers’ Cyclopædia,” Modern Language Notes 69 (1954): 560–62.
13. Walloon … Landen: natives of Belgium who speak a French dialect. The battle of Landen took place on July 29, 1693. Trim, we will later learn, was wounded there (V, xxi).
14. Q.E. D.: Quod erat demonstrandum: which was to be demonstrated (Latin).
15. certain … juice … Bartholine: the animal spirits mentioned in I, i (see n. 1). Sterne gives Borri (actually Joseph Francis) the name “Coglionissimo,” roughly equivalent to “biggest testicled.” His correspondent was Thomas Bartholine, another physician.
16. Metheglingius: Since “metheglin” is the drink mead, Sterne may again be satirizing Dr. Richard Meade, who is certainly satirized as Kunastrokius. See Jeffrey Smitten, “Sterne’s Metheglingius,” Notes and Queries, n. s., 31 (March 1984): 39–40, for the suggestion that Peter Browne, Bishop of Cork and Ross, is satirized under this name.
17. Animus … Anima: Latin; the notion of two souls, with animus as “mind” or “spirit” and anima as “soul” or “life-force,” had a long history.
18. sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul: a pun. Tristram is trying to locate the sensorium within the brain, though the word is used synonymously with “brain” throughout this book. (See also ch. x, n. 5 above.)
19. seven senses: Florida suggests the last two are “speech” and “understanding,” deriving from Ecclesiaticus 17:5, but in the eighteenth century the idea of seven senses including a sense of beauty and a sense of morality was strong, with Francis Hutcheson as the foremost proponent. See Peter Kivy, The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson and Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics (New York: Burt Franklin, 1976).
20. Causa sine quâ non: Latin; immediately translated by Tristram.
21. Lithopædus Senonesis de Partu difficili: Of the Difficult Birth of a Petrified Gallic Child (Latin). The mock-learned footnote is close to John Burton’s actual observation in A Letter to William Smellie, M.D. (1753) that Dr. William Smellie (the name fills the blank) had made the mistake of taking an illustration (“Icon”) of a petrified child for the name of an author in his A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (1752). Sterne parodies Burton’s plausible assertion that Smellie was lifting information and misspelling names by claiming he mistook “Lithopædus” for “Trinecavellius.” The names of doctors are derived from Burton. Victor Trincavellius is misspelled to add to the piled-up errors, as is the first name in the following paragraph. Arthur Cash notes that Burton “makes two or three good points but they are lost in the mass of sarcastic and picayunish sallies” (Arthur H. Cash, “The Birth of Tristram Shandy: Sterne and Dr. Burton,” Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Paul-Gabriel Boucé [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982], 198–224). Little would appeal to Sterne more.
22. Smelvogt: As with so many other evocative names, the distortion of “Joh. Adriani Slevgot,” found in John