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23. lax and pliable state: This passage parodies Burton, who speaks of “the lax and pliable Texture of … the Child’s head at birth” and quotes Smellie comparing the head to the “Form of a Sugar Loaf” (Burton, 122, 90). The claim of 470 pounds, not made by Burton, is probably ten times the actual pressure (Florida).

24. feculent and mothery: filled with dregs or filth; full of sediment, moldy.

25. vertex … understanding Sterne parodies Burton and Smellie. Burton complains of Smellie’s use of “vertex” for the “apex” of the head and he is greatly concerned that in the case of a large-headed child the cerebrum will be “squeezed … towards the cerebellum” (123).

26. Angels and Ministers of grace defend us!: Hamlet 1.4.39.

27. extracted by the feet: Known as the “podalic version,” this method was very dangerous. Burton, like Slop, had some good things to say of it in his Letter. See Cash, “Birth,” 204–5.

28. Cæsarian section … Edward the sixth: The operation, always fatal at this time, was recommended only, if at all, as a last resort. The names, except for Hermes Trismegistus, who plays an important role in IV, are drawn from Chambers (“Cæsarian section”), as are some of the details, including the “epigastrium,” or part of the abdomen above the stomach. The coccyx (oss coxcygis), known as the tail bone, consists of four vestigial vertebrae which terminate the spinal column. Florida points out that Chambers confused Manilius Manius with Manlius.

29. Alquife … Urganda: All three are mentioned by Ozell (Don Quixote, 1.1.5; 1:40n.). Don Belianis is a sixteenth-century Spanish romance. Quixote (2.3.2) is fooled by the Duke’s presentation of someone masquerading as that magician.

VOL. III

FRONTISPIECE

Fulfilling Sterne’s request through the mediation of a friend, William Hogarth designed this plate of Tristram’s baptism engraved by Simon François Ravenet the elder (d. 1774), one of the best book illustrators of the period and a favorite of Hogarth’s. He usually styled himself S. F. Ravenet. The illustration was re-engraved for the second edition by Joseph Ryland, a pupil of Ravenet. See Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (London: The Print Room, 1989), 192–93.

TITLE PAGE

1. Multitudinis … Lugdun: This statement, impishly adapted from John of Salisbury (1115/20–80), bishop not of Lyon or Leyden (Lugdun) but Chartres, claims “I do not fear the opinions of the ignorant mob, but I ask that they spare my little book, in which I always proposed to pass from the mirthful to the serious, and from the serious to the mirthful again.” The return to jesting is Sterne’s addition. He probably obtained this epigraph, as Work suggests, from Motteux’s preface to Rabelais (1, p. cxviii).

CHAP. II

1. Reynolds: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) painted Sterne’s portrait (now at the National Portrait Gallery, London) in 1760. In this striking portrait, the title Tristram Shandy appears on one of the papers under Sterne’s elbow; it seems to have been Reynolds’s own idea to capitalize on the book’s popularity, for the picture was not a commission and was engraved soon after. It also served as the frontispiece to Sterne’s Sermons a few months later. Sterne is claiming that Reynolds combines the antithetical greatness of Michelangelo and grace of Raphael, familiar qualities praised separately by Reynolds in Idler nos. 76 and 79 (1759).

CHAP. III

1. zig-zaggery … done duty in: The short lines and sharp turns of the zigzag are technically characteristic of the trenches used by attackers, such as Toby at Namur. Sterne’s noun is the first use of this form of the word cited in the OED.

CHAP. IV

1. body and his mind … rumple the other: Cf. Sermon 43, “Efficacy of Prayer.”

2. gum-taffeta … sarcenet: a thin silk stiffened with gum that might pull away from the sarcenet (soft silk).

3. Zeno … Christians: This list of Stoics comes mainly from Chambers. Dionysius of Heraclea and Montaigne were added by Sterne; neither can be considered a pure example of Stoicism