The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [289]
CHAP. XI
1. Dathan and Abiram: Ecclesiasticus 45:18 has Dathan and Abiron, as does the curse in GM (see the previous note). Sterne’s pair appears in Deuteronomy 11:6 and is equally destroyed.
2. minim … division of curses … running bass: Toby’s whistling and Slop’s curses comprise a musical performance with the minim (half note) enabling Toby’s continuation of one note and Slop’s division, or breaking a melody into shorter variations on a theme, becoming a running bass, a rapid rhythmic accompaniment.
3. vertex: A favorite term of William Smellie’s for the head in his obstetrical works is given to the character satirizing Dr. John Burton. (See also II, xix, n. 25 above.)
4. Varro … thirty thousand … establishment: The whole paragraph seems to be a reworking of Robert Burton (3.4.1.3). Marcus Terentius Varro (116–?27 BCE), prolific writer and satirist, estimates 3,000 Jupiters; Burton says “Hesiodus reckons up at least 30,000 gods” whether bearded or not (665). Burton frequently changes the figures of his authorities.
5. cassocks … Cid Hamet: Cid Hamet Benengeli is the supposed author of Don Quixote, and makes the offer of his coat (2.3.48; 4:120). Tristram, however, is not a clergyman, though Sterne is. While cassocks were worn also by soldiers, rustics, and some others, especially in earlier periods, this looks like a slip.
CHAP. XII
1. befetish’d … Guinea: Sterne’s use of “befetish’d” is the sole example in the OED. The reference is to the religious use of fetishes on the coast of Africa.
2. Garrick: David Garrick (1717–79) was regarded as the greatest actor of the age, and Sterne certainly agreed with that assessment. His highly naturalistic acting broke with the declamatory tradition, and the behavior described here has much in common with Sterne’s style in Tristram Shandy. On January 1, 1760, Sterne arranged for his friend Catherine Fourmantel to give his first two volumes to Garrick with a letter supposedly written by her (Letters, 85). For a larger look at their relation, see Ronald Hafter, “Garrick and Tristram Shandy,” SEL 7 (1967): 475–89.
3. Bossu’s: René le Bossu (1631–80), author of the Treatise of the Epick Poem, trans. W. J. (1695), was, along with Boileau, the most influential of French critics through the early eighteenth century.
4. daub: OED lists this as the first use of the noun, though the verbal noun (used in I, ix) was common enough for an inartistic painting.
5. pyramid … Angelo: Sterne draws, probably for the second time (see III, ii, n. 1 above), on Reynolds’s essays in the Idler, especially No. 76, an attack on critics’ clichés concerning major sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists, many of which appear verbatim here. “Angelo” is Michelangelo. Reynolds does not include Correggio, but Sterne’s inclusion of the mocking “corregiescity of Corregio,” an artist unmentioned by Reynolds, may be accounted for by the claim of the Annual Register in 1760 that “Among us, any action that is singularly graceful, is termed Correggiesque” (quoted by OED). This volume appears in the Catalogue of Sterne’s library, though the presence of other owners’ books in it makes it tricky to use as evidence of Sterne’s reading, as does the fact that he bought seven hundred books at once “dog cheap” in July 1761 (Letters, 142).
6. the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands: taken nearly verbatim from Reynolds’ Idler No. 76, Johnson, Works 2:237.
7. Apollo … Mercury: the god of the arts, as opposed to the god of merchandise.
8. St. Paul’s thumb … God’s flesh and God’s fish: As Work notes, Richard III swears