The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [291]
2. Agelastes … Triptolemus … Phutatorius: The three names suggest, respectively, Greek for “one who never laughs”; a hero and demigod who presided as a judge of the dead; and a copulator.
3. Locke: Essay, 2.11.2. The idea was a commonplace.
4. de fartandi et illustrandi fallaciis: of the fallacies of farting and elucidating (Latin). Probably influenced by Rabelais’s “Ars honestè fartandi [petandi] in societate” (2.7; 2:48).
5. opacular: Sterne’s neologism for “opaque.”
6. thrice able critics: For his Preface, Tristram draws in several ways upon “The Author’s Prologue” and other parts of Rabelais, here for the formula “thrice precious pockified blades” (1: cxxii).
7. Monopolos … Kysarcius … Gastripheres … Somnolentius: Monopolist, Asskisser (cf. Rabelais’s Kiss-breech), Bellybearer (cf. Rabelais’s Gastrolaters), Sleepy.
8. gifts … memory … quick parts: These “inborn mental or physical endowments of a person; natural gifts or powers of mind (or body)” (OED) are the “naturals.” Cf. “non-naturals,” I, xxiii, n. 15 above.
9. be poured down warm … in or out: In this paragraph and the next Sterne draws upon Rabelais for his rhetoric (3.31, 3:210; 3.4, 3:39, 43, as Florida notes). While Rabelais discusses “the cavernous nerve whose office is to ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny,” Sterne uses eighteenth-century conventions for the representation of sexual climax. “Tunn’d” means poured, as into a liquor barrel.
10. tickle it off: used by Rabelais, 4, “The Author’s Prologue,” and elsewhere.
11. Chaste stars: “Let me not name it to you, you chaste Stars!” (Othello, 5.2.2).
12. milk and honey … land of promise: The first is a biblical commonplace (e.g., Leviticus 20:24); the second from Hebrews 11:9.
13. Nova Zembla: thought to be the coldest place on earth.
14. passions of a man … frigid as the zone itself: refers to the commonplace notion that national character derived from climate.
15. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!: Hamlet 1.4.39. (See also II, xix, n. 26 above.)
16. chapter: a meeting of the canons of a church.
17. plentiful a lack of wit: Hamlet speaking to Polonius of old men: Hamlet 2.2.199.
18. Norway … Tartary: As Florida suggests, Sterne must have been checking a map for this “trip.” From Finland (“North Lapland”) he moves through Sweden to a Gulf of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland (“lake of Bothnia”) and crosses to provinces (Carelia and Ingria) that became parts of modern Russia when ceded by Sweden in 1721. St. Petersburg was founded in 1703. He continues to the east until reaching Mongolia (“Asiatick Tartary”).
19. luxuriant island … humours runs high: The notion that England has more than its share of eccentrics or “humorists” was widespread. Addison’s Spectator, No. 371, speaks of a humorist who bored company with “the Siege of Namur, which lasted till four a-clock, their time of parting” (Spectator, 3:399), one possible model for Toby.
20. Suidas calls dialectick induction: Although thought to be a Greek author at the time, Suidas is a lexicon. Florida suggests that Sterne picked up this knowledge from Chambers, “Induction.”
21. How d’ye: often a message sent and not just a salutation.
22. coy mistress: possibly with Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” in mind. Sterne was a known reader of the relatively unknown Marvell, and the phrase was uncommon in literature. See Keymer, ch. 6, for the links between Sterne and Marvell. Keymer privately suggests Memoirs, 92.
23. groped … dark, all the nights of their lives: echoes Isaiah 59:9–10 and perhaps other passages. The latter phrase plays on biblical commonplaces, e.g., “all the days of their life” (Ecclesiastes 2:3).
24. posts … kennels: echoes Swift, A Tale of a Tub: “if [Jack] happened to bounce his Head against a Post or fall into the Kennel,” he claims it was predestined (192). “Kennels” are gutters.
25. tilting full butt: running headfirst (mixed with a jousting metaphor).
26. Esculapius: