The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [293]
7. foul-mouth’d trumpet of Fame: See I, xxiii, n. 8 above, though this is a mock-epic rendition of “gossip.”
8. soss: with a heavy sound; usually “with a soss.”
9. break his leg: Walter’s response indicates he’s referring to sexual slang: “a woman who has had a bastard, is said to have a broken leg” (Grose, 102).
10. petards: bell-shaped charges to blow open gates or doors.
11. BATTERING-RAMS … cast javelins: Florida notes that most, though not all, of this information could come from Chambers, “Machines.” The unexplained “BALLISTA,” a bow-like mechanism, hurled stones or spears.
12. sally port: an entrance, often through an underground passage, enabling a sudden attack from a fort, though here in Walter’s suggestive account giving way to besiegers.
13. phthisical: tubercular; consumptive.
14. reins: an archaic term for the kidneys or loins; here, following the biblical usage, as the seat of the affections (OED).
CHAP. XXV
1. Alberoni’s … discovered: Tindal, 4:582. Cardinal Giulio Alberoni (1664–1752) was effectively prime minister to Philip V of Spain. His intention of driving the Austrians from Italy led to war with their allies, including Great Britain. The irony is that Toby is right, though Walter convinces him at this time that the main battle will take place in Flanders, not Naples or Sicily.
2. For a whole … cycloid itself: drawn from Chambers, “Bridge,” though bridges at Spires and Brisac are not mentioned there. Jacques Bernouilli and Guillaume-François Antoine de l’Hôpital were great mathematicians. The cycloid curve is “traced in space by a point in the circumference (or on a radius) of a circle as the circle rolls along a straight line” (OED). Tristram’s putative source is the Acts of the Learned (Leipzig, 1695).
CHAP. XXVI
1. Savoyard’s box: a peep show containing perspective views, often of cities or rooms of houses. For examples, see Barbara Maria Stafford and Francis Terpak, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001), especially 237–38.
CHAP. XXIX
1. hit the longitude: In 1714 a prize of £20,000 was offered to the discoverer of a method for determining longitude at sea. In 1760, the first number of Smollett’s British Magazine ran a piece on the continuing problem (16–17).
CHAP. XXX
1. All … purse: proverbial.
CHAP. XXXI
1. jointure: the guaranteed annual income paid a wife as survivor of her husband, usually contracted in a marriage settlement.
2. define … precision … negligence and perverseness of writers: parodies Locke, Essay: “a definition is the only way, whereby the precise meaning of moral words can be known.… And therefore, the negligence, or perverseness of mankind cannot be excused, if their discourses in morality be not much more clear, than those in natural philosophy …” (3.11.17, 517). Noted by Pål Anderson, “Scholia” 32 (2000): 401–2.
3. polemical writings in divinity: as opposed to practical writings or sermons. Sterne’s attitude toward such religious controversialists as William Warburton may have been one of the driving forces behind Tristram Shandy.
4. Will o’ the Wisp: an illusive light (caused by swamp fire) thought by the superstitious to be a sprite.
5. father of confusion: the Devil.
CHAP. XXXII
1. Pantagruel … ENNASIN: Rabelais (4.9; 4:118). The notion that Tristram’s great-grandfather’s nose was “like an ace of clubs” comes from here.
CHAP. XXXIII
1. saving the mark: The phrase “save the mark” was probably originally uttered to ward off an evil omen, and by the eighteenth century as an apology for something mentioned or about to be mentioned. Interestingly, it may have arisen as the formula of “midwives at the birth of a child bearing a birthmark” (OED).
2. Michaelmas and Lady day: September 29 (the feast of St. Michael) and March 25 (the feast of the Annunciation).
3. cawl: A “caul” is the cap-like netting that supports the hair of a wig.
4. Defend me, gracious heaven: