The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [294]
CHAP. XXXIV
1. state of nature … could: The language, especially the series of rhetorical questions, parodies Locke’s comments on the apple found in the state of nature in the second of his Two Treatises on Government (2.5.27–28). Ex confesso means “avowedly.” Tristram continues and subverts Locke’s theory of labor and property in the next paragraph.
2. Gregorius … Hermogenes’s … Justinian’s … codes of Louis and Des Eaux: See Chambers, “Code.” As Work notes, Des Eaux is not an author but the title of a book on bodies of water and forests.
3. exsudations: Variant spelling of “exudations”: oozings.
CHAP. XXXV
1. Bruscambille’s prologue: Florida notes the likelihood that this information on le Sieur de Laurier’s Pensées facétieuses (Cologne, 1709) actually comes from Ozell’s notes to Rabelais, which mentions the prologue on noses, although interestingly Bruscambille mentions Trismegistus, who will later play a significant role in Tristram’s naming. For an argument that Sterne read the book, see Jeffrey R. Smitten, “Tristram Shandy and Spatial Form,” Ariel 8 (1977): 45. W. G. Day first linked Ozell to this passage in “Sterne and Ozell,” ES 53 (1972): 434–36.
2. Piccadilly to Coleman-street: From Piccadilly Circus to Colman Street, in the financial center (“the City”), is a long walk to the east.
3. Prignitz … Scroderus, Andrea Paræus, Bouchet’s Evening Conferences … Hafen Slawkenbergius: Prignitz, if not a joke, is unidentified. Joachim Scroderus, who will later be identified as “Scroderus (Andrea)” in III, xxxviii, and as “J. Scrudr.” in a footnote to “Slawkenbergius’s Tale” (IV), published Disputatio de Musculis in genere et horum motionibus (1617), according to Nicolas Barker, “The Library Catalogue of Laurence Sterne,” The Shandean 1 (1989): 9–24. Ambrose Paré (1510–90), a military surgeon, is given his correct first name in III, xxxviii. Both the references to Paré and Guillaume Bouchet (1513–93), whose Serées were published in three books (1584–98), can be found in a footnote of Ozell’s to Rabelais on noses (1.40; 1:319, n. 12). The name Slawkenbergius derives perhaps, as Work suggests, from “Schlackenberg,” German for “hill of excrement,” and “Hafen,” meaning “chamber pot.”
CHAP. XXXVI
1. dialogue … noses: Colloquia Familiaria (1522–33) vi, “De Captandis Sacerdotiis” (“Of Benefice-Hunters”) by Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536), one of the figures in Sterne’s tradition of satirist-priests, the author of The Praise of Folly, humanist and scholar. This discussion of the uses of noses is, surprisingly, not sexual.
2. astride of your imagination: another echo of Swift’s A Tale of a Tub: “when a Man’s Fancy gets astride on his Reason, when Imagination is at Cuffs with the Senses” (171). Cf. II, v, n. 1 above.
3. to frisk it … Tickletoby’s mare: While the word “toby” may mean either the male or female genitals and “tickletoby” suggests a range of obscene and innocuous meanings, Sterne abridged the italicized passage from Rabelais’s description of a trick played on Friar Stephen Tickletoby (4.13) in Motteux’s translation.
4. (ab urb. con.) … second Punic war: as a Roman historian might date things: ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city, in 753 BCE. The second war between Rome and Carthage was fought from 218 to 201 BCE.
5. saint Paraleipomenon: evidently, the patron saint of scholars who omit things (see OED, where the Greek term is traced back to the heading of a book of the New Testament). Cf. the mention of “Sir Paraleipomenon” in Don Quixote (2.3.40; 4:47).
6. marbled page (motly emblem … mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one: The marbled pages, strikingly in full color and different in every copy, as far as is known, seem indeed “motley” or many-colored emblems of the book. The term refers to a thread of several colors and hence to the parti-colored cloth associated with the jester or fool. Cf. Tristram’s reference to his “fool’s cap” (I, vi). The “dark veil” is a traditional phrase