The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [296]
1. scarce: Sterne was recognized as an excellent Latinist by fellow churchmen. The English sometimes changes or embroiders upon the original in ways that suggest he probably wrote the Latin first.
2. Strasburg: Strasbourg is a French city on the border with Germany in Alsace.
3. scabbard: While literally a lost scabbard, Sterne’s Latin plays with the bawdy implications of vaginam perdidisse.
4. Rem penitus explorabo: literally, I will explore the thing deeply (Latin). “Thing” is slang for female genitals. Cf. Argumentum ad Rem, I, xxi, n. 22. In this context penitus slips from its meaning.
5. Benedicity: Bless me!
6. pudding’s end: As noted above (II, vi, n. 2), “pudding” is also slang for a penis, though the phrase accurately translates a word meaning “not at all” (nequaquam).
7. burgomaster’s wife: The Bürgermeister is the chief magistrate of a German town or city.
8. saint Nicolas: probably as the patron saint of travelers.
9. : Perisomate (Greek); Florida notes that this is the biblical girdle with which the loins are girded up.
10. cod-piece: a prominent appurtenance in men’s close-fitting breeches prior to the eighteenth century, often ornamented. A “cod” is a scrotum.
11. saint Radagunda: Born in Germany (Thuringia), St. Radegund (c. 520–587), Foundress of the Convent of Our Lady at Poitiers and patron saint of Jesus College, Cambridge, from which Sterne graduated in 1737, seems appropriate for Strasburgundian oaths, though she does not appear in the Latin. She will reappear in a bawdy context in VII, xliii, and perhaps this is the innkeeper’s wife’s association.
12. Compline-bells: bells calling Catholics to the last sacred service of the day.
13. queen Mab: Although she is widely recognized as queen of the fairies in folklore and literature, Mab’s effect upon dreams in Mercutio’s speech in Romeo and Juliet (1.4.53–94) is undoubtedly Sterne’s source. Appropriately, she is “drawn with a team of little atomi / Over men’s noses as they lie asleep” (57–58).
14. Quedlingberg: located in Germany.
15. placket holes: Although Sterne is the first listed as using this combined form for the “opening[s] in the outer skirt to give access to the pocket[s] within” (OED), the word “placket” itself had long been used in obscene senses.
16. the pineal gland of her brain: See II, xix, n. 12 above.
17. penitentiaries … Carthusians: Penitentiaries are members of a religious order of penitents, in this case possibly a lay (third) order, as opposed to monks, nuns, etc. These are orders, respectively, of Franciscans, Benedictines, Augustinians (also known as Norbertians for their founder, St. Norbert), Benedictines, and Carthusians.
18. saint Antony … fire: St. Anthony’s fire, or erysipelas, is a disease characterized by a painful reddening of the skin starting at the ear, thought to be cured by praying to St. Anthony.
19. nuns of saint Ursula: the Ursuline order.
20. capitulars: those belonging to the chapter of a church.
21. domiciliars: “canon[s] belonging to a minor order with no voice in the chapter” (OED, giving Sterne as the sole example).
22. butter’d buns: “One lying with a woman that has just lain with another man, is said to have buttered bun” (Grose).
23. Martin Luther: Following his rejection of certain doctrines of the Catholic church in the early 1520s, Luther (1483–1546) wrote open letters to the councils of a number of cities, including Strasbourg, cautioning against social unrest. His religious principles led to Protestantism and influenced the Peasants’ War of 1524–25. Strasbourg turned largely to Protestantism by 1534.
24. Chrysippus … Crantor … porticos: For the first, a Stoic, see II, xix, n. 8. The stoa (roughly, “portico”) gave the philosophical school its name. Crantor (c. 330–270 BCE), a Platonist of the Old Academy, was known for his writings on ethics. Horace’s reference to the two of them in Epistles, 1.2.3–4, may account for the pairing.
25. faculty: here, medical doctors.
26. œdematous: swollen with viscous fluid.
27. statical: pertaining to the action or process of weighing