The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [303]
3. two parts jest and one part earnest: The phrase appears as “betwixt jest and earnest” in Burton (2.2.3, 255), Andrew Marvell, and elsewhere. Florida notes the recommendation of such a tone in religious controversy. Sterne is often concerned about proportions of emotion or expression. But cf. also “after the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest,—but ending in downright earnest” (I, xix, 41).
4. lawyers … land: The book from which this comes, as Tristram indicates, is Henry Swinburne’s A Briefe Treatise of Testaments (1640), which Sterne also drew upon for the legal footnote in “Slawkenbergius’s Tale.” The Duke of Suffolk’s case appears here. Swinburne does not agree with Kysarcius.
5. jactitation: OED gives Sterne as the sole illustration of the obsolete meaning “discussion; bandying to and fro.”
6. Brook: Sir Robert Brook, Some New Cases … Written out of the Grand Abridgement, trans. Sir John March et al. (London, 1657).
7. Lord Coke: Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), English judge and foremost interpreter of English law prior to William Blackstone.
8. Edward the Sixth: Edward VI reigned from 1547 to 1553. Charles Brandon, third Duke of Suffolk, died in 1551, on the same day as his older brother, the second Duke.
9. venter: “one or other of two or more wives who are (successively or otherwise) sources of offspring to the same person” (OED).
10. statute of the 21st of Harry the Eighth: enacted in the twenty-first year of Henry VIII’s reign.
11. juris-consulti—the juris-prudentes: counselors at law; legal scholars (law Latin).
12. consistory and prerogative … York: Consistory courts are courts for ecclesiastical causes and offenses. Prerogative courts handle wills and administrations appealed from lower courts. Sterne served as commissary for ecclesiastical courts. See Cash, Early and Middle Years, ch. 12.
13. kin to her child: Tristram’s footnote, which gives the original Latin, comes (by way of Swinburne) from Pietro Baldi de Ubaldis, Of the Signification of Words [and Things], a commentary on Justinian’s Civil Laws.
14. Liberi … liberorum: Latin; translated earlier in the sentence with the addition of “or seed,” as in his source.
15. levitical law: Leviticus 3:7–23 covers the various prohibitions. It says nothing of grandmothers.
16. Selden: See Table Talk: Being the Discourses of John Selden, 2nd ed., ed. S. I. Milward (London, 1696), “The King,” 84. Selden gives it as an analogy of bad logic in charging Pym with treason because the parliamentarians charged followers of the king with treason.
17. Argumentum commune: common argument (Latin); but with a play on “argument of common use.”
CHAP. XXX
1. sad: New suggests “sad” in place of the text’s “said.”
CHAP. XXXI
1. loop of his hat: an indication of distraction.
2. Hippocrates: Work suggests that this medical comment comes from Dr. James Mackenzie, whom Tristram mentions with Hippocrates in II, i, History of Health, and the Art of Preserving It (1758), 2.2.6, 3.
3. inclose the great Ox-moor: This moor is not a marsh, but “an area of unenclosed, uncultivated land held by a proprietor or as common land by a town, village, etc.” (OED). His act would both improve it and take it out of common use.
4. Missisippi-scheme: a stock company organized by John Law in France with sole rights to Louisiana territory trade. Shares rose rapidly, and fortunes were lost in France (and to a lesser extent in England) when the financial bubble burst in 1720, and Law’s company went bankrupt.
5. whinny: covered with whins (prickly shrubs).
6. ingress, egress, and regress: For the source of this sexually suggestive phrase, see I, xv, n. 10 above.
7. feather put into his cap: “honor without profit” (Tilley F157).
8. tantum valet … quantum sonat: it is worth as much as it sounds (Latin).
9. lasts of rape: Rape is a Eurasian plant used as animal fodder. A “last” is “a commercial denomination of weight, capacity, or quantity,