The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [306]
17. Lady Baussiere … rode on: The episode is constructed on one in Burton (3.1.3.3, 426–27) in which the uncharitable “ride on” without concern. Noted by Ferriar, 1:97–98.
18. curate of d’Estella: Diego de Estella’s de la Vanidad del mundo (On the Contempt of the World, 1562) is convincingly identified as the book by Florida for its chapter “Against idle wordes” (trans. George Cotton [1622], 439). Sterne may have been interested in Estella because the name means “star.” Given that “sterne” was sometimes used for “star,” especially in Yorkshire, Sterne could be identified as a curate whose name means “star.” See also David A. Brewer, “Scholia” 30 (1998): 91.
19. chamber-pots: In chapter i of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), Tobias Smollett objected to readers who “stop their noses with all the signs of loathing and abhorrence, at a bare mention of the china chamber-pot” (ed. Jerry C. Beasley [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988], 10). But in ch. xiv of the second edition of Peregrine Pickle (1758), Smollett deleted an episode in which Peregrine drills holes in the chamber pot of Trunnion and his bride.
20. trouse: knee-breeches, probably of the close-fitting sort, which accentuate the buttocks and thighs.
21. a ramping and a roaring lion: probably derived from the Latin of Psalm 22:13, “leo rapiens et rugiens.” Christopher Smart, for example, translates this phrase as “ramping roaring lion” (A Translation of the Psalms of David [London, 1765], 19).
CHAP. II
1. Scotch horse … PATRIOT is sold: A political allegory: the Earl of Bute, unpopular Scottish prime minister, had replaced Pitt (Patriot) when George III became king. Sterne chose Pitt as his dedicatee for the second edition of his first two volumes and would do so again in vol. IX.
2. Sanson’s: Nicolas Sanson (1600–67), cartographer, and geographer to the king of France.
3. Agrippina … death: Although Sterne would have read Tacitus’s Annals, where the account occurs, this anecdote undoubtedly came from Burton’s “Against sorrow for death of friends or otherwise, vain feare, &c.” (Anatomy 2.3.5, 337) with much else of relevance to Walter’s oration here. Ferriar first noted Burton as source (1:99–108).
CHAP. III
1. either Plato … friends or children: The catalogue of famous authors, which parodies the offhand quotation of an authority, is selectively compiled from Burton (2.3.1.1, 303). Philosophers are followed by a more miscellaneous group including the satirist Lucian, the physician and autobiographer Jerome Cardan, the classicist Guillaume Budé, the poet Petrarch, and the religious writer Diego de Stella (see ch. i, n. 18 above). Among the saints, Austin is Augustine; Barnard, Bernard. The actual sentiment is from Plutarch (Moralia, 2.3.110–11), translated by Burton (2.3.5, 339).
2. Seneca … before his death: Lucius Annæus Seneca the elder (c. 54 BCE–39 CE), rhetorician: “sometimes ’tis good to be miserable in misery: and for the most part all grief evacuates itself by tears” (Burton, 2.3.5, 339). Apollodorus and Crito, who attempted to dissuade Socrates from drinking hemlock in Plato’s Phædo, are also found here. The rest of the passage, slightly rewritten from Burton (1.2.4.7, 163) gives the examples of David (2 Samuel 18:33–19:4); Adrian (the Roman emperor Hadrian [76–138] at the suicide of his favorite, Antinous); Niobe, the mythological mother who was punished by Apollo and Artemis for bragging of her fecundity.
3. he neither … Germans: modeled upon but not following the national examples of Burton (2.3.5, 342).
4. Tully: a version of things Pliny is quoted as saying of his daughter Virginius in Burton (1.2.4.7, 162) combined with Cicero’s philosophical consolations after the death of his daughter (2.3.5, 339).
5. A blessing … befallen him: New suggests plausibly that this calculus comes from Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722), 36. Such notions, however, go back through Francis Hutcheson to Hobbes; and William