The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [312]
CHAP. XXX
1. Euclid: Euclid (fl. c. 300 BCE), Egyptian mathematician, known best for his treatise of geometry, the Elements.
2. scrutoir: écritoire; writing cabinet (old French).
3. snuff’d the candle: here, freed it from the snuff, by cutting it (see OED).
CHAP. XXXI
1. Politian: Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), Italian poet and classical scholar. Although an undiscovered source in Politian may exist, what Walter says is found along with the quotation, accurately amended by Yorick, from Hesiod’s Works and Days (c. 700 BCE) in Aristotle’s Politics (1.1, 2–5).
2. For when the ground … origin of fortification: a standard idea.
3. argutely: sharply, shrewdly. Sterne’s is the sole example given by OED from the eighteenth century.
4. she is not the principal agent: a subject of contention between Filmer and Locke, relating to the fifth commandment, which Trim quotes in the next chapter. Locke questions “how our author infers from the fifth commandment, that all ‘power was originally in the father’; how he finds ‘monarchical power of government settled and fixed by the fifth commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother.’ If all the honour due by the commandment, be it what it will, be the only right of the father, because he, as our author says, ‘has the sovereignty over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation,’ why did God afterwards all along join the mother with him, to share in his honour?” (Two Treatises, 1.6.62, 186). For Filmer, see I, xviii, n. 11 above. Walter, a follower of Filmer, is opposed by Yorick, who voices some of Locke’s responses to Filmer.
5. Justinian … tenth section: Work notes that the Institutes of Justinian do not support the son’s respect for the mother, but only that the children are not “under the power and jurisdiction of the mother.”
CHAP. XXXII
1. fifth Commandment: See ch. xxxi, n. 4 above for Filmer and Locke on this issue.
2. Catechumen: a new convert in the process of learning.
3. Every thing … big with jest … wit in it: Cf. George Herbert, “All things are bigge with jest: nothing that’s plain, / But may be wittie, if thou hast the vein” (“The Church-Porch,” lines 239–40). Noted by Herbert Rauter, “Eine Anleihe Sternes bei George Herbert,” Anglia 80 (1963), 290–94.
4. glass … bear-leaders: a mirror; tutors, perceived as showing trained bears on the grand tour of Europe.
5. SCIENCES … WISDOM NOT: A pithier version of an observation in Walker’s Of Education, 118. “Sciences” are fields of knowledge. For Walker, see V, xvi, n. 2 above.
6. determinate idea: Locke claims that “Knowledge and reasoning require precise determinate ideas” (Essay, 3.10.22). By “determinate” Locke means a “clear and distinct idea” which is conveyed by a word that remains “steadily the sign of that very same object of the mind” (Essay, “Epistle to the Reader”).
7. the Decalogue: the Ten Commandments.
8. the Talmud: Jewish laws and commentaries, developed from the first five books of the Old Testament.
CHAP. XXXIII
1. Blessed … treasure: verbatim from Burton (1.2.4.7, 170), who cites Ecclesiasticus 30:15. Ferriar noted the source (1:109–10).
2. radical heat and the radical moisture: discussed in ch. xxxvi below, and see II, iii, n. 12, and IV, xix, n. 4.
3. MOONITES: Sterne is the first to use this term.
CHAP. XXXIV
1. Hippocrates … Verulam … brevis: Walter’s translation of Hippocrates: “Art is long, life short” (Aphorisms, 1) comes verbatim from Francis Bacon, whose title was Earl of Verulam. Florida notes that Sterne obtained this material and more, including the medical terminology, from Mackenzie, History of Health (1758), whom he uses in the next chapters as well.
2. stage-loads: Mountebanks sold nostrums from platforms or stages. The word is unrecorded by OED.
3. glisters … succedaneums: clysters (enemas); remedies.
CHAP. XXXV
1. The two … life: The Bacon quotations come from Mackenzie.
2. spicula: a pointy or prickly body.