The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [313]
CHAP. XXXVI
1. Van Helmont: Jean Baptiste Van Helmont (1577–1644), physician, chemist, and alchemist. The whole discussion comes from Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle’s Life of William Cavendish (1667). Florida credits Wilfred Watson, “Sterne’s Satire of Mechanism: A Study of Tristram Shandy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1951) with this observation.
2. Aristotle … triste: Passages close to “All animals are sad after coitus” can be found in such works of Aristotle as Of the Generation of Animals (1.18.725b).
CHAP. XXXVII
1. siege of Jerico itself: Jericho is destroyed in Joshua 6.
2. siege of Limerick: August 1690; raised August 30 on account of heavy rains.
3. Œdipus: In Greek mythology, Oedipus solved the baffling riddle of the Sphinx.
CHAP. XXXVIII
1. toises: A toise is a French measure equal to 6.395 English feet.
2. malefactors … clergy: had the right to the plea of “benefit of clergy,” the original presumption being that those who could read were clergymen and as such exempt from the secular court’s punishment for a first offense, typically hanging for “the worst malefactors.” See NLD, “Clergy.”
CHAP. XXXIX
1. phimosis: a contraction of the foreskin so that it cannot be pulled back.
CHAP. XL
1. flux: dysentery.
2. geneva: gin.
3. vapours: roughly, depression.
4. consubstantials, impriments, and occludents: The phrase derives from Francis Bacon (by way of Chambers) and means, respectively, similar things (homeopathic medicines), things imprinted, and things that close up.
5. emperic: quack.
CHAP. XLI
1. cataplasm: a poultice, or warm compress, usually medicated.
2. chear … land: a saying attributed to Diogenes the Cynic (412–c. 323 BCE).
CHAP. XLII
1. Christ-cross-row to Malachi: from the alphabet to the last book of the Old Testament.
2. -ing it: that is, learning one’s conjugations by rote, for this is the paradigmatic Greek verb. With a play on “tiptoe.”
3. probations … negations: logical terms: proofs and disproofs.
4. statue … block: a commonplace notion, perhaps deriving from Michelangelo.
5. Julius Scaliger … Peter Damianus … Baldus: Most of the information here is found together in Walker’s Of Education (114), whom Sterne is about to parody again. Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), Italian scholar and critic, who settled in France; Pietro Baldi de Ubaldis (1327–1406), Italian jurist, who actually began to study law at seventeen; St. Pietro Damiani (c. 1007–72), cardinal and theologian.
6. Eudamidas … Xenocrates: This story of Eudamidas, King of Sparta, and the philosopher Xenocrates (396–314 BCE) appears in Plutarch’s Moralia.
7. North-west passage: the desired water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, long and fruitlessly sought.
8. all fields … auxiliary verbs: another parody of Walker. In his chapter 11, Walker discusses commonplaces and auxiliary verbs, and Sterne uses many passages verbatim or nearly verbatim, including the sententious “all Fields have not a River or a Spring in them” (142). Walker mentions Raymond Lullius (Ramon Llull or Lully, 1232/33–1315/16), Spanish poet and theologian, for his “art of finding truth” (143), and Matteo Pellegrini (1595–1652), Italian scholar, for his Fonti del’ ingegno (Foundations of Invention reduced to an Art), on which Walker bases his own method (144). Walker uses the term “versability,” which he calls “speedy comparing” (130), and has as exalted a notion of “high metaphors” (145) as Walter, though he has a very different idea of imagination.
9. Virgil’s snake: Probably, as Florida notes, Aeneid: “As when some Peasant in a bushy Brake, / Has with unwary footing press’d a snake; / He starts aside, astonish’d, when he spies / His rising Crest, blue Neck, and rowling Eyes” (John Dryden trans., ed. James Kinsley [Oxford: 1958], 3:105; book 2, 510–14).
10. Danes: mercenaries hired from the king of Denmark by William III.
11. an please your honour … corporal: added to second edition.
CHAP. XLIII
1. am; was … Zodiac: Walker’s discussion of auxiliary verbs (144) is Walter’s nearly verbatim, and concludes “what would