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3. But where am I going?: the first of several echoes of Burton in a sexual context: “But where am I? What have I to do with Nunnes, Maids, Virgins, Widows” (1.3.2.4, 204). Ferriar notes a similar passage in VII, xiv, that draws on Burton (1:114), though not this one.

CHAP. XXX

1. mysogynists … Prusicus: Most of these are place names, not persons. There is no reason, for example, to think that Dardanus is the founder of Troy rather than being the city of that name, located in the same part of the world as the Bosphorus, a Turkish strait. Ulysses Aldrovandus (Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605) was a nobleman and naturalist, not a king. For the misogyny of Charles XII (1682–1718), king of Sweden, who was more generally emotionless as well (“iron-hearted”), see Voltaire, The History of Charles XII (London, 1732), 30. The Countess of Königsmark, charming and beautiful, was unable to effect a treaty. Work notes three of these names are allusions to Acts 2:9: “Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia.” Polixenes in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is no misogynist, though Leontes is. Persicus is a Latin form for “Persia” as borne in the triumphal title of many Roman emperors: “Persicus Maximus.” Work suggests that it could be an error for “Persius,” the chaste Latin satirist, and many of the geographical names were “borne by actual men.” Prusicus may well be a jab at Frederick the Great of Prussia, who would qualify as a misogynist.

2. basely … Utrecht: The Treaty of Utrecht, May 4, 1713, which brought the War of the Spanish Succession to an end, was widely reviled in England.

CHAP. XXXI

1. a surfeit of sieges: with a pun on defecation.

2. Calais … Mary’s heart: Mary, queen of England (1553–58), supposedly claimed that when she died, an autopsy would find Calais, the last English possession in France, at her heart. She died in the year of its loss.

3. harangues: speeches; there are no negative overtones.

4. Tertullus: the orator who accuses Paul (Acts 24:1–8). In his sermon “Felix’s Behaviour towards Paul,” Sterne says “—Spare thy eloquence Tertullus!… a more noble orator than thyself is risen up …” (Sermons, 4:178).

5. apologetical: An “apology” is a defense.

CHAP. XXXII

1. oration: The form owes something to the precedent of Don Quixote’s speech in favor of knight-errantry (1.4.10–11, 146–50). Yorick’s antiwar sentiments are verbatim from Burton’s attack on war (“Democritus Junior to the Reader,” 30), and a number of other verbal details in Toby’s oration appear there: “for six pence (if they can get it) a day”; “stand in the fore front of the battle, marching bravely on, with … drums and trumpets, … so many banners streaming in the air” (32). Sterne turns Burton’s “harmless, quiet … creature” of the creation (30) into Toby’s oxymoronic “getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands.”

2. Guy … England: These are eighteenth-century chapbook forms of popular romances. Guy, Earl of Warwick and Valentine and Orson date from fifteenth-century France. Emanuel Ford’s sixteenth-century Parismus, Prince of Bohemia (Parismenos is his son) imitated Spanish romances. Sterne again misnames Richard Johnson’s sixteenth-century The Seven Champions of Christendom, a collection of medieval tales of national saints. (See also I, xx, n. 2 above.)

3. Troy: Burton’s account of Troy lists the (putative) number of dead, rather than the characters of Homer’s Iliad (30). Helena is Helen of Troy, whose kidnapping by Paris led to the Trojan wars. Hector, the greatest Trojan hero, is killed by Achilles in Book 22. Priam successfully ransoms the body of his son in Book 24.

CHAP. XXXIII

1. fillet … thumb-stall: hair ribbon or headband; protective thumb covering.

2. Quanto … Cardan: from Burton, who attributes the comment to Fernelius (Jean Fernel, 1497–1558) and translates “how carefull then should wee bee in begetting of our children?” (64); noted by Ferriar, 1:92.

CHAP. XXXIV

1. queen: Queen Anne (1665–1714) reigned from 1702