The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [319]
2. March to November: The army would remain in quarters during the winter.
3. Dunkirk … stipulation: The account in this chapter comes from Tindal, 4:327–28.
4. mole: a breakwater. Sterne’s dropping “dykes” from “mole and dykes,” repeating “to spare,” and adding “for the mole’s sake”—all departures from what is otherwise verbatim Tindal—support Florida’s suggestion of a pun on “penis.”
CHAP. XXXV
1. STILLNESS … SILENCE … mantle: “Now came still Ev’ning on … Silence accompanied, … till the Moon … o’er the dark her Silver Mantle threw” (Paradise Lost 4.598–609). Credited by Florida to Dustin Griffin.
CHAP. XXXVI
1. compleat systems … love-making: Much of this account of Plotinus (205–270), a Platonist philosopher, and Ficinus (Marsilio Ficino, 1433–99), philosopher and theologian, comes from Burton (3.1.1.2, 408–9), who adds that Ficinus follows Plato.
2. Baynyard … Cantharidis: The passage draws on Baynard’s essay in Sir John Floyer and Edward Baynard, Psychrolousia, or, The History of Cold Bathing (1702). Cantharidis, popularly known as Spanish Fly, was a blistering agent sometimes used as an aphrodisiac.
3. Nazianzen … passions: Gregory Nazianzen (329–89) to Philagrius in his Letters, 32. The quotation is freely translated from the Greek. Work indicates it is not ironic in context.
4. Nor … again: Much, though not all, comes from Burton, who mentions cucumbers, water lilies, and purslane, as well as Rhasis, Ælian (not Aætius, whom Burton quotes elsewhere) on the herb Hanea (3.2.5.1, 543), and Gordonius arguing for flagellation, though not as quoted (542). Burton mentions topaz elsewhere as diminishing madness and as calming, but not as a sexual refrigerant. The figures named are medical authorities.
5. camphorated cerecloth: This too comes from Burton, who says that camphor “renders the member flaccid” (3.2.5.1, 544). A cerecloth is a waxed cloth, often medicated, used as a warm compress.
CHAP. XXXVIII
1. MALICE … IGNORANCE … misrepresent: Cf. Tom Jones: “[T]here is no Conduct so fair and disinterested, but that it may be misunderstood by Ignorance, and misrepresented by Malice” (12.1, 620). In noting this convincing allusion, Ian Campbell Ross observes that it comes in a chapter on “unacknowledged borrowings from other writers,” a particular interest of Sterne’s. See “Did Sterne Read Tom Jones?,” The Shandean 13 (2003): 109–11.
CHAP. XL
1. cold seeds: Along with those of the cucumber, mentioned in ch. xxxvi above as cooling off lovers, gourd and pumpkin seeds were thought to “cool the blood and compose the passions” (Work).
2. Inv. T.S.… Scul. TS: the standard indication that this engraving was invented (i.e., designed [invenit]) and engraved (sculpsit, literally, sculpted) by Tristram Shandy. Cf. the frontispiece to this edition.
3. right line … divines: Work suggests Hebrews 12:13 (“straight paths”).
4. Cicero: Watt points to Cicero’s use of recta via (“the right path”) in his writings.
5. cabbage-planters: fornicators.
6. Archimedes: See I, xix, n. 4 above. Archimedes’s first assumption is that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points (On the Sphere and the Cylinder, 1.1).
7. birth-day suits: fancy clothing worn to celebrate the king’s birthday, but with a play on nakedness.
VOL. VII
EPIGRAPH
1. Non … ipsum est: “This is not a digression from it, but the work itself” (Latin). Pliny the Younger, Epistles, 5.6.44. For Pliny, see I, xix, xx.
CHAP. I
1. fountain of life: Perhaps “The knowledge of a wise man shall abound like a flood: and his counsel is like a pure fountain of life” (Ecclesiasticus 21:13), though Psalms 36:9 and Proverbs 14:27 are also possibilities.
2. mounting … long stick: the simplest form of hobbyhorse.
3. DEATH … door: Thomas Patch, the caricaturist, painted this scene and engraved it (1765–69?), an indication that the chapter was recognized as part of the tradition, primarily visual but also literary, of the “dance of death,” to which Sterne seems to allude when Tristram says on the following page, reversing the relationship of