The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [320]
4. muscle: This may derive from Burton, who speaks of “many examples: as of him that thought himselfe a shell-fish; of a Nunne, and of a desperate Monk that would not be perswaded but that he was damned …” (1.1.3.2, 32). Hall-Stevenson (the model for Eugenius) may have been taking advantage of this passage on shellfish in writing about lobsters, oysters, mussels, and cloisters in “The Doctor and the Student,” Fable 2 of his Makarony Fables (1768).
5. by sin … world: Romans 5:12.
6. by the throat: Sterne might have thought this literally true of himself. In May 1762, he experienced a “fever” that caused him to lose his “voice entirely” (Letters, 164); see also Cash, Later Years, 148–49. He never recovered it fully.
7. will gallop: a play on “galloping consumption,” rapidly progressing tuberculosis.
8. Garonne … Joppa: The Garonne is the main river of southwest France and flows through Bordeaux. Mount Vesuvius is an active volcano on the Bay of Naples in Italy. Sterne would travel to France again for his health later in the year of publication (1765) and on to Italy (1765–66). His last book, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768), did not reach Italy because he died fewer than three weeks after its first two volumes appeared, but that trip is mentioned in IX, xxiv. Joppa was an ancient city of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, now called Jaffa.
9. Allons!: (French) Let’s go!
CHAP. II
1. Rochester … Chatham … St. Thomas at Canterbury: towns on the road to Dover, port of embarkation to France. Thomas à Becket (c. 1118–70), murdered at the behest of King Henry II, is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
2. sick as a horse: Nausea unrelieved by vomiting: horses cannot vomit (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [Philadelphia, 1898]).
3. nervous juices … volatile salts: “Nervous juices” (i.e., juices of the nerves) are a synonym for “animal spirits.” See Chambers, “Nervous Spirit or Juice.” See also, I, i, n. 1. For alchemists and early chemists, salt was a basic element of all substances. When heated, fixed salts remain; volatile salts rise. See Chambers, “Salt.”
CHAP. III
1. the most about: the most roundabout.
2. Chantilly: a great tourist attraction for the château with magnificent stables owned by the Prince de Condé.
CHAP. IV
1. Addison: The reference is to Joseph Addison’s Remarks on Italy (London, 1705), which begins with his saying that he “took care to refresh my memory among the Classic authors.” Sterne’s view was widespread. Fielding in his “Dedication” to A Voyage to Lisbon (London, 1753) regarded Addison as “a commentator on the classics, rather than as a writer of travels.” Samuel Johnson observed, “of many parts it is not a very severe censure to say that they might have been written at home” (Lives of the Poets, ed. G. B. Hill [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905], 2:87).
2. dry shod: Sterne attributes a similar idea to Don Quixote: “how many a foul step the Inquisitive Traveller has measured to see sights and look into discoveries; all which, as Sancho Pança said to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry-shod at home” (Sentimental Journey, 6:16). See also Don Quixote, 2.3.5, 46.
3. Democritus … Ephesus: Democritus, “the laughing philosopher” of Abdera, was often opposed to Heracleitus of Ephesus (c. 540–c. 480 BCE), “the weeping philosopher,” whom Stanley in his History of Philosophy (1687) depicts as turning power in Ephesus over to his brother (738), but the notion of both as town clerks undoubtedly derives from Burton, who calls Democritus “Law-maker, Recorder, or Townclerke” (“Democritus Junior to the Reader,” 2).
CHAP. V
1. Calatium … Calesium: Van R. Baker, “Sterne, and Piganiol de la Force: The Making of Volume VII of Tristram Shandy,” Comparative Literature Studies 13 (1976): 5–14, details Sterne’s parody