The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [321]
2. the principles of their diet: alludes to the belief that seafood led to sexual potency.
3. La Tour de Guet: watchtower.
4. Philip of France: Philippe VI (1293–1350).
5. Tête de Gravelenes: fortifications facing the lower town (basse ville) of Gravelines.
6. campaign: open field (from French).
7. Eustace de St. Pierre: one of the six burghers of Calais, commemorated in the nineteenth century by Rodin’s famous sculpture group, who became permanent hostages in 1347 to save the city.
8. Rapin’s own words: Sterne’s primary source of English history devotes only a page to the siege, on which Tristram draws for a few sentences in this chapter.
CHAP. VI
1. by that all powerful … my supper: Mountains, wind, and the visionary suggest that Sterne is parodying the Ossian poems of James Macpherson, as at least one early reviewer noted. See Thomas Keymer, Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel (Oxford, 2002), 165–66.
CHAP. VII
1. size-ace: six and one at dice: the highest number and the lowest.
2. ma chere fille: my dear girl (French).
3. debt of NATURE: death.
4. SEMINARY for the HUMANITIES: Piganiol mentions the Catholic Oratory, in which the Humanities were taught by priests, therefore a droll notion for Sterne.
CHAP. VIII
1. the most … speed: proverbial.
CHAP. IX
1. MONTREUIL … inn-keeper’s daughter: Yorick takes this route in Sentimental Journey and speaks of “Janatone” there as well (Florida, 6:39ff.). Although the name is stereotypical, she may be the fictionalized daughter of the real innkeeper, Varennes.
2. slut: a widespread teasing and affectionate use of the term, without necessarily suggesting bad character.
3. statue’s thumb: the allusion has not been found.
4. wettest drapery: this was the practice of classical sculptors, not painters.
5. Saint Austreberte: probably again from Piganiol (2:224). St. Austreberta (630–704) was a Benedictine abbess.
6. Reynolds: another bit of passing praise (here for his lifelike portraiture) for Reynolds.
7. devote: devotée (French).
8. terce … capotted: At the game of piquet, played with a shortened pack, the three lowest cards of a suit, seven to nine, form a tierce minor, worth three points. To be piqued is to have your opponent score thirty points at play before you score, and to be repiqued is to score thirty points before play begins. Capot is the winning of all the tricks at play.
CHAP. X
1. Abbeville … spin: The French city of Abbeville was known for its weaving.
2. Book … post-roads: the Liste générale des postes de France, published annually from 1708 to 1799.
CHAP. XII
1. Genevieve: Ste. Geneviève (c. 422–c. 500), patron saint of Paris.
CHAP. XIII
1. wheel … Hall … rest: The biblical phrase (Psalms 83:13) and Joseph Hall’s comments, given close to verbatim, come from Quo Vadis: A Just Censure of Travell as it is Commonly Undertaken by the Gentlemen of our Nation (1617), where he actually continues: “Motion is ever accompanied with unquietnesse, and both argues, and causes imperfection, whereas the happy estate of heaven is described by rest” (90–91).
2. Ixion’s wheel: In Greek mythology, Ixion was punished for trying to seduce Hera, wife of Zeus, by being bound to a fiery wheel which rolled incessantly.
3. Pythagoreans … think well: New traces the Greek quotation to John Norris, Practical Discourses (1691), 2:41–42, who attributes it to the Pythagoreans and expatiates on the remark, though differently from Tristram, whose translation is somewhat looser: His “in order to think well” is Norris’s to “be good philosophers.”
CHAP. XIV
1. Lessius … millions: The specific comments of Leonardus Lessius (Léonard Leys) and Francisco Ribera, sixteenth-century Jesuits, on the size of Hell come from Burton (2.2.3, 246). A Dutch mile equals roughly 4.4 English miles;