The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [326]
2. Pope and his Portrait: Tristram’s description of himself, which he claims goes beyond Pope (“half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up”) suggests that he has in mind the excellent portrait by Jean Baptiste Van Loo (1742) with Pope leaning forward in a chair with his right hand touching his head (one of the conventions of the portraiture of genius) and looking upward, as though for inspiration. Sterne would be likeliest to know this depiction of Pope from the mezzotint of John Faber (c. 1744) after the version Pope gave to his lawyer John Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield. See William Kurtz Wimsatt, The Portraits of Alexander Pope (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 312–19, 326–28.
3. TARTUFFE: from Molière’s comedy by that name (1664). Sterne speaks of “Hypocrites and Tartufe’s” (sic) in a letter to Dr. John Eustace (Letters, 411).
CHAP. III
1. blood … periclitating, pardi: The enumeration of eighteenth-century cures includes bloodletting, an enema or suppository (“glister,” an obsolete term for a “clyster”), and mercurous chloride (“calomel”). Tristram appropriately concludes that this is “imperiling, indeed.” The OED lists Sterne as the last and only eighteenth-century use of the obsolete transitive verb. It lists one of Sterne’s favorite texts, Motteux’s translation of Rabelais, as using the intransitive. “Pardi” is literally the mild French oath, “by God.”
2. mask: Black velvet masks were worn to the theater and other places where a woman risked her reputation. They were also worn by prostitutes.
3. archbishop: Sterne’s own great-grandfather Dr. Richard Sterne (d. 1683) was Archbishop of York (1664–83).
CHAP. IV
1. Cuckoldom: the old notion that the husband of an adulterous wife is the only one who does not know, or the last who comes to know.
CHAP. V
1. pined: wasted. That the lame man is sexually desirable is found in Burton (3.2.3.2, 460), whose example of Venus’s love for Vulcan is one likely source of the notion.
2. grinding the faces: “What mean ye that ye … grind the faces of the poor?” (Isaiah 3:15).
3. Longinus: “When Parmenio cried ‘I would accept these Proposals if I was Alexander,’ Alexander made this noble Reply, ‘And so would I, if I was Parmenio.’ His Answer shew’d the Greatness of his Mind.” See On the Sublime, ed. Smith (1.9, 19). Some modern translations lack this passage.
CHAP. VI
1. fifth and sixth volumes: Sterne was greatly disappointed that sales of this installment did not reach expectations, and the reviews, despite praise for sentimental passages, were generally critical. As of April 1763 slightly over 3000 of 4000 copies printed had been sold. He writes of finishing these volumes in which he lodges the complaint in November 1764 (Letters, 192, 234).
2. asthma: mentioned in I, v. It was regarded as the forerunner of consumption.
3. quirister: obsolete for chorister, choirboy.
CHAP. VIII
1. sempster: the masculine of “sempstress,” or seamstress.
2. case-knife: a knife with a sheath.
CHAP. IX
1. day-shifts: Sterne’s punning neologism for dress worn in the day as opposed to “night-shift” (nightdress).
2. Flemish ells: twenty-seven inches each.
3. corking pin: a pin of the largest size.
CHAP. X
1. old hat cock’d: Cf. V, viii, n. 1.
CHAP. XI
1. Tartary to Terra del Fuogo: Like Samuel Johnson’s “from China to Peru,” this phrase suggests a range from one part of the globe to another: from Asia, east of the Ural mountains, where the Tartars lived, to the tip of South America (Tierra del Fuego). Florida, noting the literal meaning of the latter (“land of fire”) and the slang meaning of “fugo” (the rectum), plausibly suggests that Sterne’s bawdy is present early in the sentence.
2. hirsute and gashly … furr’d cap: The OED illustrates “gashly” as a term