The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [327]
3. staragen … devil’s dung: tarragon; asafoetida (a drug and seasoning with a repugnant odor).
CHAP. XIII
1. alphabetically speaking: Sterne had models for his list. Don Quixote (1.4.7; 2:100) lists requirements for a lover. Rabelais contains a number of lists, and Burton gives the causes of love.
2. F utilitous: futile. Sterne is the OED’s sole example of this word as a rare, obsolete term, though it is probable that he is making a nonce word of a standard term, as elsewhere in this list, sometimes by changing the parts of speech.
3. G alligaskinish: for “Galligaskins,” see IV, xxvii, n. 4.
4. H andy-dandyish: Handy-dandy is a children’s game of guessing which hand holds an object, but metaphorically it suggests “Choose which you please” and that the choice may be indifferent. See OED.
5. I racundulous: inclined to anger. Sterne alone is illustrated by the OED for this term, seemingly a variant of the obsolete “iracundious.”
6. N innyhammering: A “ninnyhammer” is a fool.
7. O bstipating: probably, stopping a chink rather than constipating.
8. S tridulous: shrill or grating.
CHAP. XIV
1. wicker gate: Here and in ch. xxiii below, possibly “wicket gate,” a small gate at the entry of a field or enclosure (OED), though it could be a gate made of wicker (plaited twigs or small branches). The phrase was used by a number of others, such as Anna Seward and Sterne’s acquaintance William Combe.
CHAP. XV
1. candle, at either end: from the proverb “to burn or light a candle at both ends” (Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, “burn”).
2. meseraick … blind gut: Mesaraic or mesenteric veins are veins of the small intestine. Tunicles are membranes enclosing body organs. The blind gut is the cæcum (OED), “the first part of the large intestine,” which ends “behind the opening of the ilium” (“Illion”).
CHAP. XVI
1. movement: probably not a mistake for “moment,” but, continuing the military metaphors, a tactical change of position.
2. from Dan to Beersheba: biblical: the northern and southern boundaries of Canaan (e.g., Judges 20:1; 2 Samuel 3). Sterne also uses the phrase in Sentimental Journey (6:36).
CHAP. XVII
1. Bouchain: In August 1711, Marlborough captured the fort of Bouchain after breaking through supposedly impregnable lines.
2. snuffy: “Soiled with snuff.” Sterne’s usage is the first illustration in the OED.
3. St. Radagunda … FESSE to CLUNY: For St. Radagund, who performed acts of self-mortification, see IV, “Slawkenbergius’s Tale,” n. 11. Both “fesse” (French) and “clunis” (Latin) mean “buttock.” Cluny is a town in east central France, northwest of Mâcon.
CHAP. XIX
1. Servius Sulpicius: For his trip, see V, iii, and n. 14.
2. one half of the entertainment along with him: In a letter to Dr. John Eustace, Sterne says “a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. His own ideas are only call’d forth by what he reads, and the vibrations within, so entirely correspond with those excited, ’tis like reading himself and not the book” (Letters, 411).
3. flatus: a blast.
4. Nothing … for ever: proverbial.
5. Urbecondita’s: a nonce word: [from] the founding of the city (cf. ab urbe condita, used of Rome). The passage, with its different forms of dating, echoes the concerns of chronology (mentioned by Toby), a study reconciling biblical and secular history. Isaac Newton regarded his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) as a work of great importance.
6. MODESTY … LIBERALITY: an allusion to Guido Reni’s Allegory of Liberality and Modesty (noted by Ferriar, 1:115–16), of which John Spencer, to whom Sterne dedicated volume V, owned a version (noted by W. G. Day, “A Novel Compliment,” BSECS Newsletter 5 [1974]: 6–7).
7. cast-year … cast-almanack: Florida suggests that these nonce words mean “cast-off,” like clothing, but since almanacs forecast the weather, the notion of prediction