The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [328]
8. seventeen hundred and twelve: The military events of this year come from Tindal (4:274). Like the capture of Bouchain in ch. xvii, they are part of the War of the Spanish Succession. For James Butler, Duke of Ormond, see II, v. He was removed from his command in 1714, in part for his withdrawal (under secret orders) of his troops at Quesnoy, deserting the allies and leading to great discontent on the part of the soldiers.
9. Marlborough … marched his army: from Tindal (3:654–57) with some changes in place name spellings.
10. Wencelaus … Schwartz: This account derives nearly verbatim from Chambers, “Gunpowder.” The key figures are Wenceslaus (1361–1419), the future (uncrowned) Holy Roman Emperor (1378–1400); Berthold Schwartz; and Roger Bacon, a major figure in early English philosophy, who wrote of gunpowder in De Mirabili Potestate Artis et Naturae. Toby’s characterization of this knowledge as “generously” shared should be noticed. New suggests a twitting of Bishop William Warburton, who wrote on gunpowder, in Trim’s following question “How came priests and bishops … to trouble their heads so much about gun-powder?”
11. Bohemia … totally inland: possibly an allusion to Edmund Burke’s discussion in A Philosophical Isnquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) of Shakespeare’s “extravagant blunder” in The Winter’s Tale, which locates a shipwreck on the landlocked “coast of Bohemia.” See James T. Boulton’s edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1968), 21.
12. every ball had it’s billet: Trim’s quotation provided the germ of Denis Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste, posthumously published in 1796: “chaque balle qui partait d’un fusil avait son billet” (“each ball fired from a rifle had its place to be lodged”). Oeuvres romanesques, ed. Henri Bénac (Paris: Éditions Garnier, 1951), 493. The book as a whole is strongly influenced by Tristram Shandy.
13. Landen: The Battle of Landen (July 29, 1693) is described by Tindal (3:238–40), who discusses the roles of the regimental generals mentioned by Trim and other details.
14. tear the laurel from Luxembourg’s brows: The laurel, signifying the victorious general, was snatched from François-Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg (1628–95), Marshal of France.
15. mob: i.e., mobcap, a large, informal, puffy-crowned bonnet.
16. cæteris paribus: other things being equal.
CHAP. XX
1. Beguine: lay sister.
2. fever: Sterne alludes playfully to this passage in a letter to Elizabeth Draper written April 12–22, 1767 (part of his Journal), as a “prophetic” description of a fever he suffered in her absence (Letters, 326).
CHAP. XXI
1. with a sisserara: “with a vengeance; suddenly, promptly” (OED). A corruption of the “writ of certiorari,” which moved a case to a higher court; hence, it carries overtones of legal entanglement.
CHAP. XXII
1. despair: Watt emends to “affair.”
CHAP. XXIII
1. Gotham: The “Wise Men of Gotham” were proverbially foolish (although in some versions they were dissembling stupidity). Sterne refers to them in writing to Elizabeth Draper (Letters, 331).
CHAP. XXIV
1. raree-shew-box: peep-show. See Savoyard’s box above, III, xxvi, n. 1. See also John Stedmond, “Uncle Toby’s ‘Campaigns’ and Raree-Shows,” Notes and Queries 201 (1956): 28–29.
2. Thracian *Rodope’s: Sterne’s note comes from Burton (3.2.3.3, 466), who gets it from Heliodorus’s An Æthiopian History. A contemporary translation, closer to the widow Wadman’s description than Burton’s, describes the courtesan Rhodopis as “studied in all the charms and allurements of a Venus; it was not possible for any man to see her but he must be taken; such an inevitable fascination shot from her eyes …” Aethiopian Adventures: or, the History of Theagenes and Chariclea [1753], 70). He continues to draw on Burton’s passage on eyes in ch. xxv.
3. Gallileo … sun: Galileo may have been the first to see sunspots. He was certainly so thought in eighteenth-century England, though he was not the first to publish on the topic.
CHAP. XXV
1. it is