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1. Prolepsis: rhetorical figure of anticipation.

2. Diogenes and Plato so recalcitrate: probably from Burton (3.2.3.2, 451), where both their views appear. “Recalcitrate” is the verb form of the more familiar “recalcitrant.”

3. congredients: ingredients; a term from Lennard’s translation of Charron.

4. improprietor … great tythes: generally, a layman who has been granted the perquisites of clergy, such as tithes (for which see I, xv, n. 8).

5. pop-visit: unannounced visit. Sterne’s use is the first illustration in the OED.

6. as hairy as I am: See Charles Parish for an argument that Obadiah’s child has been sired by the bull: “The Shandy Bull Vindicated,” Modern Language Quarterly 31 (1970): 48–52. Florida contests the view on the basis that hairiness is indicative of a pre-term birth.

7. Doctors Commons: The London ecclesiastical courts where divorces were obtained, located south of St. Paul’s church and named for the dining hall of the lawyers (Doctors of Civil Law) nearby.

8. A COCK and a BULL: In a final play on words, Sterne suggests that we have been listening to a “cock and bull” or “shaggy dog” story, but cognates have appeared elsewhere in the text: for example, Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, which greatly influenced Sterne (ch. viii above); and “a tale of a roasted horse” (IV, x). A story of a cock and a bull may, according to one eighteenth-century account, have “neither beginning nor end … but they skip from a Cock to a Bull” (quoted OED, 1714). Such a story is typically “a long, rambling, idle story; tedious, disconnected” (OED), or illogical.

GLOSSARY OF MILITARY TERMS

The frequency of the use of military terms makes their separate appearance useful, as a number of editors, following Watt, have found. I draw upon Chambers’s Cyclopædia (Sterne’s chief source for such matters), Johnson’s Dictionary, and the OED, as well as other sources. I have simplified some of the definitions, which are often quite technical.

banquette: a step made on the rampart for troops to stand upon in order to fire over the parapet.

bason: basin, harbor.

bastion: a strong point in the curtin wall of a fortress, usually V-shaped (with two faces). From it, attackers along the curtin could be cross-fired upon. blind: a covering for a trench to disguise it from the enemy.

breastworks: breast-high parapets.

chamade: a drumbeat used as a signal to the enemy, to parley.

circumvallation: “a line or trench, with a parapet, thrown up by besiegers, encompassing all their camp, to defend it against any army that may attempt to relieve the place” (Chambers).

counter-guard: an earth parapet covering a weak place.

counterscarp: the outer wall or slope of the ditch surrounding a fort. The inner wall is the scarp.

covered way: a space of level ground safe for assembly and movement of troops.

cross batteries: batteries that provide cross fire.

curtin: a wall between two bastions, towers, gates, etc. (also curtain); a rampart.

cunette: see cuvette.

cuvette: a ditch in the middle of a moat.

demi-bastion: a bastion with one face and one flank.

demi-culverin: cannon with shot of nearly eleven pounds.

double tenaille: “a small low work, consisting of one or two re-entering angles (single or double tenaille), placed before the curtain between two bastions” (OED).

epaulement: hasty sidework to provide cover. From the French for shoulder. It may be higher than breastworks and used strictly for defense, as with cavalry, but sometimes the word is used synonymously with breastworks.

esplanade: literally, terrace; sometimes used for the space between the fortifications and the town, and otherwise synonymous with glacis.

fausse-bray: “an artificial mound or wall thrown up in front of the main rampart. In early use, a covered way” (OED).

field pieces: light cannons.

fossé: moat, wet or dry.

gabions: portable baskets of earth or rock designed for cover.

gazons: sod, turf.

glacis: a gradually sloping bank from