NOTES

1. "It is not things that disturb men, but their judgments about things." From the
Encheiridion of Epictetus, an ancient Greek Stoic philosopher who lived in Rome.

2. In ancient and medieval physiology, the humours were the four fluids of the body
--blood, phlegm, and black choler. One or another was believed to dominate in a
person, who would accordingly be cheerful ("sanguine") if the blood was dominant,
melancholy if the black choler, etc. The animal spirits were thought to carry
through the nerves tiny particles upon which sensation and movement depended. Sim-
ilarly, the sperm
carries the homunculus ("little man") in conception.

3. Tully (or Cicero) was an ancient seventeenth-century Roman philosopher and
Puffendorf a German, both of whom wrote on legal theory.

4. Since many of the stories Tristram tells took place before his own birth, Toby
could be considered a "source" for much of the book.

5. Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most popular books ever written, was pubished by
John Bunyan in 1678. Montaigne, the French essayist, wrote in the second half of
the sixteenth century; this complaint appears in "Upon Some Verses of Virgil."

6. Horace, the ancient Roman poet, praises Homer for not beginning the Iliad from
the emergence of Helen abovo—that is, from the egg of Leda, pro-created by Zeus in
the form of a swan (Art of Poetry, XI. 146 ff.). Homer began instead "in the middle
of things," during the Trojan War, in which Helen was involved.

7. A dealer in goods from the Near East,

8. John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) had an important influ-
ence on Tristram Shandy and on modern psychological theory. In Book II, Chapter 33,
Locke speaks of the way that ideas having nothing logically in common can become
associated in our minds, and considers these individual associations a cause of the
dangerous isolation of one person fromanother. Sterne, however, devotes himself to
tracing and understanding such associations (which result in "hobby-horses"), as
well as the equally irrational but more universal ones triggered by words like
"nose."

9. March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation (of the birth of Christ) to the Virgin Mary.

10. A neuralgic disease of the hip which makes movement painful,

11. From the first Sunday of March to the fifth of November is nearer eight months.

12. Because it is named for the goddess of love.

13. Sterne himself was much troubled by tuberculosis while writing Tristram Shandy.

14. "O wondrous day!"

15. Sterne regularly makes fun of the language overused by various professions--here
a common legal formula. Didius, one of several pedantic lawyers who move in and out
of Shandy's world, is commonly taken for a satiric version of Dr. Francis Topham, a
frequent opponent of Sterne's in the church politics of York.

16. The name "Kunastrokius" is from the Latin cunnus, female genital. A well-known
London physician, Dr. Richard Mead, was rumored to deserve the nick-name. Tristram

17. Hobby-horses were originally figures in the old morris dances. Sterne's use of
the term to refer to obsessive or fixed ideas derives from the child's toy: a stick
with a horse's head attached.

18. "There's no disputing about tastes."

19. "The whole thing."

20. James Dodsley was Sterne's publisher at the time.

21. Leading characters in Voltaire's Candide, first published in 1757, but appearing
in English the same year as these two volumes of Tristram Shandy.

22. The unimpressive steed ridden by Don Quixote de la Mancha in Cervantes' novel. He
was ordinarily a model of chastity, but when he encountered some mares belonging to a
group of Yanguesian water carriers, he was carried away by lust and got beaten for it.

23. Powdered with gold.

24. Country games involving tossing or shaking coins.

25. "On the vanity of the world and the passing of time."

26. "In ordinary years."

27. All that is left of Yorick in Shakespeare's Hamlet is his skull and the Prince's
memory of his good humor. Sterne's wit combined with his black clothes and tubercular
frame to identify him with Yorick (as well as Tristram) in social and literary circles.
One of speare's sources for Hamlet was Saxo Grammaticus, a thirteenth-century Danish
historian who speaks of King Horwendil and his son Amleth.

28. "Gaiety of heart."

29. The passage is from the Maxims (1665) of Francois de la Rochefoucauld.

30. "Witty saying."

31. The name comes from a Greek word meaning "well-born." Sterne refers to his friend
John Hall Stevenson.

32. A small horse.

33. Cardinal Wolsey uses some of these words in describing his fall from great power in
Shakespeare's Henry VIII (niii.356-57).

34. Don Quixote's servant and companion; he was altogether earthier and more skeptical
than his master. The mitres he refers to are the headgear of bishops. A cervantic tone
is both funny and satiric.

35. Hamlet's words to Yorick's skull (V.i. 179-80).

36. Tom (not Jack) Hickathrift is, like Tom Thumb, a figure in an English nursery rhyme.

37. From Rome to Loretto was the route of pilgrims visiting the Santa Casa, reputed to be
the residence of the Virgin Mary miraculously transported from Naz areth to Loretto in
1294.

38. Panegyrics are elaborate formal praise; pasquinades are lampoons.

39. The Shandy marriage contract parodies legal language that says the same thing as many
different ways as possible in an attempt to keep slippery life under control. And with words
like "coverture," "backsides," etc., Sterne allows for suggestive double meanings,

40. "Single woman."

41. "Every time."

42. A stage is the distance one set of horses could pull a coach before being replaced
with another set.

43. A famous obstetrician of the time.

44. Jenny may be a name for Catherine Fourmantelle, a young singer whom Sterne was in-
terested in at the time. "Cheapening" means bargaining for.

45. Squirearchy, the landed gentry. "The Grand Monarch," Louis XIV, has systematically
weakened the French nobility by depriving them of the political support of their tenants and
neighbors ("country interest") when he required their constant attendance at the Court.

46. Sir Robert Filmer articulated in the Patriarcha (1680) the theory that the state was a
family and the king a father to whom loyalty was required.

47. "We Praise Thee Lord" is a traditional hymn of praise, often sung at the conclusion of
wars or battles.

48. Cervantes' hero, Don Quixote, bestows his devotion and the elegant name of Dulcinea upon
a simple peasant girl. "Hermes Trismegistus" was the Greek name, meaning "thrice-great," for
the Egyptian god Thoth; he was credited with writing the philosophical and theosophical Herme-
tica. Archimedes was an ancient Greek mathematician. "Nyky" and "Simkin" are nicknames for
Nicholas, to be contrasted with the grand sort of nomenclature that Walter Shandy pre- fers.
Nicodemus represents a weak ortimid character because, according to St. John (3:1-12 and
7:45-53) he visited Christ by night but would not avow his faith publicly,

49. Piano is the musical term for "softly." To argue ad hominem ("to the man") is to
appeal to personal prejudice.

50. "Taught by God."

51. Tristram lists ancient and Renaissance authorities on logic and rhetoric.
To argue ad ignorantiam is to take advantage of an opponent's ignorance of the
subject.

52. Sterne went to Jesus College, Cambridge; there is one at Oxford, as well,

53. "Hurrah for frivolity."

54. That is, without being satirical.

55. Epsom is known both for its medicinal mineral springs and for horse racing,
so Walter Shandy may have been either sick or losing money while he was there.

56. "The sad one."

57. "The nature of things."

58. An exclamatory phrase ending a discourse. "Erotesis" is a rhetorical question
(a good example follows the reference).

59. Pliny the Younger, an ancient Roman writer and statesman, actually makes this
statement about his uncle, Pliny the Elder, not about himself (Letters, III.5).

60. These are all traditional English tales.

61. The Romish Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases of danger, be-
fore it is born;--but upon this proviso, That some part or other of the child's
body be seen by the baptizer: But the Doctors of the Sorbonne, by a deliberation
held amongst them, April 10, 1733,--have enlarged the powers of mid-wives, by
determining, That tho' no part of the child's body should appear,--that baptism
shall, nevertheless, be administered par le moyen d'une petite Canulle, Anglice,
a squirt. [By means of a small injection pipe.--In English, a squirt.]--'Tis very
strange that St Thomas Aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, both for
tying and untying the knots of school divinity,--should, after so much pains
bestowed upon this,--give up the point - at last, as a second La chose impossible
[The impossible thing.];--"Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St.
Thomas) baptizari possunt nullo modo."--[Infants in maternal wombs cannot be
baptized by any means."]--O Thomas! Thomas!

62. Conditional baptism was the term for that bestowed upon a child who had al-
ready been baptized, or who might be dead, or who was in such condition that
its very humanity was in doubt. So "conditional baptism" became a kind of joke,
suggesting someone was very ugly.

63. "By means of a little nozzle, and without doing any harm to the father."

64. The idea that the irregularity of the English climate contributes to the eccen-
tricity of the inhabitants is an old one that reached great popularity in the cen-
tury before Trisram Shandy. John Dryden brings it up in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
(1668), and Joseph Addison in his periodical The Spectator, No. 371
(1712), where he also mentions the siege of Namur.

65. "Acme."

66. These are lines from a popular song.

67. Walter Shandy may have in mind that her godparents should have remembered
Genesis 34, where Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, is defiled by Shechem.

68. A fescue is a pointer used for directing the attention of children learning
to read. Tacitus was an ancient Roman his torian whose style is sometimes so con-
cise that his meaning becomes unclear.

69. A horn work is a peculiarly-shaped military barricade, probably selected by
Sterne to allow play on the sexual implications of "horn." Namur, in Flanders
(southwest Belgium) was captured by the Allied force of the British, Dutch, and
Germans under William III in August, 1695.

70. Nicolaus Copernicus was the Polish astronomer whose work in the early-sixteenth
century established the foundation of modern astronomical theory. He argued that
apparent retrogradation ("backsliding") of the planets is an illusion caused by
the fact that some of them revolve around the sun more slowly than does the Earth.

71. "Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth."

72. "The forum (or field) of knowledge."

73. Protestants used this song, with its title drawn from what had originally
been a Catholic slogan, as an infuriating taunt against their opponents in the
Irish wars of the late seventeenth century.

74. Argumentum ad Verecundiam: "argument to modesty"; ex Absurdo: "from absurdity";
ex Fortiori: "from stronger reasons"; Ars Logica: "the art of logic"; Argumentum
Fistulatorium: "argument of the (musical) pipe"; Argumentum Baculinum: "argument
of the stick" (i.e., threat); Argumentum ad Crumenam: "argument to the purse"
(i.e., to self-interest); Argumentum Tripodium: "argument to the third leg";
Argumentum ad Rem: "argument to the thing in hand." These are all terms used in
classical logic, except fistulatorium ("whistle") and tripodium ("third leg"),
which Sterne made up to serve his own purposes.

75. Momus is a Greek figure who personifies mockery. He criticized Hephaestus,
the workman god, for not fitting a window into the breast of a model human
being he made.

76. A tax on windows when glass was a luxury.

77. Tristram is saying that heat constitutes the active force ("efficient cause")
that would turn men to glass, making it possible for them to survive ("final cause"
or purpose) on the planet Mercury.

78. In Book Four of the Aeneid, Virgil has Fame (sometimes as a trumpet) spread
word of the love affair of Dido and Aeneas.

79. Loud or soft.

80. "To the people." Sterne may want us to think of the castrati, young boys cas-
trated to sing soprano in Italian operas, but other kinds of physiological associa-
tions are just as much to the point.

81. Over-ingenious, requiring too much working out (by lamplight).

82. Air; meat and drink; sleep and waking; motion and rest; excretion and reten-
tion; affections of mind--six things seen by physicians as vital to life, but
"non-natural" because they could be come sources of disease.

83. Pentagraph, an instrument to copy prints and pictures mechanically, and in
any proportion. [Sterne's note.]

84. The camera obscura, a darkened chamber or box containing a lens through which
light passes to project a traceable image on a paper--an aid to amateur artists.
Sterne invites other associations of the word chamber, as well.

85. Diogenes, the ancient Greek Cynic philosopher, countered abstract logical
arguments against the possibility that motion exists by getting up and walking
away.

86. Os pubis: "pubic bone"; coxendix: "hip bone"; os ilium: "a pelvic bone."

87. This volume was published with Vol. I in December 1759 and dated 1760.

88. These terms of fortification, used throughout the novel, are often ex-
ploited by Sterne for their sexual suggestiveness. Counterscarp: the outer
slope of a wall or ditch. Counterguard: a narrow detached rampart placed
immediately in front of an important work to protect it. Demi-bastion: a
bastion with one face and one flank. (A bastion is a projecting part of a
fortification in the form of a pentagon with longer and shorter sides
called faces and flanks.) Covered way: an open corridor around the outworks,
guarded by an embankment. Scarp: the inner side of the ditch beneath a ram-
part. Glacis: the sloping embankment approaching a covered way so that troops
crossing it would be exposed to firing. Half-moon: a crescent-shaped outwork,
protecting a bastion. Ravelin: an outwork consisting of two faces forming
a salient angle, constructed beyond the main ditch of a fortification.

89. Hippocrates, "the Father of Medicine," was an ancient Greek physician;
Mackenzie an eighteenth-century Scottish one.

90. 4. An old French measurement, just over six feet.

91. The reply or retort valiant is one of the conventional responses to
quarrelsome provocation.

92. See note 9 in Vol. I., Chap. iv.

93. Malebranch was a seventeenth-century French philosopher studied and criti-
cized by Locke. Sterne's metaphor of the ball of wax parodies Locke's description
of the way ideas are derived from experience.

94. Also.

95. A London club.

96. The Greek words mean "essence."

97. Yclept is an old word for "called"; logomachies are wars of words.

98. The feet of the elephant may refer to the kind of ornamental drawing often
found on old maps. "Gobesius" may be Leonhard Gorecius, a sixteenth-century
expert on gunnery.

99. Ramelli, Cataneo, and the others were sixteenth and seventeenth-century
military writers. In Don Quixote (I.vi) the priest and the barber humorously
question the Don in his library, where they find "a hundred large volumes."

100. 1699.

101. Tartaglia, Malthus, Gallileo, and Torricelius were all Renaissance authorities
on gunnery, especially as it involves projectiles, trajectories, etc. Latus rectum
means "straight line."

102. Radical moisture is the body's natural moisture. Costive means constipated.

103. With a grain of salt.

104. "Incarnate": flesh over, heal; "exfoliation": peeling off; "olympiad": four
years.

105. That is, at the Royal Exchange, a center of mercantile trade.

106. Tailor.

107. Not hobby-horsical in himself.

108. Did not offend.

109. Properly, perfectly.

110. In classical drama, the epitasis is the part in which the main action is devel-
oped.

111. Aposiopesis is a rhetorical term for breaking off in mid-sentence as if unable
or unwilling to go on. Pocu piu and poco meno: a little more, a little - less,

112. There is a work by that name, but the reference here seems to be to one called
Aristotle's Book of Problems, where the question asked is: why does a man look to
heaven when he imagines things, and to the earth when he muses on the past?

113. Dr. Slop caricatures John Burton, a talented but controversial physician of York,
whose politics and religion (he was a Roman Catholic) infuriated Sterne, "Sesqui-
pedality" means "a foot-and-a- half."

114. William Hogarth was one of the most important English artists of the eighteenth
century. He published the Analysis of Beauty in 1753; and when Tristram Shandy prove-
d successful, Sterne asked him to provide some illustrations,

115. William Whiston predicted that the world would be destroyed by comets passing
close by.

116. Covered with mud (lute).

117. That is, without having received extreme unction or last rites in the Church.
Hamlet's father describes his own death as "unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,"
(I.v.77).

118. An argument referring to personal character.

119. A Dutch Renaissance mathematician and engineer.

120. Lucina, "who brings the light," was the Roman goddess of childbirth. Pilum-
nus was the god of marriage, protector of pregnant women and newborn infants.

121. French for "head-puller," or forceps, A crotchet is a hook-like instrument used
in obstetrics,

122. Argument to the purse.

123. Du Cange, a seventeenth-century French philologist, composed a dictionary of
middle and late Latin. Traditionally, a man whose wife had been un faithful grows
horns on his forehead,

124. It's in the second chapter.

125. "Humane letters," the humanities.

126. For instance, the end of Act IV, scene ii, of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

127. A halberd is a combination spear and axe, carried on a long pole; by the eigh-
teenth century (as now) it was carried mostly for ceremonial occasions, and here
suggests that Trim was in line for a promotion.

128. According to Hogath, in particular, the line of beauty is a line in the form of a
lengthened letter S.

129. The sermon is one that Sterne had preached at the cathedral church of York, at
the opening of the summer court sessions (assizes) in 1750. It had been published
separately, but Sterne apparently liked it enough to want to use it again,

130. To have an old house over your head is to be in trouble.

131. Sterne's phrasing is not exact, but the passage parallels Ecclesiastes 8:17.

132. Elijah reproached the god Baal in I Kings 18:27.

133. Most Protestant denominations count only the Eucharist (or Holy Communion)
and Baptism as sacraments. Roman Catholics have seven: Eucharist, Baptism, Con-
firmation, Marriage, Penance, Extreme Unction (Last Rites), and Holy Orders
(monastic, etc.).

134. For David and Saul, see I Samuel 24: 3-5. For the story of David's desire for
Bathsheba, his successful plot to have her husband (his friend) Uriah killed in
battle, and for the reproach that Nathan tenders him in the parable of the ewe
lamb, see II Samuel 11 and 12.

135. See I John 3:21.

136. See Ecclesiasticus 13:25-26, 14:1-2.

137. The Temple Church in London has associations with one of the three Inns of
Court where lawyers train.

138. A unit of men on guard duty,

139. A "sweep of the hand," or surprise attack.

140. Sterne is alluding to the two tables of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 31-32).

141. A paraphrase of a frequent theme in Ecclesiastes, for example 5:13.

142. Matthew 7:20.

143. A judge in Persia or Arabia.

144. A priori: deductively, before examination or analysis. A posteriori: in-
ductively, based on experience.

145. The Roman spirit or ghost of the dead. It was believed that the Manes never
slept quietly in the grave while its survivors left its wishes unfulfilled.

146. "As sovereign queens."

147. That is, the loose clothing of an invalid old man.

148. Into an infinite number of parts.

149. A "syllogism" is a common form of argument in which a conclusion is drawn
from two premises. A "sorites," then, is a series of syllogisms in which the
conclusion of one syllogism becomes the premise of another (not always legit-
imately), Zeno was the founder of the ancient Stoic school of philosophy,
Chrysippus one of his followers.

150. Rene Descartes shared the interest of other seventeenth-century philosophers
in mental processes and the question of how we think and why we believe as we
do. He located the physical position of the soul in the pineal gland.

151. The Walloons are people of mixed origins inhabiting the part of Belgium
around Namur.

152. Quid Erat Demonstrandum: "that which has been demonstrated" (used at the end
of geometrical proofs to state that the original hypothesis has been proven).

153. Soglionissimo is the superlative of the Italian word for testicles (coglione).
Joseph Francis Borri and Thomas Partholine were both seventeenth-century physi-
cians. Metheglingius is probably derived from metheglin—a type of alcoholic drink
made from honey. Animus and anima: in the androgynous vision of the Middle Ages,
the former was a term for the rational soul, or the masculine aspect of the human
psyche, while - the latter described the feminine aspect--or life-giving principle.

154. The indispensible cause, ("without which nothing").

155. The author is here twice mistaken; of for Lithopaedus should be wrote thus,
Lithopaedii Senonensis Icon. The second mistake is, that this Lithopaedus is not
an author, but a drawing of a petrified child. The account of this, published by
Albosius, 1580, may be seen at the end of Cordaeus's works in Spachius. Mr. Tris-
tram Shandy has been led into this error, either from seeing Lithopaedus's name
of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr.---, or by mistaking Lithopaedus
for Trinecavell--from the too great similitude of names. [Sterne's note.] De Partu
Difficili means "About Difficult Childbirth." This is one more of Sterne's games
with Dr. Burton (Slop), for the whole passage plays on Burton's attack on Dr.
Smellie (Smelvogt), who had mistaken Lithopaedus, in the title, for the author's

156. Caesarean operations, agonizingly painful and dangerous for the mother before
modern anaesthetics, were the means of birth not only for Julius Caesar, but also
for the Roman generals Scipio and Manilius (not Manlius). Hermes Trismegistus is
the name the Greeks gave to the Egyptian god of wisdom, arts, and sciences, Thoth.
The mother of Edward VI, Jane Seymour, died shortly after giving birth to him,
though not neces sarily because of Caesarean damage, The os pubis is the pubic
bone; the os coxygis comprises the four lowest bones of the spine. The epigastrium
is the upper and middle abdomen; the matrix is the womb.

157. Don Belianus is the central figure of this sixteenth-century Spanish romance.

158. "I do not fear the judgments of the ignorant populace, yet I ask that they
spare my humble works--in which it has always been my intention to pass from jests
to serious matters and from the serious back again to jests." From the Policra-
ticus [Stateman's Book] of John of Salisbury, a twelfth-century churchman. The
original does not speak of moving back again to jests,

159. Vid. Vol. II. p. 159. [Sterne's note; p. 104 in this edition.]

160. Sir Joshua Reynolds was the great portraitist who painted Sterne three times
in the 1760s.

161. Gum taffeta is a silk stiffened with a gum compound; sarcenet or thin persian
is a soft thin silk.

162. These are all classical or Christian philosophers who upheld Stoicism in one
form or another,

163. In May 1760, Sterne published two volumes of sermons that came under heavy
critical attack, especially because he published them under the facetious name
of Parson Yorick.

164. Charles Avison, an English composer, published Twelve Concertos by Domenico
Scarlatti (1685-1757) in 1744. Con strepito means "very noisily."

165. Cornice.

166. The Greek god of marriage.

167. A pun: cabalistic means "occult" or "mysterious"; caballus is Latin for "horse."

168. That is, knots used in executions by hanging—a fate apparently suffered by Hammond
Shandy for supporting the unsuccessful rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth against his
uncle James II in 1685.

169. Cervantes is a master of the art of appearing serious and satirically humorous at
the same time.

170. As the genuineness of the consultation upon the question of baptism, was doubted by
some, and denied by others, 'twas thought proper to print the original of this excom-
munication; for the copy of which Mr. Shandy returns thanks to the chapter clerk and
chapter of Rochester. [Sterne's note.] Ernulfus was an actual twelfth-century Bishop of
Rochester, and his curse does exist.

171. A mistranslation: it should read "May St. John the Precursor and Baptizer of
Christ. . . ."

172. A half-note.

173. A Roman scholar of the second century.

174. The fictitious Arab writer whom Cervantes claims as the source of much of what he
"translates" in Don Quixote. At II.iv.48 he wishes he could give his best coat to see
"the knight and the matron walk thus hand in hand from the chamber-door to the bed-
side."

175. That is, he's derived "befetish'd" from the use of fetishes by native tribes.

176. Again, Sterne's friend, the famous actor.

177. Rene le Bossu was a French critic of the seventeenth century whose very infiuential
Traite du poeme epique tried to derive precise rules for the epic from classical examples.

178. Tristram names many of the best-known painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, and characterizes each in the trite manner of bad art criticism. flesh").

179. Richard III is said to have sworn frequently by St. Paul, and Charles II by "'Od's
fish" (a euphemism for "God's flesh").

180. A drink seasoned with herbs.

181. "In the breast;" in secret.

182. The longest of Cicero's (Tully's) orations against Mark Antony. "Phillipic" is
derived from the ancient Greek Demosthenes' attack on Phillip of Macedon.

183. The full, bag-like breeches extending from waist to thigh that were in fashion
in the sixteenth and seventeenth (but not the eighteenth) centuries.

184. Grenade.

185. Slippers.

186. Vid Locke [Sterne's note]. He goes on to paraphrase An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding I.xiv. 3, 4, 19, 9.

187. A contrivance for turning a roasting spit: the spit is connected to a wheel in
the chimney so that rising gasses turn it.

188. Lucian, the Greek satirist and humorist of the second century, Rabelais, the
great French comic writer of the sixteenth century, and Cervantes, the great Spanish
humorist of the early seventeenth century, all contributed to Sterne's humorous mix-
ture of the educational and the entertaining. Ontology is the branch of philosophy
concerned with the essence of things or being.

189. Agalastes: "he who never laughs." Triptolemus: in Greek myth, the inventor of
agriculture, and giver of laws, and judge of the dead. Phutatorius: "copulator." Locke
describes the functions of wit and judgment in the human mind in the Essay Concerning
Human Understanding II.xi.2. He considers judgment--the capacity to distinguish one
thing from another--the useful function; wit--which notices similarities even where
they are not obvious--he considers at best amusing, at worst destructively misleading
(a doctrine with dangerous implications for literature). Didius's code translates:
"of Farting and the Explanation of Deceptions."

190. Monopolos: "monopolist." Kysarcitis: "Kiss arse." Gastripheres: "big-belly."
Somnolentius: "the sleepy one."

191. A tun is a barrel,

192. The chapter made up of the canons of a cathedral.

193. Suidas was a Byzantine lexicographer of the tenth or eleventh century.

194. Stinks (or perhaps Tristram means sinks) and kennels are sewers and gutters.

195. The Greek god of healing. Tristram goes on to list acts appropriate to true
physicians, but not to be expected from the corrupted profession.

196. The profession of law. Again there follows a list of generous and socially
useful actions unlikely in a selfish profession.

197. A hundred men.

198. The quotation is from Rabelais, 111.16.

199. "Bubble": fool; "handy-cuffs": fisticuffs.

200. To determine the succession to an estate ("in perpetuity"), preventing a suc-
cessive owner from disposing of it as he pleases.

201. Dunkirk was demolished in 1713 under an agreement reached in the Treaty of
Utrecht (ending the Wars of the Spanish Succession which had for so long occu-
pied Uncle Toby).

202. Putting tips on shoelaces.

203. Once again David Garrick, the actor. Opificers: fabricators.

204. The list names classical and Renaissance dramatists and dramatic theorists.

205. Mme. de Pompadour (1721-64) was a favorite mistress of Louis XV. A vis-a-vis
("face-to-face") is a carriage with facing seats.

206. Both married and unmarried women were addressed as "mistress" (Mrs.) until
well into the eighteenth century.

207. A deep ditch.

208. A moveable sled used to protect besiegers of a fort or city. Marcellinus was
a fourth-century Greek historian of Rome.

209. Cardinal Alberoni for a time in the eighteenth century directed Spanish foreign
policy.

210. Abbreviation of Acta Eruditorium [Transactions of the Learned], Leipzig, 1695.

211. A hurdy-gurdy or hand

212. No means had yet been found for determining longitude at sea.

213. The annual income settled on a woman, payable should she be widowed.

214. P. 73 in this edition.

215. On the island of Ennasin, noses are shaped like the ace of clubs (Rabelais, IV.9).

216. The feast of St. Michael, September 29, marks the beginning of an English legal
term, and the feast of the Annunciation (of the coming birth of Christ) to the Virgin
Mary (Our Lady), March 25, another.

217. Civil lawyer. Ex confesso : confessedly.

218. The list is of legal codes assembled from Roman times down to the Ordonnance des
eaux et forets adopted by Louis XIV in 1669 to develop French waterways and forests.

219. The stage name of Sieur Deslauriers, author of Prologues as much Serious as Fac-
etious, 1610.

220. Prignitz and Scroderus seem to be invented names, but Pare and Bouchet published
(in French) in the sixteenth century. Slawkenbergius derives from Hafen, colloquial
German for chamber pot, and Schackenberg, for a pile of manure. Pamphagus and Codes
appear in Erasmus's Colloquia Familiaria [Familiar Discourses].

221. Ab urbe condita, "from the founding of the city." 753 B.C., the date of its found-
ing, was used for dating events in ancient Rome. The Second Punic War began in 535 ab.
urb. con.

222. Tickletoby's (slang for penis) young mare in Rabelais, IV.13, had "never been leap-
ed yet." Paraleipomenon is Greek for "things omitted."

223. Pamphagus says, "The nose does not displease me." Codes replies, "Nor is there
reason why it should displease you."

224. Sterne changes the original slightly, from blowing to poking, for his own humor-
ous purposes. And by "scratching a single letter" of focum Walter could turn it into
either locum (place) or ficum (fig), either of which would add to the joke.

225. Disgraces.

226. George Whitfield was an eighteenth-century Methodist and, like many of his fol-
lowers, an enthusiastic pulpit orator.

227. Russian Crimea.

228. Gaspar Tagliacozzi (1546-99) developed a method of grafting skin from the arm
onto the nose.

229. A legal term meaning inferior,

230. At its normal size.

231. Rations.

232. In Rabelais, Grangousier is Gargantua's father, Ponocrates his tutor.

233. Middle term. Yard: a yard stick.

234. Query.

235. As Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis is extremely scarce, it may not be unaccept-
able to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his original; I
will make no reflection upon it, but that his story-telling Latin is much more
concise than his philosophic and, I think, has more of Latinity in it. [Sterne's
note.] Tristram takes some liberties with the "story-telling Latin" in his trans-
lation, exploiting wherever possible its sexually suggestive potential.

236. A Dutch coin that, like a groat, came to be nearly worthless.

237. "Bless me!"

238. 4. St. Nicolas is not only the original of Santa Claus, but also the patron
of wandering scholars.

239. A flap or bag to cover the opening at the front of the tight trunk hose fash-
ionable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Greek word that Tristram
declines to translate means "a girdle."

240. St. Radegunde was an extremely pious Queen of the Franks Franks in the sixth
century. She is patron saint of Jesus College, Cambridge, where Sterne took his
degree, Tristram speaks in Vol. VIII, Chap, xvii, of "the pricks which enter'd
the flesh of St. Radagunda in the desert" when she retreated there to mortify her
flesh.

241. Compline is the seventh and last of the canonical hours at which religious
services are performed during the day.

242. The "fairies' midwife," who delivers man's brain of dreams. Cf. Mercutio's
great description of her in Romeo and Juliet I.iv.

243. The abbess of the convent in this town in Prussian Saxony had unusual ec-
clesiastical powers.

244. Hafen Slawkenbergius means the Benedictine nuns of Cluny, founded in the
year 940, by Odo, abbe de Cluny. [Sterne's note. Tristram lists religious or-
ders both very old and more recent. The Benedictine monastery at Cluny was
founded in 910 a.d., though the first convent of that order was actually not es-
tablished until the next century.]

245. That is, flayed or scratched until they looked as if they had erysipelas,
or "St. Anthony's fire."

246. Capitulars are the clergy comprising a cathedral chapter. Domiciliars, also
members, did not have voting rights in chapter. The group is assembled, pre-
sumably, for breakfast; but "butter'd buns" is old slang for loose women.

247. Enclosure.

248. Mr. Shandy's compliments to orators----is very sensible that Slawkenbergius
has here changed his metaphor which he is very guilty of; that as a translator,
Mr. Shandy has all along done what he could to make him stick to it but that
here 'twas impossible. [Sterne's note.]

249. An ancient Greek follower of Zeno, the Stoic philosopher. Crantor, another
ancient Greek, was an early commentator on Plato's philosophy.

250. As earlier in the case of Frankfort, Sterne (or his printer) here shifts the
spelling of the town's name slightly, and the change prevails through the rest of
the tale. Consistency in spelling was not a great concern even among the most
literate until toward the end of the eighteenth century.

251. Dialectical.

252. Members of a profession--in this case, the medical.

253. Uterus.

254. That is, too much blood.

255. A logical fallacy, like begging the question.

256. Civil lawyers.

257. Of his own accord.

258. Nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formula utun/Quinimo et Logistae &
Canonistae Vid. Parce Barne Jas in d. L. Provincial. Constitut. de conjec. vid.
Vol. Lib. 4. Titul. I. N. 7. qua etiam in re conspir. Om. de Promontorio Nas.
Tichmak. ff. d. tit. 3. fol. 189. passim. Vid. Glos. de contrahend. empt. c.
nec non J. Scrudr. in cap. J . refut. ff. per totum Cum his cons. Rever. J. Tubal,
Sentent. & Prov. cap. 9 ff. II, 12. obiter. V. et Librum, cui Tit. de Terris &
Phras. Belg. ad finem, cum Comment. N. Bardy Belg. Vid. Scrip. Argentotarens. de
Antiq. Ecc. in Episc. Archiv. fid. coll. per Von Jacobum Koinshoven Folio Argent.
1583, praecip. ad finem Quibus add. Rebuff in L. obvenire de Signif. Nom. ff.
fol. & de Jure, Gent. & Civil, de protib. aliena feud, per federa, test. Joha.
Luxius in prolegom. quern velim ire. vidaes, de Analy. Cap. 1, 2, 3. Vid Idea,
[Sterne's note.] A parody of pedantic footnotes.

259. Haec mira, satisque horrenda. Plane tarum coitio sub Scorpio Asterismo in
nona coeli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant efficit Martinum Lutherum
sacrilegum hereticum, christianae religionis hostem acerrimum atque prophanum,
ex horoscopi directione ad Martis coitum, [ir] religiosissimus obiit, ejus Anima sce-
lestissima ad infernos navigavit ab Alecto, Tisiphone et Megaera flagellis igneis
cruciata perenniter.---Lucas Gauricus in Tractatu astrologico de praeteritis mul-
torum hominum accidentibus per genituras examinatis. [Sterne's note.] The passage
is drawn from the entry on Luther in Bayle's Dictionary: "This is sufficiently mira-
culous and horrifying. The conjunction of five planets under Scorpio in the ninth
house of the heavens, which the Arabs ascribe to religion, made Martin Luther a
sacrilegious heretic, a very bitter and profane enemy to the Christian religion; from
the direction of the horoscope to the conjunction of Mars, it is clear that he died
a very irreligious man, whose most wicked soul sailed to hell where Alecto, Tisi-
phone and Magera forever flagellate him with fiery whips." Lucas Gauricus's Astro-
logical Treatise on the Past Accidents of Many Men, by Means of an Examination
of their Nativities.

260. The greatest library of the ancient world, established during the time the
Greek Ptolemy family ruled Egypt, and traditionally believed to have been de-
stroyed when Caesar was besieged in Alexandria.

261. An academic cap.

262. The thirteenth-century Italian theologian, a most important medieval phi-
losopher.

263. Pantagruel sets off for "the Oracle of Bacbuc, alias the Holy Bottle" in
Rabelais, IV. 1

264. Syndics: government officials. Beguines: members of a lay sisterhood, often
nurses.

265. The catastrophe or peripetia (as it is usually spelled) of a tragedy occurs
when the fortunes of the protagonist turn finally for the worse. Prostasis: intro-
ductory action. Epistasis: developing action. Catastasis: climax. Personae dram-
atis: characters in the play.

266. Seigneur.

267. Colbert was Finance Minister to Louis XIV, and one of his most influential
advisors. Sterne is parodying the way that traditional tales are often shaped
(or distorted) to explain complex hisatorical events.

268. Hugh MacKay was one of the British commanders in Flanders.

269. "God's hooks"--i.e., the nails that fastened Christ to the cross.

270. Raphael's fresco painting of Athenian philosophers is in the Vatican.

271. These are the names of the reigning monarch, George III, and of his brother
the Duke of York, who had taken Sterne up socially after the success of the first
volumes of Tristram Shandy. The name Trismegistus ("thrice-greatest") was given
by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Thoth, who was associated with all knowledge
and mysterious wisdom.

272. Enow, enough.

273. Diana, the coolly virginal goddess of the moon. In the treatise of the
Greek Longinus, On the Sublime, coldness is one of the rhetorical failings des-
cribed. Avicenna (980-1037), the great Arabian physician-philosopher, wrote
books of many different subjects (de omni scribilli). Licetus (1577-1657), an
Italian physician, was called Fortunio after his good fortune in surviving a
premature birth.

274. See Job 1:3, 42:12 for the account of how his wealth (including his asses)
increased after God had put him through his trials.

275. A sedan-chair carrier. A day-tall critic is one whose work is counted
(talleyed) by the day--that is, by quantity not quality.

276. Tristram discussed Horace's advice in Vol. I, Chap. iv.

277. For quill pens.

278. The allusion is to Don Quixote, IIv.68.

279. The passage is loosely quoted from Montaigne's essay "Of Experience."

280. The reference is to the note Sterne just provided on Licetus: "What appears
real isn't always on the side of truth."

281. These men are most famous as philosophers, statesmen, and religious leaders,
but they also wrote on the law.

282. That is, Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world.

283. Basic heat and moisture.

284. The animal spirits, passing through the nerves, were thought to provide en-
ergy for the faculties Walter names.

285. Air, food and drink, sleep and waking, motion and rest, excretion and re-
tention, affections of mind--six things seen by physicians as vital to life, but
"non-natural" because they can become sources of disease.

286. Ambitious--or interfering.

287. The Bishop of Gloucester, William Warburton, was for a time Sterne's friend
and patron, but the relationship cooled when the Bishop offered literary advice
that the author ignored.

288. Vide Menagiana, vol. I. [Sterne's note. It refers to the collected opinions
of Gilles Menage, a seventeenth-century French philologist, from which the fol-
lowing anecdote is drawn.]

289. The traditional title of the heir to the French throne.

290. There was no Francis IX, as Sterne certainly knew; but Francis I had a
large nose and probably died of syphilis, which traditionally attacks nasal tis-
sue,

291. Since both Trim and the Duke were named James Butler, and since the Duke
was a general, satire was suspected by many readers.

292. The bishop of a diocese makes annual visitations to the parishes; Walter and
Yorick have been invited to a visitation dinner, by Dedius the Canon lawyer,
which can provide occasion for consulting about the possibility of rebaptising
Tristram,

293. A band across a coat of arms from top right (dexter) to lower left; a band
from top left (sinister) could be used to show that the bearer of the shield was
illegitimate, or descended from an illegitimate branch of the family.

294. Homenas means homilist (preacher) and was the name of a Bishop in Rabelais,
IV.48-54.

295. In the essay "Of the Education of Children."

296. Short for "God's wounds."

297. Oaths were finable offenses under an act of Parliament in the reign of George
II; a twelve-penny one was not very serious,

298. Breeches.

299. The "paunch-carrier"--as always, interested in food.

300. The temple of Janus, an ancient god who guarded Rome in time of war, opened
only in times of military action.