Scholia to A Sentimental Journey

Abstract

177 SCHOLIA TO FLORIDA TRISTRAM SHANDY ANNOTATIONS Describing Yorick, the ‘‘lean, sorry, jack-ass of a horse’’he chooses to mount, and his responses to the ‘‘groans of the serious,—and the laughter of the lighthearted ,’’Tristram writes: ‘‘His character was,—he loved a jest in his heart’’ (TS I.10.18–20). Considering Sterne’s apparent fondness for Asses, and his definite affinity with Dean Swift, a note might be useful here pointing to some similar wording in Swift’s ‘‘Beasts’ Confession to the Priest.’’ 19.29–20.1 His character was . . . his heart] A possible allusion to Swift’s‘‘The Beasts’ Confession to the Priest, On Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents’’ (1738). The third stanza begins: ‘‘The ass approaching next, confessed,/ That in his heart he loved a jest:/ A wag he was, he needs must own,/ And could not let a dunce alone:/ Sometimes his friend he would not spare,/ And might perhaps be too severe:/ But yet, the worst thatcould besaid,/Hewasawitbothborn and bred;/ And if it be a sin or shame,/ Nature alone must bear theblame’’(Complete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers [London: Penguin, 1983], 509). In that Swift’s poem is an imaginative version of the traditional satiric apologia, it is a particularly pertinent allusion withintheaccount of Yorick’s lifeand death,yetanotherversion of the same genre. James Gow University of King’s College, Halifax, NS SCHOLIA TO A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY In an interesting recent discussion of Sterne’s interest in Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (Shandean, 13 [2002], 55– 67), Christopher Fanning points to a conflict between the frontispiece, which ‘‘illustrates a conception of knowledge’’and ‘‘the theoretical idealizing diagram offered in the preface.’’ That diagram, with origins in the schematic thinking of Sir Francis Bacon, is a foldout leaf offering a series of divisions by way of an organized , transcendent incorporation of all knowledge, each division subdividing into additional divisions, and the whole visually dominated by brackets representing the unity of each subdivision. Sterne could have seen such diagrams in many works other thanChambers(e.g., in one of his favorite compendiums, Pierre Charron’s Of Wisdom (?1612), pp. 7, 173, 180), but perhaps a work that particularly caught his attention when beginning A Sentimental Journey was An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Trauailes, into forraine Countries, the more profitable and honourable (1606), by Sir Thomas Palmer (1540–1626). The slim volume is divided into two parts, each prefaced by elaborate fold-out leaves diagraming, in mind-numbing detail , the possible reasons for traveling. The possibility that Yorick’s own reasons for traveling, as outlined in his ‘‘Preface in the Desobligeant,’’ may have been influenced by this work (published eleven years before Bishop Hall’s Quo Vadis, which weknowSternereadandborrowed from) should be added to the note to ASJ, 13.1 13.1 PREFACE] (Add atendofpresent note.) Sterne may also have been familiar with—andamusedby—thediscussionof motivations for travel in Sir Thomas Palmer , An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Trauailes, into forraine Countries, the more profitable and honourable (1606). This work has an elaborate set of four fold-out leaves outlining the reasons for travel. Several verbal parallels in Yor- 178 ick’s account may function as a parody of Palmer’s work. E.g., ‘‘This brings me . . . into the efficient as well as the final causes of travelling’’ (13.25–27) is echoed in Palmer’s opening comments about the two motivating causes for travel , ‘‘namely . . . the efficient and finall’’ (2), a phrase repeated again on this page and elsewhere in the work with some regularity . And when Yorick divides his subject on p. 14, and calls particularattention to those who travel because of ‘‘Infirmity of body . . . or Inevitable necessity . . . by land or by water, labouring with pride, curiosity, vanity or spleen, subdivided and combined in infinitum’’ (14.4–9), he was perhaps looking very specifically at Palmer’s diagrams, where one division is between ‘‘Involuntaries’’ and ‘‘Voluntaries ,’’another singles out, ‘‘Decrepite persons , Fooles, Madmen, and Lunatics’’as those ‘‘inhibited’’from travel, and a third diagram tells the traveler particularly to shun ‘‘Ambition, Sensualities, Vaineglory , Couetousnesse, and Vanitie of knowledge.’’Finally,wemaysuggestthat ‘‘peregrine martyrs’’ (14.10...