The Shandean ed. by Peter de Voogd (review)

The Scriblerianhas faithfully reviewed every issue of The Shandeansince its inception in 1989, either as an entire volume, or article by article. Unfortunately, the review of volume 20 found itself, like Walter Shandy’s squeaky door hinge in need of oil, always promised but never done. The oil can has now been returned to our hands and this review of volume 20, coming after we have published reviews of volumes 21 and 22, allays that squeak.

Volume 20 starts with three papers delivered at a conference on the year 1759. Ian Campbell Ross (“Histories, Lives and Sub-chantresses: Laurence Sterne’s 1759 Reading”) offers as a source for a passage in Tristram Shandy, Walter Harte’s The History of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden(1759). He argues for certain parallels of narrative stance and for one direct borrowing, the retinue of the Abbess of Quedlingberg in Slawkenbergius’s Tale. Unhappily, a bit more research after delivering the paper located an earlier possible source, the anonymous Present State of Germany(1738). In a rare display of scholarly honesty, Mr. Ross uses a postscript to retract much of the essay.

W. G. Day (“Sterne and 1759”) moves too quickly away from 1759, attempting to calculate Sterne’s financial dealings with his printers. He adds little to what is already known, if perhaps never so minutely calculated. Tim Parnell (“‘The whole made more saleable’: Young’s Conjectures. . . [and] Tristram Shandy”) brings Tristramtogether with Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition(1759). Tristram’s ironic observations on the increase of knowledge seem clearly to parody Young’s language, although they also sound very Swiftian. Mr. Parnell, however, finds “fundamental differences between the informing assumptions of Scriblerian and Shandean satire.” The “parody is markedly understated, not to say muted, in comparison to Swift’s. . . .” Nor does Sterne “contest Young’s broad thesis” about originality. More generally, “the irregular imagination which the Scriblerians perceived as a threat has become in Sterne a repository of those values that stand in opposition to the scientific and intellectual errors highlighted by the satire.” But is Young’s “originality” the same muddle as the hack’s imagination, or, to the contrary, did Swift perceive a threat precisely where Young does: in the lack of talent andtrue originality besetting a generation of writers parading ignorance as innovation? Mr. Parnell nods in this direction when he assures us that Swift did indeed value originality, his own in particular; being original and striving to be original is a distinction aesthetic theory has recognized from ancient days.

The visual and informative gem of this Shandeanis Mr. de Voogd’s own contribution, “The Compleat Marbler.” Accompanied by twenty colored plates, and containing a wealth of information, the essay provides all we will ever need to know about marbling, including a discussion of the marbled page in editions from the late eighteenth century to the present. Perhaps his most important point is that Dodsley went through great expense and effort to produce the marbled page, since it was not a question of cutting up a large marbled sheet, but of producing for each of 4,000 copies, two marbled pages, hand-stamped with page numbers; considerable time and a good number of marblers had to be involved. The ensuing history is largely one of avoiding that difficulty, most obviously with a page bearing words to the effect that a “marbled page” is supposed to be in this space. In other instances, however, some highly ingenious substitutes were offered, and Mr. de Voogd has gathered a rich storehouse of examples. The essay concludes with a conjecture that the thought of a marbled page came to Sterne in his Coxwold pulpit, facing a stained glass window at the other end of the church, “a marbled pillar—emblem of eternity and marbled leaf in one.” Sometimes a fanciful surmise is better than a fact.

Two essays discuss Sterne’s interest in music. Peter Holman’s “Laurence Sterne the Musician” is a puzzling...