"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."
— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Author
Date
1760-7
Metaphor
"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."
Metaphor in Context
A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of a gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it, of a sarcenet or thin persian.
Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dyonisius Heracleotes, Antipater, Panaetius and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;-- Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;--Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good honest, unthinking, Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,-- all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,--you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outsides of them all to pieces;--in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of 'em would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:-- for never poor jerkin has been tickled off, at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,--and yet I declare the lining to it,--as far as I am a judge of the matter, it is not a three-penny piece the worse;--pell mell, helter skelter, ding dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long way, have they been trimming it for me:--had there been the least gumminess in my lining,--by heaven! it had all of it long ago been fray'd and fretted to a thread.
(pp. 13-5: Norton, 114-5)
Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dyonisius Heracleotes, Antipater, Panaetius and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;-- Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;--Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good honest, unthinking, Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,-- all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,--you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outsides of them all to pieces;--in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of 'em would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:-- for never poor jerkin has been tickled off, at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,--and yet I declare the lining to it,--as far as I am a judge of the matter, it is not a three-penny piece the worse;--pell mell, helter skelter, ding dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long way, have they been trimming it for me:--had there been the least gumminess in my lining,--by heaven! it had all of it long ago been fray'd and fretted to a thread.
(pp. 13-5: Norton, 114-5)
Categories
Provenance
Reading. Found again cited in Jonathan Lamb, Sterne's Fiction and the Double Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), 7. And again, Christina Lupton, Knowing Books: The Consciousness of Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 34.
Citation
At least 82 entries in ESTC (1759, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1765, 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1773, 1774, 1775, 1776, 1777, 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783, 1786, 1788, 1791, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1798, 1799, 1800). Complicated publication history: vols. 1 and 2 published in London January 1, 1760. Vols. 3, 4, 5, and 6 published in 1761. Vols. 7 and 8 published in 1765. Vol. 9 published in 1767.
See Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, 9 vols. (London: Printed for D. Lynch, 1760-1767). <Link to ECCO><Link to 1759 York edition in ECCO>
First two volumes available in ECCO-TCP: <Vol. 1><Vol. 2>. Most text drawn from second (London) edition <Link to LION>.
For vols. 3-4, see ESTC T14705 <R. and J. Dodsley, 1761>. For vols. 5-6, see ESTC T14706 <T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, 1762>. For vols. 7-8, see ESTC T14820 <T. Becket and P. A. Dehont, 1765>. For vol. 9, <T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, 1767>.
Reading in Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism, Ed. Howard Anderson (New York: Norton, 1980).
See Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, 9 vols. (London: Printed for D. Lynch, 1760-1767). <Link to ECCO><Link to 1759 York edition in ECCO>
First two volumes available in ECCO-TCP: <Vol. 1><Vol. 2>. Most text drawn from second (London) edition <Link to LION>.
For vols. 3-4, see ESTC T14705 <R. and J. Dodsley, 1761>. For vols. 5-6, see ESTC T14706 <T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, 1762>. For vols. 7-8, see ESTC T14820 <T. Becket and P. A. Dehont, 1765>. For vol. 9, <T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, 1767>.
Reading in Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism, Ed. Howard Anderson (New York: Norton, 1980).
Date of Entry
10/07/2008
Date of Review
01/28/2012
