Snakes and Arrows — ornamental headpiece for "In the Street, Calais" in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, first published in 1768. Wood-engraving, 2 cm high by 9.5 cm wide, top of p. 37. Johannot provides an elegant and slightly sinister headpiece to suggest that Yorick's motives may not be as pure as he asserts. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Complemented
Having, on the first sight of the lady, settled the affair in my fancy “that she was of the better order of beings” — and then laid it down as a second axiom, as indisputable as the first, that she was a widow, and wore a character of distress — I went no further; I got ground enough for the situation which pleased me; and had she remained close beside my elbow till midnight, I should have held true to my system, and considered her only under that general idea. ["In the Street, Calais," page 37]
Bibliography
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Illustrated with one hundred engravings on wood, by Bastin and G. Nichols, from original designs by Jacque and Fussell. London: Joseph Thomas, 1841.
Last modified 21 September 2018