The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in permanent additions to the English lexicon; within the text of "Tristram Shandy" Sterne describes the novel as "Shandean," coining a term which still carries the meaning that Sterne originally attached to it when he wrote, "I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good humoured "Shandean" book..." Strongly influenced by Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" also gave rise to the term "cervantic," (which Sterne at the time spelled "cervantick"). In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Ignatius Sancho wrote to Laurence Sterne encouraging the writer to use his pen to lobby for the abolition
USS Tristram Shandy (1864) F. Devens in command. Eleven days later, the ship arrived off Wilmington on 23 August and began duty as a blockader. On 7 September, her lookout sighted a strange ship. However, the distance between the two ships was too great, and the quarry slipped away. Her next chance came on 31 October when she joined and in pursuing a blockade runner which escaped after a three-hour chase. On 3 December 1864, a blockade runner, whose name could not be determined, ran aground off the western bar at Wilmington, at Marshall Shoals. Although within range of Fort Fisher's guns, "Tristram Shandy"