How we cite our quotes:
Quote #7
That Lippius's great clock was all out of joints, and had not gone for some years. (7.39.2)
Of course one of the only things Tristram really cares about seeing in Europe is broken, and of course it's a clock. When timekeeping is this unreliable, he might as well write forward and backward; no one's going to know the difference.
Quote #8
—Leave out the date entirely, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaning forwards, and laying his hand gently upon the corporal's shoulder to temper the interruption—leave it out entirely, Trim; a story passes very well without these niceties, unless one is pretty sure of 'em—(8.19.34)
Again, exact time—contrary to Mr. Shandy's beliefs—just doesn't seem to matter. It's how the story is told, not when it's set, that makes a good tale. Today, we call it creative license.
Quote #9
I call all the powers of time and chance, which severally check us in our careers in this world, to bear me witness, that I could never yet get fairly to my uncle Toby's amours, till this very moment, that my mother's curiosity, as she stated the affair,—or a different impulse in her, as my father would have it—wished her to take a peep at them through the key-hole. (9.1.1)
Tristram is practically panting to get to this part of the story, but time doesn't run smoothly in the narrative. He has to tell some parts before he can tell other parts, so, again, chronology isn't the determining factor of how a story's told—and neither, apparently, is the author. The story tells itself—kinda like a clock that goes once it's been wound?