CHAPTER ELEVEN

YORICK was this parson's name, and, what is very remark-
able in it, (as appears from a most ancient account of the
family, wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect pre-
servation) it had been exactly so spelt for near,-I was
within an ace of saying nine hundred years;-but I would
not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however
indisputable in itself;-and therefore I shall content myself
with only saying,-It had been exactly so spelt, without the
least variation or transposition of a single letter, for I do
not know how long; which is more than I would venture to
say of one half of the best surnames in the kingdom; which,
in a course of years, have generally undergone as many
chops and changes as their owners.-Has this been owing to
the pride, or to the shame of the respective proprietors?-
In honest truth, I think, sometimes to t-he one, and some-
times to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. But a
villainous affair it is, and will one day so blend and confound
us all together, that no one shall be able to stand up and
swear, 'That his own great grandfather was the man who did
either this or that.'
This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the
prudent care of the Yorick's family, and their religious pre-
servation of these records I quote, which do further inform
us, That the family was originally of Danish extraction, and
had been transplanted into England as early as in the reign
of Horwendillus, king of Denmark, in whose court it seems,
an ancestor of this Mr Yorick's, and from whom he was
lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of
his death. Of what nature this considerable post was, this
record saith not;-It only adds, That, for near two centuries,
it had been totally abolished, as altogether unnecessary, not
only in that court, but in every other court of the Christian
world.
It has often come into my head, that this post could be no
other than that of the king's chief jester;-and that Ham-
let's Yorick, in our Shakespeare, many of whose plays, you
know, are founded upon authenticated facts was cer-
tainly the very man.
I have not the time to look into Saxo-Grammaticus's
Danish history, to know the certainty of this;-but if you
have leisure, and can easily get at the book, you may do
it full as well yourself.
I had just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr
Noddy's eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied
as governor, riding along with him at a prodigious rate
through most parts of Europe, and of which original journey
performed by us two, a most delectable narrative will be
given in the progress of this work. I had just time, I say,
and that was all, to prove the truth of an observation made
by a long sojourner in that country;-namely, 'That
nature was neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in her
gifts of genius and capacity to its inhabitants;-but, like a
discreet parent, was moderately kind to them all; observing
such an equal tenor in the distribution of her favours, as to
bring them, in those points, pretty near to a level with each
other; so that you wig meet with few instances in that king-
dom of refined parts; but a great deal of good plain house-
hold understanding amongst all ranks of people, of which
every body has a share;' which is, I think, very right.
With us, you see, the case is quite different;-we are all
ups and downs in this matter;-you are a great genius;@r
'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;
-not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,-no,--
we are not so irregular as that comes to;-but the two
extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this
unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions
of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune her-
self not being more so in the bequest of her goods and
chattels than she.
This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to
Yorick's extraction, who, by what I can remember of him,
and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not
to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole
crasis; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run
out:-l will not philosophize one moment with you about
it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:-That in-
stead of that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and
humours, you would have looked for, in one so extracted;-
he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a
composition,-as heteroclite a creature in all his declen-
sions;-with as much life and whim, and gaité de coeureu?'
about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered
and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not
one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the
world; and, at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well
how to steer his course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl
of thirteen: So that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale
of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in
a day of somebody's tackling; and as the grave and more
slow-paced were oftenest in his way,-you may likewise
imagine, 'twas with such he had generally the ill luck to get
the most entangled. For aught I know there might be some
mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom of such Fracas:
For, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and
opposition in his nature to gravity;-not to gravity as such;
-for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave
or serious of mortal men for days and weeks together;-but
he was an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open
war against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance, or
for folly; and then, whenever it fell in his way, however
sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, That
gravity was an errant scoundrel; and he would add,-of the
most dangerous kind too,--because a sly one; and that, he
verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were
bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-
month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven.
In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he
would say, There was no danger,-but to itself: -whereas
the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently
deceit;-'twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for
more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that,
with all its pretensions,-it was no better, but often worse,
than what a French wit had long ago defined it,-viz. A
mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the
mind
;-which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great im-
prudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.
But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and un-
practised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and
foolish on every other subject of discourse where policy is
wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no impression but one,
and that was what arose from the nature of the deed spoken
of; which impression he would usually translate into plain
English without any periphrasis,-and too oft without much
distinction of either person, time, or place;-so that when
mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding,
-he never gave himself a moment's time to reflect who
was the Hero of the piece what his station, or how
far he had power to hurt him hereafter;-but if it was a
dirty action,-without more ado,-The man was a dirty
fellow,-and so on: -And as his comments had usually the
ill fate to be terminated either in a bon mot, or to be en-
livened throughout with some drollery or humour of ex-
pression, it gave wings to Yorick's indiscretion. In a word,
though he never sought, yet, at the same time, as he seldom
shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and
without much ceremony;-he had but too many tempta-
tions in life, of scattering his wit and his humour,-his gibes
and his jests about him,-They were not lost for want of
gathering.
What were the consequences, and what was Yorick's
catastrophe thereupon, you will read in the next chapter.

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