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:--Iwill not philosophize one moment with you about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:--That instead 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 declensions;--with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur 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 imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.
But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised 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 enlivened throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to Yorick's indiscretion. In a word, tho' 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 temptations 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.