I know very well that the Hero's horse was a horse of chaste deportment, which may have given grounds for the contrary opinion; but it is as certain, at the same time, that Rosinante's continency (as may be demonstrated from the adventure of the Yanguesian carriers) proceeded from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the temperance and orderly current of his blood.—And let me tell you, madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the world in behalf of which you could not say more, for your life. Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice to every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work, I could not stifle this distinction in favour of Don Quixote's horse ;- -in all other points, the parson's horse, I say, was just such another, for he was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade as Humility herself could have bestrided. In the estimation of here and there a man of weak judgment, it was greatly in the parson's power to have helped the figure of this horse of his, for he was master of a very handsome demi-peak'd saddle, quilted on the seat with green plush, garnished with a double row of silverheaded studs, and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a housing altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging of black lace, terminating in a deep black silk fringe, poudre d'or;-all which he had purchased in the pride and prime of his life, together with a grand embossed bridle, ornamented at all points as it should be.But not caring to banter his beast, he had hung all these up behind his study door; and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted him with just such a bridle and such a saddle as the figure and value of such a steed might well and truly deserve. love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in bantering the extravagance of his humour,-instead of giving the true cause,-he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as he never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether as spare a figure as his beast, he would sometimes insist upon it that the horse was as good as the rider deserved;—that they were-centaur-like |--both of a piece. At other times, and in other moods, when his spirits were above the temptation of false wit, he would say he found himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with great gravity, would pretend he could not bear the sight of a fat horse, without a dejection of heart, 'and a sensible alteration in his pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits. In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring visits to the gentry who lived around him, you will easily comprehend that the parson, so appointed, would both hear and see enough to keep his philosophy from rusting. To speak the truth, he never could enter a village but he caught the attention of both old and young.Labour stood still as he passed,the bucket hung suspended in the middle of the well,-the spinning-wheel forgot its round,even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got out of sight; and as his movement was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his hands to make his observations,-to hear the groans of the serious, and the laughter of the lighthearted; all which he bore with excellent tranquillity. His character was-he loved a jest in his heart; and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light in which he so strongly saw himself; so that to his friends, who knew his foible was not the At different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite reasons for riding a meekspirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to one of mettle;-for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully de vanitate mundi et fugá sæculi as with the advantage of a death's-head before him ;that, in all other exercitations he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along, to as much account as in his study;-that he could draw up an argument in his sermon, or a hole in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the other; -that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incompatible movements, but that upon his steed he could unite and reconcile everything;-he could compose his sermon-he could compose his cough, and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to sleep.-In short, the parson, upon such encounters, would assign any cause but the true cause; and he withheld the true one only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to him. But the truth of the story was as follows:In the first years of this gentleman's life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will, to run into the opposite extreme. In the language of the country where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling; and as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile country, it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last,-much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this, that his horse was either clapped, or spavined, or greased; or he was twitter-boned, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him which would let him carry no flesh;-so that he had, every nine or ten months, a bad horse to get❘ rid of, and a good horse to purchase in his stead. would have done the parson credit, the devil a soul could find it out.-I suppose that his enemies would not, and that his friends could not. But no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expenses of the ordinary's licence to set her up, but the whole secret came out: every horse he had lost, and two horses more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their destruction, were ran like wildfire. The parson had a returning fit of pride which had just seized him; and he was going to be well mounted once again in his life; and if it was so, 'twas plain as the sun at noon-day he would pocket the expense of the licence, ten times told, the very first year: so that everybody was left to judge what were his views in this act of charity.' What the loss in such a balance might amount to, communibus annis, I would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffic to deter-known and distinctly remembered.-The story mine; but, let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a murmur; till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and, upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expenses, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish. Besides this, he considered that, with half the sum thus galloped away, he could do ten times as much good; and what still weighed more with him than all other considerations put together was this, that it confined all his charity into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his parish; reserving nothing for the impotent,-nothing for the aged,-nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness, and affliction dwelt together. For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expense; and there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it; -and these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any application whatever, or else be content to ride the last poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and infirmities, to the very end of the chapter. As he dreaded his own constancy in the first, he very cheerfully betook himself to the second; and though he could very well have explained it, as I said, to his honour, yet for that very reason he had a spirit above it; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laugh of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story which might seem a panegyric upon himself. I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero of antiquity. But this is not the moral of my story: the thing I had in view was to show the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.-For you must know that, so long as this explanation What were his views in this and in every other action of his life, or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep. About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made entirely easy upon that score,-it being just so long since he left his parish and the world at the same time behind him; and stands accountable to a Judge of whom he will have no cause to complain. But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: order them as they will, they pass through a certain medium which so twists and refracts them from their true directionsthat, with all the titles to praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless forced to live and die without it. Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful example. . . . . But to know by what means this came to pass, and to make that knowledge of use to you, I insist upon it that you read the two following chapters, which contain such a sketch of his life and conversation as will carry its moral along with it. When this is done, if nothing stops us in our way, we will go on with the midwife. CHAPTER XI. YORICK was this parson's name, and, what is X -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 sirnames 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 the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. But a villanous 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 has been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of the Yorick family, and their religious preservation 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, 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. -we are all ups and downs in this matter;-you are a great genius; or, '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 herself 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 hundered years it might possibly have all run out:-I will 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 gaité de cœur 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 It has often come into my head that this postutterly unpractised in the world, and at the could be no other than that of the king's chief jester; and that Hamlet's Yorick, in our Shakspeare, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon authenticated facts, was certainly 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. 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 it was 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; 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. I had just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr. Noddy's eldest son, whom infor, to speak the truth, Yorick had an 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 will meet with few instances in that kingdom of refined parts, but a great deal of good plain household understanding, amongst all ranks of people, of which everybody has a share;'-which is, I think, very right. With us, you see, the case is quite different: Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say that Gravity was an arrant 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 twelvemonth 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 :-it was 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 written in letters of gold. thorough knowledge of human nature, I need not say more to satisfy him that my Hero could not go on at this rate without some slight experience of these incidental mementoes. To speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a multitude of small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding Eugenius's frequent advice, he too much disregarded; thinking that, as not one of them was contracted through any malignancy-but, on the contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere jocundity of humour-they would all of them be crossed out in course. 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. Eugenius would never admit this, and would restraint. Yorick had no impression but one, often tell him that one day or other he would and that was what arose from the nature of the certainly be reckoned with; and he would often deed spoken of; which impression he would add-in an accent of sorrowful apprehension-to usually translate into plain English, without the uttermost mite. To which Yorick, with his any periphrasis, and too oft without much usual carelessness of heart, would as often andistinction of either person, time, or place; so swer with a pshaw !-and if the subject was that when mention was make of a pitiful or an started in the fields, with a hop, skip, and a ungenerous proceeding- -he never gave himself jump at the end of it; but if close pent up in a moment's time to reflect who was the hero of the social chimney-corner, where the culprit the piece,what his station, or how far was barricadoed in, with a table and a couple of he had power to hurt him hereafter;-but if arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a it was a dirty action,-without more ado,-The tangent, Eugenius would then go on with his man was a dirty fellow,-and so on. And as his lecture upon discretion in words to this purcomments had usually the ill fate to be termi-pose, though somewhat better put together :nated either in a bon mot, or to be enlivened Trust me, dear Yorick, this unweary pleathroughout with some drollery or humour of santry of thine will sooner or later bring thee expression, it gave wings to Yorick's indiscre-into scrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit tion. 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 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. CHAPTER XII. THE mortgager and mortgagee differ, the one from the other, not more in length of purse than the jester and jestee do in that of memory. But in this the comparison between them runs, as the scholiasts call it, upon all-four; which, by the bye, is upon one or two legs more than some of the best of Homer's can pretend to, namely, That the one raises a sum and the other a laugh at your expense, and thinks no more about it. Interest, however, still runs on 'n both cases;-the periodical or accidental payments of it just serving to keep the memory of the affair alive; till at length, in some evil hour, pop comes the creditor upon each, and by demanding principal upon the spot, together with full interest to the very day, makes them both feel the full extent of their obligations. can extricate thee out of.- -In these sallics, too oft, I see it happens that a person laughed at considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckonest up his friends, his family, his kindred and allies-and dost muster up, with them, the many recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger-'tis no extravagant arithmetic to say that, for every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so. I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies.I believe and know them to be truly honest and sportive; but consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot distinguish this, and that knaves will not ; and that thou knowest not what it is either to provoke the one, or to make merry with the other.Whenever they associate for mutual defence, depend upon it they will carry on the war in such a manner against thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily sick of it, and of thy life too. Revenge, from some baneful corner, shall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart nor integrity of conduct shall set right. -The fortunes of thy house shall totter,-thy As the reader (for I hate your ifs) has a character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it,-thy faith questioned, -thy works belied,-thy wit forgotten,-thy learning trampled on. To wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, CRUELTY and COWARDICE, twin ruffians, hired and set on by MALICE in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes:- -the best of us, my dear lad, lie open there ;-and trust me-trust me, Yorick, when, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an innocent and a helpless creature shall be sacrificed, tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed to make a fire to offer it up with. Yorick scarce ever heard this sad vaticiñation of his destiny read over to him but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory look attending it that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride his tit with more sobriety.But, alas, too late!- —a grand confederacy, with ***** and ***** at the head of it, was formed before the first prediction of it. The whole plan of attack, just as Eugenius had foreboded, was put in execution all at once,—with so little mercy on the side of the allies, and so little suspicion on Yorick of what was carrying on against him, that, when he thought-good easy man!-full surely preferment was o'ripening,they had smote his root,-and then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him. Yorick, however, fought it out, with all imaginable gallantry, for some time; till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the calamities of the war-but more so by the ungenerous manner in which it was carried on, -he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his spirits in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought, quite broken-hearted. ... may yet do for thee? . . . Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head... For my part, continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words, I declare I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee, and would gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, cheering up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, and that I may live to see it. I beseech thee, Eugenius, quoth Yorick, taking off his night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,-his right being still grasped close in that of Eugenius,-I beseech thee to take a view of my head. I see nothing that ails it, replied Eugenius. Then, alas! my friend, said Yorick, let me tell you that it is so bruised and misshapened with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others, have so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might say, with Sancho Panca, that should I recover, and 'mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit it.'-Yorick's last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips, ready to depart, as he uttered this; yet still it was uttered with something of a Cervantic tone; . . . and as he spoke it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes- -faint picture of those flashes of his spirit which (as Shakespeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar ! Eugenius was convinced from this that the heart of his friend was broken; he squeezed his hand, and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door; he then closed them, and never opened them more. He lies buried in a corner of his churchyard, What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion, in the parish of —, under a plain marble slab, was as follows: A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in with an intent to take his last sight,and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing Yorick's curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick, looking up in his face, took hold of his hand and, after thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet hereafter, he would thank him again and again,-he told him he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever. . . . I hope not, answered Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke,-I hope not, Yorick, said he. . . . Yorick replied, with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius's hand, and that was all; but it cut Eugenius to his heart. . . . Come, come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within him, my dear lad, be comforted,-let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis, when thou most wantest them;-who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of GOD which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his execu tors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy: Alas, poor Dorick! Ten times in a day has Yorick's ghost the consolation to hear his monumental inscription read over, with such a variety of plaintive tones as denote a general pity and esteem for hima footway crossing the churchyard close by the side of his grave,-not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it, and sigh. ing, as he walks on, Alas, poor YORICK! |