It is but an hour ago, replied _Yorick_, since the corporal was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour.—— The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor _Slop_, turning to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being—as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally in my opinion by _consubstantials, impriments_, and _occludents._——Now this poor fellow, continued Dr. _Slop_, pointing to the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this nice point.——That he has,—said my father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—I’m sure of it—quoth _Yorick._—— C H A P. XLI DOCTOR _Slop_ being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the _Tristra-pædia._——Come! cheer up, my lads; I’ll shew you land——for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelve-month.—Huzza!— C H A P. XLII ——FIVE years with a bib under his chin; Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to _Malachi;_ A year and a half in learning to write his own name; Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at Greek and Latin; Four years at his _probations_ and his _negations_—the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the great _Julius Scaliger_ within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek;—and _Peter Damianus_, lord bishop of _Ostia_, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And _Baldus_ himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when _Eudamidas_, the son of _Archidamas_, heard _Xenocrates_ at seventy-five disputing about _wisdom_, that he asked gravely,—_If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time will he have to make use of it?_ _Yorick_ listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost atoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when you imitate him. I am convinced, _Yorick_, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a North-west passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.——But, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, _Yorick_, has not a parent to point it out.