alas! my friend, said _Yorick_, let me tell you, that ’tis so bruised and mis-shapened with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others have so unhandsomely given me, in the dark, that I might say with _Sancho Pança_, 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 _Cervantick_ 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 broke: 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. [Illustration (full-page black tombstone)] He lies buried in the corner of his churchyard, in the parish of ------, under a plain marble slab, which his friend _Eugenius_, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy. ____________________ | | | Alas, poor YORICK! | |____________________| Ten times 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 him; ----a foot-way crossing the churchyard close by the side of his grave, --not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it, --and sighing as he walks on, Alas, poor YORICK! CHAPTER XIII It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him, merely to put him in mind that there is such a body still in the world, and whom, upon the best judgment I can form upon my own plan at present, --I am going to introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall out betwixt the reader and myself, which may require immediate dispatch; ----’twas right to take care that the poor woman should not be lost in the meantime; --because when she is wanted, we can no way do without her.