Yorick, I said, picked up the chesnut which Phutatorius's wrath had flung down--the action was trifling--I am ashamed to account for it--he did it, for no reason, but that he thought the chesnut not a jot worse for the adventure--and that he held a good chesnut worth stooping for.--But this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in Phutatorius's head:
He considered this act of Yorick's in getting off his chair and picking up the chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in him, that the chesnut was originally his--and in course, that it must have been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have played him such a prank with it:
What greatly confirmed him in this opinion, was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for Yorick, who sat directly over against Phutatorius, of slipping the chesnut in--and consequently that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion, which Phutatorius cast full upon Yorick as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke his opinion--and as Phutatorius was naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general one;--and for a reason very different from any which have been yet given--in a little time it was put out of all manner of dispute.
When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world--the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them.--The search was not long in this instance.
It was well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of the treatise which Phutatorius had wrote de Concubinis retinendis, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world--and 'twas easily found out, that there was a mystical meaning in Yorick's prank--and that his chucking the chesnut hot into Phutatorius's. . .--. . ., was a sarcastical fling at his book--the doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest man in the same place.
This conceit awaken'd Somnolentus--made Agelastes smile--and if you can recollect the precise look and air of a man's face intent in finding out a riddle--it threw Gastripheres's into that form--and in short was thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit.
This, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as groundless as the dreams of philosophy: Yorick, no doubt, as Shakespeare said of his ancestor--'was a man of jest,' but it was temper'd with something which withheld him from that, and many other ungracious pranks, of which he as undeservedly bore the blame;--but it was his misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying and doing a thousand things, of which (unless my esteem blinds me) his nature was incapable. All I blame him for--or rather, all I blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of his temper, which would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the world, however in his power. In every ill usage of that sort, he acted precisely as in the affair of his lean horse--he could have explained it to his honour, but his spirit was above it; and besides, he ever looked upon the inventor, the propagator and believer of an illiberal report alike so injurious to him--he could not stoop to tell his story to them--and so trusted to time and truth to do it for him.
This heroic cast produced him inconveniences in many respects--in the present it was followed by the fixed resentment of Phutatorius, who, as Yorick had just made an end of his chesnut, rose up from his chair a second time, to let him know it--which indeed he did with a smile; saying only--that he would endeavour not to forget the obligation.
But you must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these two things in your mind.
--The smile was for the company.
--The threat was for Yorick.
