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.

It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than
that of the king's chief Jester;--and that Hamlet's Yorick, in
our Shakespeare, 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.

I had just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr. Noddy's eldest
son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as governor, riding along
with him at a prodigious rate thro' 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 houshold understanding
amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a share;' which is,
I think, very right.

With us, you see, the case is quite different:--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 hundred years, it might
possibly have al