 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 surnames 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 villainous
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 had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of the
Yorick's 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's, 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.
    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
perform'd by us two, a most delectable narrative will be given in the progress
of this work. I had just time, I say,
