 not at the beginning of it) -
very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote --
 
                                     Bravo!
 
-- Though not very offensively, -- for it is at two inches, at least, and a
half's distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very
extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is
generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote besides
with a crow's quill so faintly in a small Italian hand, as scarce to sollicit
the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not, - so that from
the manner of it, it stands half excused; and being wrote moreover with very
pale ink, diluted almost to nothing, - 'tis more like a ritratto of the shadow
of vanity, than of VANITY herself - of the two; resembling rather a faint
thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the
composer, than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world.
    With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do no
service to Yorick's character as a modest man; - but all men have their
failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is
this, that the word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a
different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner, -- as if
he had retracted, or was ashamed of the opinion he had once entertained of it.
    These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in this
one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover to it;
and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text; - but at
the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and
sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in, - he took a larger
circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one; - as if he had snatched the
occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than
the straitness of the pulpit allowed. - These, though hussar-like, they skirmish
lightly and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue -;
tell me then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be
printed together?
 

                                   Chap. XII.

When my uncle Toby had turned every thing into money,
