l run out:--I will not philosophize one moment with you
about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:--That instead of
that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would
have looked for, in one so extracted;--he was, on the contrary, as
mercurial and sublimated a composition,--as heteroclite a creature in
all his declensions;--with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur
about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put
together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of
ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of
twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a
romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon his first setting
out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul
ten times in a day of somebody's tackling; and as the grave and more
slow-paced were oftenest in his way,--you may likewise imagine, 'twas
with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled. For
aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom of
such Fracas:--For, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike
and opposition in his nature to gravity;--not to gravity as such;--for
where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of
mortal men for days and weeks together;--but he was an enemy to the
affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it appeared
a cloak for ignorance, or for folly: and then, whenever it fell in his
way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.

Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was
an errant scoundrel, and he would add,--of the most dangerous kind
too,--because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest,
well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in
one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In
the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there
was no danger,--but to itself:--whereas the very essence of gravity was
design, and consequently deceit;--'twas a taught trick to gain credit of
the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that,
with all its pretensions,--it was no better, but often worse, than what
a French wit had long ago defined it,--viz. 'A mysterious carriage
of the body to cover the defects of the mind;'--which definition of
gravity, Yorick, with great imprud