gne complained in a
parallel accident)--had I found the declivity easy, or the ascent
accessible--certes I had been outwitted.--Your notes, Homenas, I should
have said, are good notes;--but it was so perpendicular a precipice--so
wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first note I
humm'd I found myself flying into the other world, and from thence
discovered the vale from whence I came, so deep, so low, and dismal,
that I shall never have the heart to descend into it again.

A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own
size--take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.--And so much
for tearing out of chapters.

Chapter 2.LXI.

--See if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to
light their pipes!--'Tis abominable, answered Didius; it should not
go unnoticed, said doctor Kysarcius--he was of the Kysarcii of the Low
Countries.

Methinks, said Didius, half rising from his chair, in order to remove a
bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him and
Yorick--you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit upon
a more proper place, Mr. Yorick--or at least upon a more proper occasion
to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about: If the sermon is
of no better worth than to light pipes with--'twas certainly, Sir, not
good enough to be preached before so learned a body; and if 'twas good
enough to be preached before so learned a body--'twas certainly Sir, too
good to light their pipes with afterwards.

--I have got him fast hung up, quoth Didius to himself, upon one of the
two horns of my dilemma--let him get off as he can.

I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this
sermon, quoth Yorick, upon this occasion--that I declare, Didius, I
would suffer martyrdom--and if it was possible my horse with me, a
thousand times over, before I would sit down and make such another: I
was delivered of it at the wrong end of me--it came from my head instead
of my heart--and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the writing and
preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it, in this manner--To preach,
to shew the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit--to
parade in the eyes of the vulgar with the beggarly accounts of a little
learning, tinsel'd over with a few words which glitter, but convey
little light and less warmth--is a dishonest use of the poor single
half hour in a week which is put into our ha