  There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am,—for there is scarce any body I cannot give a better account of than myself; and I have often wished I could do it in a single word,—and have an end of it. It was the only time and occasion in my life I could accomplish this to any purpose;—for Shakespeare lying upon the table, and recollecting I was in his books, I took up Hamlet, and turning immediately to the grave-diggers’ scene in the fifth act, I Now, whether the idea of poor Yorick’s skull was put out of the Count’s mind by the reality of my own, or by what magic he could drop a period of seven or eight hundred years, makes nothing in this account;—’tis certain the French conceive better than they combine;—I wonder at nothing in this world, and the less at this; inasmuch as one of the first of our own Church, for whose candour and paternal sentiments I have the highest veneration, fell into the same mistake in the very same case:—“He could not bear,” he said, “to look into the sermons wrote by the King of Denmark’s jester.” Good, my Lord said I; but there are two Yoricks. The Yorick your Lordship thinks of, has been dead and buried eight hundred years ago; he flourished in Horwendillus’s court;—the other Yorick is myself, who have flourished, my Lord, in no court.—He shook his head. Good God! said I, you might as well confound Alexander the Great with Alexander the Coppersmith, my lord!—“’Twas all one,” he replied.— —If Alexander, King of Macedon, could have translated your Lordship, said I, I’m sure your Lordship would not have said so. The poor Count de B— fell but into the same error. —Et, Monsieur, est-il Yorick? cried the Count.—Je le suis, said I.—Vous?—Moi,—moi qui ai l’honneur de vous parler, Monsieur le Comte.—Mon Dieu! said he, embracing me,—Vous Êtes Yorick! The Count instantly put the Shakespeare into his pocket, and left me alone in his room. |
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