the truth of an observation made by a long sojourner in that country;--
namely, 'That nature was neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in
her gifts of genius and capacity to its inhabitants;--but, like a discreet
parent, was moderately kind to them all; observing such an equal tenor in
the distribution of her favours, as to bring them, in those points, pretty
near to a level with each other; so that you will meet with few instances
in that kingdom of refined parts; but a great deal of good plain houshold
understanding amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a
share;' which is, I think, very right.

With us, you see, the case is quite different:--we are all ups and downs in
this matter;--you are a great genius;--or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a
great dunce and a blockhead;--not that there is a total want of
intermediate steps,--no,--we are not so irregular as that comes to;--but
the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled
island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most
whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest
of her goods and chattels than she.

This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to Yorick's extraction,
who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts I could ever
get of him, seemed not to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his
whole crasis; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all 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