an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has
strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

Yorick scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his destiny read over to
him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory look attending
it, that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride his tit with more
sobriety.--But, alas, too late!--a grand confederacy with. . .and. . .at
the head of it, was formed before the first prediction of it.--The whole
plan of the attack, just as Eugenius had foreboded, was put in execution
all at once,--with so little mercy on the side of the allies,--and so
little suspicion in Yorick, of what was carrying on against him,--that when
he thought, good easy man! full surely preferment was o'ripening,--they had
smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before
him.

Yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some time;
till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the calamities of
the war,--but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which it was carried
on,--he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his spirits in
appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought,
quite broken-hearted.

What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion was as follows:

A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in with an
intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing
Yorick's curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick looking up in his
face took hold of his hand,--and after thanking him for the many tokens of
his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet
hereafter,--he would thank him again and again,--he told him, he was within