acknowledgment in him, that the chesnut was originally his—and in course, that it must have been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have played him such a prank with it: What greatly confirmed him in this opinion, was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for Yorick , who sat directly over against Phutatorius , of slipping the chesnut in⸺and consequently that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion, which Phutatorius cast full upon Yorick as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke his opinion⸺and as Phutatorius was naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general one;⸺and for a reason very different from any which have been yet given⸺in a little time it was put out of all manner of dispute.
When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world⸺the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them.—The search was not long in this instance.
It was well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of the treatise which Phutatorius had wrote de Concubinis retinendis , as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world⸺and ’twas easily found out, that there was a mystical meaning in Yorick’s prank—and that his chucking the chesnut hot into Phutatorius’s ⸺**, was a sarcastical fling at his book—the doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest man in the same place.
This conceit awaken’d Somnolentus ⸺made Agelastes smile⸺and if you can recollect the precise look and air of a man’s face intent in finding out a riddle⸻it threw Gastripheres’s into that form—and in short was thought by many to be a masterstroke of arch-wit.