Ant.—How long’s that since?
1st B. D.—Cannot you tell that? Every mechanic can tell that. It was that very day that young Pluto was born: he that was a Geologist. He that gave a New System by Posting through the bowels of the Earth in his chariot drawn by four Horses.
Ant.—Ay, marry! how did he do that?
1st B. D.—With Lucifer Matches.
Ant.—Why?
1st B. D.—Because he was mad after Proserpine.
Ant.—Peace I pray you! How long will the jaws of a Leviathan, or the bones of a Megatherium, lie in the earth e’er they crumble into dust?
1st B. D.—Faith if they be not fused in Pluto’s crucible for many thousand years.
[The remainder of the conversation relates to a controversy, now well-nigh forgotten, as to the identification of a skull said to have been that of Eugene Aram, who was executed at Tyburn, in 1759 for the murder of Daniel Clark. At the Newcastle Meeting of the British Association in 1838, a skull was produced as that of Eugene Aram, but as it had passed through many hands during the eighty years that had elapsed since his death, its authenticity was much questioned, especially as one eminent anatomist declared it to be the skull of a female.
In quoting this imitation of a scene from Hamlet, justice can hardly be done to the scarce volume from which it is taken, without quoting the instructive explanatory notes which accompany it.