Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none
But we had spared . . .
Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.
—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.
List! List! O list!
My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
If thou didst ever . . .
—What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is king Hamlet?
John Eglinton shifted his
