—­Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.

—­Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.

—­Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan.  We are getting mixed.

—­The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s widow, is the will to die.

—­Requiescat!  Stephen prayed.

    What of all the will to do? 
    It has vanished long ago ...

—­She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes.  In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul.  She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the merry wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and eyes for believers’ breeches and the most spiritual snuffbox to make the most devout souls sneeze.  Venus has twisted her lips in prayer.  Agenbite of inwit:  remorse of conscience.  It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.

—­History shows that to be true, INQUIT EGLINTONUS CHRONOLOLOGOS.  The ages succeed one another.  But we have it on high authority that a man’s worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family.  I feel that Russell is right.  What do we care for his wife or father?  I should say that only family poets have family lives.  Falstaff was not a family man.  I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.

Lean, he lay back.  Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid.  Shy, supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup.  A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.  Visits him here on quarter days.  Mr Magee, sir, there’s a gentleman to see you.  Me?  Says he’s your father, sir.  Give me my Wordsworth.  Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.

Your own?  He knows your old fellow.  The widower.

Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his hand.  The voice, new warmth, speaking.  Dr Bob Kenny is attending her.  The eyes that wish me well.  But do not know me.