Yorick near-anagram of the Greek word 'Kyrios' and thus a reference to the Catholic martyr Edmund Campion. The name was used by Laurence Sterne in his comic novels "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey" as the surname of one of the characters, a parson who is a humorous portrait of the author. Parson Yorick is supposed to be descended from Shakespeare's Yorick. The earliest printed image of Hamlet holding Yorick's skull is a 1773 engraving by John Hall after a design by Edward Edwards in Bell's edition of Shakespeare's plays. It has since become a common subject. While Yorick normally only
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman to the morality of dancing schools. Much of the singularity of "Tristram Shandy's" characters is drawn from Burton. Burton indulges himself in a Utopian sketch of a perfect government in his introductory address to the reader, and this forms the basis of the notions of "Tristram Shandy" on the subject. And Sterne parodies Burton's use of weighty quotations. The first four chapters of "Tristram Shandy" are founded on some passages in Burton. In Chapter 3, Volume 5, Sterne parodies the genre of "consolatio", mixing and reworking passages from three "widely separated sections" of Burton's "Anatomy", including a parody of Burton's