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
John Hall-Stevenson the result that in 1760 Hall-Stevenson abused Smollett and his associates in "A Nosegay and a Simile for the Reviewers" and "Two Lyrical Epistles, or Margery the Cook Maid, to the Critical Reviewers". Hall-Stevenson's "A Sentimental Dialogue between two Souls in the palpable Bodies of an English Lady of Quality and an Irish Gentleman" (1768) was seen as a parody of his friend Sterne's "Tristram Shandy". Hall-Stevenson also wrote on politics. He denounced the Earl of Bute and all politicians, whether Whig or Tory, with such works as "A Pastoral Cordial; or an Anodyne Sermon, preached before their Graces Newcastle