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Benjamin Buzzard, esquire, was indicted for having told the lady Everbloom at a public ball, that she looked very well for a woman of her years. The prisoner not denying the fact, and persisting before the court that he looked upon it as a compliment, the jury brought him in non compos mentis.

The court then adjourned to Monday the eleventh instant." CHARLES LILLIE:

Copia vera.

N° 260. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1710.

1

P Non cuicunque datum est habere nasum.

MARTIAL.

The nose, 'tis said, shows both our scorn and pride:
And yet that feature is to some deny'd.

R. WYNNE.

From my own Apartment, December 6.

We have a very learned and elaborate dissertation upon thumbs in Montaigne's Essays, and another upon ears in the "Tale of a Tub." I am here going to write one upon Noses, having chosen for my text the following verses out of Hudibras:

So learned Taliacotius from

The brawny part of porter's bum
Cut supplemental noses, which
Lasted as long as parent breech;
But when the date of nock was out,
Off dropp'd the sympathetic snout.

Notwithstanding that there is nothing obscene in natural knowledge, and that I intend to give as little offence as may be to readers of a well-bred imagination; I must, for my own quiet, desire the critics, who in all things have been famous for good noses, to refrain from the lecture of this curious Tract. These gentlemen were formerly marked out and distinguished by the little rhinocerical nose, which was always looked upon as an instrument of derision; and which they were used to cock, toss, or draw up in a contemptuous manner, upon reading the works of their ingenious contemporaries. It is not, therefore, for this generation of men that I write the present transaction,

-Minus aptus acutis

Naribus horum hominum

Unfit

For the brisk petulance of modern wit.

FRANCIS.

but for the sake of some of my philosophical friends in the Royal Society, who peruse discourses of this nature with a becoming gravity, and a desire of improving by them.

Many are the opinions of learned men concerning the rise of that fatal distemper, which has always taken a particular pleasure in venting its spight upon the nose. I have seen a little burlesque poem in Italian, that gives a very pleasant account of this matter. The fable of it runs thus: Mars, the god of war, having served during the siege of Naples in the shape of a French colonel, received a visit one night from Venus, the goddess of love, who had been always his professed mistress and admirer. The poem says, she came to him in the disguise of a sut

tling wench, with a bottle of brandy under her arm. Let that be as it will, he managed matters so well, that she went away big-bellied, and was at length brought to-bed of a little Cupid. This boy, whether it was by reason of any bad food that his father had eaten during the siege, or of any particular malig nity in the stars that reigned at his nativity, came into the world with a very sickly look, and crazy constitution. As soon as he was able to handle his bow, he made discoveries of a most perverse dispo sition. He dipped all his arrows in poison, thatrotted every thing they touched; and, what was more particular, aimed all his shafts at the nose, quite contrary to the practice of his elder brothers, who had made a human heart their butt in all coun tries and ages. To break him of this roguish trick, his parents put him to school to Mercury, who did all he could to hinder him from demolishing the noses of mankind; but, in spight of education, the boy continued very unlucky; and though his malice was a little softened by good instructions, he would very frequently let fly an invenomed arrow, and wound his votaries oftener in the nose than in the heart. Thus far the fable.

I need not tell my learned reader, that Correggio has drawn a Cupid taking his lesson from Mercury, conformable to this poem; nor that the poem itself was designed as a burlesque upon Fracastorius.

It was a little after this fatal siege of Naples, that Taliacotius began to practise in a town of Germany. He was the first love-doctor that I meet with in history, and a greater man in his age than our celebrated doctor Wall. He saw his species extremely mutilated and disfigured by this new distemper that was crept into it; and therefore, in pursuance of a very seasonable invention, set up a manufacture of

noses; having first got a patent that none should presume to make noses besides himself. His first patient was a great man of Portugal, who had done good services to his country, but in the midst of them unfortunately lost his nose. Taliacotius grafted a new one on the remaining part of the gristle or cartilaginous substance, which would sneeze, smell, take snuff, pronounce the letters M or N; and, in short, do all the functions of a genuine and natural nose. There was, however, one misfortune in this experiment: the Portuguese's complexion was a littleupon the subfuse, with very black eyes and dark eye-brows; and the nose being taken from a porter that had a white German skin, and cut out of those parts that are not exposed to the sun, it was very visible that the features of his face were not fellows. In a word, the Comdè resembled one of those maimed antique statues that has often a modern nose or fresh marble glewed to a face of such a yellow, ivory complexion, as nothing can give but age. To remedy this particular for the future, the doctor got together a great collection of porters, men of all complexions, black, fair, brown, dark, sallow, pale, and ruddy; so that it was impossible, for a patient of the most out-of-the-way colour not to find a nose to match it..

The doctor's house was now very much enlarged, and became a kind of college, or rather hospital, for the fashionable.cripples of both sexes, that resorted to him from all parts of Europe. Over his door was fastened a large golden snout,not unlike that which is placed over the great gates at Brazen-nose college in Oxford; and, as it is usual for the learned in foreign Universities to distinguish their houses by a Latin sentence, the doctor writ underneath this great golden proboscis two verses out of Ovid:

Militat omnis amans, habet et sua castra Cupido;
Pontice, crede mihi, militat omnis umans.

OVID Amor. El. ix. 1.

The toils of love require a warrior's art;
And every lover plays the soldier's part.

It is reported that Taliacotius had at one time in his house, twelve German counts, nineteen French marquisses, and a hundred Spanish caviliers, besides one solitary English esquire, of whom more hereafter. Though the doctor had the monopoly of noses in his own hands, he is said not to have been unreasonable. Indeed, if a man had occasion for a high Roman nose, he must go to the price of it. A carbuncle nose likewise bore an excessive rate; but for your ordinary short turned-up noses, of which there was the greatest consumption, they cost little or nothing; at least the purchasers thought so, who would have been content to have paid much dearer for them rather than to have gone without them.

The sympathy betwixt the nose and its parent was very extraordinary. Hudibras has told us, that when the porter died, the nose dropped of course, in which case it was always usual to return the nose, in order to have it interred with its first owner. The nose was likewise affected by the pain, as well as death of the original proprietor. An eminent instance of this nature happened to three Spaniards, whose noses were all made out of the same piece of brawn. They found them one day shoot and swell éxtremely; upon which they sent to know how the porter did and heard, upon enquiry,that the parent the noses had been severely kicked the day be

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