Josiah Shallow was indicted in the name of Dame Winifred, sole relict of Richard Dainty, esquire, for having said several times in company, and in the hearing of several persons there present, "that he was extremely obliged to the widow Dainty, and that he should never be able sufficiently to express his gratitude." The prosecutor urged, that this might blast her reputation, and that it was in effect a boasting of favours which he had never received. The prisoner seemed to be much astonished at the construction which was put upon his words, and said, "that he meant nothing by them, but that the widow had befriended him in a lease, and was very kind to his younger sister." The jury finding him a little weak in his understanding, without going out of the court, brought in their verdict igno

ramus.

The

Ursula Goodenough was accused by the lady Betty Wou'dbe, for having said, that she, the lady Betty Wou'dbe, was painted. The prisoner brought several persons of good credit to witness to her reputation, and proved by undeniable evidences, that she was never at the place where the words were said to have been uttered. Censor, observing the behaviour of the prosecutor, found reason to believe, that she had indicted the prisoner for no other reason but to make her complexion be taken notice of, which indeed was very fresh and beautiful: he therefore, asked the offender with a very stern voice, how she could presume to spread so groundless a report? and whether she saw any colours in the lady Wou'dbe's face that could procure credit to such a falsehood? "Do you see," says he, "any lilies or roses in her cheeks, any bloom, any probability?" The prosecutor, not able to bear such language

any longer, told him, "that he talked like a blind old fool, and that she was ashamed to have entertained any opinion of his wisdom:" but she was put to silence, and sentenced "to wear her mask for five months, and not to presume to shew her face until the town should be empty."

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 as a compliment, the jury brought him in non compos mentis.

it

"The court then adjourned to Monday the eleventh instant.".

Copia vera.

CHARLES LILLIE.

No. 260. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1710.

Non cuicunque datum est habere nasum.

MARTIAL.

The nose, 'tis said, shews 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 wellbred 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 spite 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 suttling 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 malignity 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 disposition. He dipped all his arrows in poison, that rotted 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 countries 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 spite 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 little upon the subfusc, 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,