our pillow, and reflect coolly upon the transactions of the preceding day. In the same manner I should recommend it to every one so to regulate his conduct through the active scenes of social life, that he may lie down in the evening of old age, and review them with unruffled satisfaction; and, as we have observed that the happiness derived from hope, though inferior to that of reflection, is not however trivial, I would also recommend him so to extract and mingle the joys of each, as to make the soothing remembrance of past pleasures a solid foundation for a speculative anticipation of those

to come.

ANON.

No. XI.

SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1787.

Smiles from reason flow, to brutes denied-Milton,

IT has been the business of philosophers in all ages to invent an apposite and characteristic term by which man may be distinguished from the brute creation in his exclusive right to some peculiar faculty. The deep penetration and vigorous researches of an illustrious heathen have enabled him to inform us, that man is an animal bipes implume, a two-legged animal without feathers. And philosophers of later ages have discovered, that he is a laughing animal, a rational animal, a tool-making animal, a cooking animal.

It is my present intention to consider him as the laughing animal; and that faculty, though it should resolve itself into as many subdivisions as a lecture upon heads, or branch forth into ramifications like a Welsh pedigree, I shall pursue through all its degrees, from the risus sardonicus of the ancients, to the tee-hee of the modern drawing

room.

When I insist upon the gravity of the subject I am about to handle, lest I should be accused of extravagance of opinion, I shall endeavour to show, by a brief narrative of facts, that the consequences which flow from the use and abuse of this our distinguishing faculty are of the most serious nature. I have seen a whole battalion of militia men, as valorous and as red-coated as a regiment of guards, disconcerted and put into confusion in the midst of their manoeuvring and tobacco-chewing, from the broad-shouldered serjeant of the grenadier company to the duck-legged corporal of recruits, by the horse-laugh of a by-stander. I was once present (credite dicenti) in the pit at the Opera, during the representation of Macbeth: on my right hand sat an unthinking Englishman, who, forgetful that he was a spectator of a serious performance, burst into a horse-laugh, just at the very time when lady Macbeth and her caro sposo were conjuring up all the horror that heads and heels were capable of exciting. Her ladyship, conscious that she brandished her dagger in tune, and that she rubbed off the "damn'd spot" from her hand most harmoniously, without exhibiting to the audience any of that disagreeabilità of countenance for which Mrs. Siddons has been condemned, was very highly as

well as very justly enraged. The curtain fell, and the signora declared she would never appear again before an English audience. In vain did the distressed manager represent to her, that the taste, the judgment, the every thing of this unhappy nation, were infinitely beneath her notice; heaping at the same time upon poor John Bull a profusion of epithets, all ending in issimo. In vain was he pressing in his solicitations, that she should give them, at least, one more trial: she still persisted in her cruel threats, that she would leave them, and return to her own country. At last, however, the kind interference of a noble frequenter of the opera-house produced a reconciliation. He could not but confess the headstrong vulgarity and unreasonable prejudices of his countrymen, who considered every competition with their favourite poet as a burlesque and an insult: yet, he hoped, the ignorance and the insolence of a few would not be a sufficient reason for the punishment of the great body of cognoscenti. He moreover spiritedly declared, that he would call any person to a very severe account, who should dare to laugh, when on the printed bills of the night was written, in large characters, a serious opera."

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The resentment of signor Macabet himself was carried to a still higher pitch. He who but the day before had been complimented with the thaneship of Cawdor, because he had stood a minute and a half longer, by the manager's watch, upon one leg, than any Macbeth or Artaxerxes who had ever appeared upon any stage, was actually found the next morning hanging in a pair of embroidered garters, with tassels of silver twist. The signor

made a vacancy in the opera list, and his garters were entirely spoiled, having been so much stretched as to be unfit for the use of any future Macbeth, Rinaldo, Artaxerxes, or, in short, any body with a decent leg.

This tragical after-piece was entirely occasioned by the horse-laugh, the use of which is sometimes allowable, but the too frequent repetition of it I cannot but consider as a disease. This disease is very prevalent in the city; it is often found at a sitting of the quorum, and, in short, at most places where the company meet to be merry; the symptoms attending it are violent convulsions, and a bloated habit.

This disorder, among the men, I believe to have originated from the false philosophy of a few smatterers in science, who conceived, that as man was distinguished from the brutes by laughter, the more he laughed, the farther he was removed from the lower species. Yet they should, in their philosophical researches, have recollected, that extremes meet, and for that very reason this species of laughter, which being too much indulged, was considered as unbecoming mankind, has been degraded by the title of the horse-laugh. With the ladies, this complaint has a different origin. The Venus of the Greeks, from whom we derive all our notions of the elegant and beautiful, when represented by the poets in her most bewitching attire, is called the poμsions, a term expressive of that rational cheerfulness of countenance, which comprehends all that is lovely in the female face. The poverty of our language has been obliged to translate this "the laughter-loving;" and to that cause alone

are owing all those shrill, yet violent sallies of misinterpreted gaiety, which frighten our horses in the Park, give us the head-ache at old Drury, and, worse than all, distort the features of the fairest women in the world.

Of grinning, which I do not consider as a species of laughter, I shall treat upon some future occasion, and endeavour to describe the different modifications of it, as it is at present practised by those professors who exercise their faculty through a horse-collar, at a country fair, by that useful animal in the kitchen, the turnspit, and by the illustrious assistant and partner of Mr. Astley, gene

ral Jackoo.

I shall proceed, therefore, to the risus in angulo of the ladies, or giggle in the corner. This species of merriment has many different ends in view. It sometimes hunts down a man of bashfulness, sometimes ridicules a hump-back or a red nose, and sometimes becomes an assignation of gallantry. The two former of its qualities are particularly called forth, when a bevy of beauties, huddled up into one corner of a room, monopolize the wit of a whole company, and exercise all the cruel artillery of stolen glances and half-stifled laughs, to the great disquiet of any man who is not as serene amidst difficulties as Fabricius was in the tent of king Pyrrhus.

That the giggle in the corner is sometimes an assignation of gallantry, my male readers, who have no authority upon which they can with more confidence rely, will find sufficiently demonstrated in Horace. My female readers are reminded of a