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effect of the music, and not the product of skill and practice. Now Clidamira came on with a crowd of graces, and demanded my judgment with so sweet an air-and she had no sooner carried it, but Damia made her utterly forgot, by a gentle sinking, and a rigadoon step. The contest held a full half-hour; and, I protest, I saw no manner of difference in their perfections, until they came up together, and expected sentence. "Look ye, ladies," said I, " I see no difference in the least in your performance; but you, Clidamira, seem to be so well satisfied that I shall determine for you, that I must give it to Damia, who stands with so much diffidence and fear, after showing an equal merit to what she pretends to. Therefore, Clidamira, you are pretty; but, Damia, you are a very pretty lady: for," said I, "beauty loses its force, if not accompanied with modesty. She that has an humble opinion of herself, will have every body's applause, because she does not expect it; while the vain creature loses approbation through too great a sense of deserving it."

From my own Apartment, June 27.

Being of a very spare and hective constitution, I am forced to make frequent journeys of a mile or two for fresh air; and, indeed, by this last, which was no farther than the village of Chelsea, I am farther convinced of the necessity of travelling to know the world: for, as it is usual with young voyagers, as soon as they land upon a shore, to begin their accounts of the nature of the people, their soil, their government, their inclinations, and their passions; so really I fancied I could give you an immediate description of this village, from the Five Fields where the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee-house where the Literati sit in council. A great ancestor of our's by the mother's side, Mr. Justice Overdo (whose history is written by Ben Jonson), met with more

enormities by walking incognito than he was capable of correcting; and found great mortifications in observing also persons of eminence, whom he before knew nothing of. Thus it fared with me, even in a place so near the town as this. When I came into the coffee-house, I had not time to salute the company, before my eyes were diverted by ten thousand gimcracks round the room, and on the cieling. When my first astonishment was over, there comes to me a sage of a thin and meagre countenance; which aspect made me doubt, whether reading or fretting had made it so philosophic: but I very soon perceived him to be of that sect which the antients call Gingivistæ; in our language, tooth-drawers. I immediately had a respect for the man; for these practical philosophers go upon a very rational hypothesis, not to cure, but to take away the part affected. My love of mankind made me very benevolent to Mr. Salter; * for such is the name of this eminent barber and antiquary. Men are usually, but unjustly, distinguished rather by their fortunes than their talents; otherwise this personage would make a great figure in that class of men which I distinguish under the title of Odd Fellows. But it is the misfortune of persons of great genius to have their faculties dissipated by attention to too many things at once. Mr. Salter is an instance of this: if he would wholly give himself up to the string, instead of playing twenty beginnings to tunes, he might, before he dies, play Roger de

* Mr. Salter was a noted barber, who began to make a collection of natural curiosities, which acquired him the name (probably first given him by Steele) of Don Saltero. He formerly kept a coffee-house at Chelsea, the curiosities of which were lately sold by auction. See Gent. Mag. vol. LXIX. p. 160.

+ There was no passing his house, if he was at home, without having one's ears grated with the sound of his fiddle, on hich he scraped most execrably.

Caubly quite out. I heard him go through his whole round; and indeed I think he does play tne "Merry Christ Church Bells" pretty justly; but he confessed to me, he did that rather to shew he was orthodox, than that he valued himself upon the music itself. Or, if he did proceed in his anatomy, why might he not hope in time to cut off legs, as well as teeth? The particularity of this man put me into a deep thought, whence it should proceed, that of all the lower order, barbers should go further in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men. Watermen brawl, cobblers sing: but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician? The learned Vossius says, his barber used to comb his hair in iambics. And indeed, in all ages, one of this useful profession, this order of cosmetic philosophers, has been celebrated by the most eminent hands. You see the barber in Don Quixote is one of the principal characters in the history; which gave me satisfaction in the doubt, why Don Saltero writ his name with a Spanish termination: for he is descended in a right line, not from John Tradescant,* as he himself asserts, but from that memorable companion of the Knight of Mancha. And I hereby certify all the worthy citizens who travel to see his rarities, that his double-barrelled pistols, targets, coats of mail, his sclopeta and sword of Toledo, were left to his ancestor by the said Don Quixote, and by the said ancestor to all his progeny down to Don Saltero. Though I go thus far in favour of Don Saltero's great merit, I cannot allow a liberty he takes of imposing several names (without my licence) on the collections he has made, to the abuse of the good people of England; one of which is particularly calculated to deceive religious persons, to the great scandal of the well-disposed, and may

* Tradescant was the person who collected the curiosities which Elias Ashmole left to the University of Oxford,

introduce heterodox opinions. He shows you a straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge Peskad, within three miles of Bedford; and tells you, "It is Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat." To my knowledge of this very hat it may be added, that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. Therefore this is really nothing but, under the specious pretence of learning and antiquities, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I cannot tolerate among his rarities: as, the china figure of a lady in the glass-case: the Italian engine for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it: both which I hereby order to be taken down, or else he may expect to have his letters-patent for making punch superseded, be debarred wearing his muff next winter, or ever coming to London without his wife. It may perhaps be thought I have dwelt too long upon the affairs of this operator; but I desire the reader to remember, that it is my way to consider men as they stand in merit, and not according to their fortune or figure; and if he is in a coffee-house at the reading hereof, let him look round, and he will find, there may be more characters drawn in this account than that of Don Saltero; for half the politicians about him, he may observe, are, by their place in nature, of the class of tooth-drawers.

N° 35. THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 1709.

Quicquid agunt homines

nostri est farrago libelli.

Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86.

Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream,
Our motley paper seizes for its theme.

P.

Grecian Coffee-house, June 28. THERE is an habit or custom which I have put my ience to the utmost stretch to have suffered so

long, because several of my intimate friends are in the guilt; and that is, the humour of taking snuff, and looking dirty about the mouth by way of orna

ment.

My method is, to drive to the bottom of a sore before I pretend to apply a remedy. For this reason, I sat by an eminent story-teller and politician, who takes half an ounce in five seconds, and has mortgaged a pretty tenement near the town, merely to improve and dung his brains with this prolific powder. I observed this gentleman, the other day, in the midst of a story, diverted from it by looking at something at a distance, and I softly hid his box. But he returns to his tale, and, looking for his box, he cries, "And so, Sir-." Then, when he should have taken a pinch, "As I was saying-" says he, " has nobody seen my box?" His friend beseeches him to finish his narration: then he proceeds; "And so, Sir - where can my box be?" Then turning to me, "Pray, Sir, did you see my box?" "Yes, Sir," said I, "I took it to see how long you could do without it." He resumed his tale; and I took notice that his dulness was much more regular and fluent than before. A pinch supplied the place of “As I was saying," and "So, Sir;" and he went on currently enough in that style which the learned call insipid. This observation easily led me into a philosophic reason for taking snuff; which is done only to supply with sensations the want of reflection. This I take to be an ευρηκα, a nostrum; upon which I hope to receive the thanks of this board: for as it is natural to lift a man's hand to a sore, when you fear any thing coming at you; so when a person feels his thoughts are run out, and he has no more to say, it is as natural to fill his weak brain with powder at the nearest place of access, viz. the nostrils. This is so evident, that nature suggests the use according to the indigence of the persons

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