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let any one look over the old beaux, and he will find the man of success was remarkable for quarrelling impertinently for their sakes, for dressing unlike the rest of the world, or passing his days in an insipid assiduity about the fair sex to gain the figure he made amongst them. Add to this that he must have the reputation of being well with other women, to please any one woman of gallantry; for you are to know, that there is a mighty ambition among the light part of the sex to gain slaves from the dominion of others. My friend Will Honeycomb says it was a common bite with him, to lay suspicions that he was favoured by a lady's enemy, that is, some rival beauty, to be well with herself. A little spite is natural to a great beauty: and it is ordinary to snap up a disagreeable fellow lest another should have him. That impudent toad Bareface fares well among all the ladies he converses with, for no other reason in the world but that he has the skill to keep them from explanation with one another. Did they know there is not one who likes him in her heart, each would declare her scorn of him the next moment; but he is well received by them because it is the fashion, and opposition to each other brings them insensibly into an imitation of each other. What adds to him the greatest grace is, that the pleasant thief, as they call him, is the most inconstant creature living, has a wonderful deal of wit and humour, and never wants something to say; besides all which, he has a most spiteful dangerous tongue if you should provoke him.

To make a woman's man, he must not be a man of sense or a fool; the business is to entertain, and it is much better to have a faculty of arguing, than a capacity of judging right. But the pleasantest of all the woman's equipage are your regular visitants; these are volunteers in their service, without hopes of pay or preferment. It is enough that they can lead out from a public place, that they are admitted on a public day, and can be allowed to pass away part of that heavy load, their time, in the company of the fair. But commend me above all others to those who are known for your ruiners of ladies; these are the choicest spirits which our age produces. We have several of these irresistible gentlemen among us when the company is in town. These fellows are accomplished with the knowledge of the ordinary occurrences about court and town, have that sort of good breeding which is exclusive of all morality, and consists only in being publicly decent, privately dissolute.

It is wonderful how far a fond opinion of herself can carry a woman, to make her have the least regard to a professed known woman's man; but as scarce one of all the women who are in the tour of gallantries ever hears anything of what is the common sense of sober minds, but are entertained with a continual round of flatteries, they cannot be mistresses of themselves enough to make arguments for their own conduct from the behaviour of these men to others. It is so far otherwise, that a general fame for falsehood in this kind is a recommendation; and the coxcomb, loaded with the favours of many others, is received like a victor that disdains his trophies, to be a victim to the present charmer.

If you see a man more full of gesture than ordinary in a public assembly, if loud upon no occasion, if negligent of the company around him, and yet laying wait for destroying by that negligence, you may take it for granted that he has ruined many a fair one. The woman's man expresses himself wholly in that motion which we call strutting. An elevated chest, a pinched hat, a measurable step, and a sly surveying eye, are the marks of him. Now and then you see a gentleman with all these accomplishments; but alas! any one of them is enough to undo thousands. When a gentleman with such perfections adds to it suitable learning, there should be public warning of his residence in town, that we may remove our wives and daughters. It happens sometimes that such a fine man has read all the miscellany poems, a few of our comedies, and has the translation of Ovid's Epistles by heart. "Oh if it were possible that such a one could be as true as he is charming! but that is too much, the women will share such a dear false man: a little gallantry to hear him talk one would indulge one's self in, let him reckon the sticks of one's fan, say something of the cupids in it; and then call one so many soft names which a man of his learning has at his fingers-ends. There sure is some excuse for frailty, when attacked by force against a weak woman." Such is the soliloquy of many a lady one might name, at the sight of one of these who makes it no iniquity to go on from day to day in the sin of womenslaughter.

It is certain that people are got into a way of affectation, with a manner of overlooking the most solid virtues, and admiring the most trivial excellencies. The woman is so far from expecting to be contemned for being a very injudicious silly animal, that while she can preserve her features and her mien, she knows that she is still

the object of desire; and there is a sort of secret ambition, from reading frivolous books, and keeping as frivolous company, each side to be amiable in imperfection, and arrive at the characters of the Dear Deceiver and the Perjured Fair.

ACCOUNT OF A GRINNING-MATCH

No. 173. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1711. [ADDISON.]

Remove fera monstra, tuæque

Saxificos vultus, quæcunque ea, tolle Medusa.— OVID. MET.

'N a late paper I mentioned the project of an ingenious author

for by our British artisans, and the influence they might have towards the improvement of our several manufactures. I have since been very much surprised by the following advertisement which I find in the Post-Boy of the 11th instant, and again repeated in the Post-Boy of the 15th.

"ON the 9th of October next will be run for upon Coleshill Heath, in Warwickshire, a plate of six guineas value, 3 heats, by any horse, mare, or gelding, that hath not won above the value of 57., the winning horse to be sold for iol., to carry 10 stone weight, if 14 hands high; if above or under, to carry or be allowed weight for inches, and to be entered Friday the 15th at the Swan in Coleshill, before 6 in the evening. Also a plate of less value to be run for by The same day a gold ring to be grinned for by men."

asses.

The first of these diversions, that is to be exhibited by the rol. race-horses, may probably have its use; but the two last, in which the asses and men are concerned, seem to me altogether extraordinary and unaccountable. Why they should keep running asses at Coleshill, or how making mouths turns to account in Warwickshire, more than in any other parts of England, I cannot comprehend. I have looked over all the Olympic games, and do not find anything in them like an ass-race, or a match at grinning. However it be, I am informed, that several asses are now kept in body

clothes, and sweated every morning upon the heath; and that all the country-fellows within ten miles of the Swan grin an hour or two in their glasses every morning, in order to qualify themselves for the 9th of October. The prize which is proposed to be grinned for, has raised such an ambition among the common people of outgrinning one another, that many very discerning persons are afraid it should spoil most of the faces in the county; and that a Warwickshire man will be known by his grin, as Roman Catholics imagine a Kentish man is by his tail. The gold ring which is made the prize of deformity, is just the reverse of the golden apple that was formerly made the prize of beauty, and should carry for its posie the old motto inverted,

Detur tetriori.

Or, to accommodate it to the capacity of the combatants,

The frightfull'st grinner

Be the winner.

In the mean while I would advise a Dutch painter to be present at this great controversy of faces, in order to make a collection of the most remarkable grins that shall be there exhibited.

I must not here omit an account which I lately received of one of these grinning matches from a gentleman, who, upon reading the above-mentioned advertisement, entertained a coffee-house with the following narrative. Upon the taking of Namur, among other public rejoicings made on that occasion, there was a gold ring given by a Whig justice of the peace to be grinned for. The first competitor that entered the lists, was a black, swarthy Frenchman, who accidentally passed that way, and being a man naturally of a withered look and hard features, promised himself good success. He was placed upon a table in the great point of view, and looking upon the company like Milton's death,

Grinn'd horribly a ghastly smile.

His muscles were so drawn together on each side of his face that he showed twenty teeth at a grin, and put the country in some pain, lest a foreigner should carry away the honour of the day; but upon a further trial they found he was master only of the merry grin.

The next that mounted the table was a Malecontent in those days, and a great master of the whole art of grinning, but particu

larly excelled in the angry grin. He did his part so well, that he is said to have made half a dozen women miscarry; but the justice being apprized by one who stood near him, that the fellow who grinned in his face was a Jacobite, and being unwilling that a disaffected person should win the gold ring, and be looked upon as the best grinner in the country, he ordered the oaths to be tendered unto him upon his quitting the table, which the grinner refusing, he was set aside as an unqualified person. There were several other grotesque figures that presented themselves, which it would be too tedious to describe. I must not, however, omit a ploughman, who lived in the further part of the country, and being very lucky in a pair of long lanthorn-jaws, wrung his face into such a hideous grimace, that every feature of it appeared under a different distortion. The whole company stood astonished at such a complicated grin, and were ready to assign the prize to him, had it not been proved by one of his antagonists that he had practised with verjuice for some days before, and had a crab found upon him at the very time of grinning; upon which the best judges of grinning declared it as their opinion, that he was not to be looked upon as a fair grinner, and therefore ordered him to be set aside as a cheat.

The prize, it seems, fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last. At the very first grin he cast every human feature out of his countenance, at the second he became the face of a spout, at the third a baboon, at the fourth the head of a bass-viol, and at the fifth a pair of nut-crackers. The whole assembly wondered at his accomplishments, and bestowed the ring on him unanimously; but, what he esteemed more than all the rest, a country wench whom he had wooed in vain for above five years before, was so charmed with his grins, and the applauses which he received on all sides, that she married him the week following, and to this day wears the prize upon her finger, the cobbler having made use of it as his weddingring.

This paper might perhaps seem very impertinent, if it grew serious in the conclusion. I would nevertheless leave it to the consideration of those who are the patrons of this monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in some measure, of an affront to their species, in treating after this manner the Human Face Divine, and turning that part of us, which has so great an

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