ON LAUGHING.
To form a true judgment of a person’s temper, begin with an observation on his laugh; for the people are never so unguarded as when they are pleased; and laughter being a visible symptom of some inward satisfaction, it is then, if ever, we may believe the face; but for method sake, it will be necessary to point out the several kinds of laughing, under the following heads:
The dimplers.—The smilers.—The laughers.—The grinners.---The horse-laughers.
The dimple is practised to give a grace to the features, and is frequently made a bait to entangle a gazing lover. This was called by the ancients, the chain-laugh.
The smile is for the most part confined to the fair sex, and their male retinue; it expresses our satisfaction in a silent sort of approbation, and does not disorder the features too much, and is therefore practised by lovers of the most delicate address.
The grin is generally made use of to display a beautiful set of teeth.
The horse-laugh is made use of with great success, in all kinds of disputation. The proficients in this kind, by a well-timed laugh, will baffle the most solid argument. This, upon all occasions, supplies the want of reason, and is received with great applause in coffee-house disputes; that side the laugh joins with, is generally observed to gain the better of his antagonist.
The prude has a wonderful esteem for the chain-laugh or dimple; she looks upon all other kinds of laughter as excessives of levity, and is never seen upon the most extravagant jests, to disorder her features with a smile; her lips are composed with a primness peculiar to her character; all her modesty seems collected into her face, and but very rarely takes the freedom to sink her cheek into a dimple. The effeminate fop, by the long exercise of his countenance at the glass, is in the same situation, and you may generally see him admire his own eloquence by a dimple.
The young widow is only a chain for a time; her smiles are confined by decorum, and she is obliged to make her face sympathise with her habit; she looks demure by art, and by the strictest rule of decency is never allowed to smile, till the first offer or advance to her is over.
The wag generally calls in the horse-laugh to his assistance.
There are another kind of grinners, which some people term sneerers. They always indulge their mirth at the expence of their friends, and all their ridicule consists in unseasonable ill-nature; but they should consider, that let them do what they will, they never can laugh away their own folly by sneering at other people’s.
The coquette has a great deal of the sneerer in her composition; but she must be allowed to be a proficient in laughter, and one who can run through all the exercise of the features: she subdues the formal lover with the dimple---accosts the fop with a smile—joins with the wit in a downright laugh:---to vary the air of her countenance, she frequently rallies with a grin---and when she hath ridiculed her lover quite out of his understanding, she, to complete his misfortunes, strikes him dumb with the horse-laugh.
At present the most fashionable is a mixture of the horse-laugh and the grin, so happily blended together, that the teeth are shown without the face being distorted.