[No. 260. [Addison and Steele.]
From Tuesday, Dec. 5, to Thursday, Dec. 7, 1710.
Non cuicunque datum est habere nasum.
Mart., Epig. i. 41.
From my own Apartment, Dec. 6.
We have a very learned and elaborate dissertation upon thumbs in Montaigne's Essays,[228] and another upon ears in the "Tale of a Tub."[229] I am here going to write one upon noses,[230] having chosen for my text the following verses out of "Hudibras":
So learned Talicotius from
The brawny part of porter's bum
Cut supplemental noses, which
Lasted as long as parent breech:
But when the date of nock[231] was out,
Off dropped the sympathetic snout.[232]
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 well-bred imagination, I must, for my own quiet, desire the critics (who in all times have been famous for good noses) to refrain from the lecture[233] 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——