'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 Chian 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, doth not too much disorder the features, and is practised by lovers of the most delicate address. This tender motion of the physiognomy the ancients called the Ionic laugh.
'The Laugh among us is the common risus of the ancients.
'The Grin, by writers of antiquity, is called the Syncrusian, and was then, as it is at this time, made use of to display a beautiful set of teeth.
'The Horse-laugh, or the Sardonic, 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, is always received with great applause in coffee-house disputes; and that side the laugh joins with is generally observed to gain the better of his antagonist.
'The prude hath a wonderful esteem for the Chian laugh, or Dimple; she looks upon all the other kinds of laughter as excesses of levity, and is never seen upon the most extravagant jests to disorder her countenance with the ruffle of a smile. Her lips are composed with a primness peculiar to her character; all her modesty seems collected into her face, and she but very rarely takes the freedom to sink her cheek into a dimple.
'The coquette is a proficient in laughter, and can run through the whole exercise of the features. She subdues the formal lover with the dimple, accosts the fop with the smile, joins with the wit in the downright laugh; to vary the air of her countenance frequently rallies with the grin; and when she has ridiculed her lover quite out of his understanding, to complete his misfortune, strikes him dumb with the horse-laugh.'
No. 34. The 'Guardian.'—April 20, 1713.
Mores multorum vidit.—Hor.