O _SLAWKENBERGIUS!_ thou faithful analyzer of my _Disgrazias_—thou sad
foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage
or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my
nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of.—Tell me,
_Slawkenbergius!_ what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice?
whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears?——art thou sure thou
heard’st it?——which first cried out to thee——go——go, _Slawkenbergius!_
dedicate the labours of thy life—neglect thy pastimes——call forth all
the powers and faculties of thy nature——macerate thyself in the service
of mankind, and write a grand FOLIO for them, upon the subject of their
noses.
How the communication was conveyed into _Slawkenbergius_’s
sensorium——so that _Slawkenbergius_ should know whose finger touch’d
the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as _Hafen
Slawkenbergius_ has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and
ten years——we can only raise conjectures.
_Slawkenbergius_ was play’d upon, for aught I know, like one of
_Whitefield_’s disciples——that is, with such a distinct intelligence,
Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon
his _instrument_——as to make all reasoning upon it needless.
——For in the account which _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ gives the world of
his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of
his life upon this one work—towards the end of his prolegomena, which
by-the-bye should have come first——but the bookbinder has most
injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book,
and the book itself—he informs his reader, that ever since he had
arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and
consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and
distinguish the main end and design of his being;——or—to shorten my
translation, for _Slawkenbergius_’s book is in _Latin_, and not a
little prolix in this passage—ever since I understood, quoth
_Slawkenbergius_, any thing—or rather _what was what_——and could
perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by
all who had gone before;——have I _Slawkenbergius_, felt a strong
impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up
myself to this undertaking.
And to do justice to _Slawkenbergius_, he has entered the list with a
stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man
who had ever entered it before him——and indeed, in many respects,
deserves to be _en-nich’d_ as a prototype for all writers, of
voluminous works at least, to model their books by——for he has taken
in, Sir, the whole subject—examined every part of it
_dialectically_——then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with
all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could
strike—or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him
to cast upon it—collating, collecting, and compiling——begging,
borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote or
wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: so that
_Slawkenbergius_ his book may properly be considered, not only as a
model—but as a thorough-stitched DIGEST and regular institute of
_noses_, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known
about them.
For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise)
valuable books and treatises of my father’s collecting, wrote either,
plump upon noses——or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as
_Prignitz_, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite
learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of
above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty
charnel-houses in _Silesia_, which he had rummaged——has informed us,
that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of
human noses, in any _given_ tract of country, except _Crim Tartary_,
where they are all crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment can
be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;—the
difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking
notice of;——but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and
by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is
owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts
and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d and driven by
the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it
(bating the case of idiots, whom _Prignitz_, who had lived many years
in _Turky_, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)—it so
happens, and ever must, says _Prignitz_, that the excellency of the
nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the
wearer’s fancy.
It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in
_Slawkenbergius_, that I say nothing likewise of _Scroderus (Andrea)_
who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn _Prignitz_ with great
violence—proving it in his own way, first _logically_, and then by a
series of stubborn facts, “That so far was _Prignitz_ from the truth,
in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the
nose begat the fancy.”
—The learned suspected _Scroderus_ of an indecent sophism in this—and
_Prignitz_ cried out aloud in the dispute, that _Scroderus_ had shifted
the idea upon him——but _Scroderus_ went on, maintaining his thesis.
My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he
should take in this affair; when _Ambrose Paræus_ decided it in a
moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of _Prignitz_ and
_Scroderus_, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at
once.