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.
* * * * *