Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1883 — NOSES. [ARTICLE]

NOSES.

I JBTaw TAey -Have Boom Abused «sm( JSMC- | tried. - . I | Poet* and dramatistfl, historians and have delighted to dip their I pen in venom, and with barbed shafts lof ridicule assail the nose. Both indiI viduals and peoples have come under Mho lash of scorn and criticism. Leigh IJffhnt says Cromwell’s nose was “like a I knob df oak.” Dromio of Syracuse, in I the “Comedy of Errors,” discovers I America, the Indies, upon the nose of a I fat kitchen wench, “a nose all over emI' bellished with rubies, carbuncles, r sapphires declining their rich aspect to I the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole I; armadas of carracks to be ballast to her Inose.” I Bluff Ben Jonson could not let Lady I Politick’s nose alone, but he is rude I enough to make Peregrine, in “The I Fox,” say to her: I Indeed, your husband told me you were fair, I And so you are; only your nose inclines, I The side that’s next the sun, to the green apIfe.. pies. I Bob Southey, the poet laureate, and I author of “The Doctor,” was savage on I the nose of Godwin, the novelist, and I author of “Caleb 'Williams.” Writing I to Cottle, he says: “As for Godwin r^himself, he has large, noble eyes, and a I nose—oh, most abominable nose! LanI guage ip not vituperations enough to I describe the effect of its downward I elongation.” And at another time: L“We dine with Mary Wollstencroft I (Mrs. Godwin) to-morrow. Oh, he has l a foul nose, and I never see it without r longing to cut it off.” L‘. Anthropologists talk of the flat-nosed I Africans, and the old Jewish law forI bade any one with a flat nose to apI proaeh the altar. f ■ The rhyme of our childhood: Says Aaron to Moses, t~ “et’scutoff ouruDse?;’ I Says Moses to Aaron, “ "Tis the fashion to wear 'em," I is not, however, so well authenticated, k ■ The learned Poignitz declares that I “the size and jollity of every individu- [ al nose, and by which one nose ranks L above another and bears a higher price, I are owing to the cartilageous and musI cular parts of it, into whose ducts and r sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impelled and driven by the force of I imagination, it so happens, and ever must, that the excellency of the nose is I in direct arithmetical proportion to the I excellency of the wearer’s fancy.” Is it any wonder, then, that Bardolph was I such a fellow of infinite fancy ? What jibs and jests, what voluntaries and [fugues, did not Jack Falstaff play upon that Bardolphine proboscis? “Do I thou amend thy face and I’ll amend my I life,” says the jolly lover of sack. I ■ WhemFalstaff lay a-dying, his feet and upward all a-cold as any stone, as I Dame Quickly, in her quaint pathos, dek scribes it, that tiny thief of a page bids Bardolph put his nose between the I sheets and do the business of a warmr ing-pan. Poor Jack Falstaff’s last joke L was at the expense of Bardolph’s nose I and the fire that fed it. The irresistibly comic poet and puns flter, Hood, who laughed and jested at everything, did not let the nose escape. In the “Irish Schoolmaster” he writes: His nose—lt is a coral to the view, Well nourished with Pierian Potheen, For much he loves his native mountain-dew; But to depict the dye would lack, I ween, L A bottle red, in terms, as well as bottle-green.” I Bam Slick, of Slickville, Judge Haliburton’s comic contribution early in the century, pronounces against the nose: “Some fellers, and especially painters, go a ravin’ and a pratin’ about • the mouth, the expression of the t > mouth, the seat of all the emotions, the ■ Bpeakin’ mouth, the large print of the 5 mouth, and all such stuff; and others t are for everlastin’ly lecturin’ about the Lnose, the expression of the nose, the Character of the nose, and so on, just \ if the nose was anything but a speak--1 in’ trumpet that a sneeze blows through and the snuffles gives the rattles to, or that cant uses as a flute. I wouldn’t • give a piece of tobacky for the nose, 'except to tell me when my food was • good.”