tB Lineaments of Leanness, 



up to him, to give him his choice ; but the man stood as still 

 as his intoxication would permit him, without attempting to 

 pass on either side. After viewing each other a moment, 

 •* My friend," said Hanway, '^ you seem as if you had rather 

 drunk too much;^^ — to which the man replied, with consider- 

 able naivete^ ** And you, my friend, seem as if you had ate 

 too littler 



I have stated, that good humour and the power of looking 

 on the favourable side of things are among the concomitant 

 causes of corpulency ; and so they have been considered from 

 the days of Solomon. — *^ A merry heart doeth good like a 

 medicine ; but a broken spirit drieth the bones."— Prot;er 6s. 

 Now the optics of some lean people are in so unlucky a perspec- 

 tive, as to throw a shade over every picture that is presented 

 to them : to them the whole face of Nature is gloomy and 

 ugly. It would be a blessed thing for such persons, if Dol- 

 lond could alter their vision by the aid of spectacles. To fatten 

 a man by impressions on the optic nerve would be a new feat 

 in the philosophy of physic and surgery. 



** Laugh and grow fat" is an old adage; and Sterne tells 

 us, that every time a man laughs, he adds something to his 

 life. An eccentric philosopher, of the last century, used to 

 say, that he liked not only to laugh himself, but to see laugh- 

 ter, and to hear laughter. " Laughter, sir, laughter is good 

 for the health ; it is a provocative to the appetite, and a friend 

 to digestion. Dr. Sydenham, sir, said the arrival of a merry- 

 andrew in a town was more beneficial to the health of the inha- 

 bitants than twenty asses loaded with medicine." Mr. Pott 

 used to say that he never saw the " Tailor riding to Brent- 

 ford," without feeling better for a week afterwards. 



From what has been said, it will appear that, next to my phi- 

 losophical patient's notions of enlarging the coecum, and less- 

 ening the spleen, the excitement of laughter ought to have a 

 a place in the '* Ars Pinguefaciendi." Mr, George Jones, 

 mentioned by Granger, seems to have had this object in view 

 in his ** Friendly Pills," which were to make patients of all com- 

 plexions laugh at the time of taking them^ and to cure all curable 

 complaints. Let us hope, for the sake of his Majesty's " lean 

 lieges," that George Jones's recipe may start from some anti- 



