hard features, promised himself good
success. He was placed upon a table in the great point of view, and,
looking upon the company like Milton's Death,

Grinned horribly a ghastly smile.

His muscles were so drawn together on each side of his face that he
showed twenty teeth at a grin, and put the country in some pain lest a
foreigner should carry away the honour of the day; but upon a further
trial they found he was master only of the merry grin.

The next that mounted the table was a malcontent in those days, and a
great master in the whole art of grinning, but particularly excelled in
the angry grin. He did his part so well that he is said to have made
half a dozen women miscarry; but the justice being apprised by one who
stood near him that the fellow who grinned in his face was a Jacobite,
and being unwilling that a disaffected person should win the gold ring,
and be looked upon as the best grinner in the county, he ordered the
oaths to be tendered unto him upon his quitting the table, which the
grinner refusing, he was set aside as an unqualified person. There were
several other grotesque figures that presented themselves, which it would
be too tedious to describe. I must not, however, omit a ploughman, who
lived in the further part of the county, and being very lucky in a pair
of long lantern jaws, wrung his face into such a hideous grimace that
every feature of it appeared under a different distortion. The whole
company stood astonished at such a complicated grin, and were ready to
assign the prize to him, had it not been proved by one of his antagonists
that he had practised with verjuice for some days before, and had a crab
found upon him at the very time of grinning; upon which the best judges
of grinning declared it as their opinion that he was not to be looked
upon as a fair grinner, and therefore ordered him to be set aside as a
cheat.

The prize, it seems, fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name,
who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to
cut faces for many years together over his last. At the very first grin
he cast every human feature out of his countenance; at the second he
became the face of spout; at the third a baboon; at the fourth the head
of a bass-viol; and at the fifth a pair of nut-crackers. The whole
assembly wondered at his accomplishments, and bestowed the ring on him
unanimously; but what he esteemed more than all the rest, a country