, has been
celebrated by the most eminent hands. You see the barber in "Don
Quixote,"[350] is one of the principal characters in the history, which
gave me satisfaction in the doubt, why Don Saltero writ his name with a
Spanish termination: for he is descended in a right line, not from John
Tradescant,[351] as he himself asserts, but from that memorable
companion of the Knight of Mancha. And I hereby certify all the worthy
citizens who travel to see his rarities, that his double-barrelled
pistols, targets, coats of mail, his sclopeta,[352] and sword of
Toledo,[353] were left to his ancestor by the said Don Quixote, and by
the said ancestor to all his progeny down to Don Saltero. Though I go
thus far in favour of Don Saltero's great merit, I cannot allow a
liberty he takes of imposing several names (without my licence) on the
collections he has made, to the abuse of the good people of England; one
of which is particularly calculated to deceive religious persons, to the
great scandal of the well disposed, and may introduce heterodox
opinions. He shows you a straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge
Peskad, within three miles of Bedford; and tells you, it is Pontius
Pilate's wife's chamber-maid's sister's hat. To my knowledge of this
very hat, it may be added, that the covering of straw was never used
among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it.
Therefore this is really nothing, but under the specious pretence of
learning and antiquity, to impose upon the world. There are other things
which I cannot tolerate among his rarities; as, the china figure of a
lady in the glass case; the Italian engine for the imprisonment of those
who go abroad with it: both which I hereby order to be taken down, or
else he may expect to have his letters patents for making punch
superseded, be debarred wearing his muff next winter, or ever coming to
London without his wife.[354] It may perhaps be thought I have dwelt too
long upon the affairs of this operator; but I desire the reader to
remember, that it is my way to consider men as they stand in merit, and
not according to their fortune or figure; and if he is in a coffee-house
at the reading hereof, let him look round, and he will find there may be
more characters drawn in this account than that of Don Saltero; for half
the politicians about him, he may observe, are, by their place in
nature, of the class of tooth-drawers.

[Footnote 337: See p. 273, note.]