dener, butler, and valet, you would fee that he is endued with greater accomplishments; for, according to our ancient author, Quot Galli, totidem Coqui," As many Frenchmen as you have, so many Cooks you "may depend upon;" which is very useful where there is a numerous iffue. And I doubt not but with fuch tutors, and good housekeepers to provide cake and fweetmeats, together with the tender care of an indulgent mother to fee that the children eat and drink every thing that they call for; I doubt not, I fay, but we may have a warlike and frugal gentry, a temperate and auftere clergy, and fuch perfons of quality in all stations as may best undergo the fatigues of our flect and armies.

Pardon me, Sir, if I break off abruptly, for I am going to Monf. D'Avaux, a person famous for eafing the toothach by avulfion. He has promised to fhew me how to strike a lancet into the jugular of a carp, fo as the blood may iffue thence with the greatest effufion, and then will instantly perform the operation of ftewing it in its own blood in the presence of myfelf and several more virtuofi. But let him.ufe what claret he will in the performance, I will fecure enough to drink your health and the reft of your friends.

I remain, Sir, 'c.

LETTER II. TO MR.

SIR,

I SHALL make bold to claim your promise in your laft obliging letter, to obtain the happiness of my correfpondence with Dr. Lifter, and to that end have fent you the enclosed, to be communicated to him if you think convenient.

LET.III.TODR.LISTER,PRESENT.

SIR,

I AM a plain man, and therefore never ufe compli→ ments; but I must tell you that I have a great ambition to hold a correfpondence with you, efpecially that I may beg you to communicate your remarks from the Ancients concerning dentiscalps, vulgarly called Toothpicks. I take the use of them to have been of great antiquity, and the original to come from the inftinct of Nature, which is the best mistress upon all occafions. The Egyptians were a people excellent for their philofophical and mathematical obfervations; they searched into all the springs of action: and tho' I must condemn their fuperftition I cannot but applaud their invention. This people had a vast district that worshipped the crocodile, which is an animal whose jaws, being very oblong, give him the oppor

tunity of having a great many teeth; and his habitation and business lying most in the water he, like our modern Dutch whitfters in Southwark, had a very good stomach,andwasextremely voracious. It is certain that he had the water of Nile always ready, and confequently the opportunity of washing his mouth after meals; yet he had farther occafion for other inftruments to cleanse his teeth, which are serrate, or like a faw. To this end Nature has provided an animal, called the Ichneumon, which performs this office, and is fo maintained by the product of its own labour. The Egyptians feeing fuch an useful fagacity in the crocodile, which they fo much reverenced, foon began to imitate it, great examples easily drawing the multitude; fo that it became their conftant custom to pick their teeth and wash their mouths after eating. I cannot find in Marsham's Dynasties, nor in the Fragments of Manethon, what year of the moon (for I hold the Egyptian years to have been lunar, that is, but of a month's continuance) fo venerable an usage first began; for it is the fault of great philologers to omit fuch things as are moft material. Whether Se→ foftris in his large conquefts might extend the use of them is as uncertain; for the glorious actions of thofe ages lie very much in the dark. It is very probable that the publick ufe of them came in about the fame time that the Egyptians made use of juries. I find, in

*Whofe teatergrounds are now almost all built upon.

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the Preface to the Third Part of Modern Reports, that "the Chaldees had a great esteem for the num'ber Twelve, because there were so many signs of the "zodiack; from them this number came to the E"gyptians, and fo to Greece, where Mars himfelf was "tried for a murder, and was acquitted." Now it does not appear upon record, nor any ftone that I have feen, whether the jury clubbed, or whether Mars treated them at dinner, though it is most likely that he did; for he was a quarrelfome fort of a perfon, and probably though acquitted might be as guilty as Count Koning fmark. Now the cuftom of juries dining at an eatinghouse, and having glaffes of water brought them, with toothpicks tinged with vermilion fwimming at the top, being still continued, why may we not imagine that the toothpicks were as ancient as the dinner, the dinner as the juries, and the juries at least as the grandchildren of Mitzraim? Homer makes his heroes feed fo grofsly, that they seem to have had more occafion for fkewers than goofequills. He is very tedious in defcribing a fmith's forge and an anvil; whereas he might have been more polite in fetting out the toothpick cafe or painted fnuff box of Achilles, if that age had not been so barbarous as to want them. And here I cannot but confider that Athens in the time of Pericles, when it flourished most in fumptuous buildings, and Rome in its height of empire from Auguftus down to Adrian, had nothing

that equalled the Royal or New Exchange, or Pope's Head-Alley, for curiofities and toyfhops; neither had their Senate any thing to alleviate their debates concerning the affairs of the universe like raffling fometimes at Colonel Parfons's. Although the Egyptians often extended their conquefts into Africa and Ethiopia, and though the Cafre blacks have very fine teeth, yet I cannot find that they made use of any such inftrument; nor does Ludolphus, though very exact as to the Abyffinian empire, give any account of a matter fo important; for which he is to blame, as I fhall fhew in my treatife of Forks and Napkins, of which I shall send you an effay with all expedition. I shall in that treatise fully illuftrate or confute this paffage of Dr. Heylin, in the third book of his Cofmography, where he says of the Chinese "that they eat their "meat with two sticks of ivory, ebony, or the like, "not touching it with their hands at all, and there"fore no great foulers of linen. The use of filver forks "with us, by fome of our spruce gallants taken up of "late, came from hence into Italy, and from thence "into England." I cannot agree with this learned Doctor in many of thefe particulars; for, first, the ufe of these sticks is not fo much to fave linen as out of pure neceffity, which arifes from the length of their nails, which perfons of great quality in those countries wear at a prodigious length, to prevent all poffibility of working or being ferviceable to themVolume I. D