網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

that two of his fore-teeth were struck out and his nose a little flatted.

Cleora, a widow of Ephesus, being inconsolable for the death of her husband, was resolved to take this leap in order to get rid of her passion for his memory; but being arrived at the promontory, she there met with Dimmachus the Milesian, and after a short conversation with him, laid aside the thoughts of her leap, and married him in the temple of Apollo.

N. B. Her widow's weeds are still seen hanging up in the western corner of the temple.

Olphis, the fisherman, having received a box on the ear from Thestylis the day before, and being determined to have no more to do with her, leaped, and escaped with life.

Atalanta, an old maid, whose cruelty had several years before driven two or three despairing lovers to this leap, being now in the fifty-fifth year of her age, and in love with an officer of Sparta, broke her neck in the fall.

Tettyx, the dancing-master, in love with Olympia, an Athenian matron, threw himself from the rock with great agility, but was crippled in the fall.

Diagoras, the usurer, in love with his cook-maid; he peeped several times over the precipice, but his heart misgiving him, he went back, and married her that evening.

Eunica, a maid of Paphos, aged nineteen, in love with Eurybates. Hurt in the fall, but recovered.

N. B. This was the second time of her leaping.

Hesperus, a young man of Tarentum, in love with his master's daughter. Drowned, the boats not coming in soon enough to his relief.

Sappho the Lesbian, in love with Phaon, arrived at the temple of Apollo habited like a bride, in garments as white as snow. She wore a garland of myrtle on her head, and carried in her hand the little musical instrument of her own invention. After having sung a hymn to Apollo, she hung up her garland on one side of his altar, and her harp on the other. She then tucked up her vestments like a Spartan virgin, and amidst thousands of spectators, who were anxious for her safety, and offered up vows for her deliverance, marched directly forwards to the utmost summit of the promontory, where, after having repeated a stanza of her own verses, which we could not hear, she threw herself off the rock with such an intrepidity as was never before observed in any who had attempted that dangerous leap. Many who were present related, that they saw her fall into the sea, from whence she never rose again; though there were others who affirmed that she never came to the bottom of her leap, but that she was changed into a swan as she fell, and that they saw her hovering in the air under

that shape. But whether or no the whiteness and fluttering of her garments might not deceive those who looked upon her, or whether she might not really be metamorphosed into that musical and melancholy bird, is still a doubt among the Lesbians.

Alcæus, the famous lyric poet, who had for some time been passionately in love with Sappho, arrived at the promontory of Leucate that very evening, in order to take the leap upon her account; but hearing that Sappho had been there before him, and that her body could be nowhere found, he very generously lamented her fall, and is said to have written his hundred and twenty-fifth ode upou that occasion.

[blocks in formation]

A very wild, extravagant dream employed my fancy all the last night. I was invited, methought, to the dissection of a beau's head and a coquette's heart, which were both of them laid on a table before us. An imaginary operator opened the first with a great deal of nicety, which, upon a cursory and superficial view, appeared like the head of another man; but upon applying our glasses to it, we made a very cdd discovery, namely, that what we looked upon as brains were not such in reality, but a heap of strange materials wound up in that shape and texture, and packed together with wonderful art in the several cavities of the skull. For, as Homer tells us, that the blood of the gods is not real blood, but only something like it; so we found that the brain of a beau is not a real brain, but only something like it.

The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower water, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye, insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties.

We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput,1 that was filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery, wrought together in a most curious piece of net-work, the parts of which were likewise imperceptible to the naked eye. Another of these antrums or cavities was stuffed with invisible billet-doux, love-letters, pricked dances, and other trumpery of the same nature. In another we found a kind of powder, which set the whole company a sneezing, and by the scent discovered itself to be right Spanish. The several other cells were stored with commodities of the same kind, of which it would be tedious to give the reader an exact inventory.

1 The fore part of the head.

There was a large cavity on each side of the head, which I must not omit. That on the right side was filled with fictions, flatteries, and falsehoods, vows, promises, and protestations: that on the left, with oaths and imprecations. There issued out a duct from each of these cells, which ran into the root of the tongue, where both joined together, and passed forward in one common duct to the tip of it. We discovered several little roads or canals running from the ear into the brain, and took particular care to trace them out through their several passages. One of them extended itself to a bundle of sonnets and little musical instruments. Others ended in several bladders which were filled either with wind or froth. But the large canal entered into a great cavity of the skull, from whence there went another canal into the tongue. This great cavity was filled with a kind of spongy substance, which the French anatomists call gallimatias, and the English nonsense.

The skins of the forehead were extremely tough and thick, and, what very much surprised us, had not in them any single bloodvessel that we were able to discover, either with or without our glasses; from whence we concluded that the party, when alive, must have been entirely deprived of the faculty of blushing.

The os cribriforme1 was exceedingly stuffed, and in some places damaged with snuff. We could not but take notice in particular of that small muscle which is not often discovered in dissection, and draws the nose upwards, when it expresses the contempt which the owner of it has, upon seeing any thing he does not like, or hearing any thing he does not understand. I need not tell my learned reader this is that muscle which performs the motion so often mentioned by the Latin poets, when they talk of a man's cocking his nose, or playing the rhinoceros.

We did not find any thing very remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or, as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn and decayed with use; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.

We were informed, that the person to whom this head belonged, had passed for a man above five and thirty years; during which time he eat and drank like other people, dressed well, talked loud, laughed frequently, and on particular occasions had acquitted himself tolerably at a ball or an assembly; to which one of the company added, that a certain knot of ladies took him for a wit. He was cut off in the flower of his age by the blow of a paring shovel, having been surprised by an eminent citizen, as he was tendering some civilities to his wife.

That is, the "bone resembling a sieve," through which the fibres of the olfactory nerves pass to the nose

Our operator applied himself in the next place to the coquette's heart, which he likewise laid open with great dexterity. There occurred to us many particularities in this dissection; but being unwilling to burden my reader's memory too much, I shall reserve this subject for the speculation of another day.

Spectator, No. 273.

DISSECTION OF A COQUETTE'S HEART.

Having already given an account of the dissection of a beau's head, with the several discoveries made on that occasion; I shall here, according to my promise, enter upon the dissection of a coquette's heart, and communicate to the public such particulars as we observed in that curious piece of anatomy.

Our operator, before he engaged in this visionary dissection, told us, that there was nothing in his art more difficult than to lay open the heart of a coquette, by reason of the many labyrinths and recesses which are to be found in it, and which do not appear in the heart of any other animal.

He desired us first of all to observe the pericardium, or outward case of the heart, which we did very attentively; and by the help of our glasses discerned in it millions of little scars, which seemed to have been occasioned by the points of innumerable darts and arrows, that from time to time had glanced upon the outward coat; though we could not discover the smallest orifice, by which any of them had entered and pierced the inward substance.

Nor must I here omit an experiment one of the company assured us he himself had made with the thin, reddish liquor contained in the pericardium, which he found in great quantity about the heart of a coquette whom he had formerly dissected. He affirmed to us that he had actually enclosed it in a small tube made after the manner of a weather-glass; but that instead of acquainting him with the variations of the atmosphere, it showed him the qualities of those persons who entered the room where it stood. He affirmed, also, that it rose at the approach of a plume of feathers, an embroidered coat, or a pair of fringed gloves; and that it fell as soon as an ill-shaped periwig, a clumsy pair of shoes, or an unfashionable coat came into his house. Nay, he proceeded so far as to assure us, that upon his laughing aloud when he stood by it, the liquor mounted very sensibly, and immediately sunk again upon his looking serious. In short, he told us, that he knew very well, by this invention, whenever he had a man of sense or a coxcomb in his room.

Having cleared away the pericardium or the case, and liquor above mentioned, we came to the heart itself. The outward sur face of it was extremely slippery, and the mucro, or point, so very

cold withal, that upon endeavoring to take hold of it, it glided through the fingers like a smooth piece of ice.

The fibres were turned and twisted in a more intricate and perplexed manner than they are usually found in other hearts; insoinuch that the whole heart was wound up together in a Gordian knot, and must have had very irregular and unequal motions, while it was employed in its vital function.

Upon weighing the heart in my hand, I found it to be extremely light, and consequently very hollow, which I did not wonder at, when, upon looking into the inside of it, I saw multitudes of cells and cavities running one within another, as our historians describe the apartments of Rosamond's bower. Several of these little hollows were stuffed with innumerable sorts of trifles, which I shall forbear giving any particular account of, and shall therefore only take notice of what lay first and uppermost, which upon our unfolding it, and applying our microscopes to it, appeared to be a flame-colored hood.

:

We are informed that the lady of this heart, when living, received the addresses of several who made love to her, and did not only give each of them encouragement, but made every one she conversed with believe that she regarded him with an eye of kindness; for which reason we expected to have seen the impres sions of multitudes of faces among the several plaits and foldings of the heart but to our great surprise not a single print of this nature discovered itself until we came into the very core and centre of it. We there observed a little figure, which, upon applying our glasses to it, appeared dressed in a very fantastic manner. The more I looked upon it, the more I thought I had seen the face before, but could not possibly recollect either the place or time; when at length, one of the company, who had examined this figure more nicely than the rest, showed us plainly, by the make of its face, and the several turns of its features, that the little idol which was thus lodged in the very middle of the heart was the deceased beau, whose head I gave some account of in my last "Tuesday's paper.

As soon as we had finished our dissection, we resolved to make an experiment of the heart, not being able to determine among ourselves the nature of its substance, which differed in so many particulars from that of the heart in other females. Accordingly we laid it in a pan of burning coals, when we observed in it a certain salamandrine quality, that made it capable of living in the inidst of fire and flame, without being consumed, or so much as singed.

As we were admiring this strange phenomenon, and standing round the heart in a circle, it gave a most prodigious sigh, or rather

« 上一頁繼續 »