14 hands high; if above or under, to carry or be allowed weight for
inches, and to be entered Friday, the 5th, at the Swan in Coleshill,
before six in the evening. Also, a plate of less value to be run for
by asses. The same day a gold ring to be grinn'd for by men."

The first of these diversions that is to be exhibited by the 10 pounds
race-horses, may probably have its use; but the two last, in which the
asses and men are concerned, seem to me altogether extraordinary and
unaccountable. Why they should keep running asses at Coleshill, or how
making mouths turns to account in Warwickshire, more than in any other
parts of England, I cannot comprehend. I have looked over all the
Olympic games, and do not find anything in them like an ass-race, or a
match at grinning. However it be, I am informed that several asses are
now kept in body-clothes, and sweated every morning upon the heath: and
that all the country-fellows within ten miles of the Swan grin an hour or
two in their glasses every morning, in order to qualify themselves for
the 9th of October. The prize which is proposed to be grinned for has
raised such an ambition among the common people of out-grinning one
another, that many very discerning persons are afraid it should spoil
most of the faces in the county; and that a Warwickshire man will be
known by his grin, as Roman Catholics imagine a Kentish man is by his
tail. The gold ring which is made the prize of deformity, is just the
reverse of the golden apple that was formerly made the prize of beauty,
and should carry for its poesy the old motto inverted:

_Detur tetriori_.

Or, to accommodate it to the capacity of the combatants,

The frightfull'st grinner
Be the winner.

In the meanwhile I would advise a Dutch painter to be present at this
great controversy of faces, in order to make a collection of the most
remarkable grins that shall be there exhibited.

I must not here omit an account which I lately received of one of these
grinning matches from a gentleman, who, upon reading the above-mentioned
advertisement, entertained a coffee-house with the following
narrative:--Upon the taking of Namur, amidst other public rejoicings made
on that occasion, there was a gold ring given by a Whig justice of peace
to be grinned for. The first competitor that entered the lists was a
black, swarthy Frenchman, who accidentally passed that way, and being a
man naturally of a withered look and