“The particularity of this man put me into a deep thought, whence it should proceed that, of all the lower order, barbers should go further in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men: watermen brawl, cobblers sing; but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician. The learned Vossius says, his barber used to comb his hair in iambics; and indeed in all ages, one of this useful profession, this order of cosmetic philosophers, has been celebrated by the most eminent hands. You see the barber, in Don Quixote, 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, as he himself asserts, but from that memorable companion of the Knight of Mancha; and I hereby certify, to all the worthy citizens who travel to see his rarities, that his double-barrelled pistols, targets, coats of mails, his sclopeta, and sword of Toledo, were left to his ancestor, by the said ancestor to all his progeny down to Don Saltero. Though I go thus far in favour of Don Saltero’s 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 chambermaid’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it; both of which I hereby order to be taken down, or else he may expect to have his letters-patent for making punch superseded, be debarred wearing his muff next winter, or ever coming to London without his wife.