Page images
PDF
EPUB

1

The beard, conformable to the notion of my friend Sir Roger, was for many ages looked upon as the type of wisdom. Lucian more than once rallies the philosophers of his time; who endeavored to rival one another in beard: and represents 25 a learned man who stood for a professorship in philosophy as unqualified for it by the shortness of his beard.

Aelian, in his account of Zoilus, the pretended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus 30 had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems, the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which, if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have 35 starved his beard.

I have read somewhere that one of the popes refused to accept an edition of a saint's works, which were presented to him, because the saint, in his effigies before the book, was drawn without a beard.

We see by these instances what homage the world has formerly paid to beards; and that a barber was not then allowed to make those depredations on the faces of the learned, which have been permitted him of later years.

40

Accordingly several wise nations have been so extremely 45 jealous of the least ruffle offered to their beard that they seem to have fixed the point of honor principally in that part. The Spaniards were wonderfully tender in this particular.

Don Quevedo, in his third vision on the last judgment, has carried the humor very far, when he tells us that one of his 50 vain-glorious countrymen, after having received sentence, was taken into custody by a couple of evil spirits; but that his guides happening to disorder his mustachios, they were forced to recompose them with a pair of curling-irons, before they could get him to file off.

1a blithe Greek satirist.

a Roman writer of the second century, A.D.

55

If we took into the history of our own nation, we shall find that the beard flourished in the Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discouraged under the Norman line. It shot out, however, from time to time, in several reigns under different 60 shapes. The last effort it made seems to have been in Queen Mary's days, as the curious reader may find if he pleases to peruse the figures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner; though, at the same time, I think it may be questioned, if zeal against popery has not induced our Protestant painters 65 to extend the beards of these two persecutors beyond their natural dimensions, in order to make them appear the more terrible.

[blocks in formation]

I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign. of King James the First.

During the civil wars there appeared one, which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence: I mean that of the redoubted Hudibras, an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the following lines:

1

"His tawny beard was th' equal grace

Both of his wisdom and his face ;

In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part thereof was whey,

The nether orange mixt with grey."

The whisker continued for some time among us after the expiration of beards; but this is a subject which I shall not here enter upon, having discussed it at large in a distinct treatise, which I keep by me in manuscript, upon the mustachio.

If my friend Sir Roger's project of introducing beards should take effect, I fear the luxury of the present age would make it a very expensive fashion. There is no question but the beaux would soon provide themselves with false ones of

1 Hudibras is the chief figure in a violent satire on the Puritans by Samuel Butler.

the lightest colors and the most immoderate lengths.1 A fair beard, of the tapestry size Sir Roger seems to approve, could 90 not come under twenty guineas. The famous golden beard of Aesculapius would hardly be more valuable than one made in the extravagance of the fashion.

Besides, we are not certain that the ladies would not come into the mode, when they take the air on horseback. They 95 already appear in hats and feathers, coats and periwigs; and I see no reason why we should not suppose that they would have their riding-beards on the same occasion.

[blocks in formation]

5

My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the Club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me, assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a play these twenty years. "The last I saw," said Sir Roger, "was The Committee which I should 2 not have gone to neither, had not I been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy." He then proceeded to inquire of me who this distressed mother 3 was, and, upon hearing that she was Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a 10 schoolboy, he had read his life at the end of the dictionary.

1 judging from the custom with wigs.

"The Committee "was a play by Sir Henry Howard first acted about 1665, in the days of Sir Roger's youth.

"The Distressed Mother" was a play produced just about this time by Phillips, a friend of Addison's.

My friend asked me, in the next place, if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohocks 1 should be abroad. "I assure you," says he, "I thought I had 15 fallen into their hands last night; for I observed two or three

lusty black men 2 that followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know," continued the Knight with a smile, "I fancied they had a mind to hunt 20 me; for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighborhood who was served such a trick in King Charles the Second's time; for which reason he has not ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport had this been their design; for, as I am an old fox25 hunter, I should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks they had never seen in their lives before." Sir Roger added that if these gentlemen had any such intention they did not succeed very well in it: "for I threw them out," says he, "at the end of Norfolk Street, 30 where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings

4

before they could imagine what was become of me. However," says the Knight, "if Captain Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, and if you will both of you call upon me about four o'clock, that we may be at the house 35 before it is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John tells me he has got the fore wheels mended."

The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had 40 put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk." Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with

1 Mohocks was a slang name for the bands of young men of fashion who roamed the town at night, doing all sorts of outrageous things.

2 Cf. 1, 2.

the time of Sir Roger's days in town.

The play began about five or a little after: Cf. 2, 66.
a victory of the French over the English and Dutch, Aug. 31, 1692.

good oaken plants to attend their master upon this occasion. When he had placed him in his coach with myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his butler at the head of 45 his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the playhouse, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the Captain and I went in with him, and seated hin betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about 50 him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made 55 a very proper center to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better strut. I was, indeed, very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism, and was well pleased 60 to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for Andromache, and a little while after as much for Hermione, and was extremely puzzled to think what would become of Pyrrhus.

65

When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added, with a more than ordinary vehemence, "You can't imagine, Sir, what 'tis to have to do with a widow." Upon Pyrrhus his 70 threatening afterwards to leave her, the Knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." That part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination, that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows, Sir, are the most 75 perverse creatures in the world.1 But pray," says he, "you

1 See 113, 9 and 73,

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »