“The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.”
This was an age ever memorable for the choicest wits, and, we need not scruple to add, BEARDS. These were of every variety of cut, size, and colour; and certain professions were distinguished by particular beards. The cathedral beard, long and square-trimmed, which fell upon the breast, was worn by divines of the English church; the broad spade-beards and steeletto beards by soldiers: the former in favour with the Earl of Essex, the latter with Lord Southampton. There were, likewise, hammer-shaped beards, like the Roman T, similar to the formidable beard of the present Emperor of France; the pique devant, forked, needle, and tile-shaped beard; and round, trimmed beards, “like a glover’s paring-knife.”
Taylor, the Water-Poet, who had a curious cork-screw beard of his own, in his “Whip for Pride,” thus flagellates the whole race:
Now a few lines to paper I will put,
Of men’s beards strange and variable cut;
In which there’s some do take as vain a pride
As almost in all other things beside.
Some are reaped most substantial as a brush,
Which make a natural wit known by the bush.
Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine,