Who inward search’d, have livers white as milk;
And these assume but valour’s excrement,
To render them redoubted.”
There seems, at all times to have been a sinister protest, in some quarter or other, against the presumed arrogance of the beard—a lurking spirit of revolt, engendered possibly of envy, against the supremacy of its reign. Even the would-be-philosopher of old did not go unchallenged, as we may guess from the sharp rebuke administered in the memorable words, “Video barbam et palliam; philosophum nondum video.” And, indeed, if the truth must be spoken, there are faces to which it lends no dignity. A mean and contemptible nature, hid behind a potent beard, is a miserable disguise. The affectations of a gentleman are but trifles. Raleigh wore stays, and was a great dandy; but he was something more—an elegant poet, an accomplished gentleman, and a gallant soldier. But the abuse of a good thing is no argument for its disuse. We grieve to think of the degradation of this manly ornament, and put no faith in
“those ambiguous things that ape
Goats in their visage, women in their shape;”
and would fain hope that a return to the “flat faces,”
“such as would disgrace a screen,”
is next to impossible.
“Now, a beard is a thing which commands in a king,