Beaver, beaver, burning bright,
In what forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy xanthine symmetry?
The Beaver in History.
The celebrated Beavers of history need not be catalogued at length. Shakespeare was a Bald-Beaver, apparently an Anticipatory-Vandyke. Napoleon Bonaparte was not a Beaver. Julius Cæsar, Edward Gibbon, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Alexander VI. and Beethoven did all “... against the edicts of God, the oracles of the Prophets, the placits of councils and the judgment of learned men, hold fast the foolish custom of shaving.”[2] Contrariwise, Hannibal, William Morris, Rodin, St. Paul and Juan Rodriguez de Silva y Vélasquez were all content with “nourishing their horrid bushes of vanity.”[3] The Jews bore their beards proudly from out the Captivity. Indeed they took captivity captive; did not the Egyptians from time to time, asserting their masculinity, assume ceremonial false beards, “double faults” to a man? The most antient Romans were King-Beavers; the Normans were Walruses; the Greeks supported a considerable number of King-Beavers, among them Pericles and Socrates, “shaving was very rare in the early part of our period (440 B.C.–330 B.C.).”[4] Until the eighteenth century Beaverhood was common, since that time it has grown rarer and rarer, with a sudden uprush of fur to the face in the middle of the last century, an uprush which has now almost died away. We read “... the value of their fur has caused their destruction in great measure where they were once numerous, and has led to their extirpation where there is evidence that they existed as a not uncommon animal. They were formerly distributed over the greater part of Europe. In England semi-fossilised remains show that they were not uncommon ... in 1188 Giraldus stated that they were living on the river Teify in Cardiganshire ... some were known to frequent the Elbe in 1878.”[5]
[2] Bulwer. Anthropometamorphosis (1650). [3] Dr. Bolton. [4] Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, p. 83. [5] Living Animals of the World, vol. I., p. 152 et seq. Parts of this extract are not clear. What value has the pelt of the Red-King commercially? Can a tippet be made of the adornment of the Fringed-Georgic?
THE GAME.
Origin.
The origin of the game, which is scored in exactly the same manner as Lawn Tennis, is unknown. There are, however, various theories; one school holds that it came to birth in Oxford, another that it emerged in the other place, and a third traces it to Malta (where “my brother from Gozo” was, doubtless, a local champion) and seeks for some association with antient mysteries.