Hoc jacet in tumulo raptus puerilibus annis
Pantagathus, domini cura, dolorque sui,
Vix tangente vagos ferro resecare capillos
Doctus, et hirsutas excoluisse genas.
Sic, licet, ut debes, Tellus placata, levisque;
Artificis levior non potes esse manu.
In attempting a version of this, I feel, as if I were about to disfigure a pretty spinster, with a mob-cap.
Here lies Pantagathus, the slave,
Petted he liv’d, and died lamented;
No youth, like him could clip and shave,
Since shears and razors were invented.
So light his touch, you could not feel
The razor, while your cheeks were smoothing;
And sat, unconscious of the steel,
The operation was so soothing.
Oh, mother Earth, appeas’d, since thou
Back to thy grasping arms hast won him,
Soft be thy hand, like his, and now
Lie thou, in mercy, lightly on him.
Rochester was right; few things were ever benefited, by translation, but a bishop.
The Tonstrinæ, or barbers’ shops, in Rome, were seldom visited by any, but the humbler classes. They were sometimes called the Shades. Horace, Ep. i. 7, 50, describes Philippus, an eminent lawyer, as struck with sudden envy, upon seeing Vulteius Mena, the beadle, sitting very much at ease, in one of these shades, after having been shaved, and leisurely cleaning his own nails, an office commonly performed by the barbers:—
Adrasum quendam vacua tonsoris in umbra,
Cultello proprios purgantem leniter ungues.
There were she-barbers, in Rome, residing in the Saburra and Argiletum, very much such localities, as “the Hill,” formerly in Boston, or Anthony Street, in New York. Martial describes one of these tonstrices, ii. 17—
Tonstrix Saburræ fancibus sedet primis, etc.
Some there were, of a better order. Plautus, Terence, and Theophrastus have many allusions to the barbers’ shops. They have ever been the same “otiosorum conciliabula,” that they were, when Terence wrote—resorts of the idle and garrulous. In old times—very—not now, of course—not now, a dressmaker, who was mistress of her business, knew that she was expected to turn out so much work, and so much slander. That day has fortunately gone by. But the “barber’s tale” is the very thing that it was, in the days of Oliver Goldsmith, and it was then the very thing, that it was, as I verily believe, in the days of Ezekiel. There are many, who think, that a good story, not less than a good lather, is half the shave.
It is quite in rerum natura, that much time should be consumed, in waiting, at the tonstrinæ—the barbers’ shops; and to make it pass agreeably, the craft have always been remarkable, for the employment of sundry appliances—amusing pictures around the walls—images and mechanical contrivances—the daily journals—poodles, monkeys, squirrels, canaries, and parrots. In the older countries, a barber’s boy was greatly in request, who could play upon the citterne, or some other musical instrument.