A POET'S CALCULATION CONCERNING THE TIME EMPLOYED IN SHAVING, AND THE USE THAT MIGHT BE MADE OF IT. THE LAKE POETS LAKE SHAVERS ALSO. A PROTEST AGAINST LAKE SHAVING.
Intellect and industry are never incompatible. There is more wisdom, and will be more benefit, in combining them than scholars like to believe, or than the common world imagine. Life has time enough for both, and its happiness will be increased by the union.
SHARON TURNER.
The poet Campbell is said to have calculated that a man who shaves himself every day, and lives to the age of threescore and ten, expends during his life as much time in the act of shaving, as would have sufficed for learning seven languages.
The poet Southey is said to carry shaving to its ne plus ultra of independency, for he shaves sans looking-glass, sans shaving-brush, sans soap, or substitute for soap, sans hot-water, sans cold-water, sans every thing except a razor. And yet among all the characters which he bears in the world, no one has ever given him credit for being a cunning shaver!
(Be it here observed in a parenthesis that I suppose the word shaver in this so common expression to have been corrupted from shaveling; the old contemptuous word for a Priest.)
But upon reflection, I am not certain whether it is of the poet Southey that this is said, or of the poet Wordsworth. I may easily have confounded one with the other in my recollections, just as what was said of Romulus might have been repeated of Remus while they were both living and flourishing together; or as a mistake in memory might have been made between the two Kings of Brentford when they both quitted the stage, each smelling to his nosegay, which it was who made his exit P. S. and which O. P.
Indeed we should never repeat what is said of public characters (a denomination under which all are to be included who figure in public life, from the high, mighty and most illustrious Duke of Wellington at this time, down to little Waddington) without qualifying it as common report, or as newspaper, or magazine authority. It is very possible that the Lake poets may, both of them, shave after the manner of other men. The most attached friends of Mr. Rogers can hardly believe that he has actually said all the good things which are ascribed to him in a certain weekly journal; and Mr. Campbell may not have made the remark which I have repeated, concerning the time employed in mowing the chin, and the use to which the minutes that are so spent might be applied. Indeed so far am I from wishing to impute to this gentleman upon common report, anything which might not be to his credit, or which he might not like to have the credit of, that it is with the greatest difficulty I can persuade myself to believe in the authenticity of his letter to Mr. Moore upon the subject of Lord and Lady Byron, though he has published it himself, and in his own name.