[22]. In this and in other places I am obliged to leave under a veil of obscure allusion, arguments of thrilling force, not only from ancient but from our own history: matters not to be met with in ordinary histories; but too abundant in the pages of satirists and moralists, who were hardy enough to lash the prevalent follies and vices of the times in which they lived.
[23]. I trust my honest and uncompromising brother Beard will pardon the liberty I have taken with his name. No one can be a more sincere admirer than myself of the manly way in which he maintains his opinions on all occasions, and the humorous kindness of disposition which renders him beloved in private and in public. I should always esteem him as a public man, were it only for his long and single-handed fight against that economical iniquity—that suicidal tax on prudence and foresight, and bounty on improvidence—the Fire Insurance Duty!
[24]. “She had,” says D’Israeli, “for her marriage dower the rich province of Poitou and Guyenne; and this was the origin of those wars which for 300 years ravaged France, and cost the French three million of men. All which probably had never occurred had Louis VII not been so rash as to crop his head and shave his Beard, by which he became so disgustful in the eyes of our Queen Eleanor.”
[25]. No true Scotchman would pardon me if I omitted to note that the brave Wallace had “a most brave Beard.”
[26]. Southey in “The Doctor” mentions the Beard of Dominico d’Ancona, as the crown or King of Beards,
A Beard the most singular
Man ever described in verse or prose;
and of which Berni says, “that the Barber ought to have felt less reluctance in cutting the said Dominico’s throat, than in cutting off so incomparable a Beard.” But Southey is outdone by a story told by Dr. Ehle in his work on the hair, where mention is made of two seven-foot giants with Beards down to their toes, at the court of one of the German sovereigns. They both fell in love with the same woman, and their master decided that whichever should succeed in putting his rival into a sack, should have the maiden. One of them sacked the other after a long duel before the whole court, and married the girl. That the pair lived happily afterwards, as the Novelists say, is proved by their having as many signs of affection as there are in the Zodiac; and it is worthy of remark, both physiologically and astrologically, that the whole twelve were born under one sign, Gemini.
[27]. It surely will not be denied by any Judge of taste, that the Chancellor and other legal dignitaries would look more dignified in their own hair and with Beards of “reverend grey,” than in the present absurd, fantastic, unnatural and unbecoming frosted ivy bushes, with a black crow’s nest in the centre, in which Minerva might more readily mistake them for stray specimens of her favorite bird, the owl, than for learned, intelligent, and logical “sages of the law.”
[28]. Although an attempt was made in this reign to restrain the growth of legal Beards by some pragmatical heads of Lincoln’s Inn, who passed a resolution “that no fellow of that house should wear a Beard of above a fortnight’s growth;” and although transgression was punished with fine, loss of commons, and final expulsion, such was the vigorous resistance to this act of tyranny, that in the following year all previous orders respecting Beards were repealed. Percy Anecdotes.