A dagger in his face,
What must he wear in his sheath.”
Old Author.
“Who make sharp Beards and little breeches Deities.”
Beaumont and Fletcher.
[37]. I cannot refrain from alluding in a note to a curious fact. On the day this Lecture was given, a little boy was brought to look at the portraits just after they were hung. I said to him, “Edward, which face do you like best?” He instantly touched the portrait of Addison, and said, “that’s the best woman,” and “that’s the best man!” pointing to the well-bearded face of Leonardo da Vinci.
[38]. That Southey had the same compunctious visitings as Addison, appears clearly enough, for while in his Doctor he compares “shaving at home” with “slavery abroad;” states that “a good razor is more difficult to meet with, than a good wife;” denounces the practice “as preposterous and irrational,” as “troublesome, inconvenient,” and attended with “discomfort, especially in frosty weather and March winds;” places it on an equality with the curse pronounced on Eve; and concludes with the opinion that “if the daily shavings of one year could be put into one shave, the operation would be more than flesh and blood could bear;” he has nothing to say in favour of shaving, but that it encourages Barbers, compels the shaver to some moments of calm thought and reflection, and enables him to draw lessons from the looking glass that nobody with razor in hand ever thought of. These words in another place give a key to his real opinion. “If I wore a Beard,” he writes, “I would cherish it as the Cid Campeador did his, for my pleasure. I would regale it on a Summer’s day with rose-water, and without making it an idol, I should sometimes offer incense to it with a pastille, or with lavender and sugar. My children, when they were young enough for such blandishments, would have delighted to comb and stroke and curl it, and my grandchildren in their time would have succeeded to the same course of mutual endearment.”
See also Leigh Hunt’s humourous paper on Lie-abeds in the Indicator, where he calls “shaving a villainous and unnecessary custom.”
[39]. Seume, a German poet of a better school, in his travels says, “To-day I threw my powder apparatus out of window, when will the day come that I can send my shaving apparatus after it!”
[40]. One hardly knows which is the most detestable, the canting hypocrisy of Prussian constitutional pretence,—the more open poltroonery of Neapolitan despotism—or the paternal care to prevent even the buddings of free thought as in Austria, where I can state from my own knowledge that Schiller’s works were seized as contraband on the Hungarian frontier, and a party in the Austrian service who had attempted to defend the conduct of the government at a Table d’Hôte was sent for by the head of the police, and when to excuse himself he alleged he was speaking for the government, was replied to—“Young man, the government want no defence—no discussion—and your wisest course is to be silent!”