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Sir Roger, was for many ages looked upon as the type of wisdom. Lucian more than once rallies the philosophers of his time, who endeavored to rival one another in beard; and represents a learned man who stood for a professorship in philosophy, as unqualified for it by the shortness of his beard.

Ælian, in his account of Zoilus, the pretended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems, the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which, if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have starved his beard.

I have read somewhere, that one of the popes refused to accept an edition of a saint's works, which were presented to him, because the saint, in his effigies before the book, was drawn without a beard.

We see by these instances what homage the world has formerly paid to beards; and that a barber was not then allowed to make those depredations on the faces of the learned, which have been permitted him of later years.

Accordingly several wise nations have been so extremely jealous of the least ruffle offered to their beard, that they seem to have fixed the point of honor principally in that part. The Spaniards were wonderfully tender in this particular. Don Quevedo, in his third vision on the last judgment, has carried the humor very far, when he tells us that one of his vain-glorious countrymen, after having received sentence, was taken into custody by a couple of evil

spirits; but that his guides happening to disorder his mustachoes, they were forced to recompose them with a pair of curling-irons, before they could get him to file off.

If we look into the history of our own nation, we shall find that the beard flourished in the Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discouraged under the Norman line. It shot out, however, from time to time, in several reigns under different shapes. The last effort it made seems to have been in Queen Mary's days, as the curious reader may find if he pleases to peruse the figures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner; though, at the same time, I think it may be questioned, if zeal against popery has not induced our Protestant painters to extend the beards of these two persecutors beyond their natural dimensions, in order to make them appear the more terrible. I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign of King James the First.

During the civil wars there appeared one, which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence: I mean that of the redoubted Hudibras,1 an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the following lines:

His tawny beard was th' equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part thereof was whey,

The nether orange mixt with gray.

The whisker continued for some time among us after the expiration of beards; but this is a subject

1. A famous satire on the Puritans by Samuel Butler, published in three parts in 1663, 1664, 1678.

which I shall not here enter upon, having discussed it at large in a distinct treatise, which I keep by me in manuscript, upon the mustachoe.

If my friend Sir Roger's project of introducing beards should take effect, I fear the luxury of the present age would make it a very expensive fashion. There is no question but the beaux would soon provide themselves with false ones of the lightest colors and the most immoderate lengths. A fair beard, of the tapestry size Sir Roger seems to approve, could not come under twenty guineas. The famous golden beard of Esculapius would hardly be more valuable than one made in the extravagance of the fashion.

Besides, we are not certain that the ladies would not come into the mode, when they take the air on horseback. They already appear in hats and feathers, coats and periwigs; and I see no reason why we should not suppose that they would have their ridingbeards on the same occasion.

XXXII. SIR ROGER AT THE PLAY.

Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo
Doctum imitatorem, et veras hinc ducere voces.1

HORACE, Ars Poetica, 327, 328.

My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the Club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy 2 with me, assuring me,

1. I'll bid him look for a model of life and manners,

Make him a skilled copyist: so shall he shape his speech aright.

2. Addison was ready to use his creation in the way of helping his friend Ambrose Phillips who had translated and adapted to the English stage Racine's Andromaque under the title The Dis

tressed Mother.

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dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks they
had never seen in their lives before." Sir Roger
added that if these gentlemen had any such intention
they did not succeed very well in it; "for I threw
them out," says he, "at the end of Norfolk Street,
where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my
lodgings before they could imagine what was become
of me.
However," says the Knight, "if Captain
Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, and if
you will both of you call upon me about four o'clock,
that we may be at the house before it is full, I will
have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for
John tells me he has got the fore wheels mended."

The captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants to attend their master upon this occasion. When he had placed him in his coach, with myself at his left hand, the captain before him, and his butler at the head of his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the playhouse, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the captain and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that

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