66
The Philosophy of Beards.
occasionally favored with visions of better times, past and to come.[1]
To the reign of false curls, succeeded that still more egregious outrage—that climax of coxcombry-powder, pomatum, and pigtails! The former to give the snows of age to the ruddy face of youth; the latter being, I suppose, an attempt of some bright genius to outdo nature,
- ↑ That Southey had the same compunctions 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 a 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 pastile, 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."
