It was an abortive measure, and was not taken
seriously. It was never enforced, and people laughed at the Legislature
for attempting to raise money by means of the beard. In Elizabeth's
reign it was considered a mark of fashion to dye the beard and to cut
it into a variety of shapes. In the reigns of the first James and the
first Charles these forms attracted not a little attention from the
poets of the period. The rugged lines of Taylor, "the Water Poet," are
among the best known, and if not of great poetical merit, they show
considerable descriptive skill, and enable us to realise the fashions of
his day. In his "Superbiae Flagellum," he describes a great variety of
beards in his time, but omitted his own, which is that of a screw:--
"Now a few lines to paper I will put,
Of men's beards strange, and variable cut,
In which there's some that take as vain a pride
As almost in all other things beside;
Some are reap'd most substantial like a brush,
Which makes a nat'rel wit known by the bush;
And in my time of some men I have heard,
Whose wisdom have been only wealth and Beard;
Many of these the proverb well doth fit,
Which says, bush natural, more hair than wit:
Some seem, as they were starched stiff and fine,
Like to the bristles of some angry swine;
And some to set their love's desire on edge,
Are cut and prun'd like a quickset hedge;
Some like a spade, some like a fork, some square,
Some round, some mow'd like stubble, some stark bare;
Some sharp, stiletto fashion, dagger-like,
That may with whisp'ring, a man's eyes outpike;
Some with the hammer cut, or roman T,
Their Beards extravagant, reform'd must be;
Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion,
Some circular, some oval in translation;
Some perpendicular in longitude;
Some like a thicket for their crassitude;
That heights, depths, breadths, triform, square, oval, round,
And rules geometrical in Beards are found.
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