“I then presaged thou shortly wouldst be king, And now thou art so. But what need presage To us, that might have read it in thy Beard, As well as he that chose thee! By the Beard Thou wert found out and marked for sovereignty. O happy Beard! but happier Prince, whose Beard Was so remarked as marked out our Prince Not bating us a hair. Long may it grow, And thick and fair, that who lives under it May live as safe as under Beggar’s Bush, Of which _it_ is the thing—_that_ but the type. This is the Beard—the bush—or bushy Beard, Under whose gold and silver reign ’twas said, So many ages since, we all should smile! No impositions, taxes, grievances, Knots in a state, and whips unto a subject, Lie lurking in this Beard, but all combed out.”
“The Roman T, your T-Beard is the fashion, And twifold doth express the enamoured courtier As full as your _fork carving_ doth the traveller.”
The last line alluding to Coryate the traveller’s recent introduction of the dinner-fork from Italy.
Of this Roman T-Beard another writer humorously says—
“The Roman T, In its bravery, Doth first itself disclose:
But so high it turns, That oft it burns With the flame of a torrid nose.”
“The soldier’s Beard Doth match in this herd In figure like a spade;
With which he will make His enemies quake To think their grave is made.”
In 1610, died Henry IV, of France, whose Beard is said “to have diffused over his countenance a majestic sweetness and amiable openness;” his son Louis XIII,[33] ascending the throne while yet a minor, the courtiers and others, to keep him in countenance, began to shave, leaving merely the tuft called a mouche or royal. Sully, however, the famous minister of Henry, stoutly refused to adopt the effeminate custom. Being sent for to court, and those about the king having mocked at his old-fashioned Beard, the duke indignantly turned to Louis and said, “Sire! when your father of glorious memory did me the honor to hold a consultation on grave and important business, the first thing he did was to order out of the room all the buffoons and stage dancers of his court!” About this time also, Marshal Bassompierre having been released from a long imprisonment, declared the chief alteration he found was, “that the men had lost their Beards and the horses their tails.”