How neat's mouchatoes do at a distance stand,
Lest they disturbe his lips or saffron band:
How expert he's; with what attentive care
Doth he in method place each stragling haire.”

Holme describes, besides, the cathedral beard, which has been noticed, p. 279, and illustrated fig. 253. "The British beard has long mochedoes (moustachios) on the higher lip, hanging down either side the chin, all the rest of the face being bare; the forked beard is a broad beard ending in two points; the mouse-eaten beard, when the beard groweth scatteringly, but here a tuft and there a tuft," etc. And in Lyly's "Midas," 1591, act iii. scene 2, Motto the barber thus speaks to his boy:-"Besides, I instructed thee in the phrases of our eloquent occupation, as-How, sir, will you be trimmed? Will you have your beard like a spade or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an ally on your chin? A low curl on your head like a Bull, or dangling locke like a Spaniell? Your Mustachoes sharpe at the ends like Shomakers' aules, or hanging downe to your mouth like Goates' flakes? Your Love-lockes wreathed with a silken twist, or shaggie to fall on your shoulders." In his " Endimion" of 1591 the bush beard occurs. The following are but a few of Shakespeare's mentions of the beard:

Quickly. "Does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife?

Simple. No, forsooth; he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard; a Cain coloured beard."

Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 4.

Bottom. "I will discharge it in either your straw coloured beard, your orange tawny beard, your purple in grain beard, or your Frenchcrown-colour beard, your perfect yellow."

A Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 2.

Gower. "A beard of the general's cut."

Hen. V. iii. 6.

In the "Spanish Tragedy," 1592, mention is made of "beards of Judas his own colour." In "Westward Ho," 1605, "Catherine pear colour'd beards." Taylor, the water-poet, in his "Superbiæ Flagellum," has the following curious description of the great variety of beards in his

time; but has omitted that worn by himself, which was fashioned like a screw, and is copied (No. 8) from Repton's plate:

"Now a few lines to paper I will put,

Of men's Beards' strange and variable cut;
In which there's some doe take as vaine a Pride,
As almost in all other things beside.

Some are reap'd most substantial, like a brush,
Which makes a natʼrall wit knowne by the bush;
(And in my time of some men I have heard,

Whose wisedome have bin onely wealth and beard);
Many of these the proverbe well doth fit,

Which sayes-B

-Bush naturall, more haire then wit.
Some seeme as they were starched stiffe and fine,
Like to the bristles of some angry swine;

And some (to set their Loves desire on edge),

Are cut and prun'd like to a quickset hedge.

Some like a spade, some like a forke, some square,

Some round, some mow'd like stubble, some starke bare,
Some sharpe, Stiletto fashion, dagger-like,

That may with whispering a mans eyes outpike:

Some with the hammer cut, or Romane T,

Their beards extravagant reform'd must be,

Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion,

Some circular, some ovall in translation,

Some perpendicular in longitude,

Some like a thicket for their crassitude,

That heights, depths, bredths, triforme, square, ovall, round,
And rules Geometricall in beards are found."

Rowland Whyte, in a letter to Sir Robert Sidney, in October, 1599, mentions a play of "the overthrow of Turnholt" being acted, in which "he that plaid that part (Sir Francis Vere's) gott a beard resembling his and a watchet sattin doublett, with hose trimmed with silver lace.”. Collins.

In 1623, when Prince Charles and Buckingham went off to Madrid, according to Sir Henry Wotton they set out with "disguised beards;" and at Paris, to further veil their visages, they purchased each of them a perriwig.

We have added from Mr. Repton's plates some other examples of these fashions. No. 9 shows the T-shaped beard, or hammercut beard, a fashion which prevailed in the reign of Charles I., as appears from the " Queen of Corinth," 1647, act iv. scene 1:

"Strokes his beard,

Which now he puts i' th' posture of a T,

The Roman T; your T beard is in fashion."

The constant changes of shape in beards is noticed in "Time's Metamorphosis," by R. Middleton, 1608:—

The spade-beard and stiletto-beard have been engraved in p. 279, Nos. 1 and 2, and are described by writers of the period as respectively worn by the Earls of Essex and Southampton during the reign of Elizabeth. No. 10 is the sugar-loaf beard of the same period, as worn by Lord Seymour of Sudley. No. 11, the swallow-tail cut, as mentioned by Tom Nash in 1596. In "Cynthia's Revels," 1601, Anaides says, "Sir, you with the pencil on your chin." The tile-beard of "Hudibras " resembled the cathedral-beard already noticed, and which, though

"In cut and dye so like a tile

A sudden view it would beguile." (Part i. c. 1.)

The widow declares,

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"It does your visage more adorn

Than if 'twere prun'd, and starch'd, and lander'd,
And cut square by the Russian standard."

Brushes were made expressly for the use of the beard. Thus, in Dekker's play, "Match mee in London," 1631, one of the characters exclaims, “I like this beard-brush, but that the haire's too stiff." In the notes to Grey's "" 'Hudibras we are told, "they were then so curious in the management of their beards, that some, as I am informed, had pasteboard cases to put over them in the night, lest they should turn upon them and rumple them in their sleep ;" and in the life of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, entitled "Pylades and Corinna," 1731, p. 21, we have the following account of Mr. Richard Shute, her grandfather, a Turkey merchant:-"That he was very nice in the mode of that age, his valet being some hours every morning in starching his beard and curling his whiskers, during which

time a gentleman, whom he maintained as a companion, always read to him upon some useful subject." Mr. Repton further notices the fashion of using beard-combs and beard-brushes by the gallants of the day. Thus, in the "Queen of Corinth," act ii. scene 4:

Play with your Pisa beard! why, where's

Your brush, pupil?

He must have a brush, sir!"

In Davies's "Scourge of Folly" we read of other appliances for the fashioning of the beard:

"Crispus doth spend his time in labour sore
To bring his beard in fashion if he could:
Quils, irons, and instruments he hath good store,
To fashion it and make it fashion hold."

A stampt beard is mentioned in "Wit at several Weapons," 1647; a perfumed beard occurs in Barry's "Ram Alley," 1611.

In "Davenant. Wits," 1636, we find :

"Like orange water kept
To sprinkle holiday beards."

In No. 331 of the "Spectator" will be found some remarks on beards of that period.

In a biographical memoir of Lord Rokeby, then Matthew Robinson, published 1798, he is mentioned as the only peer, or perhaps even gentleman, who then wore a beard.

BEARERS. "Bearers, rowls, fardingales, are things made purposely to put under the skirts of gowns at their setting on at the bodies, which raise up the skirt at that place to what breadth the wearer pleaseth, and as the fashion is."Randle Holme, "Academy of Armory," 1688. The accompanying sketch of the back view of a corset in the South Kensington Museum shows the bearers." They are round and padded, and about five inches long and an

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inch in diameter. Swift refers to "bolsters that supply her hips."

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BEARING-CLOTH. The mantle or cloth used to cover a child when it was carried to baptism. The old French engravings of De Bosse and others depict sages-femmes holding babies thus arrayed. A bearing-cloth for a squire's child" is mentioned in Shakspeare's "Winter's Tale." Gloster says to Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester and cardinal::

They were generally decorated with lace or fringe. In Halliwell's folio edition of Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 126, is an excellent specimen, copied from an engraving executed about 1600 by H. Bonnart.

BEAUTY. From notices in wills of 1518 and 1540, this appears to have been a colour. John West in his will, 1515, bequeaths a "gowne of beauty furred with black." Beawtie colour is also mentioned in will of Edm. Gifford, 1540.

BEAVER. The face-guard of a helmet; sometimes used to designate the helmet itself, as in Shakspeare:

"I saw young Harry with his beaver on."

Henry IV., Part I. act iv. sc. 2. "What, is my beaver easier than it was?"

Richard III., act v. sc. 3.

The same poet notices the beaver as a face-guard, thus:

:

"He wore his beaver up."

Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.

"Their beavers down;

Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel."

Henry IV., Part II. act iv. sc. 1.

The latter kind of beaver has been engraved by Knight in his "Illustrated Shakspeare," from an armet of the time of Philip and Mary in Goodrich Court, and which being of the kind generally used, is also sufficiently near to the time of our great dramatist to convince us that such a beaver must have been frequently seen by him, It is here engraved from that work, No. 1. It has attached to its