oet," 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."

[Illustration: Lord Mayor of York escorting Princess Margaret through
York in 1503. Shows the Beard of the Lord Mayor.]

Some curious lines appear in "Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume,"
edited by Frederick W. Fairholt, F.S.A., printed for the Percy Society,
1849. The piece which is entitled "The Ballad of the Beard," is
reprinted from a collection of poems, entitled "Le Prince d'Amour,"
1660, but it is evidently a production of the time of Charles I., if not
earlier. "The varied form of the beard," says Fairholt, "which
characterised the profession of each wearer, is amusingly descanted on,
and is a curious fact in the chronicle of male fashions, during the
first half of the seventeenth century." Taylor, the Water Poet, has
alluded to the custom at some length; and other writers of the day have
so frequently mentioned the same thing, as to furnish materials for a
curious (privately-