OUR most universal and most imaginative Poet, whose single lines are
often abstracts and epitomes of poems, makes Hamlet exclaim—“What a
piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in
form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an
angel! in apprehension, how like a God! the beauty of the world! the
paragon of animals!” And yet this same glorious creature, thus worthily
praised, is, with singular contradiction, so forgetful of his higher
attributes, that he can despise his reason! ignore his infinite
faculties! deliberately deface that form so express and admirable!
descend to actions that smack rather of the demon than the angel! Drown
his godlike apprehension in drink! Shave off his majestic beauty! and
become, instead of the paragon—the parody of animals!
O Fashion! most mighty, but most capricious of goddesses! what strange
vagaries playest thou with the sons and daughters of men! What is there
so lovely, that thou canst not, with a word, transform into an object of
disgust and abhorrence? What so ugly and repulsive, but thou hast the
art to exalt it into a golden image for thy slaves to worship, on pain
of the fiery furnace of ridicule? Could a collection be made of the
forms and figures, modes and mummeries, which thou hast imposed on thy
ofttimes too willing votaries, it would task the most vivid imagination,
the most fantastic stretch of fancy, to furnish a description of the
incongruous contents!
Perhaps no human feature has been more the subject of Fashion’s
changeable humours than the BEARD, of which it is purposed to night to
render some account, in the hope of being able to prove that in no
instance has she been guilty of more deliberate offences against nature
and reason! With this object in view, the structure, intention, and uses
of the Beard will be examined, and its artistic relations indicated; its
history will next be traced; and a reply will then be briefly given to
some objections against wearing the Beard, not embraced in the preceding
matter.
[Illustration]
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