In the reign of James the 1st, Beards continued in fashion, and I extract two out of many passages from Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays; the first being, not excepting even that of Butler’s Hudibras, the most humourous description of a Beard in the language. A banished prince in disguise, having been elected “King of the Beggars” on account of his Beard; Higgen the Orator of the Troop proceeds in this fashion:— “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.” In his Queen of Corinth we learn that— “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.” and then adds— “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.”