y Elizabethan figure
in inky black, with his very Elizabethan thoughts, the central figure,
almost the great symbol of his age.

JAMES THE FIRST

Reigned twenty-two years: 1603-1625.

Born 1566. Married 1589, Anne of Denmark.

THE MEN

This couplet may give a little sketch of the man we should now see
before us:

'His ruffe is set, his head set in his ruff;
His reverend trunks become him well enough.'

We are still in the times of the upstanding ruff; we are watching,
like sartorial gardeners, for the droop of this linen flower.
Presently this pride of man, and of woman too, will lose its
bristling, super-starched air, and will hang down about the necks of
the cavaliers; indeed, if we look very carefully, we see towards the
end of the reign the first fruits of elegance born out of Elizabethan
precision.

Now in such a matter lies the difficulty of presenting an age or a
reign in an isolated chapter. In the first place, one must endeavour
to show how a Carolean gentleman, meeting a man in the street, might
say immediately, 'Here comes one who still affects Jacobean clothes.'
Or how an Elizabethan lady might come to life, and, meeting the same
man, might exclaim, 'Ah! these are evidently the new fashions.' The
Carolean gentleman would notice at first a certain air of stiffness, a
certain padded arrangement, a stiff hat, a crisp ornament of feathers.
He would see that the doublet varied from his own in being more
slashed, or slashed in many more degrees. He would see that it was
stiffened into an artificial figure, that the little skirt of it was
very orderly, that the cut of the sleeves was tight. He would notice
also that the man's hair was only half long, giving an appearance not
of being grown long for beauty, but merely that it had not been cut
for some time. He would be struck with the preciseness, the correct
air of the man. He would see, unless the stranger happened to be an
exquisite fellow, that his shoes were plain, that the 'roses' on them
were small and neat. His trunks, he would observe, were wide and full,
but stiff. Mind you, he would be regarding this man with
seventeenth-century eyes--eyes which told him that he was himself an
elegant, careless fellow, dressed in the best of taste and
comfort--eyes which showed him that the Jacobean was a nice enough
person in his dress, but old-fashioned, grandfatherly.

To us, meeting the pair of them, I am afraid that a certain noti