eir beards against me."

In Shirley's play, _A Contention for Honour and Riches_, 1633:--

"You have worn a sword thus long to show ye hilt,
Now let the blade appear.
COURTIER.--Good Captain Voice,
It shall, and teach you manners; I have yet
No ague, I can look upon your buff,
And punto beard, and call for no strong waters."

"It is difficult to ascertain," says Repton, "when the custom of pulling
the nose superseded that of pulling the beard, but most probably when
the chin became naked and close shaven, affording no longer a handle for
insult." In the reign of James II., William Cavendish, Earl of
Devonshire, paid L30,000 for offering this insult to a person at Court.
An earlier instance of pulling the nose may be found in Ben Jonson's
_Epicaene, or the Silent Woman_, Act iv. sc. 5.

In "Aubrey's Letters" is an allusion to wiping the beard. "Ralph Kettle,
D.D.," we read, "preached in St Mary's Church at Oxford, and, in
conclusion of a sermon, said, 'But now I see it is time for me to shutt
up my booke, for I see the doctors' men come in wiping their beards from
the ale-house' (he could from the pulpit plainly see them, and 't was
their custome to go there, and, about the end of the Sermon, to return
to wayte on their masters)." An old play by Lyly, entitled _Mother
Bombie_ (1597-98), Act i. sc. 3, contains the following passage:--

"Tush, spit not you, and I'll warrant I, my beard is as good as a
handkerchief."

Our quotations from old plays are mainly drawn from Repton's little
book, "Some account of the Beard and Moustachio," of which one hundred
copies were printed for private circulation in 1839.

The extracts which we have reproduced are not such as to cause the beard
to find favour with the ladies. In Marston's _Antonio and Melida_,
(1602), Act v., we read as follows:--

"PIERO.--Faith, mad niece, I wonder when thou wilt marry?

"ROSSALINE.--Faith, kind Uncle, when men abandon jealousy,
forsake taking tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long.
Oh! to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of
furze on the ridge of his chin, ready still to flop into his foaming
chaps; ah! 't is more than most intolerable."

In another part of the same play are other objections to the mustachios.
We find in other old plays allusions to women combing and stroking
beards. "There is no accounting," says Repton, "for the taste of ladies.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Su