Few things are more difficult, than shaving a cold corpse, and making, what the artistes call a good job of it. I heard Robert New say so, forty years ago, who kept his shop, at the north—easterly corner of Scollay’s buildings. He said the barber ought to be called, as soon, as the breath was out of the body, and a little before, if it was a clear case, and you wished the corpse “to look wholesome.” I think he was right. Pope’s Narcissa said—

“One need not sure be ugly, though one’s dead.”

There is considerable mystery, in shaving a living corpse. I find it so; and yet I have always shaved myself; for I have never been able to overcome a strong, hereditary prejudice, against being taken by the nose.My razor is very capricious; so, I suppose, is everybody’s razor. There is a deep and mystical philosophy, about the edge of a razor, which seems to have baffled the most scientific; and is next of kin to witchcraft. A tract, by Cotton Mather, upon this subject, would be invaluable. The scholar will smile, at any comparison, between Pliny the elder and Cotton Mather. So far, as respects the scope of knowledge, and power of intellect, and inexhaustible treasures, displayed in Pliny’s thirty-seven books of Natural History, one might as well compare Hyperion to a mummy. I allude to nothing but the Magnalia or Improbabilia; and, upon this point of comparison, Mather, witchcraft and all fairly fade out of sight, before the marvels and fantastical stories of Pliny. In lib. xxviii. 23, Pliny assigns a very strange cause, why aciem in cultris tonsorum hebetescere—why the edge of a barber’s razor is sometimes blunted. The reader may look it up, if he will—it is better in a work, sub sigillo latinitatis, than in an English journal.

I have often put my razor down, regretting, that my beard did not spread over a larger area; so keenly and agreeably has the instrument performed its work. It really seemed, that I might have shaved a sleeping mouse, without disturbing his repose. After twelve hours, that very razor, untouched the while, has come forth, no better than a pot-sherd. The very reverse of all this has also befallen me. I once heard Revaillon, our old French barber, say, that a razor could not be strapped with too light a hand; and the English proverb was always in his mouth—“a good lather is half the shave.”

Some persons suppose the razor to be an instrument, of comparatively modern invention, and barbers to have sprung up, at farthest, within the Christian era. It is written, in Isaiah vii. 20, “In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor, that is hired,” &c. Ezekiel began to prophecy, according to Calmet, 590 years before Christ: in the first verse of ch. v. he says—“take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass upon thy head and upon thy beard.” To cause a razor to pass upon the beard seems to mean something very different from shaving, in the common sense of that word. Doubtless, it does: the culter or novacula, that is, the razor, of the ancients, was employed, for shearing or shortening, as well as for shaving the beard. Barbers were first known, among the Romans A. U. C. 454, i. e. 298 years before Christ. Pliny says, vii. 59—Sequens gentium consensus in tonsoribus fuit, sed Romanis tardior. In Italiam ex Sicilia venere post Romam conditam anno quadringentessimo quinquagessimo quarto, adducente P. Ticinio Mena, ut auctor est Varro: antea intonsi fuere. Primus omnium radi quotidie instituit Africanus sequens: Divus Augustus cultris semper usus est. Then barbers came into use, among the nations, but more slowly among the Romans. In the year of the city 454, according to Varro, P. Ticinius Mena introduced barbers into Italy from Sicily: until that time, men wore their beards. The latter Africanus first set the example of being shaven daily. Augustus constantly used razors. The passage of Varro, referred to by Pliny, showing, that, before A. U. C. 454, men wore their beards, states the fact to be established, by the long beards, on all the old male statues. That passing of the sharp knife or razor, upon the beard, spoken of, by Ezekiel, I take to be the latter of the two modes, employed by the Romans—“vel strictim, hoc est, ad cutem usque; vel paulo longius a cute, interposito pectine”—either close to the skin, or with a comb interposed. That both modes were in use is clear from the lines of Plautus in his play of the Captives, Act ii. sc. 2, v. 16—

Nunc senex est in tonstrina; nunc jam cultros adtinet;
Sed utrum strictimne adtonsurum dicam esse, an per pectinem,
Nescio.

Now the old man is in the barber’s shop and under the razor; but whether to be close shaved, or clipped with the comb, I know not.

Pliny, as we have seen, states, that the practice came from Sicily. There it had been long in use. There is a curious reference to the custom in Cicero’s Tusculan Questions, v. 20. Speaking of the tyrant, Dionysius he says—Quin etiam ne tonsori collum committeret, tondere suas filias docuit. Ita sordido ancillarique artificio regiÆ virgines, ut tonstriculÆ tondebant barbam et capillum patris. For, not liking to trust his throat to a barber, he taught his daughters to shave him, and thus these royal virgins, descending to this coarse, servile vocation, became little, she barbers, and clipped their father’s beard and hair.

There is a curious passage in Pliny which not only proves, that barbers’ shops were common in his time, but shows the very ancient employment of cobweb, as a styptic. In lib. xxix. 36, he says—Fracto capiti aranei tela ex oleo et aceto imposita, non nisi vulnere sanato, abscedit. HÆc et vulneribus tonstrinarum sanguinem sistit. Spiders’ web, with oil and vinegar, applied to a broken head, adheres, till the wound heals. This also stops the bleeding from cuts, in barbers’ shops.

Razors were sharpened, some two thousand years ago, very much as they are at present. Pliny devotes sec. 47, lib. xxxvi. to hones and whetstones, oil stones and water stones—quarta ratio—he says—est saliva hominis proficientium in torstrinarum officinis—the fourth kind is such as are used in the barbers’ shops, and which the man softens with his saliva.

Most common, proverbial sayings are, doubtless, of great antiquity. Chopping-blocks with a razor is a common illustration of the employment of a subtle ingenuity, upon coarse and uninteresting topics. Thus Goldsmith, in his Retaliation, says of Burke—

In short, ’twas his fate, unemploy’d, or in place, sir,
To eat mutton cold, and chop blocks with a razor.

The latter illustration is as old as Livy—novacula cotem discindere.

The Romans made a prodigious fuss, about their beards. The first crop, called prima barba, and sometimes lanugo, was, according to Petronius, consecrated to some god. Suetonius says, in his Life of Nero, 12—Gymnico quod in septis edebat, inter buthysiÆ apparatum, barbam primam posuit, conditamque in auream pyxidem, et pretiosissimis margaritis adornatam, capitolio consecravit.—During the games, which he had given in the enclosures, and in the very midst of the splendor of the sacrifice, for the first time, he laid down his beard, and having placed it in a golden box, adorned with precious stones, he made a sacred deposit thereof, in the capitol.

After the custom of shaving had been introduced, by Mena, A. U. C. 454, it went out, for a short time, in Rome, during the time of Adrian, who as Spartianus relates, in his Life of that Emperor, having some ugly excrescences on his chin, suffered his beard to grow to conceal them—of course the courtiers followed the example of the emperor—the people, that of the courtiers. The grave concealed those excrescences, more effectually, A. D. 139, and the navacula again came into use, among the Romans: Marcus Antoninus, his successor, had no excrescences on his chin.

The day, upon which a young Roman was said ponere barbam, that is, to shave for the first time, was accounted a holiday; and Juvenal says, iii. 187, he received presents from his friends.

Ovid, Trist. iv. 10, 67, dates his earliest literary exhibitions, before the people, by his first or second shave, or clip—

Carmina quum primum populo juvenilia legi,
Barba resecta mihi bisve semelve fuit.

Which may be thus translated—

When first in public I began
To read my boyish rhymes,
I scarcely could be call’d a man,
And had not shav’d three times.

CÆsar says of the Britons, B. G. V. 14—omni parte corporis rasa, prÆter caput et labrum superius—they shave entirely, excepting the head and upper lip.

Half-shaving was accounted, in the days of Samuel, I suppose, as reducing the party to a state of semi-barbarism: thus, in Samuel II. x. 4—“Wherefore Hanan took David’s servants, and shaved off the one half of their beards.”

To be denied the privilege of shaving was accounted dishonorable, among the Catti, a German nation, in the days of Tacitus; for he says, De Moribus GermanÆ, 31—Apud Cattos in consensum vertit, ut primum adoleverint, crinem barbamque submittere, nec, nisi hoste cÆso—It was settled among the Catti, that no young man should cut his hair, or shave his beard, till he had killed his man.

Seneca, Cons. Polyb. xxxvi. 5, blames Caius, for refusing to shave, because he had lost his sister—Idem ille Caius furiosa in constantia, modo barbam capillumque submittens—There is that Caius, clinging so absurdly to his sorrow, and suffering his hair and beard to grow on account of it.

There is an admirable letter, from Seneca to Lucillus, Ep. 114, which shows, that the dandies, in old Rome, were much like our own. He is speaking of those—qui vellunt barbam, aut intervellunt; qui labra pressius tondent et abradunt, servata et submissa cÆtera parte—who pull out the beard, by the roots, or particular parts of it—who clip and shave the hair, either more closely, or leave it growing, on some parts of their lips.

Juvenal, ii. 99, and Martial, vi. 64, 4, laugh at such, as use a mirror while shaving. Knives and razors of brass, are of great antiquity, according to the ArchÆological Æliana, p. 39.—Fosbroke, p. 351, says, that razors are mentioned by Homer. But I am going to a funeral, this afternoon, as an amateur, and it is time for me to shave—not with a razor of brass, however—Pradier is too light for me—I use the Chinese. Hutchinson, i. 153, says, that Leverett was the first Governor of Massachusetts, who is painted without a beard, and that he laid it aside, in Cromwell’s court.

China is the paradise of barbers. There, according to Mr. Davis, they abound. No man shaves himself, the part, to be shorn, being out of his reach. There would be no difficulty in removing the scanty hair upon their chins; but the exact tonsure of the crown, without removing one hair from the Chinaman’s long tail, that reaches to his heels, is a delicate affair. Their razors are very heavy, but superlatively keen.