Will I, my loved Marina, clip to form;
And what these fourteen years no razor touched,
To grace thy marriage day, I'll beautify.

Scott, in his _Woodstock_, represents Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, whilom
Ranger of Woodstock Park (or Chase), as wearing his full beard, to
indicate his profound grief for the death of the "Royal Martyr," which
indeed was not unusual with elderly and warmly devoted Royalists until
the "Happy Restoration"--save the mark!

Another extraordinary beard was that of Van Butchell, the quack doctor,
who died at London in 1814, in his 80th year. This singular individual
had his first wife's body carefully embalmed and preserved in a glass
case in his "study," in order that he might enjoy a handsome annuity to
which he was entitled "so long as his wife remained above ground." His
person was for many years familiar to loungers in Hyde Park, where he
appeared regularly every afternoon, riding on a little pony, and wearing
a magnificent beard of twenty years' growth, which an Oriental might
well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so
generally practised.--A jocular epitaph was composed on "Mary Van
Butchell," of which these lines may serve as a specimen:

O fortunate and envied man!
To keep a wife beyond life's span;
Whom you can ne'er have cause to blame,
Is ever constant and the same;
Who, qualities most rare, inherits
A wife that's dumb, yet _full of spirits_.

The celebrated Dr. John Hunter is said to have embalmed the body of Van