Perhaps the 'Fables of Florian' kindled the poetic fire within him; at all events they may have acted as the first stimulus to his art of rhyming.

They opened his mind to the love of nature, to the pleasures of country life, and the joys of social intercourse.
There is nothing in the occupation of a barber incompatible with the cultivation of poetry.

Folez, the old German poet, was a barber, as well as the still more celebrated Burchiello, of Florence, whose sonnets are still admired because of the purity of their style.

Our own Allan Ramsay, author of 'The Gentle Shepherd,' spent some of his early years in the same occupation.
In southern and Oriental life the barber plays an important part.

In the Arabian tales he is generally a shrewd, meddling, inquisitive fellow.