* * * * *

This love affair would suggest what Mr. Gilbert calls:

"A Passion à la Plato
For a bashful young potato."

were we not to remember that in Anne's time handsome full-bottomed
periwigs were regarded with an enthusiasm far too fervid to be called
Platonic. Actors made it a point to have this indispensable headgear
as elaborate as possible, and it is even related that Barton Booth and
Wilks actually paid forty guineas each "on the exorbitant thatching of
their heads."

* * * * *

But let loquacious Colley have his say: "For it is to be noted that
the _Beaux_ of those days were of a quite different cast from the
modern stamp, and had more of the stateliness of the peacock in their
mein than (which now seems to be their highest emulation) the pert air
of a lap-wing. Now, whatever contempt philosophers may have for a fine
perriwig, my friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in
it, knew very well that so material an article of dress upon the head
of a man of sense if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him
a more partial regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for
in an ill-made one."

* * * * *

Brett expresses such an admiration for this particular full-bottomed