The hair of one is tied behind,
And plaited like a womankind,
While t’other carries on his back,
In silken bag, a monstrous pack:
But pray, what’s that much like a whip,
Which with the air does waving skip
From side to side, and hip to hip?
It is a modish pig-tail wig.”
When the Czar Peter was in Holland he made free with a burgomaster’s wig in a very characteristic manner. He was at church: the service was somewhat dull, and his head getting cold, when, observing a good warm wig on the head of a fat functionary near him, he clapped it on his own pate, and did not restore it until the service was over. Churchill, the poet, used to declare that his career at Oxford was cut short by a large bushy wig, which added such a sage solemnity to the grave aspect of the examiner’s face, that he could not control his laughter. Churchill had his jest, and was rejected at the examination. Garrick himself was once driven from the stage by a fit of laughter, brought on at the sight of a powdered wig. A Whitechapel butcher in a church-warden’s wig, accompanied by his dog, occupied seats in front of the stage. Garrick was playing Lear, and preparing for a triumph at the end of the fifth act. The butcher, overcome with heat and mental excitement, was in a melting mood; to relieve which, he took off his wig, and placed it on the dog’s head, who advanced to the orchestra, holding himself up by the fore-paws. At the critical moment, when inspiration seemed to animate every tone and gesture of the great actor, it chanced that his eye, “in a fine frenzy rolling,” lighted on his four legged critic, who was as intent as any biped present on the scene before him, and quite indifferent to his large well-powdered Sunday peruke. At the moment the effect was irresistible; the dog outdid Garrick, who fairly ran off the stage amid roars of laughter from the whole house.
Of old, the doctor who set up in business without a wig in the best style of art was as little likely to succeed in his profession as a modern physician without his carriage.