The amiable Cowper, shocked at the vulgar assurance of the once coy shepherdess, beheld
“Her head, adorned with lappets pinned aloft,
And ribands streaming gay, superbly raised,
And magnified beyond all human size,
Indebted to some smart wig-weaver’s hand
For more than half the tresses it sustains.”
Cowper, like Shakspere appears to have entertained a great antipathy to wigs. The author of the Diverting History of John Gilpin assailed them in their dotage: Shakspere would have nipped them in the bud. Cowper, writing to a friend, says, “I give you joy of your own hair. No doubt you are a considerable gainer by being disperriwigged....* * * I have little doubt if an arm or a leg could have been taken off with as little pain as attends the amputation of a curl or a lock of hair, the natural limb would have been thought less becoming than a wooden one.”
“Look on beauty,
And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,