[52] This attitude and employment, however inconsistent with our modern ideas of good breeding, seems to have been an air frequently assumed by the beaus of the seventeenth century. In a play by Killigrew, called the "Parson's Wedding," we have this direction: "Enter Jack Constant, Will Sad, Jolly, and a footman: they comb their heads, and talk." Our author alludes to the same fashion, in the Prologue to the "Conquest of Grenada," Part II.
Straight every man who thinks himself a wit,
Perks up, and, managing his comb with grace,
With his white wig sets off his nut-brown face.
The same custom is alluded to by Congreve, and is supposed to have remained fashionable during Queen Anne's time.
[53] Mr Malone conjectures, with great probability, that this virtue, which would not bear the light, must have been lord Salisbury's secret attachment to the exiled monarch.
[54] This seems to be an allusion to the pretended dukedom of Marine, in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Noble Gentleman," which had been revived in 1688, by Tom D'urfey, under the title of the "Three Dukes of Dunstable."
Gent. Hark you, sir, the king doth know you are a duke.
Mar. No! does he?
Gent. Yes, and is content you shall be; but with this caution,