[388] Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger (1778-1827) was an amiable woman and a popular writer of history and biography. She was a friend of the Lambs, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Aikin, Campbell, and others. Among her works are Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots and Anne Boleyn, and a poem on the slave-trade.
[389] From Mr. W. Roberts’ “Memorials of Christie’s, it appears that the original cup from Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, which was presented to David Garrick by the Mayor and Corporation, at the time of the Jubilee at Stratford, realised 121 guineas on April 30, 1825.” Smith mis-states the date. On May 30, 1903, a figure of Shakespeare carved from the tree was sold at Sotheby’s for £13, 5s.
[391] This derivation has been questioned by others. The New English Dictionary leaves the point doubtful, but quotes the Globe of July 24, 1882: “The ‘Busby,’ so often used colloquially when a large bushy wig is meant, most probably took its origin … not from Dr. Busby, the famous headmaster of Westminster School, but from the wig denominated a ‘Buzz,’ from being frizzled and bushy.” May it not be that the word sprang from “buzz,” in association with the name of the famous headmaster?—the one originating and the other confirming its use.
[392] Nevertheless periwigs were known in England considerably earlier. Fairholt mentions one that was ordered “for Sexton, the king’s fool,” in the reign of Henry VIII. In Hall’s Satires (1598) a courtier is made to lose his periwig while trying to bow on a windy day. Other instances are quoted by Fairholt in Costume in England.
[393] The Duke of Wellington once entertained a dinner-table with an account of Louis XIV.’s wig. His remarks were thus reported, at first hand, in Notes and Queries of Nov. 25, 1871, by Mr. Herbert Randolph:—
“I was in the year 1834 or 1835 dining in company with the Duke of Wellington at Betshanger in Kent, then the seat of Frederick Morice, Esq., now of Sir Walter James. It was about the time when the Bishop of London (Dr. Blomfield) had first appeared in the House of Lords without his wig, and a smart controversy arising out of the fact was going on. Opposite to the Duke at table hung a portrait of an admiral of Queen Anne’s time, an ancestor of Mr. Morice, and the finely painted ‘Ramillies wig’ upon his head caught the Duke’s attention. He took occasion from this to give, in his terse and decided manner, a complete history of wigs, having evidently mastered the subject in reference to the question of the day. He concluded, to the point, by saying: ‘Louis the Fourteenth had a hump, and no man, not even his valet, ever saw him without his wig. It hung down his back, like the judges’ wigs, to hide the hump. But the Dauphin, who hadn’t a hump, couldn’t bear the heat, so he cut it round close to the poll; and the episcopal wig that you are all making such a fuss about is the wig of the most profligate days of the French court.’”
[394] It was Woollett’s pleasing custom to celebrate the completion of a plate by firing a cannon from the roof of his house, No. 36 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. On this occasion he doubtless used an extra charge of powder.
[395] No allusion to Sir Cloudesley Shovel was intended by Pope. The line occurs in the Moral Essays, Epistle iii.—
“When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend