[31] These lines are in the spirit of, but are not a quotation from Lee's Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great.
[32] The object of the Act of 1678 (30 Charles II. c. 3), which obliged the dead to be buried in woollen, was to protect homespun goods against foreign linen.
"'Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke,'
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke;
'No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face;
One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead—
And—Betty—give this cheek a little red.'"
(Pope, Moral Essays, i. 246-251.)
Pope here alludes, says Carruthers, to Mrs. Oldfield, who acted Narcissa in Cibber's Love's Last Shift. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, the corpse being decorated with "a Brussels lace head-dress, a Holland shift, with tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and a pair of new kid gloves."—See, too, Tatler, No. 118.
It is evident that by making a certain payment persons of position could evade the Act; in the Overseers' Rate Books for the Parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, one or two persons in the year are often mentioned as being buried in linen: Thus in the volume for 1702 (p. 147) I found—
"Received for persons buried in linen, contrary to Act of Parliament:
| For —— | £2 5 0 |
| For the Earl of Macclesfield | £2 10 0." |
Mr. Austin Dobson has pointed out that if Anne Oldfield really gave the orders alleged by Pope she was only elaborating the words of Steele's widow, which she must have often heard on the stage, as she acted the part of Lady Sharlot in this play.
[33] Genest (Account of the English Stage) suggests that the idea of Lady Sharlot's escape was taken from Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, Act V., Sc. III.
[34] Eusden, in a complimentary poem "To the Author of the Tatler," printed in Nichols' Collection of Poems, iv. 152-4, thus expressed himself:—