Pertinaciously present at the Assembly balls and in the Long Room, we should see Dr. Akenside, pale and proud, and with the stamp of genius on his handsome brow, passing without recognition, or meeting supercilious looks of contempt, which he is not slow to return with scorn. Sometimes Garrick brings his graceful Viola (she was called Violette by command of Maria Theresa), on the occasion of a special concert or other entertainment in the Long Room, where Goldsmith, who loves music, and still better to escort Miss Reynolds and her friends, appears in bag-wig and sword and his second-best suit of ‘Queen’s blue silk,’ lined with satin. Once Miss Reynolds was asked to toast the ugliest man she knew, and instantly named Oliver Goldsmith, but on reading “The Traveller,” rescinded her opinion. The beautiful thoughts of the poet transfigured the man, and she could never after think him ugly. Another noticeable person seen here from time to time was the cheerful, chatty Dr. Young, the protégé of Mrs. Boscawen, widow of the Admiral who resided at Colney Hatch, the friend and correspondent of Richardson. Young’s daily utterances had no affinity with his sombre “Night Thoughts,” lines lit with loveliness though many of them be. Charming Mrs. Montague, too, occasionally appeared—a little later than May Day, when she was wholly engaged with her annual feast and garden-party, her guests being the little sweeps of London, enfranchised for one summer day in their miserable existence by this lady’s compassionate thought for them. Her death must have been a real sorrow for the black brotherhood of London climbing boys, their one friend out of all the great multitude of its inhabitants, till Elia’s gentle-hearted friend Jem White for some years resumed the festival. As we have said, the persons we have recalled are well known to us, almost as well as if we had lived, and walked, and talked amongst them; they stand out saliently from the general company. But there is a new order amongst these whom we know not. The Toupees, young gentlemen of fashion, who, while periwigs were still worn, wisely took the ordering of their heads into their own hands, and wore their own hair powdered and brushed up from the forehead in a top-knot or toupee. They appear to have been the precursors of the modern masher, and when on the Mall, or at Ranelagh, or Vauxhall, were said to be composed of powder, lace, and essences. ‘You may know them,’ says one authority, ‘by the dress of the toupee, the buckles in their shoes, the choice of the waistcoat, and the cock of the hat.’[280]