In 1700, a young country girl received £60 for her head of hair; and the grey locks of an old woman, after death, sold for fifty pounds: the ordinary price of a wig was about forty pounds. Full-bottomed wigs, invented by one Duviller, to conceal, it is said, a want of symmetry in the shoulders of the Dauphin, were appropriated by the learned professions and those who studied to look uncommonly grave and sagacious. “Physic of old her entry made Beneath the immense full-bottom’s shade, While the gilt cane, with solemn pride, To each sagacious nose applied, Seemed but a necessary prop To bear the weight of wig at top.” Children, too, wore wigs; and, if unprovided with so necessary an article of dress, the hair was combed and curled, so as to look as much like a wig as possible. Archbishop Tillotson was the first of our prelates who wore a wig. In one of his sermons he writes: “I can remember when ministers generally, whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion to reprove the sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly at him with great zeal.” The reign of Queen Anne saw the magnitude of the wig somewhat diminished, but the variety of wigs in fashion was increased. Steele’s wig at one time formed a heavy item in his expenditure. His large black perriwig cost him (we are supposing it was paid for) as much as forty guineas. Swift had a fine state wig for grand occasions waiting his coming to St. James’s, as did poor Vanessa. Colley Cibber’s wig, in which he played a favourite character, was of such noble proportions, that it was brought upon the stage in a sedan by two chairmen. How it was that Colonel Brett desired to possess this formidable wig, at any price, must be told in Cibber’s own words: “Possibly, the charms of our theatrical nymphs might have had some share in drawing him thither; yet, in my observation, the most visible cause of his first coming was a more sincere passion he had conceived for a fair full-bottom’d perriwig, which I then wore in my first play of the _Fool in Fashion_. * * * * * Now, whatever contempt philosophers may have for a fine perriwig, my friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one,“--terms were offered--and it ended in an agreement to finish our bargain that night over a bottle.” “That single bottle was the sire of many a jolly dozen,” at their subsequent meetings, as he explains further on.