Bubb Doddington’s wig is again figured by Hogarth in one of the prints of “The Election,” where it shares in the perils and triumphs of the chairing of the member. Cumberland says that when Doddington was made Lord Melcomb, he actually strutted before the looking-glass, coronet in hand, to study deportment. Warburton’s wig was another of the portrait-wigs, of the Parsonic order. From Hogarth’s most popular works alone one might select a gallery of wigs--tie-wigs, bag-wigs, pig-tails, and bob-wigs, in every variety--well worthy of earnest criticism. Matthews used to say he wondered what the beggars did with their left off clothes till he went to Ireland, when he discovered some of those old relics curiously clinging to the nakedness of their brethren of the Emerald Isle. What became of the old wigs we had ourselves never sufficiently considered till we scanned one of these said prints, and found, to our delight, what had evidently once been a wig comically seated on the head of a young vagrant beside a gutter. Voltaire’s wig, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was as fatally charged with the electricity of criticism, as Dr. Johnson’s proved to be, to the terror of his obsequious followers. This Rhadamanthus of literature, speaking of Geneva, says, “Je secoue ma perruque, la republique est bien poudrée.” There was one, André, a perriwig maker, who wrote a play in 1760, and ventured to solicit Voltaire’s friendly criticism. His reply is well known; it filled four sides of a sheet of letter-paper with merely a repetition of “_Monsieur André, faites des perruques_,” and ending, “_toujours des perruques et jamais que des perruques_.” Descartes had a great passion for perukes; and at the taking of Dresden, Frederick the Great found in the wardrobe of Count Brühl some hundreds of wigs--one authority says fifteen hundred. Some time before bag-wigs went out of fashion a practical joke was played off in Pall Mall, with the intention of bringing bags into contempt, which had like to have ended somewhat seriously. The particulars are given in the Annual Register of 1761. Some wags dressed up a porter in a bag-wig and lace ruffles, and made him as Frenchified as possible, and drove him into the midst of the fashionable throng in the Mall. His superb dress immediately won the admiration of the votaries of pleasure, who seemed anxious to make his acquaintance; but his absurd conduct soon convinced them of the trick which had been played upon them, and the fellow was thrust out from among them--we sincerely hope with the addition of a good cudgelling.