The amiable Cowper, shocked at the vulgar assurance of the once coy shepherdess, beheld “Her head, adorned with lappets pinned aloft, And ribands streaming gay, superbly raised, And magnified beyond all human size, Indebted to some smart wig-weaver’s hand For more than half the tresses it sustains.” Cowper, like Shakspere appears to have entertained a great antipathy to wigs. The author of the Diverting History of John Gilpin assailed them in their dotage: Shakspere would have nipped them in the bud. Cowper, writing to a friend, says, “I give you joy of your own hair. No doubt you are a considerable gainer by being disperriwigged....* * * I have little doubt if an arm or a leg could have been taken off with as little pain as attends the amputation of a curl or a lock of hair, the natural limb would have been thought less becoming than a wooden one.” “Look on beauty, And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight; Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it. So are the crispéd, snaky, golden locks, Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head; The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.” MERCHANT OF VENICE. The Water-poet was more explicit than elegant when he inveighed against the dames “Whose borrowed hair (perhaps not long before) Some wicked trull in other fashion wore; Or one that at the gallows made her will, Late chokéd with the hangman’s pickadill; In which respect a sow, a cat, a mare, More modest than these foolish females are; For the brute beasts, (continual night and day,) Do wear their own still, (and so do not they.)” Pennant had a strange aversion to wigs, and, when he was half seas over, used to snatch them off the wearers’ heads. Once, at Chester, dining with an officer and a personal friend, (who, knowing his particular weakness, purposely sat next him, to prevent mischief,) being somewhat elated with wine, he made a sudden dart at the officer’s wig and threw it into the fire. The officer, enraged at the insult, drew his sword, and Pennant took to his heels. The son of Mars was close upon him when Pennant’s better knowledge of the bye-ways of Chester stood him in good stead, and he contrived to give the enemy the slip. His friend, who remembered all the particulars of this hair-breadth escape, used to call it Pennant’s Tour in Chester.