._): Thus am I doubly arm'd; my death and life,
My bane and antidote are both before me:
_This_ in a moment brings me to an end;
But _this_ informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger....

Ten pages more sententious and leisurely comment; then:

Oh! (_dies_).

There is much to be said for it, in a Ramillies wig. It is stately, it
is dignified, it is perhaps noble. If, as I say, it is not very much
like life, neither are you who enact it. But be sure that out of sight
or remembrance of the wig such a tragedy were not to be endured.

That is very well. The wig serves its turn, inspiring what without it
would be intolerable. I am sure my friend had no trouble in accounting
for Addison in full dress and his learned sock. Nor need he have had
with Addison the urbane, Addison of the _Spectator_ condescending to
Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb. There is in that, the very
best gentlemanly humour our literature possesses, nothing inconsistent
with the full-bottomed wig and an elbow-chair. But when the right
honourable gentleman set himself to compose _Rosamond: an Opera_, and
disported himself thus:

PAGE:
Behold on yonder rising ground
The bower, that wanders
In meanders
Ever bending,
Never ending,
Glades on glades,
Shades in shades,
Running an eternal round.

QUEEN:
In such an endless maze I rove,
Lost in the labyrinths of love,
My breast with hoarded vengeance burns,
While fear and rage
With hope engage,
And rule my wav'ring soul by turns--

then I do not see how the wig can have been useful. I feel that
Addison must have left it on the bedpost and tied up his bald pate
in a tricky bandana after the fashion of Mr. Prior or Mr. Gay, one of
whom, if I remember rightly, did not disdain to sit for his picture in
that frolic guise. The wig, which adds age and ensures dignity, would
have been out of place there; nor is it possible that _The Beggar's
Opera_ owes anything to it. To explain the Addison of _Rosamond_
or _The Drummer_, my friend would have had to shave the head of his
victim and clap a nightcap upon it.

The device was ingenious and happy. You yoke one art to serve another.
It can be extended in either direction, working backwards from the
Ramillies, or forwards, as I propose to show. Skip for a moment
the Restoration and the perruque, skip the cropped polls of the
Roundheads; with this you are in f