* * * * *

This love affair would suggest what Mr. Gilbert calls: 

  “A Passion a la Plato
  For a bashful young potato.”

were we not to remember that in Anne’s time handsome full-bottomed periwigs were regarded with an enthusiasm far too fervid to be called Platonic.  Actors made it a point to have this indispensable headgear as elaborate as possible, and it is even related that Barton Booth and Wilks actually paid forty guineas each “on the exorbitant thatching of their heads.”

* * * * *

But let loquacious Colley have his say:  “For it is to be noted that the Beaux of those days were of a quite different cast from the modern stamp, and had more of the stateliness of the peacock in their mein than (which now seems to be their highest emulation) the pert air of a lap-wing.  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.”

* * * * *

Brett expresses such an admiration for this particular full-bottomed periwig that Cibber is highly flattered, and the two are soon laughing themselves into the best of terms.  Nay, they spend the night roistering over a bottle or two of wine, and dear, vain Colley, like many who come after him, falls into the belief that he is a bold, fast man.  With an air of conscious rakishness that is charmingly ridiculous, he writes:  “If it were possible the relation of the happy indiscretions which passed between us that night could give the tenth part of the pleasure I then received from them, I could still repeat them with delight.”

Instead of pausing, however, to relate those happy indiscretions, Cibber prattles on in his colloquial way, telling us that through the goodly offices of Sir Thomas Skipwith, Brett was introduced to the divorced wife of the Earl of Macclesfield, “a lady who had enough in her power to disencumber him of the world and make him every way easy for life."[A]

[Footnote A:  One story of the day made this woman the mother of Richard Savage.]

“While he was in pursuit of this affair [coyly adds the Apologist] which no time was to be lost in (for the Lady was to be in town for but three weeks) I one day found him idling behind the scenes before the play was begun.  Upon sight of him I took the usual freedom he allow’d me, to rate him roundly for the madness of not improving every moment in his power in what was of such consequence to him. [Oh, fie, thou worldly old Colley.] Why are you not (said I) where you know you only should be?  If your design should once get wind in the town, the ill-will of your enemies or the sincerity of the Lady’s friends may soon blow up your hopes, which in your circumstances of life cannot be long supported by the bare appearance of a gentleman.”