1667--Pepys' Diary, on ACTING
[January 24] After dinner, with my wife, to the King's house to see The Mayden Queen
[? Secret Love?], a new play of Dryden's, mightily commended for the regularity of it,
and the strain and wit; and the truth is, there is a comical part done by Nell [Gwyn], which is
Florimell, which I never can hope ever to see the like done again, by man or woman. The King
and Duke
of York were at the play. But so great performance of a comical part was never, I
believe, in the world before Nell do this.
1738--Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791) onMONEY
An Irish painter assured Johnson that "thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to
live
there [in London] without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He
said a man
might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and
if they did, it was easy to say, ‘Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending three-pence in
a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for
six-pence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On
clean-shirt-day he went abroad and paid visits."
1760 Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (Letter III) on
WIGS
To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber: you have
undoubtedly heard of the Jewish champion, whose strength lay in his hair [i.e., Samson]: one
would think that the English were for placing all wisdom there: To appear wise, nothing more is
requisite here than for a man to borrow hair from the heads of all his neighbours, and clap it like
a bush on his own: the distributors of law and physic [medicine] stick on such quantities, that it
is almost impossible, even in idea to distinguish beween the head and the hair.
Those whom I have been now describing, affect the gravity of the lion: those I am going to describe more resemble the pert vivacity of smaller animals. The barber, who is still master of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown; and then with a composition of meal and hog's lard, plasters the whole in such a manner, as to make it impossible to distinguish whether the patient wears a cap or a plaster; but to make the picture more perfectly striking, conceive the tail of some beast, a greyhound's tail, or a pig's tail for instance, appended to the back of the head, and reaching down to that place where tails in other animals are generally seen to begin; thus betailed and be-powdered, the man of taste fancies he improves in beauty.
The novelist Fanny Burney's meetings with Dr. Johnson, including much conversation about many topics but especially Garrick, may be read.