Herbert's poems;
and, if I am not mistaken, in the translation of Du Bartas. I do
not remember any other kind of work among the moderns which more
resembles the performances I have mentioned than that famous picture
of King Charles the First, which has the whole Book of Psalms
written in the lines of the face, and, the hair of the head. When I
was last at Oxford I perused one of the whiskers, and was reading
the other, but could not go so far in it as I would have done, by
reason of the impatience of my friends and fellow-travellers, who
all of them pressed to see such a piece of curiosity. I have since
heard, that there is now an eminent writing-master in town, who has
transcribed all the Old Testament in a full-bottomed periwig: and
if the fashion should introduce the thick kind of wigs which were in
vogue some few years ago, he promises to add two or three
supernumerary locks that should contain all the Apocrypha. He
designed this wig originally for King William, having disposed of
the two Books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but that
glorious monarch dying before the wig was finished, there is a space
left in it for the face of any one that has a mind to purchase it.
But to return to our ancient poems in picture.
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