It may be that it will revive. It would not be the first time that such a
result of a great catastrophe was found to be only temporary. I remember
that Pepys records in his Diary that one result of the Great Plague was
that the wig went out of fashion. People were afraid to wear wigs that
might be made of the hair of those who had died of infection. But the wig
returned again for more than a century, though you may remember that in
_The Rivals_ there is an early hint of its final disappearance. There was
never probably a more crazy fashion, and, like most crazy fashions, it
began, as the "Alexandra limp" of our youth began, in snobbery. Was it not
a fact that a bald-headed King wore a wig to conceal his baldness, which
set all the flunkey-world wearing wigs to conceal their hair? This aping of
the great is always converting some defect or folly into a virtue. When
Lady Percy in _Henry IV._ is lamenting Hotspur she says:--
... he was, indeed, the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
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