his petty, spiteful way, has immortalised the
intimacy of mistress and handmaiden in these lines:

"'Odious! in woolen? 'twould a saint provoke!'
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.
'No, let a charming Chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face;
One would not sure be frightful when one's dead,
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red.'"[A]

[Footnote A: Pope's Moral Essays.]

These ante-mortem directions had no further reality than the
imagination of the poet; but it is easy to believe that the woman who
had set the fashions for the town these many years would have enough
of the feminine instinct left, though Death waited without, to plan a
becoming funeral garb. Woollen, forsooth! It was a beastly law which
required that all the dead should be buried in that material, and
Nance shuddered when she thought of it.[A]

[Footnote A: The dead were then buried in woolen, which was rendered
compulsory by the Acts 30 Car. II. c. 3 and 36 ejusdem c. i. The first
act was entitled "an Act for the lessening the importation of linnen
from beyond the seas, and the encouragement of the woolen and paper
manufactures of the kingdome." It prescribed that the curate of every
parish, shall keep a register to be provided at the charge of the
parish, wherein to enter all burials and affidavits of persons being
buried in woolen; the affidavit to be taken by any justice of the
peace, mayor, or such like chief officer in the parish where the
body was interred.... It imposed a fine of five pounds for every
infringement, one half to go to the informer, and the other half to
the poor of the parish. This Act was only repealed by 54 Geo. III.
c. 108, or in the year 1815. The material used was flannel, and
such interments are frequently mentioned in the literature of the
time.--ASHTON.]

Soon there were no more thoughts of dress, no more plaintive shudders
at the iniquity of the woollen act. The eyes whose kindly light had
illumined the dull soul of many a playgoer, closed for ever on the
23rd of October, 1730, and the incomparable Oldfield was no more.
Surely old Sol did not shine on London that day; surely he must
have mourned behind the leaden English sky for one of his fairest
daughters, that child of sunshine who brightened the world by her
presence, and made her exit, as she did her entrance, with a smile.

After the breath had left Anne's still lovely body, Mistress Saunders
dressed h