runs thus:--

"From a king-killing saint,
Patch, powder, and paint,
Libera nos, Domine."

Massinger, in the "City Madam," printed in 1679, describing the dress of
a rich merchant's wife, mentions powder thus:--

"Since your husband was knighted, as I said,
The reverend hood cast off, your borrowed hair
Powdered and curled, was by your dresser's art,
Formed like a coronet, hanged with diamonds
And richest orient pearls."

John Gay, in his poem, "Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of
London," published in 1716, advises in passing a coxcomb--

"Him like the Miller, pass with caution by,
Lest from his shoulder clouds of powder fly."

We learn from the "Annals of the Barber-Surgeons" some particulars
respecting the taxing of powder. On 8th August 1751, "Mr John Brooks,"
it is stated, "attended and produced a deed to which he requested the
subscription of the Court; this deed recited that by an Act of
Parliament passed in the tenth year of Queen Anne, it was enacted that a
duty of twopence per pound should be laid upon all starch imported, and
of a penny per pound upon all starch made in Great Britain, that no
perfumer, barber, or seller of hair-powder should mix any powder of
alabaster, plaster of Paris, whiting, lime, etc. (sweet scents
excepted), with any starch to be made use of for making hair-powder,
under a pain of forfeiting the hair-powder and L50, and that any person
who should expose the same for sale should forfeit it and L20." Other
details were given in the deed, and the Barber-Surgeons gave it their
support, and promised twenty guineas towards the cost of passing the
Bill through Parliament.

A few years prior to the above proceeding we gather from the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ particulars of some convictions for using powder
not made in accordance with the laws of the land. "On the 20th October,
1745," it is recorded, "fifty-one barbers were convicted before the
commissioners of excise, and fined in the penalty of L20, for having in
their custody hair-powder not made of starch, contrary to Act of
Parliament: and on the 27th of the same month, forty-nine other barbers
were convicted of the same offence, and fined in the like penalty."

Before powder was used, the hair was generally greased with pomade, and
powdering operations were attended with some trouble. In houses of any
pretension was a small room set apart for the purpose, and it was known
as the