Bristol.
[Footnote 3: [The biographical notices of Endymion Porter are extremely
scanty. Can our correspondent furnish any particulars respecting
him?--ED.]]
_Buckle_ (Vol. viii., p. 304.).--This word is in common use by the artizans
who work upon sheet-iron, to denote the curl which a sheet of iron acquires
in passing through a pair of rollers. The word has been derived from the
French _boucle_, a curl. The shoe-buckle has got its name from its curved
form. In the days in which every man in this country, who was in easy
circumstances, wore a wig, it was well known that to put a wig in _buckle_,
meant to arrange its curls in due form.
"When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch, who living sav'd a candle's end:
Should'ring God's altar a vile image stands,
Belies his features, nay, extends his hands;
That live-long wig which Gorgon's self might own,
Eternal _buckle_ takes in Parian stone."--Pope, _Moral Essays_, Epistle
III.