5 George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, was M.P. for Cornwall, and Secretary at War. In December 1711 he was raised to the peerage, and in 1712 was appointed Comptroller of the Household. He died in 1735, when the t.i.tle became extinct. Granville wrote plays and poems, and was a patron of both Dryden and Pope. Pope called him "Granville the polite." His Works in Verse and Prose appeared in 1732.

6 Samuel Masham, son of Sir Francis Masham, Bart., had been a page to the Queen while Princess of Denmark, and an equerry and gentleman of the bed-chamber to Prince George. He married Abigail Hill (see Letter 16, note 7), daughter of Francis Hill, a Turkey merchant, and sister of General John Hill, and through that lady"s influence with the Queen he was raised to the peerage as Baron Masham, in January 1712. Under George I. he was Remembrancer of the Exchequer. He died in 1758.

7 A roughly printed pamphlet, The Honourable Descent, Life, and True Character of the... Earl of Wharton, appeared early in 1711, in reply to Swift"s Short Character; but that can hardly be the pamphlet referred to here, because it is directed against libellers and backbiters, and cannot be described as "pretty civil."

8 "In that word (the seven last words of the sentence huddled into one) there were some puzzling characters" (Deane Swift).

9 Sir Robert Worsley, Bart., married, in 1690, Frances, only daughter of the first Viscount Weymouth. Their daughter Frances married Lord Carteret (see Letter 12, note 22) in 1710. In a letter to Colonel Hunter in March 1709 Swift spoke of Lady (then Mrs.) Worsley as one of the princ.i.p.al beauties in town. See, too, Swift"s letter to her of April 19, 1730: "My Lady Carteret has been the best queen we have known in Ireland these many years; yet is she mortally hated by all the young girls, because (and it is your fault) she is handsomer than all of them together."

10 See Letter 3, note 1.

11 See Letter 5, note 17.

12 William Stratford, son of Nicholas Stratford, Bishop of Chester, was Archdeacon of Richmond and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, until his death in 1729.

13 See Letter 3, note 22.

14 James, third Earl of Berkeley (1680-1736), whom Swift calls a "young rake" (see Letter 16, note 15). The young Countess of Berkeley was only sixteen on her marriage. In 1714 she was appointed a lady of the bed-chamber to Caroline, Princess of Wales, and she died of smallpox in 1717, aged twenty-two. The Earl was an Admiral, and saw much service between 1701 and 1710; under George I. he was First Lord of the Admiralty.

15 Edward Wettenhall was Bishop of Kilmore from 1699 to 1713.

16 In the Dedication to The Tale of a Tub Swift had addressed Somers in very different terms: "There is no virtue, either in public or private life, which some circ.u.mstances of your own have not often produced upon the stage of the world."

17 Their lodgings, opposite to St. Mary"s Church in Stafford Street, Dublin.

LETTER 15.

1 The Stamp Act was not pa.s.sed until June 1712: see the Journal for Aug.

7, 1712.

2 Both in St. James"s Park. The Ca.n.a.l was formed by Charles II. from several small ponds, and Rosamond"s Pond was a sheet of water in the south-west corner of the Park, "long consecrated," as Warburton said, "to disastrous love and elegiac poetry." It is often mentioned as a place of a.s.signation in Restoration plays. Evelyn (Diary, Dec. 1, 1662) describes the "scheets" used on the Ca.n.a.l.

3 Mrs. Beaumont.

4 The first direct mention of Hester Vanhomrigh. She is referred to only in two other places in the Journal (Feb. 14, 1710-11, and Aug, 14, 1711).

5 See Letter 3, note 17.

6 No. 27, by Swift himself.

7 No. 7 of Harrison"s series.

8 The printers of the original Tatler.

9 Harley had forwarded to Swift a banknote for fifty pounds (see Journal, March 7, 1710-11).

10 At Moor Park.

11 Scott says that Swift here alludes to some unidentified pamphlet of which he was the real or supposed author.

12 See Letter 11, note 13.

13 The Examiner.

14 See Letter 6, note 43.

15 Mistaken.

16 Mrs. De Caudres, "over against St. Mary"s Church, near Capel Street,"

where Stella now lodged.

17 "A crease in the sheet" (Deane Swift).

18 "In the original it was, good mallows, little sollahs. But in these words, and many others, he writes constantly ll for rr" (Deane Swift).

19 See Letter 4, note 19.

20 "Those letters which are in italics in the original are of a monstrous size, which occasioned his calling himself a loggerhead"

(Deane Swift). (Italics replaced by capitals for the transcription of this etext.)

21 I.e., to ask whether.

LETTER 16.

1 Harcourt.

2 "A shilling pa.s.ses for thirteenpence in Ireland" (Deane Swift).

3 Robert Cope, a gentleman of learning with whom Swift corresponded.

4 Archdeacon Morris is not mentioned in Cotton"s Fasti Ecclesiae Hiberniae.

5 See Letter 14, note 6.

6 See Letter 10, note 2.

7 Abigail Hill, afterwards Lady Masham, had been introduced into the Queens service as bed-chamber woman by the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. Her High Church and Tory views recommended her to Queen Anne, and in 1707 she was privately married to Mr. Samuel Masham, a gentleman in the service of Prince George (see Letter 14, note 6). The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough discovered that Mrs. Masham"s cousin, Harley, was using her influence to further his own interests with the Queen; and in spite of her violence the d.u.c.h.ess found herself gradually supplanted. From 1710 Mrs. Masham"s only rival in the royal favour was the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset. Afterwards she quarrelled with Harley and joined the Bolingbroke faction.

8 See Letter 4, note 16.

9 No. 14 of Harrison"s series.