29 “He seems to have written these words in a whim; for the sake of what follows” (Deane Swift).
30 See Letter 8, note 33.
31 No. 249 (see Letter 10, note 18).
32 See Letter 5, note 34.
33 In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Tisdall, of Dec. 16, 1703, Swift said: “I’ll teach you a way to outwit Mrs.
Johnson: it is a new−fashioned way of being witty, and they call it a bite. You must ask a bantering question, or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then she will answer or speak as if you were in earnest; and then cry you, ‘Madam, there’s a bite!’ I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in Court, and everywhere else among the great people.” See, too, the Tatler, No. 12, and Spectator, Nos. 47, 504: “In a word, a Biter is one who thinks you a fool, because you do not think him a knave.”
34 See Letter 9, note 4.
35 “As I hope to be saved;” a favourite phrase in the Journal.
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36 See Letter 7, note 12.
37 This statement receives some confirmation from a pamphlet published in September 1710, called “A Condoling Letter to the Tatler: On Account of the Misfortunes of Isaac Bickerstaf Esq., a Prisoner in the on Suspicion of Debt.”
38 Dr. Lambert, chaplain to Lord Wharton, was censured in Convocation for being the author of a libellous letter.
39 Probably the same person as Dr. Griffith, spoken of in the Journal for March 3, 1713,when he was ill,as having been “very tender of” Stella.
40 See Letter 9, note 22.
41 Vexed, offended. Elsewhere Swift wrote, “I am apt to grate the ears of more than I could wish.”
42 Ambrose Philips, whose Pastorals had been published in the same volume of Tonson’s Miscellany as Pope’s. Two years later Swift wrote, “I should certainly have provided for him had he not run party mad.” In 1712 his play, The Distrest Mother, received flattering notice in the Spectator, and in 1713, to Pope’s annoyance, Philips’ Pastorals were praised in the Guardian. His pretty poems to children led Henry Carey to nickname him “Namby Pamby.”
43 An equestrian statue of William III., in College Green, Dublin. It was common, in the days of party, for students of the University of Dublin to play tricks with this statue.
44 Lieutenant−General Richard Ingoldsby (died 1712) was Commander of the Forces in Ireland, and one of the Lords Justices in the absence of the Lord Lieutenant.
45 This seems to have been a mistake; cf. Journal for July 13, 1711, Alan Brodrick, afterwards Viscount Midleton, a Whig politician and lawyer, was made Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench in Ireland in 1709, but was removed from office in June 1711, when Sir Richard Cox succeeded him. On the accession of George I.
he was appointed Lord Chancellor for Ireland. Afterwards he declined to accept the dedication to him of Swift’s Drapiers Letters, and supported the prosecution of the author. He died in 1728.
46 Robert Doyne was appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland in 1695, and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1703. This appointment was revoked on the accession of George I.
47 See Letter 9, note 12.
48 Of the University of Dublin.
49 See Letter 2, note 18 and Letter 3, note 4. Sir Thomas Frankland’s eldest son, Thomas, who afterwards succeeded to the baronetcy, acquired a fortune with his first wife, Dinah, daughter of Francis Topham, of Agelthorpe, Yorkshire. He died in 1747.
50 See Letter 8, note 21.
51 see Letter 4, note 15.
52 Mary, daughter of Sir John Williams, Bart., and widow of Charles Petty, second Lord Shelburne, who died in 1696. She had married, as her second husband, Major−General Conyngham, and, as her third NOTES.
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husband, Colonel Dallway.
53 Dr. John Vesey became Bishop of Limerick in 1672, and Archbishop of Tuam in 1678. He died in 1716.
54 See Letter 3, note 39.
55 Sex.
56 Toby Caulfeild, third son of the fifth Lord Charlemont. In 1689 he was Colonel to the Earl of Drogheda’s Regiment of Foot, and about 1705 he succeeded to the command of Lord Skerrin’s Regiment of Foot. After serving in Spain his regiment was reduced, having lost most of its men (Luttrell, vi. 158).
57 John Campbell, second Duke of Argyle (1680−1743), was installed a Knight of the Garter in December 1710, after he had successfully opposed a vote of thanks to Marlborough, with whom he had quarrelled. It was of this nobleman that Pope wrote
“Argyle, the State’s whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field.”
In a note to Macky’s Memoirs, Swift describes the Duke as an “ambitious, covetous, cunning Scot, who had no principle but his own interests and greatness.”
58 Harley’s second wife, Sarah, daughter of Simon Middleton, of Edmonton, and sister of Sir Hugh Middleton, Bart. She died, without issue, in 1737.
59 Elizabeth Harley, then unmarried, the daughter of Harley’s first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Foley, of Whitley Court, Worcestershire. She subsequently married the Marquis of Caermarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds.
60 Harcourt (see Letter 3, note 24).
61 William Stawel, the third baron, who succeeded to the title in 1692, was half−brother to the second Baron Stawel. The brother here referred to was Edward, who succeeded to the title as fourth baron in 1742.
Letter 12.
1 Charles Finch, third Earl of Winchelsea, son of Lord Maidstone, and grandson of Heneage, second Earl of Winchelsea. On his death in 1712 Swift spoke of him as “a worthy honest gentleman, and particular friend of mine.”
2 Vedeau was a shopkeeper, who abandoned his trade for the army (Journal, March 28, April 4, 1711). Swift calls him “a lieutenant, who is now broke, and upon half pay” (Journal, Nov. 18, 1712) 3 Sir Edmund Bacon, Bart. (died 1721), of Herringflat, Suffolk, succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1686.
4 The reverse at Brihuega.
5 See Letter 8, note 12.
6 John Barber, a printer, became Lord Mayor of London in 1732, and died in 1741. Mrs. Manley was his NOTES.
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mistress, and died at his printing office. Swift speaks of Barber as his “very good and old friend.”
7 Bernage was an officer serving under Colonel Fielding. In August 1710 a difficulty arose through Arbuthnot trying to get his brother George made Captain over Bernage’s head; but ultimately Arbuthnot waived the business, because he would not wrong a friend of Swift’s.
8 See Letter 1, note 52.
9 George Smalridge (1663−1719), the High Church divine and popular preacher, was made Dean of Carlisle in 1711, and Bishop of Bristol in 1714. Steele spoke of him in the Tatler (Nos. 73, 114) as “abounding in that sort of virtue and knowledge which makes religion beautiful.”
10 St. Albans Street, Pall Mall, was removed in 1815 to make way for Waterloo Place. It was named after Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans.
11 Ben Portlack, the Duke of Ormond’s secretary.
12 Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford (1684−1750), only son of Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Lord Hertford succeeded to the dukedom in 1748. From 1708 to 1722 he was M.P. for Northumberland, and from 1708 to 1713 he took an active part in the war in Flanders.
13 See Letter 4.
14 A Short Character of the Earl of Wharton (see Letter 10. note 29).
15 See Letter 9.
16 Henry Herbert, the last Baron Herbert of Cherbury, succeeded to the peerage in 1709, and soon afterwards married a sister of the Earl of Portsmouth. A ruined man, he committed suicide in 1738.
17 Nos. 257, 260.
18 See Letter 6, note 12.
19 “AFTER is interlined” (Deane Swift).
20 With this account may be compared what Pope says, as recorded in Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 223: “Lord Peterborough could dictate letters to nine amanuenses together, as I was assured by a gentleman who saw him do it when Ambassador at Turin. He walked round the room, and told each of them in his turn what he was to write. One perhaps was a letter to the emperor, another to an old friend, a third to a mistress, a fourth to a statesman, and so on: yet he carried so many and so different connections in his head, all at the same time.”
21 Francis Atterbury, Dean of Carlisle, had taken an active part in the defence of Dr. Sacheverell. After a long period of suspense he received the appointment of Dean of Christ Church, and in 1713 he was made Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. Atterbury was on intimate terms with Swift, Pope, and other writers on the Tory side, and Addisonat whose funeral the Bishop officiateddescribed him as “one of the greatest geniuses of his age.”