33 Madams.
34 This word is doubtful. Forster reads “cobbled.”
35 A mistake, apparently, for “writing.” The letter was begun on March 8.
36 Silly jade.
37 O Lord, what a clutter.
38 On the death of Dr. William Graham, Dean of Wells, it was reported that Swift was to be his successor.
Dr. Brailsford, however, received the appointment.
39 Abel Roper (1665−1726), a Tory journalist, published, thrice weekly, the Postboy, to which Swift sometimes sent paragraphs. Boyer (Political State, 1711, p. 678) said that Roper was only the tool of a party;
“there are men of figure and distinction behind the curtain, who furnish him with such scandalous reflections as they think proper to cast upon their antagonists.”
40 Joe Beaumont.
41 Beg your pardon, Madams, I’m glad you like your apron (see Letter 41, note 18).
42 This word was smudged by Swift.
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43 I cannot find Somers in contemporary lists of officials. Cf. Letter 30, note 16 and Letter 17, note 3.
44 Obliterated and doubtful.
45 Words obliterated and illegible. Forster reads, conjecturally, “Pray send Pdfr the ME account that I may have time to write to Parvisol.”
Letter 44.
1 Addressed to “Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed “Apr. 14.”
2 “Is” (MS.).
3 The words after “yet” are partially obliterated.
4 See Letter 7, note 35.
5 John Cecil, sixth Earl of Exeter (died 1721).
6 See Letter 22, note 5.
7 Arbuthnot.
8 A resort of the Tories.
9 Deane Swift, a son of Swift’s uncle Godwin, was a merchant in Lisbon.
10 Winces. Lyly says, “Rubbe there no more, least I winch.”
11 Probably William Whiston, who was deprived of the Lucasian professorship at Cambridge in 1710 for his heterodox views. Parliament having offered a reward for the discovery of means of finding the longitude, Whiston made several attempts (1714 and 1721).
12 Word obliterated.
13 Distilled water prepared with rosemary flowers. In Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, a lady gives up to a highway robber, in her fright, a silver bottle which, the ruffian said, contained some of the best brandy he had ever tasted; this she “afterwards assured the company was a mistake of her maid, for that she had ordered her to fill the bottle with Hungary water.”
14 As I hope to be saved.
15 Added on the fourth page, as the letter was folded.
Letter 45.
1 Addressed to “Mrs. Johnson,” etc. Endorsed “May 1st.”
2 A kind of clover, used for soothing purposes.
Letter 46.
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1 Addressed to “Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed “May 15.”
2 Madam Ayris.
3 Simpleton.
4 Robert Benson (see Letter 6, note 36).
5 See Letter 41, note 35 and Letter 43, note 7.
6 The title was, An Appendix to John Bull still in his Senses: or, Law is a Bottomless Pit.
7 Arbuthnot.
8 Enquiries by servants.
9 See Letter 17, note 5.
10 Sick.
11 Afterwards Rector of Letcombe, Berks. It was to his house that Swift repaired a few weeks before the Queen’s death. On June 8, 1714, he wrote, “I am at a clergyman’s house, whom I love very well, but he is such a melancholy, thoughtful man, partly from nature, and partly by a solitary life, that I shall soon catch the spleen from him. His wife has been this month twenty miles off at her father’s, and will not return these ten days, and perhaps the house will be worse when she comes.” Swift spells the name “Geree”; later on in the Journal he mentions two of Mr. Gery’s sisters, Betty (Mrs. Elwick) and Moll (Mrs. Wigmore); probably he made the acquaintance of the family when he was living with the Temples at Moor Park (see Letter 59, note 11).
12 Because she is a good girl in other things.
Letter 47.
1 Addressed to “Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed “June 5.”
2 Sice, the number six at dice.
3 At Laracor Swift had “a canal and river−walk and willows.”
4 Splenetic fellow.
5 One of them was by Oldmixon: Reflections on Dr. Swift’s Letter to the Earl of Oxford.
6 Beg your pardon.
7 See Letter 25, note 9.
8 On May 28, Lord Halifax moved an Address to the Queen that the instructions given to the Duke of Ormond might be laid before the House, and that further orders might be issued to him to act offensively, in concert with the Allies. Wharton and Nottingham supported the motion, but it was negatived by 68 votes against 40. A similar motion in the House of Commons was defeated by 203 against 73.
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9 See Letter 34, note 10.
10 See Letter 23, note 13.
11 “Some Reasons to prove that no Person is obliged by his Principles, as a Whig, to oppose Her Majesty: in a Letter to a Whig Lord.”
12 Several words obliterated.
13 Several words obliterated.
14 The bellman.
15 This present writing.
16 Please.
Letter 48.
1 Addressed to “Mrs. Rebecca Dingley,” etc. Endorsed “June 23d.”
2 Mr. Ryland reads “second.”
3 As I hope to be saved.
4 See Letter 30, Sept. 18, 1711.
5 Glad at heart.
6 The threepenny pamphlet mentioned in Letter 47, note 11.
7 I.e., for.
Letter 49.
1 Addressed to “Mrs. Dingley.” Endorsed “July 8.”
2 See Letter 28, note 24.
3 See Letter 10, note 2.
4 See Letter 3, note 11.
5 See Letter 48, note 4.
6 Dr. William Lloydone of the Seven Bishops of 1688was eighty−four years of age at this time; he died five years later. He was a strong antipapist, and a great student of the Apocalypse, besides being a hard−working bishop. A curious letter from him to Lord Oxford about a coming war of religion is given in the Welbeck Papers (Hist. MSS. Comm.) v. 128.
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7 “Toland’s Invitation to Dismal to dine with the Calf’s Head Club.” The Earl of Nottingham (Dismal) had deserted the Tories, and Swift’s imitation of Horace (Epist. I. v.) is an invitation from Toland to dine with “his trusty friends” in celebration of the execution of Charles I. The Calf’s Head Club was in the habit of toasting
“confusion to the race of kings.”
8 Bolingbroke.
9 George Fitzroy, Duke of Northumberland (died 1716), a natural son of Charles II., was also Viscount Falmouth and Baron of Pontefract. See Notes and Queries, viii. i. 135.
10 Enoch Sterne.
11 Templeoag (see Letter 48, Jun. 17, 1712).
12 Swift probably was only repeating an inaccurate rumour, for there is no evidence that Steele was arrested.
His gambling scheme was withdrawn directly an information was laid under the new Act of Parliament against gambling (Aitken’s Life of Steele, i. 347).
13 Dr. William Moreton (1641−1715), Swift’s diocesan, was translated from the see of Kildare to that of Meath in 1705.
14 Words obliterated. Forster reads conjecturally, “when ME wants me to send. She ought to have it,” etc.
Letter 50.
1 Addressed to “Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed “July 23.”
2 “N.33” seems a mistake. Letter No. 32 was received after Swift had left Kensington and gone to Windsor; see Letter 51, Aug. 7, 1712 and Letter 52, Sept. 18, 1712 (Ryland).
3 Dr. Moreton (see Letter 49, note 13).
4 Memoranda.
5 Again.
6 O Lord, drunken slut.
7 There’s for you now, and there’s for your letter, and every kind of thing.
8 Bolingbroke.
9 See Letter 13, note 10.
10 Grub Street pamphlet. The title was, A Supposed Letter from the Pretender to another Whig Lord.
11 Arnold Joost Van Keppel, created Earl of Albemarle in 1697. He died in 1718. The action referred to was at Denain, where the Dutch were defeated by Villars.
Letter 51.
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1 Addressed to “Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed “Aug. 14.”
2 Perhaps this was influenza.
3 By the Stamp Act passed on June 10, 1712which was repealed in 1859a duty of one halfpenny was levied on all pamphlets and newspapers contained in half a sheet or less, and a duty of one penny on those of more than half but not exceeding a whole sheet. Swift opposed the idea in January 1711 (see Letter 15, note 1), and Defoe argued against the Bill in the Review for April 26, 1712, and following numbers. Addison, in the Spectator, No. 445, spoke of the mortality among authors resulting from the Stamp Act as “the fall of the leaf.”
4 The title is, “Lewis Baboon turned honest, and John Bull politician. Being the Fourth Part of Law is a Bottomless Pit.” This pamphletreally the fifth of the seriesappeared on July 31, 1712.
5 Poor Laracor.
6 See Letter 12, note 1.
7 On the death of the third Earl in 1712, the title of Earl of Winchelsea passed to his uncle, Heneage Finch, who had married Anne, daughter of Sir William Kingsmill (see Letter 24, note 7).