Letter 14.
1 See Letter 7, note 22.
2 Thomas Southerne's play of Oroonoko, based on Mrs. Aphra Behn's novel of the
same name, was first acted in 1696.
3 "Mrs." Cross created the part of Mrs. Clerimont in Steele's Tender Husband
in 1705.
4 See Letter 12, note 7.
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 title
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 principal 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 (168O-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 circumstances 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.
