Part 59 (1/2)

6 O Lord, drunken s.l.u.t.

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 t.i.tle 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.

1 Addressed to ”Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed ”Aug. 14.”

2 Perhaps this was influenza.

3 By the Stamp Act pa.s.sed on June 10, 1712--which was repealed in 1859--a duty of one halfpenny was levied on all pamphlets and newspapers contained in half a sheet or less, and a duty of one penny on those of more than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 t.i.tle is, ”Lewis Baboon turned honest, and John Bull politician.

Being the Fourth Part of Law is a Bottomless Pit.” This pamphlet--really the fifth of the series--appeared on July 31, 1712.

5 Poor Laracor.

6 See Letter 12, note 1.

7 On the death of the third Earl in 1712, the t.i.tle of Earl of Winchelsea pa.s.sed to his uncle, Heneage Finch, who had married Anne, daughter of Sir William Kingsmill (see Letter 24, note 7).

LETTER 52.

1 Addressed to ”Mrs. Dingley,” etc. Endorsed ”Oct. 1st. At Portraune”

(Portraine).

2 Oxford and Bolingbroke.

3 Including Hester Vanhomrigh.

4 He died on Sept. 15, 1712.

5 Elizabeth Villiers, eldest daughter of Sir Edward Villiers, Knight Marischal of England, and sister of the first Earl of Jersey. In 1695 she married Lord George Hamilton (son of Lord William Douglas, afterwards Duke of Hamilton), who was raised to the peerage of Scotland in 1696 as Earl of Orkney. William III. gave her an Irish estate worth 26,000 pounds a year. Swift's opinion of her wisdom is confirmed by Lord Lansdowne, who speaks, in his Progress of Poetry, of

”Villiers, for wisdom and deep judgment famed, Of a high race, victorious beauty brings To grace our Courts, and captivate our Kings.”

The ”beauty” seems a poetic licence; Swift says the lady squinted ”like a dragon.”