43.  In Exchange Alley.  Cf.  Spectator, No. 454:  “I went afterwards to Robin’s, and saw people who had dined with me at the fivepenny ordinary just before, give bills for the value of large estates.”

Letter 4.

1 John Molesworth, Commissioner of the Stamp Office, was sent as Envoy to Tuscany in 1710, and was afterwards Minister at Florence, Venice, Geneva, and Turin.  He became second Viscount Molesworth in 1725, and died in 1731.

2 Misson says, “Every two hours you may write to any part of the city or suburbs:  he that receives it pays a penny, and you give nothing when you put it into the Post; but when you write into the country both he that writes and he that receives pay each a penny.”  The Penny Post system had been taken over by the Government, but was worked separately from the general Post.

3 The Countess of Berkeley’s second daughter, who married, in 1706, Sir John Germaine, Bart. (165O-1718), a soldier of fortune.  Lady Betty Germaine is said to have written a satire on Pope (Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, ii. 11), and was a constant correspondent of Swift’s.  She was always a Whig, and shortly before her death in 1769 she made a present of 100 pounds to John Wilkes, then in prison in the Tower.  Writing of Lady Betty Butler and Lady Betty Germaine, Swift says elsewhere, “I saw two Lady Bettys this afternoon; the beauty of one, the good breeding and nature of the other, and the wit of either, would have made a fine woman.”  Germaine obtained the estate at Drayton through his first wife, Lady Mary Mordaunt—­Lord Peterborough’s sister—­who had been divorced by her first husband, the Duke of Norfolk.  Lady Betty was thirty years younger than her husband, and after Sir John’s death she remained a widow for over fifty years.

4 The letter in No. 28O of the Tatler.

5 Discover, find out.  Cf.  Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well, iii. 6:  “He was first smoked by the old Lord Lafeu.”

6 A village near Dublin.

7 Excellent.

8 John Molesworth, and, probably, his brother Richard, afterwards third Viscount Molesworth, who had saved the Duke of Marlborough’s life at the battle of Ramillies, and had been appointed, in 171O, colonel of a regiment of foot.

9 Presumably at Charles Ford’s.

10 The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod, published as a single folio sheet, was a satire on Godolphin.

11 Apparently Marcus Antonius Morgan, steward to the Bishop of Kildare (Craik).  Swift wrote to the Duke of Montagu on Aug. 12, 1713 (Buccleuch MSS., 1899, i. 359).  “Mr. Morgan of Kingstrope is a friend, and was, I am informed, put out of the Commission of justice for being so.”

12 Dr. Raymond is called Morgan’s “father” because he warmly supported Morgan’s interests.

13 The Rev. Thomas Warburton, Swift’s curate at Laracor, whom Swift described to the Archbishop as “a gentleman of very good learning and sense, who has behaved himself altogether unblamably.”