19 Presumably the eldest son, William, who succeeded his father as second Earl of Kerry in 1741, and died in 1747.  He was at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and was afterwards a Colonel in the Coldstream Guards.

20 Henry Petty, third Lord Shelburne, who became Earl of Shelburne in 1719.  His son predeceased him, without issue, and on Lord Shelburne’s death, in 1751, his honours became extinct.  His daughter Anne also died without issue.

21 The menagerie, which had been one of the sights of London, was removed from the Tower in 1834.  In his account of the Tory Fox Hunter in No. 47 of the Freeholder, Addison says, “Our first visit was to the lions.”

22 Bethlehem Hospital, for lunatics, in Moorfields, was a popular “sight” in the eighteenth century.  Cf. the Tatler, No. 30:  “On Tuesday last I took three lads, who are under my guardianship, a rambling, in a hackney coach, to show them the town:  as the lions, the tombs, Bedlam.”

23 The Royal Society met at Gresham College from 1660 to 1710.  The professors of the College lectured on divinity, civil law, astronomy, music, geometry, rhetoric, and physic.

24 The most important of the puppet-shows was Powell’s, in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden, which is frequently mentioned in the Tatler.

25 The precise nature this negligent costume is not known, but it is always decried by popular writers of the time.

26 Retched.  Bacon has “Patients must not keck at them at the first.”

27 Swift was born on November 30.

28 Mrs. De la Riviere Manley, daughter of Sir Roger Manley, and cousin of John Manley, M.P., and Isaac Manley (see Letter 3, note 3), wrote poems and plays, but is best known for her “Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of both sexes.  From the New Atalantis, 1709,” a book abounding in scandalous references to her contemporaries.  She was arrested in October, but was discharged in Feb. 1710.  In May 1710 she brought out a continuation of the New Atalantis, called “Memoirs of Europe towards the Close of the Eighth Century.”  In June 1711 she became editress of the Tory Examiner, and wrote political pamphlets with Swift’s assistance.  Afterwards she lived with Alderman Barber, the printer, at whose office she died in 1724.  In her will she mentioned her “much honoured friend, the Dean of St. Patrick, Dr. Swift.”

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.”