18 See Letter 6, note 12.  The last number of Steele’s Tatler appeared on Jan. 2, 1711; Harrison’s paper reached to fifty-two numbers.

19 Dryden Leach (see Letter 7, note 22).

20 Cf.  Letter 7, October 28th.

21 Published by John Baker and John Morphew.  See Aitken’s Life of Steele, i. 299-301.

22 In No. 224 of the Tatler, Addison, speaking of polemical advertisements, says:  “The inventors of Strops for Razors have written against one another this way for several years, and that with great bitterness.”  See also Spectator, Nos. 428, 509, and the Postman for March 23, 1703:  “The so much famed strops for setting razors, etc., are only to be had at Jacob’s Coffee-house. . . .  Beware of counterfeits, for such are abroad.”

23 Sir John Holland (see Letter 3, note 28).

24 Addison speaks of a fine flaxen long wig costing thirty guineas (Guardian, No. 97), and Duumvir’s fair wig, which Phillis threw into the fire, cost forty guineas (Tatler, No. 54)

25 Swift’s mother, Abigail Erick, was of a Leicestershire family, and after her husband’s death she spent much of her time with her friends near her old home.  Mr. Worrall, vicar of St. Patrick’s, with whom Swift was on terms of intimacy in 1728-29, was evidently a relative of the Worralls where Mrs. Swift had lodged, and we may reasonably suppose that he owed the living to Swift’s interest in the family.

26 The title of a humorous poem by Lydgate.  A “lickpenny” is a greedy or grasping person.

27 Small wooden blocks used for lighting fires.  See Swift ("Description of
the Morning"),
     “The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
      Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep;” and Gay (Trivia, ii.
35),
     “When small-coal murmurs in the hoarser throat,
      From smutty dangers guard thy threatened coat.”

28 The Tory Ministers.

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.