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.

Letter 15.

1 The Stamp Act was not passed until June 1712:  see the Journal for Aug. 7, 1712.

2 Both in St. James’s Park.  The Canal was formed by Charles ii. from several small ponds, and Rosamond’s Pond was a sheet of water in the south-west corner of the Park, “long consecrated,” as Warburton said, “to disastrous love and elegiac poetry.”  It is often mentioned as a place of assignation in Restoration plays.  Evelyn (Diary, Dec. 1, 1662) describes the “scheets” used on the Canal.

3 Mrs. Beaumont.

4 The first direct mention of Hester Vanhomrigh.  She is referred to only in two other places in the Journal (Feb. 14, 1710-11, and Aug, 14, 1711).

5 See Letter 3, note 17.