eas (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.

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