11 This "Song" begins:

"An orator dismal of Nottinghamshire,
Who had forty years let out his conscience for hire."

12 The Conduct of the Allies.

13 Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and fourth Earl of Lindsey,
was created Marquis of Lindsay in 1706, and Duke of Ancaster and
Kesteven in 1715. He died in 1723.

14 Lady Sunderland (see Letter 27, note 21) and Lady Rialton, ladies of
the bed-chamber to the Queen.

15 Hugh Cholmondeley (died 1724), the second Viscount, was created
Viscount Malpas and Earl of Cholmondeley in 1706, and in 1708 was
appointed Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household, an office which he held
until 1713, in spite of his Whig sympathies. "Good for nothing, so far
as ever I knew," Swift wrote of him.

16 Prov. xxv. 3.

17 See Letter 31, note 8.

18 Thomas Parker, afterwards created Earl of Macclesfield, was appointed
Lord Chief-Justice in March 1710. In September 1711 he declined Harley's
offer of the Lord Chancellorship, a post which he accepted under a Whig
Government in the next reign.

19 The Bill against Occasional Conformity.

LETTER 37.

1 The proposed visit to London of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the renowned
General, and friend of Marlborough, was viewed by the Government with
considerable alarm.

2 Swift's "An excellent new Song; being the intended Speech of a famous
orator against Peace," a ballad "two degrees above Grub Street" (see
Letter 36, note 11).

3 Robert Walpole was then M.P. for King's Lynn, and Leader of the
Opposition in the House of Commons. He had been Secretary at War
from February 1708 to September 1710, and the Commissioners of Public
Accounts having reported, on Dec. 21, 1711, that he had been guilty of
venality and corruption, he was expelled from the House of Commons, and
taken to the Tower.

4 William King, D.C.L., author of the Journey to London in 1698,
Dialogues of the Dead, The Art of Cookery, and other amusing works, was,
at the end of the month, appointed Gazetteer, in succession to Steele,
on Swift's recommendation. Writing earlier in the year, Gay said that
King deserved better than to "languish out the small remainder of his
life in the Fleet Prison." The duties of Gazetteer were too much for his
easy-going nature and failing health, and he resigned the post in July
1712. He died in the following December.

5 At the bottom of St. James's Street, on the west side.

6 The Rev. John Shower, pastor of the Presbyterian C