[104] On swearing note the following extract from a sixteenth-century writer: "There is no regyon nor countrie that doth use more swearynge than is used in Englande, for a chyld that scarse can speake, a boy, a gyrle, a wenche, now-a-days wyl swere as great othes as an old knave and an old drabbe.... As for swearers a man nede not to seke for thym, for in the Kynges courte and lordes courtes in cities, borowes and in townes, and in every house, in maner there is abbominable swerynge, and no man dothe go about to redresse it, but doth take swearyng as for no sinne, which is a damnable synne; and they the which doth use it, be possessed of the Devill, and no man can helpe them but God and the Kynge." (Hill, Georgiana: Women in English Life, vol. I, p. 116.)
See [p. 317] for reprobation of "female swearers" in The Ladies' Calling (1671). Swift's Polite Conversation (1738) bears the same implication as to the manners of good society in the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
[105] The "Matchless Orinda" gives us an inkling of the way some of this praise should be discounted. It seems that Waller was reported to have said that he would give all his own poems to have been the author of a poem written by the Duchess of Newcastle. On being taxed with insincerity he answered that he could "do no less in Gallantry than be willing to devote all his own Papers to save the Reputation of a Lady, and keep her from the Disgrace of having written anything so ill." (Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, Letter XLII.)
[106] Life of the Duchess of Newcastle (ed. Brydges), "Critical Preface."
[107] Aubrey: Brief Lives, vol. II, pp. 153-54.
[108] Keats, John: Letters to his Family and Friends, pp. 29-30.
[109] Philips, Mrs. Katherine: Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, Letter XIV. This letter also appeared in the Preface to her Works in 1768.
[110] Giffard, Lady: Her Life and Letters, p. 41.
[111] The Lives of the Norths, vol. III, p. 289.
[112] Ibid., Editor's Preface.