_Abigail_ (Vol. iv., pp. 424., &c.; Vol. viii., p. 653.).--Your recent
correspondents on this subject do not appear to have met with the passage
in which I mentioned, that since putting the question, I had found that a
waiting-maid in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of _The Scornful Lady_ was
named Abigail; and that, as the play appeared to have been a favourite one,
the application of the name to the class generally was probably owing to
it. In the absence of any proof of its having been previously used in this
sense, I still continue to think that this conjecture was well founded.
Considering the terms on which Dean Swift was with the Mashams, he was the
last person in the world to have used such a term, unless it had been so
long in familiar use as to be deprived of all appearance of personal
allusion to them.