The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume IX | Page 9

the defamation and disgrace of your
family; as, that your relations Distaff and Broomstaff were both
inconsiderate mean persons, one spinning, the other sweeping the
streets, for their daily bread. But I forbear to vent my spleen on objects
so much beneath my indignation. I shall only give the world a
catalogue of my ancestors, and leave them to determine which hath
hitherto had, and which for the future ought to have, the preference.
"First then comes the most famous and popular lady _Meretrix_, parent
of the fertile family of _Bellatrix, Lotrix, Netrix, Nutrix, Obstetrix,
Famulatrix, Coctrix, Ornatrix, Sarcinatrix, Fextrix, Balneatrix, Portatrix,
Saltatrix, Divinatrix, Conjectrix, Comtrix, Debitrix, Creditrix, Donatrix,
Ambulatrix, Mercatrix, Adsectrix, Assectatrix, Palpatrix, Praeceptrix,
Pistrix._

"I am yours,
"ELIZ. POTATRIX."
[Footnote 1: This letter is introduced:
"From my own Apartment, June 29.
"It would be a very great obligation, and an assistance to my treatise
upon punning, if any one would please to inform me in what class
among the learned, who play with words, to place the author of the
following letter."
The proposed work had been promised in the 32nd number of "The
Tatler," where it was stated that, "I shall dedicate this discourse to a
gentleman, my very good friend, who is the Janus of our times, and
whom, by his years and wit, you would take to be of the last age; but by
his dress and morals, of this." [T.S.]]
[Footnote 2: In the 11th number of "The Tatler," by Heneage Twisden.
[T.S.]]
THE TATLER, NUMB. 59.
FROM TUESDAY AUGUST 23. TO THURSDAY AUGUST 25.
1709.
_Will's Coffee-house, August 24._
The author of the ensuing letter, by his name, and the quotations he
makes from the ancients, seems a sort of spy from the old world, whom
we moderns ought to be careful of offending; therefore I must be free,
and own it a fair hit where he takes me, rather than disoblige him.
"SIR, Having a peculiar humour of desiring to be somewhat the better
or wiser for what I read, I am always uneasy when, in any profound
writer (for I read no others) I happen to meet with what I cannot
understand. When this falls out, it is a great grievance to me that I am
not able to consult the author himself about his meaning; for
commentators are a sect that has little share in my esteem. Your
elaborate writings have, among many others, this advantage, that their
author is still alive, and ready (as his extensive charity makes us expect)
to explain whatever may be found in them too sublime for vulgar
understandings. This, Sir, makes me presume to ask you, how the
Hampstead hero's character could be perfectly new[1] when the last
letters came away, and yet Sir John Suckling so well acquainted with it
sixty years ago? I hope, Sir, you will not take this amiss: I can assure
you, I have a profound respect for you; which makes me write this,

with the same disposition with which Longinus bids us read Homer and
Plato.
"'When in reading,' says he, 'any of those celebrated authors, we meet
with a passage to which we cannot well reconcile our reasons, we ought
firmly to believe, that were those great wits present to answer for
themselves, we should to our wonder be convinced, that we only are
guilty of the mistakes we before attributed to them.' If you think fit to
remove the scruple that now torments me, it will be an encouragement
to me to settle a frequent correspondence with you, several things
falling in my way which would not, perhaps, be altogether foreign to
your purpose, and whereon your thoughts would be very acceptable to
"Your most humble servant,
"OBADIAH GREENHAT."
[Footnote 1: In No. 57 of "The Tatler" Steele wrote: "Letters from
Hampstead say, there is a coxcomb arrived there, of a kind which is
utterly new. The fellow has courage, which he takes himself to be
obliged to give proofs of every hour he lives. He is ever fighting with
the men, and contradicting the women. A lady, who sent him to me,
superscribed him with this description out of Suckling:
"'I am a man of war and might, And know thus much, that I can fight,
Whether I am i' th' wrong or right. Devoutly. 'No woman under Heaven
I fear, New oaths I can exactly swear; And forty healths my brains will
bear, Most stoutly.'"
The "description out of Suckling" is from that writer's rondeau, "A
Soldier." As the poet died in 1642, Swift ridicules the statement that
this kind of coxcomb was "utterly new." [T.S.]]

THE TATLER, NUMB. 63.
FROM THURSDAY SEPTEMBER I. TO SATURDAY SEPTEMBER
3, 1709. "SIR,[1]
"It must be allowed, that Esquire Bickerstaff is of all authors the most
ingenuous. There