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

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 are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense. You'll be pleased, Sir, to pardon this expression, for the same reason for which you once desired us to excuse you when you seemed anything dull. Most writers, like the generality of Paul Lorrain's[2] saints, seem to place a peculiar vanity in dying hard. But you, Sir, to show a good example to your brethren, have not only confessed, but of your own accord mended the indictment. Nay, you have been so good-natured