d let the better-born and
higher-placed be distinguished by 'Mrs. Patience,' 'Mrs. Prue,' or 'Mrs.
Abigail.'"]

[Footnote 164: Perhaps there is here an illusion to Mrs. Anne Oldfield
(died 1730), and Brigadier-General Charles Churchill, brother of the
Duke of Marlborough. Mrs. Oldfield acted as Lady Betty Modish in
Cibber's "Careless Husband," a part which was not only written for, but
copied from her. Her son by Churchill married Lady Mary Walpole.]

[Footnote 165: A coffee-house in Pall Mall. Swift and Prior frequented
it: "Prior and I came away at nine, and sat at the Smyrna till eleven
receiving acquaintance." "I walked a little in the Park till Prior made
me go with him to the Smyrna Coffee-house."--("Journal to Stella," Oct.
15, 1710; Feb. 19, 1711.)]

[Footnote 166: The sixth and last volume of the "Dryden" Miscellany
Poems was published by Tonson in 1709. The elder Tonson, who was founder
and secretary of the Kit Cat Club, died in 1736.]

[Footnote 167: By Elizabeth Singer, who became Mrs. Rowe in 1710, and
died in 1737. Besides poems which gained for her the friendship of
Prior, Dr. Watts, and Bishop Ken, she published "Friendship in Death, in
twenty letters from the Dead to the Living," and "Letters Moral and
Entertaining."]

[Footnote 168: Dryden's version of "Antony and Cleopatra" was produced
in 1673.]

[Footnote 169: Horace, 1 Od. xxvi. 2. The joke consists in Mrs. Jenny
Distaff mistaking Horace's "Creticum" for "Criticum," and so misapplying
the passage.]

[Footnote 170: See No. 1.]

[Footnote 171: "In the absence of Mr. Bickerstaff, Mrs. Distaff has
received Mr. Nathaniel Broomstick's letter" (folio).]

No. 11. [STEELE.

By ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.

From _Tuesday May 3,_ to _Thursday, May 5_, 1709.

* * * * *

Will's Coffee-house, May 3.

A kinsman[172] has sent me a letter, wherein he informs me, he had
lately resolved to write an heroic poem, but by business had been
interrupted, and has only made one similitude, which he should be
afflicted to have wholly lost, and begs of me to apply it to something,
being very desirous to see it well placed in the world. I am so willing
to help the distressed, that I have taken it in; but though his greater
genius might very well distinguish his verses from mine, I have marked
where his begin. His lines are a description of the sun in eclipse,
which I know nothing more like than a brave man in sorrow, who bear