[Footnote 1:  Ben Jonson’s ‘Epicoene’, or the Silent Woman, kept the stage in the Spectator’s time, and was altered by G. Colman for Drury Lane, in 1776.  Cutbeard in the play is a barber, and Thomas Otter a Land and Sea Captain.

  “Tom Otter’s bull, bear, and horse is known all over England, ’in
  rerum natura.’”

In the fifth act Morose, who has married a Silent Woman and discovered her tongue after marriage, is played upon by the introduction of Otter, disguised as a Divine, and Cutbeard, as a Canon Lawyer, to explain to him

  ’for how many causes a man may have ‘divortium legitimum’, a
  lawful divorce.’

Cutbeard, in opening with burlesque pedantry a budget of twelve impediments which make the bond null, is thus supported by Otter: 

‘Cutb.’  The first is ‘impedimentum erroris’.

‘Otter.’  Of which there are several species.

‘Cutb.’  Ay, ‘as error personae’.

’Otter.  If you contract yourself to one person, thinking her
another.’]

[Footnote 2:  This is fourth of five stanzas to ‘The Waiting-Maid,’ in the collection of poems called ‘The Mistress.’]

[Footnote 3:  Donne’s Funeral Elegies, on occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury.  ‘Of the Progress of the Soul,’ Second Anniversary.  It is the strain not of a mourning lover, but of a mourning friend.  Sir Robert Drury was so cordial a friend that he gave to Donne and his wife a lodging rent free in his own large house in Drury Lane,

  ‘and was also,’ says Isaac Walton, ’a cherisher of his studies, and
  such a friend as sympathized ’with him and his, in all their joys and
  sorrows.’

The lines quoted by Steele show that the sympathy was mutual; but the poetry in them is a flash out of the clouds of a dull context.  It is hardly worth noticing that Steele, quoting from memory, puts ‘would’ for ‘might’ in the last line.  Sir Robert’s daughter Elizabeth, who, it is said, was to have been the wife of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I, died at the age of fifteen in 1610.]

* * * *

ADVERTISEMENT.

A young Gentlewoman of about Nineteen Years of Age
(bred in the Family of a Person of Quality lately deceased,)
who Paints the finest Flesh-colour,
wants a Place,
and is to be heard of at the House of
Minheer Grotesque a Dutch Painter in Barbican.

N. B. She is also well-skilled in the Drapery-part,
and puts on Hoods and mixes Ribbons
so as to suit the Colours of the Face
with great Art and Success.

R.

* * * *

No. 42.  Wednesday, April 18, 1711.  Addison.

      Garganum inugire putes nemus aut mare Thuscum,
      Tanto cum strepitu ludi spectantur; et artes,
      Divitiaeque peregrina, quibus oblitus actor
      Cum stetit in Scena, concurrit dextera laevae. 
      Dixit adhuc aliquid?  Nil sane.  Quid placet ergo? 
      Lana Tarentino violas imitata veneno.