[Footnote 270:  Swift’s “Tale of a Tub,” sect. 4.]

[Footnote 271:  I.e., hold him in.]

[Footnote 272:  Said to be Bateman and Heathcote, both eminent citizens—­(Gentleman’s Magazine, lx. 679.)]

[Footnote 273:  “Mr. Bickerstaff has received a letter, dated June 6, with the just exceptions against the pretence of persons therein mentioned, to the name of Pretty Fellows, which shall be taken notice of accordingly:  as likewise, the letter from Anthony Longtail of Canterbury, concerning the death of Thomas a Becket” (folio).  See Nos. 24, 26.]

No. 26. [STEELE.

From Tuesday, June 7, to Thursday, June 9, 1709.

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, June 8.

I have read the following letter with delight and approbation, and I hereby order Mr. Kidney at St. James’s, and Sir Thomas at White’s[274] (who are my clerks for enrolling all men in their distant classes, before they presume to drink tea or chocolate in those places), to take care, that the persons within the descriptions in the letter be admitted, and excluded according to my friend’s remonstrance.[275]

“To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.; at Mr. Morphew’s near Stationers’ Hall.

“June 6, 1709.

“SIR,

“Your paper of Saturday[276] has raised up in me a noble emulation, to be recorded in the foremost rank of worthies therein mentioned; and if any regard be had to merit or industry, I may hope to succeed in the promotion, for I have omitted no toil or expense to be a proficient; and if my friends do not flatter, they assure me, I have not lost my time since I came to town.  To enumerate but a few particulars; there’s hardly a coachman I meet with, but desires to be excused taking me, because he has had me before.  I have compounded two or three rapes; and let out to hire as many bastards to beggars.  I never saw above the first act of a play:  and as to my courage, it is well known, I have more than once had sufficient witnesses of my drawing my sword both in tavern and playhouse.  Dr. Wall[277] is my particular friend; and if it were any service to the public to compose the difference between Marten and Sintilaer[278] the pearl-driller, I don’t know a judge of more experience than myself:  for in that I may say with the poet,

    “’Quae regio in villa nostri non plena laboris?’[279]

“I omit other less particulars, the necessary consequences of greater actions.  But my reason for troubling you at this present is, to put a stop, if it may be, to an insinuating, increasing set of people, who sticking to the letter of your treatise, and not to the spirit of it, do assume the name of ‘pretty fellows’; nay, and even get new names, as you very well hint.  Some of them I have heard calling to one another, as I have sat at White’s and St. James’s, by the names of Betty, Nelly, and so forth.  You see them accost each other with effeminate airs:  they have their signs and tokens like freemasons:  they rail at women-kind; receive visits on their beds in gowns, and do a thousand other unintelligible prettinesses that I cannot tell what to make of.  I therefore heartily desire you would exclude all this sort of animals.