conclusion had taken place without the premises.  Indeed, the scourge of ridicule is seldom better employed than on that species of Precieuse, who is anxious to confound the boundaries which nature has fixed for the employments and studies of the two sexes.  No man was more zealous than Swift for informing the female mind in those points most becoming and useful to their sex.  His “Letter to a Young Married Lady” and “Thoughts on Education” point out the extent of those studies. [S.]

Nichols, in his edition of “The Tatler” (1786), ascribes this paper to “Swift and Addison”; but he thinks the humour of it “certainly originated in the licentious imagination of the Dean of St. Patrick’s.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  John Norris (1657-1711), Rector of Bemerton, author of “The Theory and Regulation of Love” (1688), and of many other works.  His correspondence with the famous Platonist, Henry More, is appended to this “moral essay.”  Chalmers speaks of him as “a man of great ingenuity, learning, and piety”; but Locke refers to him as “an obscure, enthusiastic man.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  Henry More (1614-1687), the famous Cambridge Platonist, and author of “Philosophicall Poems” (1647), “The Immortality of the Soul” (1659), and other works of a similar nature.  Chalmers notes that “Mr. Chishall, an eminent bookseller, declared, that Dr. More’s ’Mystery of Godliness’ and his other works, ruled all the booksellers of London for twenty years together.” [T.S. ]]

[Footnote 4:  The reference here is to Milton’s “Apology for Smectymnuus.”  Milton and More were, during one year, fellow-students at Christ’s College, Cambridge. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  Said to refer to a Mr. Repington, a well-known wag of the time, and a member of an old Warwickshire family, of Amington, near Tamworth. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 6:  The Betty here referred to is the Lady Elizabeth Hastings (1682-1739), daughter of Theophilus, seventh Earl of Huntingdon.  In No. 49 of “The Tatler,” Steele refers to her in the famous sentence:  “to love her is a liberal education.”  She contributed to Mrs. Astell’s plans for the establishment of a “Protestant nunnery.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 7:  See previous note.  Mrs. Mary Astell (1668-1731) the authoress of “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their true and greatest Interest” (1694), was the friend of Lady Elizabeth Hastings and the correspondent of John Norris of Bemerton.  There is not the slightest foundation for the gross and cruel insinuations against her character in this paper.  The libel is repeated in the 59th and 63rd numbers of “The Tatler.”  Her correspondence with Norris was published in 1695, with the title, “Letters Concerning the Love of God”.  Later in life she attacked Atterbury, Locke, and White Kennett. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 8:  The reference here is to Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medici,” part ii., section 9. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 9:  M. Bournelle—­a pseudonym of William Oldisworth—­remarks:  “The next interview after a second is still a second; there is no progress in time to lovers” ("Annotations on ‘The Tatler’").  Chalmers reads here, “a second and a third interview.” [T.S.]]