[Footnote 163:  The word “Miss” was still confined, in Steele’s day, to very young girls or to young women of giddy or doubtful character.  Thus Pastorella in No. 9 is called “Miss,” and similarly we find “Miss Gruel” in No. 33.  In the “Original Letters to the Tatler and Spectator,” printed by Charles Lillie (i. 223) there is a “Table of the Titles and Distinctions of Women,” from which what follows is extracted.  “Let all country-gentlewomen, without regard to more or less fortune, content themselves with being addressed by the style of ‘Mrs.’  Let ‘Madam’ govern independently in the city, &c.  Let no women after the known age of 21 presume to admit of her being called ‘Miss,’ unless she can fairly prove she is not out of her sampler.  Let every common maid-servant be plain ‘Jane,’ ‘Doll,’ or ‘Sue,’ and 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.