hat our most
illustrious, most renowned, and most celebrated Roman family of _Ix_, has
enjoyed the precedency to all others from the reign of good old Saturn. I
could say much to the defamation and disgrace of your family; as, that
your relations _Distaff_ and _Broomstaff_ were both inconsiderate mean
persons, one spinning, the other sweeping the streets, for their daily
bread. But I forbear to vent my spleen on objects so much beneath my
indignation. I shall only give the world a catalogue of my ancestors, and
leave them to determine which hath hitherto had, and which for the future
ought to have, the preference.

"First then comes the most famous and popular lady _Meretrix_, parent of
the fertile family of _Bellatrix, Lotrix, Netrix, Nutrix, Obstetrix,
Famulatrix, Coctrix, Ornatrix, Sarcinatrix, Fextrix, Balneatrix,
Portatrix, Saltatrix, Divinatrix, Conjectrix, Comtrix, Debitrix,
Creditrix, Donatrix, Ambulatrix, Mercatrix, Adsectrix, Assectatrix,
Palpatrix, Praeceptrix, Pistrix._

"I am yours,

"ELIZ. POTATRIX."

[Footnote 1: This letter is introduced:

"From my own Apartment, June 29.

"It would be a very great obligation, and an assistance to my treatise
upon punning, if any one would please to inform me in what class among
the learned, who play with words, to place the author of the following
letter."

The proposed work had been promised in the 32nd number of "The Tatler,"
where it was stated that, "I shall dedicate this discourse to a
gentleman, my very good friend, who is the Janus of our times, and
whom, by his years and wit, you would take to be of the last age; but
by his dress and morals, of this." [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: In the 11th number of "The Tatler," by Heneage Twisden.
[T.S.]]

THE TATLER, NUMB. 59.

FROM TUESDAY AUGUST 23. TO THURSDAY AUGUST 25. 1709.

_Will's Coffee-house, August 24._

The author of the ensuing letter, by his name, and the quotations he
makes from the ancients, seems a sort of spy from the old world, whom we
moderns ought to be careful of offending; therefore I must be free, and
own it a fair hit where he takes me, rather than disoblige him.

"SIR, Having a peculiar humour of desiring to be somewhat the better or
wiser for what I read, I am always uneasy when, in any profound writer
(for I read no others) I happen to meet with what I cannot understand.
When this falls out, it is a great grievance to me that I am not able to
consult the author himself about his