N.R.

[Footnote 1: This letter appeared originally under the heading: "From my
own Apartment, December I." [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: In his "Journal to Stella" (December 2, 1710) Swift
writes: "Steele, the rogue, has done the impudentest thing in the world.
He said something in a 'Tatler,' that we ought to use the word Great
Britain, and not England, in common conversation, as, the finest lady
in Great Britain, &c. Upon this Rowe, Prior, and I, sent him a letter,
turning this into ridicule. He has to-day printed the letter, and signed
it J.S., M.P. and N.R. the first letters of our names. Congreve
told me to-day, he smoked it immediately." The passage referred to
by Swift, was a letter, signed Scoto-Britannus, printed in No. 241 of
"The Tatler," in which it was objected that a gentleman ended every
sentence with the words, "the best of any man in England," and called
upon him to "mend his phrase, and be hereafter the wisest of any man
in Great Britain." Writing to Alderman Barber, under date August
8, 1738, Swift remarks: "The modern phrase 'Great Britain' is
only to distinguish it from Little Britain where old clothes and old
books are to be bought and sold." [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3: We paid our _scot; i.e.,_ our share of the reckoning.
[T.S.]]


NOTE.

With No. 271 Steele brought his venture to a close. It was issued
on January 2nd, 1710. "I am now," he wrote, "come to the end of my