[Footnote 1: In No. 57 of "The Tatler" Steele wrote: "Letters from Hampstead say, there is a coxcomb arrived there, of a kind which is utterly new. The fellow has courage, which he takes himself to be obliged to give proofs of every hour he lives. He is ever fighting with the men, and contradicting the women. A lady, who sent him to me, superscribed him with this description out of Suckling: "'I am a man of war and might, And know thus much, that I can fight, Whether I am i' th' wrong or right. Devoutly. 'No woman under Heaven I fear, New oaths I can exactly swear; And forty healths my brains will bear, Most stoutly.'" The "description out of Suckling" is from that writer's rondeau, "A Soldier." As the poet died in 1642, Swift ridicules the statement that this kind of coxcomb was "utterly new." [T.S.]] THE TATLER, NUMB. 63. FROM THURSDAY SEPTEMBER I. TO SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 1709. "SIR,[1] "It must be allowed, that Esquire Bickerstaff is of all authors the most ingenuous. There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense. You'll be pleased, Sir, to pardon this expression, for the same reason for which you once desired us to excuse you when you seemed anything dull. Most writers, like the generality of Paul Lorrain's[2] saints, seem to place a peculiar vanity in dying hard. But you, Sir, to show a good example to your brethren, have not only confessed, but of your own accord mended the indictment. Nay, you have been so good-natured as to discover beauties in it, which, I will assure you, he that drew it never dreamed of: And to make your civility the more accomplished, you have honoured him with the title of your kinsman,[3] which, though derived by the left hand, he is not a little proud of. My brother (for such Obadiah is) being at present very busy about nothing, has ordered me to return you his sincere thanks for all these favours; and, as a small token of his gratitude, to communicate to you the following piece of intelligence, which, he thinks, belongs more properly to you than to any others of our modern historians.