Note 85 — No. 223. [? Steele.[85] From Saturday, Sept. 9, to Tuesday, Sept. 12, 1710.

Steele (or Addison) edited this paper, but the real author was their friend Edward Wortley Montagu, to whom the second volume of the Tatler was dedicated. Mr. Moy Thomas says that Addison and Steele "were in the habit of asking him for hints and heads for papers; and there are among the Wortley Manuscripts original sketches of essays which may be found in the Tatler." This essay on marriage settlements "was entirely founded on Mr. Wortley's notes, and is frequently in his own words." He quarrelled with his future father-in-law because he objected to settle his property upon a future son, and he eloped with Lady Mary Pierrepont in August 1712. In a letter to Addison which accompanied the "loose hints" for this number, he says, "What made me think so much of it was a discourse with Sir P. King, who says that a man that settles his estate does not know that two and two make four" ("Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu," ed. Moy Thomas, i. 5, 10, 62). No doubt Wortley Montagu's notes furnished the materials for No. 199, and perhaps for No. 198 also.