8. Healey reports that "in such issues as I have been able to find of
the _Scots Postman, or the New Edinburgh Gazette_, there is no mention
of the _Scots Atalantis_" (_Letters_, p. 306, n. 1). The title of this
work and of Defoe's _Atalantis Major_ are derived from Mrs. Manley's
_New Atalantis or Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of
Quality of both Sexes from the New Atalantis, an island in the
Mediterranean_ (1709). The OED records that the word _atalantis_
enjoyed a brief currency in the eighteenth century with the meaning, "a
secret or scandalous history."