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The Tatler

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had in some places touched upon matters concerning Church and State, and he could not be cold enough to conceal his opinions. Gay tells us, in "The Present State of Wit," that the town being generally of opinion that Steele was quite spent as regards matter, was the more surprised when the _Spectator_ appeared; people were therefore driven to accept the alternative view that the _Tatler_ was laid down "as a sort of submission to, or composition with, the Government for some past offences." Excellent testimony to the immediate popularity of the _Tatler_ is furnished by the fact that its successive numbers were reprinted in Dublin and in Edinburgh. At least sixty-nine numbers of the Dublin issue, in quarto, were printed. The Scottish re-issue was a folio sheet, commenced about February 1710, and continued until the close of the paper. The date of each number of the Edinburgh paper--"printed by James Watson, and sold at his shop next door to the Red Lion, opposite to the Lucken Booths"--is five or six days later than that of the original issue; it was evidently worked off as soon as the London post came in. Other evidence of the popularity of the _Tatler_ in the provinces is afforded by the foundation of the "Gentleman's Society" at Spalding. Maurice Johnson, a native of Spalding and a member of the Inner Temple, gives this account of the matter: "In April 1709, that great genius Captain Richard Steele ... published the _Tatlers_, which, as they came out in half-sheets, were taken in by a gentleman, who communicated them to his acquaintances at the coffee-house then in the Abbey Yard; and these papers being universally approved as both instructive and entertaining, they ordered them to be sent down thither, with the Gazettes and Votes, for which they paid out of charity to the person who kept the coffee-house, and they were accordingly had and read there every post-day, generally aloud to the company, who would sit and talk over the subject afterwards. This insensibly drew the men of sense and letters into a sociable way of conversing, and continued the next year, 1710, until the publication of these papers desisted, which was in December, to their great regret." Afterwards the _Spectator_ was taken in, and a regular society was started in 1712, by the encouragement of Addison, Steele, and other members of Button's Club. One indication of the popularity of the _Tatler_ in its own day is the long subscription list prefixed to the reprint in four octavo volumes. Some copies were printed on "royal," others on "medium" paper; and the price of the former was a guinea a volume, while that of the latter was half a guinea. There was also an authorised cheap edition, in duodecimo, at half a crown a volume, besides a pirated edition at the same price. A still more conclusive proof of the success of the _Tatler_ was the number of papers started in imitation of its methods. Addison mentioned some of those periodicals in No. 229, where details will be found of the "Female Tatler," "Tit for Tat," and the like. But besides these, several spurious continuations of the _Tatler_ appeared directly after the discontinuance of the genuine paper, including one by William Harrison, written with Swift's encouragement and assistance. But Harrison, as Swift said, had "not the true vein for it," and his paper reached only to fifty-two numbers, which were afterwards reprinted as a fifth volume to the collected edition of the original _Tatler_. Gay said that Steele's imitators seemed to think "that what was only the garnish of the former _Tatlers_ was that which recommended them, and not those substantial entertainments which they everywhere abound in." The town, in the absence of anything better, welcomed their occasional and faint endeavours at humour; "but even those are at present become wholly invisible, and quite swallowed up in the blaze of the _Spectator_." Steele himself said that his imitators held the censorship in commission. [Footnote 1: No. 18.] [Footnote 2: No. 89.] [Footnote 3: No. 271.] [Footnote 4: _Spectator_, No. 532.] [Footnote 5: _Tatler_, No. 18.] [Footnote 6: No. 163.] [Footnote 7: No. 158.] [Footnote 8: Nos. 155, 160.] [Footnote 9: No. 249.] [Footnote 10: Nos. 100, 102.] [Footnote 11: No. 117.] [Footnote 12: No. 86.] [Footnote 13: No. 10.] [Footnote 14: No. 30.] [Footnote 15: No. 142.] [Footnote 16: No. 184.] [Footnote 17: No. 27.] [Footnote 18: No. 210.] [Footnote 19: No. 168.] [Footnote 20: Nos. 127, 186.] [Footnote 21: Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, 39.] [Footnote 22: Nos. 56, &c.] [Footnote 23: Nos. 40, 45.] [Footnote 24: No. 134.] [Footnote 25: See Nos. 115, 271.] [Footnote 26: No. 181.] [Footnote 27: No. 5.] [Footnote 28: No. 82.] [Footnote 29: No. 94.] [Footnote 30: No. 172.] [Footnote 31: Nos. 95, 114.] [Footnote 32: No. 49.] [Footnote 33: No. 33.] [Footnote 34: No. 149.] [Footnote 35: No. 85. See, too, No. 104.] [Footnote 36: Nos. 141, 248.] [Footnote 37: No. 212.] [Footnote 38: Nos, 40, 42, 47.] [Footnote 39: No. 68.] [Footnote 40: No. 8.] [Footnote 41: No. 6.] [Footnote 42: No. 87.] THE TATLER THE PREFACE.[43] In the last _Tatler_ I promised some explanation of passages and persons mentioned in this work, as well as some account of the assistances I have had in the performance. I shall do this in very few words; for when a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass. I have in the dedication of the first volume made my acknowledgments to Dr. Swift, whose pleasant writings, in the name of Bickerstaff, created an inclination in the town towards anything that could appear in the same disguise. I must acknowledge also, that at my first entering upon this work, a certain uncommon way of thinking, and a turn in conversation peculiar to that agreeable gentleman, rendered his company very advantageous to one whose imagination was to be continually employed upon obvious and common subjects, though at the same time obliged to treat of them in a new and unbeaten method. His verses on the Shower in Town,[44] and the Description of the Morning,[45] are instances of the happiness of that genius, which could raise such pleasing ideas upon occasions so barren to an ordinary invention. When I am upon the house of Bickerstaff, I must not forget that

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