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.