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.]