Tatler no. 230

Summary

Headnote

Published 1710; copy text 1735 (see Textual Account).

Tatler 230 is the only number that can be confidently attributed to Swift's sole authorship (apart, that is, from the introductory paragraph supplied by Steele). Swift regularly reported his progress to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley in Dublin in JSt. On 18 September 1710 he reported that he ‘begun a letter to the Tatler about the corruptions of style and writing, 'c.’; on 23 September he mentioned that ‘I have sent a long letter to Bickerstaff ‘; and on 29 September, the day after publication, he confirmed that ‘I made a Tatler since I came’, inviting them to ‘guess which it is’. On 1 October he asked ‘Have you smoakt the Tatler that I writ? It is much liked here, and I think it is a pure one.’ Percy, indeed, notes that an announcement of a grammar aimed at less learned readers followed close upon the publication of no. 230. Addison would further develop some of Swift's concerns in Spectator 135.

The views expressed in Tatler 230 would apparently have been familiar to the ladies in Dublin: Swift comments that ‘you may be sometimes sure of things, as that about style, because it is what I have frequently spoken of ‘. In Tatler 230 he anticipates several of the concerns that he will later enlarge upon in his Proposal for Correcting (1712) and Polite Conversation (1738).His private use of words and forms objected to in this paper is commonly noticed; but Strang usefully emphasises his later sense that ‘much of his spontaneous usage must be remodelled to take its place in work addressed to a public future’. One aspect of that ‘public future’ is realised by the attention given to Swift's views in Johnson's Dictionary (1755), including, on occasion, concurrence in his disapproval of particular words.

Some of the terms to which Swift objects relate to public interest in the campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession, a war against which Swift would soon be writing on behalf of the Tory ministry.