Chiswick Press Editions POLITE CONVERSATION ⁂ _This Edition is limited to Five Hundred copies, viz.:_ _50 on Japanese Vellum, numbered 1 to 50._ _450 on Handmade paper, numbered 51 to 500._ _This is No. 438._ [Illustration: IONATHAN SWIFT S. T. D. _Decanus Ecclesia Cathedralis Sancti Patricy DUBLIN._ _Carolus Jervacius Pictor Reg. Pinxit._ _Geo. Vertue Londini Sculpsit_] POLITE CONVERSATION IN THREE DIALOGUES BY JONATHAN SWIFT WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY [Illustration] LONDON PRINTED AND ISSUED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM & CO AT THE CHISWICK PRESS MDCCCXCII CONTENTS. PAGE EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION vii INTRODUCTION TO THE DIALOGUES 3 DIALOGUE I. 53 DIALOGUE II. 127 DIALOGUE III. 173 ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 191 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION. In some ways nothing could be a better introduction to the “Polite Conversation” than the account of it which Mr. Thackeray has given in his “English Humourists” (though under the head of Steele, not Swift), as illustrating the society of the period. That account is in its way not much less of a classic than the immortal original itself, and it is purely delightful. But it neither deals nor pretends to deal with the whole of the subject. Indeed, the idea of Swift’s character which the “Conversation” gives does not square altogether well with the view—true, but one-sided—which it suited Mr. Thackeray to take of Swift.