The importance of dialogue in the novel has been often mentioned and will scarcely be contested: while frequent occasion has been taken to point out that it had hitherto been very ill-achieved.
Swift's "conversation" though designedly _underlined_, as it were, to show up current follies and extravagances of phrase and of fashion generally, is yet pretty certainly in the main the real average conversation of the society of his time, which he knew well and thoroughly.

Further, there is a distinct, though it may be almost impalpable, difference between it and the conversation of the stage, though it is naturally connected therewith.

Non-poetical stage dialogue in capable hands is either deliberate talking for display of "wit" like that of Congreve, or is conditioned and directed by the necessities of action and character.

Of course, novel conversation may diverge in the first direction, and cannot properly neglect the second altogether.

But, as there is room for very much more of it, it may and should allow itself a considerably wider range and imitate, on proper occasions, the desultory gossip and small talk of people who live on the "boards" of a room-floor and not of a stage.
This is just what Swift's does, and just what there is very little of in Defoe; almost necessarily less in Addison and his group because of their essay form; and hardly anything elsewhere and earlier.