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The Appeal to Authority, 1650-1800

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<blockquote>
<hr WIDTH="100%"><blink>READING:</blink>
Baugh, A.C./ Cable, Th. 1993. A History Of The English Language.
4th
edition. London: Routledge [paragraphs 186-197]
 
<hr WIDTH="100%">
The Appeal to Authority, 1650-1800
 
<hr WIDTH="100%">
  
<a NAME="p186"></a>§ 186. The Impact of the Seventeenth
Century.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
The social, commercial, technological, and intellectual forces that
were released in the Renaissance had profound effects on the English language,
as the previous chapter has described. In the middle and latter part of
the seventeenth century the evolution and interaction of these forces led
to a culmination, a series of crises, and an eventual reaction. Both the
crises and the responses to them were provoked by transmutations of forces
that had energized the Renaissance, and these new trends became disruptively
intense by the middle of the seventeenth century. The most obvious crisis
was the English Civil War of the 1640s, followed by the Restoration of
Charles II in 1660. The intellectual turbulence, which involved matters
of language and language use, among many other concerns, is somewhat harder
to trace than the political turbulence, and it has often been misread.
While it is natural for us to take the rationality of scientific
discourse as a kind of norm, the new scientists and philosophers of the
seventeenth century saw their world view challenged by an outpouring of
fervent expression that was often driven by religious zeal and occult science,
and which incorporated large measures of irrationality and obscurity, often
accompanied by belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft. Radical Nonconformists,
Dissenters, and other perceived fanatics were lumped together under the
pejorative label "Enthusiasts" by writers and scientists connected with
the Royal Society, as well as by more conservative Anglicans. Supporters
of rational science such as Henry More, Thomas Sprat, John Wilkins, and
Robert Boyle were disturbed by the "ranting" language of the Enthusiasts.
More conservative minds were concerned about the very fact of public expression
and the sheer bulk of controversial publications.
Learned discourse was no longer confined to elite circles; it was now
being extensively published, in English. The practitioners of natural science
seemed to glory not only in condemning the Enthusiasts and the old authorities
but also in open disputation. They regarded science as a cooperative enterprise
which required disagreements. In the seventeenth century, however, it was
still very difficult for people to conceive that open controversy was either
safe or beneficial to society. As one conservative nobleman put it, "Controversye
Is a Civill Warr with the Pen which pulls out the sorde soone afterwards."<a href="#f01">1</a>In
the wake of the recent revolutionary turmoil (1640-1660), featuring civil
war, the execution of a king, and a Cromwellian interregnum, his apprehensions
were understandable. Thus, there arose during the latter seventeenth century
a highly focused public consciousness as regards language. Yet, with few
exceptions, though often for different reasons, educated English people
recoiled from the solution Thomas Hobbes proposed - that all power, even
over knowledge - must reside in a single political authority.
In the 1660s the Royal Society, which served as coordinator and clearing
house for English scientific endeavors, proposed a solution in which the
English language would play a crucial role. Among the membership, the leading
proponents of this solution were religious moderates: Latitudinarian Anglicans
and moderate Puritans. They argued that the English prose of scientists
should be stripped of ornamentation and emotive language. It should be
plain, precise, and clear. The style should be non-assertive. Assent was
to be gained not by force of words but by force of evidence and reasoning.
An author writing on scientific subjects, as one of them said, should convey
"a sense of his own fallibility.... [He] never concludes but upon resolution
to alter his mind upon contrary evidence ... he gives his reasons without
passion ... discourses without wrangling, and differs without dividing."
<a href="#f02">2</a>
Essentially this amounted to a repudiation of classical principles of rhetoric,
which had accented powers of persuasion and could easily be used to project
mirages of plausibility. Language, it was urged, should be geared for dispassionate,
rational - literally prosaic - discourse. It was also recommended that
the higher or "Liberal Arts" should be brought in closer contact with the
baser "Mechanick Arts." In this way English prose could facilitate a national
unity built around scientific honesty and social utility.
This proposal became a credo of the Royal Society, and its principles
influenced efforts to design universal languages. All this bespeaks an
intense awareness of the importance of language in almost every sphere
of politics, society, and culture. John Locke's ideas about language, in
the Essay of Human Understanding and elsewhere in his writings were
greatly influenced by the Latitudinarians of the Royal Society. He wished
that the qualities desired for scientific prose could be extended to all
prose. But the Royal Society could not impose its scheme; it could only
hope that its members would set an example. Nor did the Royal Society create
the "plain style," though it may have accomplished something equally important
and that is to give elite sanction to the idea that a plain style was best.
In all these endeavors, linguistic and scientific, one sees the emergence
of certain widely noted characteristics of the decades that followed in
England.

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p187"></a>§ 187. The Temper of the Eighteenth
Century.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
In the light of this seventeenth-century background we may more readily
understand the temper of the eighteenth century. The
first half of the eighteenth century is commonly designated in histories
of literature as the Augustan Age in England. The principle characteristics
of this age which affected the course of the English language emerged early
and maintained their influence throughout the century, in spite of the
eruption of some radical challenges in the final two decade.
 The eighteenth century sought to retain from the seventeenth century
the best features of rational discourse that had been established while
rejecting the uncontrolled proliferation of what sober minds regarded as
dangerous tendencies in English prose.
In England the age was characterized by a search
for stability. One of the first characteristics to be mentioned is a strong
sense of order and the value of regulation. Adventurous individualism and
the spirit of independence characteristic of the previous era gave way
to a desire for system and regularity. This involves conformity to a standard
that the consensus recognizes as good. It sets up correctness as an ideal
and attempts to formulate rules or principles by which correctness may
be defined and achieved. The most important consideration in the
foundation of this standard is reason. The
spirit of scientific rationalism in philosophy was reflected in many other
domains of thought. A great satisfaction was felt in things that could
be logically explained and justified. It must not be supposed, however,
that the powerful new current of scientific rationalism swept away the
firmly grounded reverence for classical literature. Not only in literature
but also in language Latin was looked upon as a model, and classical precedent
was often generalized into precept. It is easy to see how a standard having
its basis in regularity, justified by reason, and supported by classical
authority might be regarded as approaching perfection, and how an age that
set much store by elegance and refinement could easily come to believe
in this standard as an indispensable criterion of "taste." While continuing
to venerate Greece and Rome, eighteenth-century English people were increasingly
conscious of ways in which their own achievements could be judged as surpassing
those of the ancient world. They could easily come to believe in the essential
rightness of their judgment and think that their own ideals could be erected
into something like a permanent standard. We may well believe that permanence
and stability would seem like no inconsiderable virtues to a generation
that remembered the disorders and changes of the Revolution and Restoration.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p188"></a>§ 188. Its Reflection in the
Attitude toward the Language.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
The intellectual tendencies here noted are seen quite clearly in the
eighteenth-century efforts to standardize, refine,
and fix the English language. In the period under consideration
discussion of the language takes a new turn. Previously interest had been
shown chiefly in such questions as whether English was worthy of being
used for writings in which Latin had long been traditional, whether the
large additions being made to the vocabulary were justified, and whether
a more adequate system of spelling could be introduced. Now for the first
time attention was turned to the grammar, and it
was discovered that English had no grammar. At any rate its grammar was
largely uncodified, unsystematized. The ancient languages had been reduced
to rule; one knew what was right and what was wrong. But in English everything
was uncertain. One learned to speak and write as one learned to
walk, and in many matters of grammatical usage there was much variation
even among educated people. This was clearly distasteful to an age that
desired above all else an orderly universe. The spontaneous creativeness
of a Shakespeare, verbing it with nouns and adjectives, so to speak, sublimely
indifferent to rules, untroubled by any considerations in language save
those springing from a sure instinct, had given place to hesitation and
uncertainty, so that a man like Dryden confessed that at times he had to
translate an idea into Latin in order to decide on the correct way to express
it in English.
In its effort to set up a standard of correctness
in language the rationalistic spirit of the eighteenth century showed
itself in the attempt to settle disputed points logically, that is, by
simply reasoning about them, often arriving at entirely false conclusions.
The respect for authoritative example, especially
for classical example, takes the form of appeals to the analogy of Latin,
whereas a different manifestation of the respect for authority is at the
bottom of the belief in the power of individuals
to legislate in matters of language and accounts for the repeated
demand for an English Academy. Finally it is an idea often expressed that
English
has been and is being daily corrupted, that it needs correction
and refinement, and that when the necessary reforms have been effected
it should be fixed permanently and protected from change.
In other words, it was desired in the eighteenth century to give the English
language a polished, rational, and permanent form. How mistaken
were these goals and methods will be shown later. The various features
of that attempt will constitute the major topics for discussion in the
remainder of this chapter.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p189"></a>§ 189. "Ascertainment."
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
Eighteenth-century attempts to codify the English language and to direct
its course fall, we may repeat, under three main heads:(1)
to reduce the language to rule and set up a standard of correct usage;
(2) to refine it - that is, to remove supposed defects and introduce certain
improvements; and (3) to fix it permanently in the desired form.
As pointed out in the preceding section, one of
the chief defects of English that people became acutely conscious of in
the latter part of the seventeenth century was the absence of a standard,
the fact that the language had not been reduced to a rule so that one could
express oneself at least with the assurance of doing so correctly. Dryden
sums up this attitude in words: "we have yet no prosodia, not so much as
a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar, so that our language is in a manner
barbarous." <a href="#f03">3</a> That is, the language did not
possess the character of an orderly and well-regulated society. One must
write it according to one's individual judgment and therefore without the
confidence that one might feel if there were rules on which to lean and
a vocabulary sanctioned by some recognized authority. It was a conviction
of long standing with him. In his dedication of Troilus and Cressida
to the earl of Sunderland (1679) he says: "how barbarously we yet write
and speak, your lordship knows, and I am sufficiently sensible in
my own English. For I am often put to a stand, in considering whether what
I write be the idiom of the tongue, or false grammar." And he adds: "I
am desirous, if it were possible, that we might all write with the same
certainty of words, and purity of phrase, to which the Italians first arrived,
and after them the French; at least that we might advance so far, as our
tongue is capable of such a standard." The ideal was expressed many
times in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, perhaps nowhere more
accurately than in the words "we write by guess, more than any stated rule,
and form every man his diction, either according to his humour and caprice,
or in pursuance of a blind and servile imitation.'' <a href="#f04">4</a>
In the eighteenth century the need for standardization
and regulation was summed up in the word ascertainment . The
force of this word then was somewhat different from that which it has today.
To ascertain was not so much to learn by inquiry as to settle a
matter, to render it certain and free from doubt. Dr. Johnson defined ascertainment
as "a settled rule; an established standard"; and it was in this
sense that Swift used the verb in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving,
and Ascertaining the English Tongue.<a href="#f05">5</a>
When reduced to its simplest form the need was for a dictionarythat
should record the proper use of words and agrammarthat
should settle authoritatively the correct usages in matters of construction.
How it was proposed to attain these ends we shall see shortly.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p190"></a>§ 190.The Problem of "Refining"
the Language.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
Uncertainty was not the only fault that the eighteenth
century found with English. The lack of a standard to which all might conform
was believed to have resulted in many corruptions that were growing up
unchecked. It is the subject of frequent lament that for some time the
language had been steadily going down. Such observations are generally
accompanied by a regretful backward glance at the good old days. Various
periods in the past were supposed to represent the highest perfection of
English. It was Dryden's opinion that "from Chaucer the purity of the English
tongue began," but he was not so completely convinced as some others that
its course had been always downward. For Swift the golden age was that
of the great Elizabethans. "The period," he says, "wherein the English
tongue received most improvement, I take to commence with the beginning
of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and to conclude with the great rebellion in
forty-two. From the civil war to this present time, I am apt to doubt whether
the corruptions in our language have not at least equalled the refinements
of it; and these corruptions very few of the best authors in our age have
wholly escaped. During the usurpation, such an infusion of enthusiastic
jargon prevailed in every writing, as was not shaken off in many years
after. To this succeeded the licentiousness which entered with the restoration,
and from infecting our religion and morals fell to corrupt our language.
" <a href="#f06">6</a>
With this opinion Dr. Johnson agreed. In his Dictionary
he says, "I have studiously endeavoured to collect examples and authorities
from the writers before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells
of English undefiled, as the pure sources of genuine diction." It is curious
to find writers later in the century, such as Priestley, Sheridan, and
the American Webster, looking back upon the Restoration and the period
of Swift himself as the classical age of the language. It is apparent that
much of this talk springs merely from a sentimental regard for the past
and is to be taken no more seriously than the perennial belief that our
children are not what their parents were. Certainly the corruptions
that Swift cites seem to us rather trivial. But the significance of such
utterances lies in the fact that they reveal an attitude of mind and lead
to many attempts in the course of the century to "purify" the language
and rid it of supposed imperfections.
There have always been, and doubtless always will be, people who feel
a strong antipathy toward certain words or expressions or particular constructions,
especially those with the taint of novelty about them. Usually such people
do not make their objections felt beyond the circle of their friends. But
occasionally an individual whose name carries weight and who is possessed
with a crusading spirit offers his or her views to the public. However
much the condemned usages may represent mere personal prejudice, they are
often regarded by others as veritable faults in the language and continue
to be condemned in words that echo those of the original critic until the
objections attain a currency and assume a magnitude out of all proportion
to their significance. Such seems to have been the case with the strictures
of Dean Swift on the English of his day.
In matters of language Swift was a conservative.
His conservatism was grounded in a set of political and religious, as well
as linguistic, opinions. He cherished the principle of authority in church
and state, and thus deplored the Latitudinarians. He decried the skeptical
spirit of inquiry proposed by the Royal Society. Innovation, whether in
politics or language, crumbled the cement of society. Taking his writings
as a whole, one may surmise that he would have preferred that the seventeenth
century, at least after 1640, with its political commercial, and scientific
revolutions had never happened.<a href="#f07">7</a> Although
Swift upheld the classics, he understood the merits of a plain English
style, so long as it was not polluted by crude and careless usages. The
things that specifically troubled the gloomy dean in his reflections on
the current speech were chiefly innovations that he says had been growing
up in the last twenty years. One of these was the
tendency to clip and shorten words that should have retained their
full polysyllabic dignity. He would have objected to taxi, phone, bus,
ad, and the like, as he did to rep, mob, penult , and
others. The practice seems to have been a temporary fad, although not unknown
to any period of the language. It continued, however, to be condemned for
fifty years. Thus George Campbell in his Philosophy of Rhetoric
(1776) says: "I shall just mention another set of barbarisms, which also
comes under this class, and arises from the abbreviation of polysyllables,
by lopping off all the syllables except the first, or the first and second.
Instances of this are hyp for hypochondriac, rep for reputation,
ult for ultimate, penult for penultimate, incog for incognito,
hyper for hypercritic, extra for extraordinary . Happily
all these affected terms have been denied the public suffrage. I scarcely
know any such that have established themselves, except mob for mobile
. And this it hath effected at last, notwithstanding the unrelenting
zeal with which it was persecuted by Dr. Swift, wherever he met with it.
But as the word in question hath gotten use, the supreme arbitress of language,
on its side, there would be as much obstinacy in rejecting it at present,
as there was perhaps folly at first in ushering it upon the public stage."<a href="#f08">8</a>
Campbell's admission of the word mob is interesting, because in
theory he accepted the test of usage, but he could not quite free himself
from prejudice against this word.
A second innovation that Swift opposed was the
tendency to contract verbs like drudg'd, disturb'd, rebuk'd,
fledg'd "and a thousand others everywhere to be met with in prose as
well as verse, where, by leaving out a vowel to save a syllable, we form
a jarring sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondered
how it could ever obtain." His ostensible reason
for rejecting this change, which time has fully justified, is that "our
language was already overstocked with monosyllables." We accordingly
hear a good bit in the course of the century about the large number of
monosyllabic words in English, an objection that seems to have no more
to support it than the fact that a person of Swift's authority thought
monosyllables "the disgrace of our language."
A third innovation that aroused Swift's ire has to do with certain
words then enjoying a considerable vogue among wits and people of fashion.
They had even invaded the pulpit. Young preachers, fresh from the universities,
he says, "use all the modern terms of art, sham, banter,
mob, bubble, bully, cutting, shuffling,
and palming , all which, and many more of the like stamp,
as I have heard them often in the pulpit, so I have read them in some of
those sermons that have made most noise of late." Swift was by no means
alone in his criticism of new words. Each censor of the language has his
own list of objectionable expressions (cf. § 205). But this type of
critic may be illustrated here by its most famous representative.
All of these faults that Swift found in the language he attacked in
a letter to the Tatler (No. 230) in 1710, and he called attention
to them again two years later in his Proposal
for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue .
In the former paper, in order to set out more clearly the abuses
he objected to, he published a letter supposedly "received some time ago
from a most accomplished person in this way of writing":
  
<blockquote>Sir,
 I cou'dn't get the things you sent for all about Town
.-- I thô t to ha'
come down myself, and then I'd ha' brout'um ; but I han't
don't , and I believe I can't do't , that's
pozz
.-- Tom begins to g'imself airs because he's going
with the plenipo's .-'Tis said, the French King will
bamboozl'
us agen , which causes many speculations . The Jacks
, and others of that kidney , are very uppish
, and alert upon't , as you may see by their phizz's.--Will
Hazzard has got the hipps ,having lost to the tune of five
hundr'd pound, thôhe understands
play very well, nobody better. He has promis't me upon
rep,
to leave off play; but you know 'tis a weakness he's too apt to
give into, thô he has as much
wit as any man, nobody more. He has lain incog ever since.--The
mobb's very quiet with us now. - I believe you
thô
t I banter'd you in my last like a country put.-- I
sha'n't leave Town this month, &c.</blockquote>
"This letter," he says, "is in every point an admirable pattern of the
present polite way of writing." The remedy he proposes is for the editor
(Steele) to use his position to rid the language of these blemishes, "First,
by argument and fair means; but if these fail, I think you are to make
use of your authority as Censor, and by an annual index expurgatorius
expunge all words and phrases that are offensive to good sense, and condemn
those barbarous mutilations of vowels and syllables." Later, in his Proposal,
he was to go much further.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p191"></a>§ 191.The Desire to "Fix"
the Language.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
One of the most ambitious hopes of the eighteenth
century was to stabilize the language, to establish it in a form that would
be permanent. Swift talked about "fixing" the language, and the
word was echoed for fifty years by lesser writers who shared his desire
and, like him, believed in the possibility of realizing it. The fear of
change was an old one. Bacon at the end of his life had written to his
friend, Sir Toby Matthew (1623): "It is true, my labours are now most set
to have those works, which I had formerly published,. . . well translated
into Latin.... For these rnodern languages will, at one time or other,
play the bankrupts with books." <a href="#f09">9</a>
A succession of writers voiced the fear that in a few generations their
works would not be understood. Shortly after the Restoration the poet Waller
wrote (Of English Verse):
<blockquote>But who can hope his lines should long
 Last, in a daily changing tongue?
 While they are new, Envy prevails;
 And as that dies, our language fails ....
Poets that Lasting Marble seek,
 Must carve in Latin or in Greek;
 We write in Sand ....</blockquote>
A little later Swift wrote: "How then shall any man, who hath a genius
for history equal to the best of the ancients, be able to undertake such
a work with spirit and cheerfulness, when he considers that he will be
read with pleasure but a very few years, and in an age or two shall hardly
be understood without an interpreter?" And he added, "The fame of our writers
is usually confined to these two islands, and it is hard it should be limited
in time as much as place by the perpetual variations of our
speech." <a href="#f10">10</a> Pope echoed
the sentiment when he wrote in his Essay on Criticism, "And such
as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be." Even after the middle of the century,
when the hope of fixing the language was less frequently expressed, Thomas
Sheridan addressed a plea to the earl of Chesterfield to exert his influence
toward stabilizing the language: "Suffer not our Shakespear, and our Milton,
to become two or three centuries hence what Chaucer is at present, the
study only of a few poring antiquarians, and in an age or two more the
victims of bookworms.'' <a href="#f11">11</a>
It is curious that a number of people notable in various intellectual
spheres in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries should have
been blind to the testimony of history and believed that by taking thought
it would be possible to suspend the processes of growth and decay that
characterize a living language. It is the more remarkable in that the truth
had been recognized by some from a considerably earlier date. The anonymous
author of the pamphlet Vindex Anglicus: or, The Perfections of the English
Language Defended and Asserted (1644)<a href="#f12">12</a>
noted that changes in language are inevitable.
Even earlier (1630) that delightful letter writer James Howell had observed:
"that as all other sublunary things are subject to corruptions and decay....
so the learnedest and more eloquent languages are not free from this common
fatality, but are liable to those alterations and revolutions, to those
fits of inconstancy, and other destructive contingencies which are unavoidably
incident to all earthly things."<a href="#f13">13</a> Nevertheless,
laboring under the mistaken notion that the classical languages, particularly
Greek, had continued unchanged for many centuries, some held that English
might be rendered equally stable. That great scholar Bentley explained
the changes that English had undergone in the previous two centuries as
due chiefly to the large number of Latin words incorporated into the language,
and he thought that it would not change so much in the future, adding:
"Nay, it were no difficult contrivance, if the Public had any regard to
it, to make the English Tongue unmutable; unless here after some Foreign
Nation shall invade and overrun us."<a href="#f14">14</a> Bentley's
influence is apparent in
Swift's opinion that "if it [English] were once refined to a certain
standard, perhaps there might be ways found out to fix it for ever, or
at least till we are invaded and made a conquest by some other state."
In the same place Swift says: "But what I have most at heart, is, that
some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language
for ever, after such alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite.
For
I am of opinion, it is better a language should not be wholly perfect,
than that it should be perpetually changing." And again he adds,
"I
see no absolute necessity why any language should be perpetually changing;
for we find many examples to the contrary."<a href="#f15">15</a>
It would be possible to show the continuance of this idea through much
of the rest of the century, but it is sufficient to recognize it as one
of the major concerns of the period with respect to the language.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p192"></a>§ 192. The Example of Italy
and France.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
It was perhaps inevitable that those who gave thought to the threefold
problem which seemed to confront English--of standardizing, refining, and
fixing it - should consider what had been done in this direction by other
countries. Italy and France were the countries to which the English had
long turned for inspiration and example, and in both of these lands the
destiny of the language had been confided to an academy. In Italy, prolific
in academies, the most famous was the Accademia della
Crusca, founded as early as 1582. Its
avowed object was the purification of the Italian language, and to this
end, it published in 1612 a dictionary, the famous Vocabolario degli
Accademici della Crusca. The dictionary provoked controversy,
one of the most effective kinds of publicity, and, though subsequently
modified in important ways, it went through several editions. In the third
(1691) it had reached the proportions of three folio volumes, and the fourth
edition (1729-1738) filled six. Here then was an impressive example of
the results attained in at least one country from an effort to improve
its language. Perhaps an even more effective precedent was furnished by
France. In 1635 Cardinal Richelieu offered
a royal charter to a small group of men who for several years had been
meeting once a week to talk about books and to exchange views on literature.
The original group was composed of only six or eight; the maximum membership
was set at forty. The society was to be known as
the French Academy (l'Académie française),
and in the statutes that were drawn up defining its purpose it was declared:
"The principal function of the Academy shall be to labor with all possible
care and diligence to give definite rules to our language, and to render
it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and sciences." It was
to cleanse the language of impurities, whether in the mouths of the people
or among people of affairs, whether introduced by ignorant courtiers or
preachers or writers. It would be well "to establish
a certain usage of words" and accordingly it should undertake to compile
a dictionary, a grammar, a rhetoric, and a treatise on the art of poetry.
The
most important of these projects was the dictionary.
Work on it proceeded slowly, but in 1694
it appeared. Thus while England continued to lament the lack of
an adequate dictionary, Italy and France had both apparently achieved this
object through the agency of academies.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p193"></a>§ 193. An English Academy.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
There can be little doubt that the vital incentive to the establishment
of an academy in England came from the example of France and Italy. The
suggestion of an English Academy occurs early in the seventeenth century.
Indeed, learned societies had been known in England from 1572, when a Society
of Antiquaries founded by Archbishop Parker began holding its meetings
at the house of Sir Robert Cotton and occupied itself with the study of
antiquity and history. It might in time have turned its attention to the
improvement of the language, but it languished after the accession of James.
A proposal that promised even more was made about the year of Shakespeare's
death by Edmund Bolton, an enthusiastic antiquary. It was for a society
to be composed of men famous in politics, law, science, literature, history,
and the like. Those proposed for membership, beside the originator, included
such well-known names as George Chapman, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Robert Cotton,
Sir Kenelm Digby, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, John Selden,
Sir Henry Spelman, and Sir Henry Wotton, all men with scholarly tastes
and interests. But the project died with James I.
In time, however, the example of the French Academy
began to attract attention in England. In 1650 James Howell spoke
approvingly of its intentions to reform French spelling, and in 1657 its
history appeared in English, translated from the French of Pellisson. With
the Restoration, discussion of an English Academy became much more frequent.
In the very year that Charles II was restored to the throne, a volume was
published with the title New Atlantis ... Continued by R. H.
Esquire (1660) in which, as a feature of his ideal commonwealth, the
author pictured an academy "to purifie our Native Language from Barbarism
or Solecism, to the height of Eloquence, by regulating the termes and phrases
thereof into constant use of the most significant words, proverbs, and
phrases, and justly appropriating them either to the Lofty, mean, or Comic
stile."<a href="#f16">16</a>
Shortly thereafter the idea of an academy received support from several
influential persons, notably from Dryden and John Evelyn. In the dedication
of the Rival Ladies (1664) Dryden says, "I am Sorry, that (Speaking
so noble a Language as we do) we have not a more certain Measure of it,
as they have in France, where they have an Academy erected for the purpose,
and Indow'd with large Privileges by the present King." A few months later
the Royal Society took a step that might have led it to serve the
purpose of an academy. This society, founded in 1662,
was mainly scientific in its interests, but in December 1664 it adopted
a resolution to the effect that as "there were persons of the Society whose
genius was very proper and inclined to improve the English tongue, Particularly
for philosophic purposes, it was voted that there should be a committee
for improving the English language; and that they meet at Sir Peter Wyche's
lodgings in Gray's-Inn once or twice a month, and give an account of their
proceedings, when called upon." The committee was a large one; among
its twenty-two members were Dryden, Evelyn, Sprat, and Waller. Evelyn,
on one occasion, unable to attend the meeting of the committee, wrote out
at length what he conceived to be the things that they might attempt. He
proposed the compilation of a grammar and some reform of the spelling,
particularly the leaving out of superfluous letters. This might be followed
by a "Lexicon or collection of all the pure English words by themselves;
then those which are derivative from others, with their prime, certaine,
and natural signification; then, the symbolical: so as no innovation might
be us'd or favour'd, at least, 'till there should arise some necessity
of providing a new edition, & of amplifying the old upon mature advice."
He further suggested collections of technical words, "exotic" words, dialect
expressions, and archaic words that might be revived. Finally, translations
might be made of some of the best of Greek and Latin literature, and even
out of modern languages, as models of elegance in style. He added the opinion
in conclusion that "there must be a stock of reputation gain'd by some
public writings and compositions of ye Members of this Assembly,
and so others may not thinke it dishonor to come under the test, or accept
them for judges and approbators." Evelyn's statement is important not so
much for the authority that attaches to his words as for the fact that
his notions are quite specific and set out at length. Whether because the
program he outlined appeared too ambitious or for some other reason, nothing
was done about it. The committee seems to have held only three or four
meetings. The Royal Society was not really interested in linguistic matters.
It is quite likely, as 0. F. Emerson thought,<a href="#f17">17</a>
that the moving spirit in this gesture of the Royal Society was John Dryden.
Though he was certainly not a pioneer in suggesting the creation of an
English Academy, he was the most distinguished and consistent advocate
of it in public. Later he seems to have joined forces with the earl of
Roscommon. Horace Walpole, in his life of the earl, says: "we are told
that his Lordship in conjunction with Dryden projected a society for refining
and fixing the standard of our language. It never wanted this care more
than at that period; nor could two men have been found more proper to execute
most parts of that plan than Dryden, the greatest master of the powers
of language, and Roscommon, whose judgment was sufficient to correct the
exuberances of his associate."<a href="#f18">18</a> Thus the
movement for an academy did not lack the support of well-known and influential
names.
But at the end of the century the idea was clearly in the air.
In 1697, Defoe in his Essay upon Projects devoted one article to
the subject of academies. In it he advocated an academy for England.
He says: "I would therefore have this society wholly composed of gentlemen,
whereof twelve to be of the nobility, if possible, and twelve private gentlemen,
and a class of twelve to be left open for mere merit, let it be found in
who or what sort it would, which should lie as the crown of their study,
who have done something eminent to deserve it." He had high hopes of the
benefits to be derived from such a body: "The voice of this society should
be sufficient authority for the usage of words, and sufficient also to
expose the innovations of other men's fancies; they should preside with
a sort of judicature over the learning of the age, and have liberty to
correct and censure the exorbitance of writers, especially of translators.
The reputation of this society would be enough to make them the allowed
judges of style and language; and no author would have the impudence to
coin without their authority. Custom, which is now our best authority for
words, would always have its original here, and not be allowed without
it. There should be no more occasion to search for derivations and constructions,
and it would be as criminal then to coin words as money."

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p194"></a>§ 194. Swift's Proposal, 1712.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the ground had been prepared,
and the time was apparently ripe for an authoritative plan for an academy.
With
the example of Richelieu and the French Academy doubtless in his mind,
Swift addressed a letter in 1712
to the earl of Oxford, Lord Treasurer of England. It was published under
the title A Proposal for Correcting,
Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue.
After
the usual formalities he says: "My Lord, I do here
in the name of all the learned and polite persons of the nation complain
to your Lordship as first minister, that our language is extremely
imperfect; that its daily improvements are by no means in proportion to
its daily corruptions; that the pretenders to polish and refine it have
chiefly multiplied abuses and absurdities; and, that in many instances
it offends against every part of grammar." He then launches an attack
against the innovations he had objected to in his paper in the Tatler
two years before, observing, "I have never known this great town without
one or more dunces of figure, who had credit enough to give rise
to some new word, and propagate it in most conversations, though it had
neither humour nor significancy."
The remedy he proposes is an academy, though he does not call it by
that name. "In order to reform our language, I conceive, my lord, that
a free judicious choice should be made of such persons, as are generally
allowed to be best qualified for such a work, without any regard to quality,
party, or profession. These, to a certain number at least, should assemble
at some appointed time and place, and fix on rules, by which they design
to proceed. What methods they will take, is not for me to prescribe." The
work of this group, as he conceives it, is described in the following terms:
"The persons who are to undertake this work will have the example of the
French before them to imitate, where these have proceeded right, and to
avoid their mistakes. Besides the grammar-part, wherein we are allowed
to be very defective, they will observe many gross improprieties, which
however authorized by practice, and grown familiar, ought to be discarded.
They will find many words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our
language, many more to be corrected, and perhaps not a few long since antiquated,
which ought to be restored on account of their energy and sound." And then
he adds the remark which we have quoted in a previous paragraph, that what
he has most at heart is that they will find some way to fix the language
permanently. In setting up this ideal of permanency he allows for growth
but not decay: "But when I say, that I would have our language, after it
is duly correct, always to last, I do not mean that it should never be
enlarged. Provided that no word, which a society shall give a sanction
to, be afterwards antiquated and exploded, they may have liberty to receive
whatever new ones they shall find occasion for." He ends with a renewed
appeal to the earl to take some action, indulging in the characteristically
blunt reflection that "if genius and learning be not encouraged under your
Lordship's administration, you are the most inexcusable person alive. "
The publication of Swift's Proposal marks
the culmination of the movement for an English Academy. It had in
its favor the fact that the public mind had apparently become accustomed
to the idea through the advocacy of it by Dryden and others for more than
half a century. It came from one whose judgment carried more weight than
that of anyone else at the beginning of the eighteenth century who might
have brought it forward. It was supported by important contemporary opinion.
Only a few months before, Addison, in a paper in the Spectator (No.
135) that echoes most of Swift's strictures on the language, observed that
there were ambiguous constructions in English "which will never be decided
till we have something like an Academy, that by the best Authorities and
Rules drawn from the Analogy of Languages shall settle all Controversies
between Grammar and Idiom."
Apparently the only dissenting voice was that of John Oldmixon, who,
in the same year that Swift's Proposal appeared, published Reflections
on Dr. Swift's Letter to the Earl of Oxford, about the English Tongue.
It was a violent Whig attack inspired by purely political motives. He says,
"I do here in the Name of all the Whigs, protest against all and everything
done or to be done in it, by him or in his Name." Much in the thirty-five
pages is a personal attack on Swift, in which he quotes passages from the
Tale
of a Tub as examples of vulgar English, to show that Swift was no fit
person to suggest standards for the language. And he ridicules the idea
that anything can be done to prevent languages from changing. "I should
rejoice with him, if a way could be found out to fix our Language for
ever, that like the Spanish cloak, it might always be
in Fashion." But such a thing is impossible.
Oldmixon's attack was not directed against the idea of an academy. He
approves of the design, "which must be own'd to be very good in itself."
Yet
nothing came of Swift's Proposal. The explanation of its
failure in the Dublin edition is probably correct; at least it represented
contemporary opinion. "It is well known," it says, "that if the Queen had
lived a year or two longer, this proposal would, in all probability, have
taken effect. For the Lord Treasurer had already nominated several persons
without distinction of quality or party, who were to compose a society
for the purposes mentioned by the author; and resolved to use his credit
with her Majesty, that a fund should be applied to support the expence
of a large room, where the society should meet, and for other incidents.
But this scheme fell to the ground, partly by the dissensions among the
great men at court; but chiefly by the lamented death of that glorious
princess."
This was the nearest England ever came to having
an academy for the regulation of the language. Though Swift's attempt
to bring about the formation of such a body is frequently referred to with
approval by the advocates of the idea throughout the century, no serious
effort was made to accomplish the purpose again. Apparently it was felt
that where Swift had failed it would be useless for others to try. Meanwhile
opposition to an academy was slowly taking shape. The importance of the
Proposal
lies in the fact that it directed attention authoritatively to the problems
of language that then seemed in need of solution.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p195"></a>§ 195. Objection to an Academy.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
Though the idea of establishing an academy died
hard, the eighteenth century showed a growing skepticism toward it and
an increasing attitude of dissent. The early enthusiasm for the
example of France had given place, in the minds of some, to doubts about
the value of the results obtained by the French Academy. As an anonymous
writer in 1724 observes, "many say, that they have been so far from making
their language better, that they have spoiled it."<a href="#f19">19</a>
Certainly they had not prevented it from changing. The
claim that a language could be fixed in permanent form was the rock on
which the hope for an academy seems first to have split. Oldmixon,
in his attack on Swift's Proposal referred to above, vigorously
opposes the notion. "The Doctor," he says, "may as well set up a Society
to find out the Grand Elixir, the Perpetual Motion, the Longitude,
and other such Discoveries, as to fix our Language beyond their own Times
... This would be doing what was never done before, what neither Roman
nor Greek, which lasted the longest of any in its Purity, could
pretend to." A much more authoritative utterance was that of Dr.
Johnson in the
Preface to his Dictionary
(1755): "Those who have been persuaded to
think well of my design, require that it should fix our language, and put
a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered
to make in it without opposition. With this consequence I will confess
that I flattered myself for a while; but now begin to fear that I have
indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When
we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century
to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand
years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being
able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and
phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his
language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power
to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity,
and affectation.
"With this hope, however, academies have been
instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives,
and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been
vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain
syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride,
unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. The French language has
visibly changed under the inspection of the academy ... and no Italian
will maintain, that the diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly
different from that of Boccace, Machiavel, or Caro."
Other grounds for objecting to an academy were not wanting. When in
the same preface Johnson said, "If an academy should be established ...
which I, who can never wish to see dependence multiplied, hope the spirit
of English liberty will hinder or destroy," he was voicing a prevailing
English attitude. The English have always been moved
by a spirit of personal liberty in the use of their language. A policy
of noninterference appeals to them much more than one of arbitrary regulation.
As Johnson late in life again remarked of Swift's Proposal, "The
certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience, he thinks attainable,
he proposes to secure by instituting an academy; the decrees of which every
man would have been willing, and many would have been proud to disobey."
Johnson's views apparently had a decided influence. After the publication
of his Dictionary, advocacy of an academy becomes less frequent.
Instead we find his views reflected in the opinions expressed by other
writers. Thomas Sheridan in his British Education, published a year
later, says: "The only scheme hitherto proposed for correcting, improving,
and ascertaining our language, has been the institution of a society for
that purpose. But this is liable to innumerable objections; nor would it
be a difficult point to prove, that such a method could never effectually
answer the end." He then repeats Johnson's objections. At least some people
realized that language has a way of taking care of itself, and that features
which appear objectionable to one age are either accepted by the next or
have been eliminated by time. Joseph Priestley,
who, as we shall see, was remarkably liberal in his views upon language,
anticipating the attitude of later times, inserts a passage in his Grammar
(1761) that may be taken as indicating the direction that opinion
on the subject of an academy was taking in the latter half of the eighteenth
century: "As to a public Academy, invested with authority
to ascertain the use of words, which is a project that some persons are
very sanguine in their expectations from, I think it not only unsuitable
to the genius of a free nation, but in itself ill calculated to reform
and fix a language. We need make no doubt but that the best forms of speech
will, in time, establish themselves by their own superior excellence: and,
in all controversies, it is better to wait the decisions of time, which
are slow and sure, than to take those of synods, which are often hasty
and injudicious."<a href="#f20">20</a>
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p196"></a>§ 196. Substitutes for an
Academy.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
Since the expectation of those who put their hopes in an academy must
have been considerably lessened by the failure of Swift's Proposal,
the
only means left to them was to work directly upon the public. What
could not be imposed by authoritative edict might still win adoption through
reason and persuasion. Individuals sought
to bring about the reforms that they believed necessary and to set up a
standard that might gain general acceptance. In 1724 there appeared
an anonymous treatise on The Many Advantages of a Good Language to Any
Nation: with an Examination of the Present State of Our Own. This repeats
the old complaints that English has too many monosyllables, uses too many
contractions, and has no adequate grammar or dictionary. But what is of
more importance is that it seeks to stir up popular interest in matters
of language, calls upon the public to take part in the discussion, and
proposes the publication of a series of weekly or monthly pamphlets on
grammar and other linguistic topics. In 1729 one Thomas Cooke published
"Proposals for Perfecting the English Language."<a href="#f21">21</a>
The reforms he suggests extend to the changing of all strong verbs to weak,
the formation of all plurals of nouns by means of -s or -es,
the comparison of adjectives only with more and most, and
the like. Cooke was both an idealist and an optimist, but he did not put
his faith in academies. The change in attitude, the
belief that a standard was to be brought about not by force but by general
consent, is revealed in the words of Sheridan: "The result of the researches
of rational enquirers, must be rules founded upon rational principles;
and a general agreement amongst the most judicious, must occasion those
rules to be as generally known, and established, and give them the force
of laws. Nor would these laws meet with opposition, or be obeyed with reluctance,
inasmuch as they would not be established by the hand of power, but by
common suffrage, in which every one has a right to give his vote: nor would
they fail, in time, of obtaining general authority, and permanence, from
the sanction of custom, founded on good sense.''<a href="#f22">22</a>
The two greatest needs, still felt and most frequently
lamented, were for a dictionary and a grammar. Without these there
could be no certainty in diction and no standard of correct construction.
The one was supplied in 1755 by Johnson's
Dictionary,
the other in the course of the next half-century by the early grammarians.
  

<hr WIDTH="100%">
 <a NAME="p197"></a>§ 197. Johnson's Dictionary.
 
<hr>
 (Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Languge: 1993)
The publication in 1755 ofA
Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel
Johnson, A.M., in two folio volumes, was hailed as a great achievement.
And it was justly so regarded, when we consider that it was
the work of one man laboring almost without assistance for the short space
of seven years. True, it had its defects. Judged by modern standards
it was painfully inadequate. Its etymologies are often ludicrous. It is
marred in places by prejudice and caprice. Its definitions, generally sound
and often discriminating, are at times truly Johnsonian.<a href="#f23">23</a>
It includes a host of words with a very questionable right to be regarded
as belonging to the language.<a href="#f24">24</a> But it had
positive virtues. It exhibited the English vocabulary
much more fully than had ever been done before. It offered a spelling,
fixed, even if sometimes badly, that could be accepted as standard. It
supplied thousands of quotations illustrating the use of words, so that,
as Johnson remarked in his preface, where his own explanation is inadequate
"the sense may easily be collected entire from the examples."
It is the first purpose of a dictionary to record
usage. But even today, when the scientific study of language makes
us much less disposed to pass judgment upon, and particularly to condemn,
its phenomena, many people look upon the editor of a dictionary as a superior
kind of person with the right to legislate in such matters as the pronunciation
and use of words. This attitude was wellnigh universal in Johnson's day
and was not repugnant to the lexicographer himself. In many ways he makes
it clear that he accepts the responsibility as part of his task. "Every
language," he says in the preface, "has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient,
and in themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections
of human things, and which require only to be registred, that they may
not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but
every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it
is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe." In a paper he
published in the Rambler (No. 208) while he was still engaged on
the Dictionary he wrote: "I have laboured to refine our language
to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious
idioms, and irregular combinations." He condemns the word lesser
as a barbarous corruption, though he admits that "it has all the authority
which a mode originally erroneous can derive from custom." Under nowise
he
says, "this is commonly spoken and written by ignorant barbarians,
noways."
But noways was once much used and, as a later contemporary observed,
"These ignorant barbarians ... are only Pope, and Swift, and Addison, and
Locke, and several others of our most celebrated writers."<a href="#f25">25</a>
In addressing the Plan of his work to the earl of Chesterfield,
Johnson said: "And though, perhaps, to correct the language of nations
by books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of morality,
may be tasks equally difficult; yet, as it is unavoidable to wish, it is
natural likewise to hope, that your Lordship's patronage may not be wholly
lost."
That Johnson's Dictionary should suggest comparison with similar
works in France and Italy, prepared by academies, is altogether natural.
Garrick wrote an epigram on his friend's achievement in which occur the
lines
<blockquote>And Johnson, well arm'd like a hero of yore,
 Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more.</blockquote>
A notice that appeared on the continent observes that Johnson may boast
of being in a way an academy for his island.<a href="#f26">26</a>Johnson
himself envisaged his work as performing the same function as the dictionary
of an academy. Speaking of pronunciation, he says, "one great end
of this undertaking is to fix the English language"; and in the same place
he explains, "The chief intent of it is to preserve the purity, and ascertain
the meaning of our English idiom." Summing up his plan he says, "This ...
is my idea of an English Dictionary; a dictionary by which the pronunciation
of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which
its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened."<a href="#f27">27</a>
These statements sound like the program of an academy. Chesterfield felt
that it would accomplish the same purpose. In the paper published in the
World
(No. 100), by which he is supposed to have angled for the dedication
of the work, he said: "I had long lamented, that we had no lawful standard
of our language set up, for those to repair to, who might choose to speak
and write it grammatically and correctly." Johnson's
Dictionary,
he believed, would supply one. "The time for discrimination seems to be
now come. Toleration, adoption, and naturalization, have run their lengths.
Good order and authority are now necessary. But where shall we find them,
and at the same time the obedience due to them? We must have recourse to
the old Roman expedient in times of confusion, and choose a Dictator. Upon
this principle, I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous
post." In 1756 Sheridan wrote, "if our language should ever be fixed, he
must be considered by all posterity as the founder, and his dictionary
as the corner stone."<a href="#f28">28</a> Boswell
was apparently expressing the opinion of his age when he spoke of Johnson
as "the man who had conferred stability on the language of his country."
  
Kersey, John. 1702. A New English Dictionary.[The
first English dictionary to attempt systematic coverage of common words
as well as difficult ones. It was very popular and remained in print for
70 years.]
Edward Phillips. 1706. New World of English Words.
Revised by John Kersey.
Nathan Bailey. 1721. An Universal Etymological
English Dictionary.
 ---. 1727. [A supplementary volume appeared, sometimes called volume
II]
Nathan Bailey. 1730. Dictionarium Britannicum.
[It
represented an amalgam of the two volumes of An Universal Etymological
English Dictionary; Johnson used this dictionary as a working
base for his own dictionary]
Samuel Johnson. 1747. Plan for a Dictionary of
the English Language.
  
  

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