ng a Compleat System of an
English Education. _Published by_ JOHN BRIGHTLAND, for the Use of the
Schools of Great Britain and Ireland." It is ingeniously recommended in a
certificate by Sir Richard Steele, or the Tattler, under the fictitious
name of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., and in a poem of forty-three lines, by
Nahum Tate, poet laureate to her Majesty. It is a duodecimo volume of three
hundred pages; a work of no inconsiderable merit and originality; and
written in a style which, though not faultless, has scarcely been surpassed
by any English grammarian since. I quote it as Brightland's:[78] who were
the real authors, does not appear. It seems to be the work of more than
one, and perhaps the writers of the Tattler were the men. My copy is of the
seventh edition, London, printed for Henry Lintot, 1746. It is evidently
the work of very skillful hands; yet is it not in all respects well planned
or well executed. It unwisely reduces the parts of speech to four; gives
them new names; and rejects more of the old system than the schools could
be made willing to give up. Hence it does not appear to have been very
extensively adopted.

30. It is now about a hundred and thirty years, since _Dr. Swift_, in a
public remonstrance addressed to the Earl of Oxford, complained of the
imperfect state of our language, and alleged in particular, that "in many
instances it offended against every part of grammar." [79] Fifty years
afterward, _Dr. Lowth_ seconded this complaint, and pressed it home upon
the polite and the learned. "Does he mean," says the latter, "that the
English language, as it is spoken by the politest part of the nation, and
as it stands in the writings of the most approved authors, often offends
against every part of grammar? _Thus far, I am afraid the charge is
true_."--_Lowth's Grammar, Preface_, p. iv. Yet the learned Doctor, to whom
much praise has been justly ascribed for the encouragement which he gave to
this neglected study, attempted nothing more than "A Short Introduction to
English Grammar;" which, he says, "was calculated for the learner _even of
the lowest class_:" and those who would enter more deeply into the subject,
he referred to _Harris_; whose work is not an English grammar, but "A
Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar." Lowth's Grammar was
first published in 1758. At the commencement of his preface, the reverend
author, after acknowledging the enlargement, polish, and refinement, which