ity of California, Los Angeles

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
EDNA C. DAVIS, Clark Memorial Library

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INTRODUCTION

The answerers who rushed into print in 1712 against Swift's _Proposal
for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue_ were
so obviously moved by the spirit of faction that, apart from a few
debating points and minor corrections, it is difficult to disentangle
their legitimate criticisms from their political prejudices. As
Professor Landa has written in his introduction to Oldmiron's
_Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley_ and Mainwaring's
_The British Academy_ (Augustan Reprint Society, 1948): "It is not
as literature that these two answers to Swift are to be judged. They
are minor, though interesting, documents in political warfare which
cut athwart a significant cultural controversy."

Elizabeth Elstob's _Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities_
prefixed to her _Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue_
is an answer of a very different kind. It did not appear until 1715;
it exhibits no political bias; it agrees with Swift's denunciation
of certain current linguistic habits; and it does not reject the
very idea of regulating the language as repugnant to the sturdy
independence of the Briton. Elizabeth Elstob speaks not for a party
but for the group of antiquarian scholars, led by Dr. Hickes, who
were developing and popularizing the study of the Anglo-Saxon origins
of the English language--a study which had really started in the
seventeenth century.

What irritated Miss Elstob in the _Proposal_ was not Swift's eulogy
or Harley and the Tory ministry, but his scornful reference to
antiquarians as "laborious men of low genius," his failure to
recognize that his manifest ignorance of the origins of the language
was any bar to his pronouncing on it or legislating for it, and his
repetition of some of the traditional criticisms of the Teutonic
elements in the language, in particular the monosyllables and
consonants. Her sense of injury was personal as well as academic.
Her brother William and her revered master Dr. Hickes were among the
antiquarians whom Swift had casually insulted, and she herself had
published an elaborate edition of _An English-Saxon Homily on the
Birthday of St. Gregory_ (1709) and was at work on an Anglo-Saxon
homilarium. Moreover she had a particular affection for her field
of study, because it had enabled