A history of the English Language

190.
The Problem of “Refining” the Language.
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.”
6
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
5 
Cf. §193. 
6 
Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue.
The appeal to authority, 1650-1800 243

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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, cmmbled 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.
7
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