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    Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712)
    Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712)
    Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712)
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712)

    By Arthur Maynwaring, Mr. (John) Oldmixon and Louis A. Landa

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 25, 2013
    Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712)

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      Book preview

      Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) - Arthur Maynwaring

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley

      (1712) and The British Academy (1712), by John Oldmixon and Arthur Mainwaring

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712)

      Author: John Oldmixon

      Arthur Mainwaring

      Commentator: Louis A. Landa

      Release Date: April 19, 2008 [EBook #25091]

      Language: English

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      Editor’s Introduction

      Oldmixon, Reflections

      Mainwaring, Academy

      Augustan Reprints

      Transcriber’s Notes

      Series Six:

      Poetry and Language

      No. 1

      John Oldmixon, Reflections on Dr.

      Swift’s Letter to Harley (1712);

      and

      Arthur Mainwaring, The British

      Academy (1712).

      With an Introduction by

      Louis A. Landa

      The Augustan Reprint Society

      September, 1948

      Price: 75 cents

      GENERAL EDITORS

      Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan

      Edward Niles Hooker, University of California, Los Angeles

      H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles

      ASSISTANT EDITOR

      W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan

      ADVISORY EDITORS

      Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington

      Benjamin Boyce, University of Nebraska

      Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan

      Cleanth Brooks, Yale University

      James L. Clifford, Columbia University

      Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago

      Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota

      Ernest Mossner, University of Texas

      James Sutherland, Queen Mary College, London

      Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author

      by

      Edwards Brothers, Inc.

      Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

      1948

      INTRODUCTION

      The two tracts reprinted here, as well as Swift’s Proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English tongue, which occasioned them, may be viewed in the context of the many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century suggestions for the formation of a British Academy. They are in part a result of the founding of the French Academy in 1635, although the feeling in England that language needed regulating to prevent its corruption and decline was not purely derivative. By the close of the seventeenth century an informed Englishman might have been familiar with a series of native proposals, ranging from those of Carew of Antony

      and Edmund Bolton early in the century to that of Defoe at the close. Among the familiar figures who urged the advantages of an Academy were Evelyn, the Earl of Roscommon, and Dryden. Of these Dryden was particularly vocal; but Evelyn’s suggestion, associated as it was with the Royal Society, was rather more spectacular. In 1665 he set forth for the Society’s Committee for Improving the Language an exhaustive catalogue of the forces tending to the corruption of the English tongue. Those, he declared, are victories, plantations, frontiers, staples of commerce, pedantry of schools, affectation of travellers, translations, fancy and style of court, vernility and mincing of citizens, pulpits, political remonstrances, theatres, shops, &c. There follows Evelyn’s careful formulation of the problems facing those who would refine the language and fix its standards.

      This sense of the corruption of the language and of the urgent need for regulation was communicated to the eighteenth century, in which a number of powerful voices called for action. Early in the period Addison advocated something like an Academy that by the best Authorities and Rules ... shall settle all Controversies between Grammar and Idiom (The Spectator, No. 135). He was followed by Swift, who in turn was followed by such diverse persons as Orator Henlay, the Earl of Orrery, and the Earl of Chesterfield. Curiously, Johnson’s appears to be the only weighty voice in opposition: the edicts of an English Academy, he insisted, would probably be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey them.

      But if the two tracts reprinted here may be viewed in this context, they may also be seen from another vantage--as part of the interminable wrangling in the period between Whigs and Tories, even over a matter so apparently non-political as the founding of an Academy. Since it was Swift’s petty treatise on the English Language--the epithet is Johnson’s--which provoked these two replies, we must look briefly at his handiwork. Swift was undoubtedly guilty of pride of authorship with respect to his Proposal, which appeared on May 17, 1712, in the form of a Letter to the Earl of Oxford. He had touched on the problem earlier in the Tatler (No. 230), but this is a more considered effort. In June, 1711, he first broached to Harley the idea of "a society or academy for correcting

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