A History of English Language

The appeal to authority, 1650-1800 251
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 O.F.Emerson thought, 17 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.” 18 Thus the movement for an academy did not lack the support of wellknown
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.”
17
O.F.Emerson, John Dryden and a British Academy (London, 1921; Proc. of the British
Academy).
18
Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England (2nd ed., 1959). The statement is echoed
by Dr. Johnson in his Lives of the Poets.