A History of English Language

A history of the english language 252
194. Swift’s Proposal, 1712.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the ground had been prepared, and the time
was apparently ripe for an authoritative plan for an academy. With the example of
Richelieu and the French Academy doubtless in his mind, Swift addressed a letter in
1712 to the earl of Oxford, Lord Treasurer of England. It was published under the title A
Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. After the
usual formalities he says: “My Lord, I do here in the name of all the learned and polite
persons of the nation complain to your Lordship as first minister, that our language is
extremely imperfect; that its daily improvements are by no means in proportion to its
daily corruptions; that the pretenders to polish and refine it have chiefly multiplied abuses
and absurdities; and, that in many instances it offends against every part of grammar.” He
then launches an attack against the innovations he had objected to in his paper in the
Tatler two years before, observing, “I have never known this great town without one or
more dunces of figure, who had credit enough to give rise to some new word, and
propagate it in most conversations, though it had neither humour nor significancy.”
The remedy he proposes is an academy, though he does not call it by that name. “In
order to reform our language, I conceive, my lord, that a free judicious choice should be
made of such persons, as are generally allowed to be best qualified for such a work,
without any regard to quality, party, or profession. These, to a certain number at least,
should assemble at some appointed time and place, and fix on rules, by which they design
to proceed. What methods they will take, is not for me to prescribe.” The work of this
group, as he conceives it, is described in the following terms: “The persons who are to
undertake this work will have the example of the French before them to imitate, where
these have proceeded right, and to avoid their mistakes. Besides the grammar-part,
wherein we are allowed to be very defective, they will observe many gross improprieties,
which however authorized by practice, and grown familiar, ought to be discarded. They
will find many words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our language, many more to
be corrected, and perhaps not a few long since antiquated, which ought to be restored on
account of their energy and sound.” And then he adds the remark which we have quoted
in a previous paragraph, that what he has most at heart is that they will find some way to
fix the language permanently. In setting up this ideal of permanency he allows for growth
but not decay: “But when I say, that I would have our language, after it is duly correct,
always to last, I do not mean that it should never be enlarged. Provided that no word,
which a society shall give a sanction to, be afterwards antiquated and exploded, they may
have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occasion for.” He ends with a
renewed appeal to the earl to take some action, indulging in the characteristically blunt
reflection that “if genius and learning be not encouraged under your Lordship’s
administration, you are the most inexcusable person alive.”
The publication of Swift’s Proposal marks the culmination of the movement for an
English Academy. It had in its favor the fact that the public mind had apparently become
accustomed to the idea through the advocacy of it by Dryden and others for more than
half a century. It came from one whose judgment carried more weight than that of anyone
else at the beginning of the eighteenth century who might have brought it forward. It was