Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/135

 Rh the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign to the breaking out of the civil war of 1642. His perturbed mind was filled with mingled feelings of grief and indignation as he pointed out in this letter the growing corruptions then so apparent even in the writings of the best authors, and more especially as he was compelled to admit that not only the fanatics of the commonwealth, but also the court itself, had contributed to bring about the sad condition of the language.

It is not worth while to speak in detail of Swift's fanciful and quixotic scheme for purging the language and keeping it pure. But it is interesting to observe, in passing, that his urgent appeal to the prime minister to become the guardian and curator of the English tongue was utterly fruitless and, what is more, that his direful predictions as to the speedy decay of English have never been verified. Furthermore, some of those very neologisms which Swift criticized so unrelentingly are now recognized in polite speech and bear the stamp of approval as the jus et norma loquendi. Of his second class of barbarisms well-nigh all are to-day accepted as standard English and are without a trace of slang. With his first and third classes, however, fate has not dealt so kindly, for these words are still under condemnation, save mob, which has forced its way to recognition in good usage as a necessary term.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century appeared another champion of the preservation of the purity and propriety of the English speech. This was James Beattie, a learned Scotchman. For some reason or other, the Scotch seemed extremely solicitous about the English language during the eighteenth century—a solicitude that was not appreciated by the British lexicographers and least of all by Dr. Johnson. In a letter written in 1790, Beattie took occasion to speak of the 'new-fangled phrases and barbarous idioms that are now so much affected by those who form their style from political pamphlets and those pretended speeches in Parliament that appear in the newspapers.' "Should this jargon continue to gain ground among us," he assures his correspondent, in a doleful mood, "English literature will go to ruin. During the last twenty years, especially since the breaking out of the American war, it has made alarming progress. . . . If I live to execute what I purpose on the writings and genius of Addison, I shall at least enter my protest against the practise; and by exhibiting a copious specimen of the new phraseology, endeavor to make my reader set his heart against it."

In order to emphasize the damage resulting to the language from the neologisms which were creeping in, Beattie conceived the clever plan of privately printing a series of 'Dialogues of the Dead,' which purported to be the production of his son deceased a few years before. The most interesting of these 'Dialogues' is the report of an imaginary