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INTRODUCTION

The answerers who rushed into print in 1712 against Swift's _Proposal
for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue_ were
so obviously moved by the spirit of faction that, apart from a few
debating points and minor corrections, it is difficult to disentangle
their legitimate criticisms from their political prejudices. As
Professor Landa has written in his introduction to Oldmiron's
_Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley_ and Mainwaring's
_The British Academy_ (Augustan Reprint Society, 1948): "It is not
as literature that these two answers to Swift are to be judged. They
are minor, though interesting, documents in political warfare which
cut athwart a significant cultural controversy."

Elizabeth Elstob's _Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities_
prefixed to her _Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue_
is an answer of a very different kind. It did not appear until 1715;
it exhibits no political bias; it agrees with Swift's denunciation
of certain current linguistic habits; and it does not reject the
very idea of regulating the language as repugnant to the sturdy
independence of the Briton. Elizabeth Elstob speaks not for a party
but for the group of antiquarian scholars, led by Dr. Hickes, who
were developing and popularizing the study of the Anglo-Saxon origins
of the English language--a study which had really started in the
seventeenth century.

What irritated Miss Elstob in the _Proposal_ was not Swift's eulogy