English language; he was merely echoing criticisms which had been
expressed frequently since the early sixteenth century. The number
of English monosyllables was sometimes complained of, because to
ears trained on the classical languages they sounded harsh, barking,
unfitted for eloquence; sometimes because they were believed to impede
the metrical flow in poetry; sometimes because, being particularly
characteristic of colloquial speech, they were considered low; and
often because they were associated with the languages of the Teutonic
tribes which had escaped the full refining influence of Roman
civilization. Swift followed writers like Nash and Dekker in
emphasizing the first and last of these objections.

There were, of course, stock answers to these stock objections.
Such criticism of one's mother tongue was said to be unpatriotic or
positively disloyal. If it was difficult to maintain that English was
as smooth and euphonious as Italian, it could be maintained that its
monosyllables and consonants gave it a characteristic and masculine
brevity and force. Monosyllables were also very convenient for the
formation of compound words, and, it was argued, should, when properly
managed, be an asset rather than a handicap to the English rhymester.
By the time Swift and Miss Elstob were writing, an increasing number
of antiquarian Germanophils (and also pro-Hanoverians) were prepared
to claim Teutonic descent with pride.

Most of these arguments had been bandied backwards and forwards
rather inconclusively since the sixteenth century, and Addison in
_The Spectator_ No. 135 expresses a typically moderate opinion on
the matter: the English language, he says, abounds in monosyllables,
which gives us an opportunity of delivering our thoughts in few
sounds. This indeed takes off from the elegance of our tongue,