to give a sharp personal turn to her scholarly refutations--as, for
instance, when she demonstrates the usefulness of monosyllables in
poetry by illustrations from a series of poets beginning with Homer
and ending with Swift. There can be little doubt that Swift is
decisively worsted in this argument.

It is not known whether Swift ever read Miss Elstob's _Rudiments_,
though it is interesting to notice a marked change of emphasis in
his references to the Anglo-Saxon language. In the _Proposal_ he had
declared with a pretense of knowledge, that Anglo-Saxon was "excepting
some few variations in the orthography... the same in most original
words with our present English, as well as with German and other
northern dialects." But in _An Abstract of the History of England_
(probably revised in 1719) he says that the English which came in
with the Saxons was "extremely different from what it is now." The
two statements are not incompatible, but the emphasis is remarkably
changed. It is possible that some friend had pointed out to Swift that
his earlier statement was too gross a simplification, or alternatively
that someone had drawn his attention to Elizabeth Elstob's
_Rudiments_.

All writers owe much to the labors of scholarship and are generally
ill-advised to scorn or reject them, however uninspired and
uninspiring they may seem. Moreover when authors do enter into dispute
with "laborious men of low genius" they frequently meet with more than
their match. Miss Elstob's bold and aggressive defense of Northern
antiquities was remembered and cited by a later scholar, George
Ballard, as a warning to those who underestimated the importance of
a sound knowledge of the language. Indeed, he wrote, "I thought that
the bad success Dean Swift had met with in this affair from the