An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities

An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities

The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Apology For The Study of Northern
Antiquities, by Elizabeth Elstob This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities
Author: Elizabeth Elstob
Release Date: March 11, 2005 [EBook #15329]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN APOLOGY FOR THE STUDY OF ***

Produced by David Starner, Louise Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Transcriber's Note: This text includes a number of citations from languages other than English, and in scripts other than Roman. They are shown as: *Saxon* +Greek+ ++Hebrew, Gothic++ #black-letter type# (German, Middle English, Old French) ]

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
ELIZABETH ELSTOB
An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities
(1715)
Introduction by Charles Peake
Publication Number 61
Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California
1956
* * * * *
GENERAL EDITORS RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan RALPH COHEN, University of California, Los Angeles VINTON A. DEARING, University of California, Los Angeles LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL, Clark Memorial Library
ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN BOYCE, Duke University LOUIS BREDVOLD, University of Michigan JOHN BUTT, King's College, University of Durham JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST C. MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, University College, London H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY EDNA C. DAVIS, Clark Memorial Library
* * * * *
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 or Harley and the Tory ministry, but his scornful reference to antiquarians as "laborious men of low genius," his failure to recognize that his manifest ignorance of the origins of the language was any bar to his pronouncing on it or legislating for it, and his repetition of some of the traditional criticisms of the Teutonic elements in the language, in particular the monosyllables and consonants. Her sense of injury was personal as well as academic. Her brother William and her revered master Dr. Hickes were among the antiquarians whom Swift had casually insulted, and she herself had published an elaborate edition of _An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_ (1709) and was at work on an Anglo-Saxon homilarium. Moreover she had a particular affection for her field of study, because it had enabled her to surmount the obstacles to learning which had been put in her path as a girl, and which had prevented her, then, from acquiring a classical education. Her Rudiments, the first Anglo-Saxon grammar written in English, was specifically designed to encourage ladies suffering from similar educational disabilities to find an intellectual pursuit. Her personal indignation is shown in her sharp answer to Swift's insulting phrase, and in her retaliatory classification of the Dean among the "light and fluttering wits."
As a linguistic historian she has no difficulty in exposing Swift's ignorance, and in establishing her claim that if there is any refining or ascertaining of the English language to be done, the antiquarian scholars must be consulted. But it is when she writes as a literary critic, defending the English language, with its monosyllables and consonants, as a literary medium, that she is most interesting.
There was