"Sir,
"Your, &c."
St. Cl[eme]nts, Oct. 5.
"Mr. Bickerstaff,
"I observe, as the season begins to grow cold, so does people's devotion; insomuch that, instead of filling the churches, that united zeal might keep one warm there, one is left to freeze in almost bare walls, by those who in hot weather are troublesome the contrary way. This, sir, needs a regulation that none but you can give to it, by causing those who absent themselves on account of weather only this winter time, to pay the apothecary's bills occasioned by coughs, catarrhs, and other distempers contracted by sitting in empty seats. Therefore to you I apply myself for redress, having gotten such a cold on Sunday was sevennight, that has brought me almost to your worship's age from sixty within less than a fortnight. I am,
"Your Worship's in all obedience,
"W. E."
FOOTNOTES:
[128] See Nos. 38 and 230.
[129] This letter refers to the one by Swift in No. 230, on the corruptions of the English language in ordinary writings. The present letter, which is supposed to be by James Greenwood, closes with the statement that an English grammar, with notes, would be published next term. Soon afterwards there appeared, with the date 1711, "A Grammar of the English Tongue, with Notes.... Printed for John Brightland," &c. This book was noticed in the Works of the Learned for November 1710. Facing the title is a page bearing the head of Cato the Censor, and the following lines: "The Approbation of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.: 'The following treatise being submitted to my censure, that I may pass it with integrity, I must declare, that as grammar in general is on all hands allowed to be the foundation of all arts and sciences, so it appears to me that this Grammar of the English Tongue has done that justice to our language which, till now, it never obtained. The text will improve the most ignorant, and the notes will employ the most learned. I therefore enjoin all my female correspondents to buy, read, and study this grammar, that their letters may be something less enigmatic; and on all my male correspondents likewise, who make no conscience of false spelling and false English, I lay the same injunction, on pain of having their epistles exposed in their own proper dress in my Lucubrations.—Isaac Bickerstaff, Censor.'" There is a Dedication to the Queen, and a Preface in which "the Authors" explain how they have come to undertake a much-needed work at the request of Mr. Brightland.
This book was followed by a pamphlet of six pages, "Reasons for an English Education, by teaching the Youth of both Sexes the Arts of Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry, and Logic, in their own Mother-Tongue, 1711." On p. 5 the writer asks, "Has our Censor complained without cause, and given a false alarm of danger to the language of our country? (Lucubrat., Sept. 28, 1710);" and on the next page we are told that I. B., encouraged by the success of his book, was industriously correcting it for a second edition. This appeared in 1712, with an increase in the number of pages from 180 to 264. Other editions appeared in 1714 and 1720. The fifth is dated 1729, and is advertised in the Craftsman for July 5, 1729, as "recommended by Sir Richard Steele, for the use of the schools of Great Britain;" but according to the Monthly Chronicle, it really appeared on August 8, 1728, being called in the Index, "Bickerstaffe's Grammar." The seventh and eighth editions were published in 1746 and 1759.