|
An
index
of names to Lowth’s Short Introduction
to English Grammar (1762), (1763),
(1764)[*]
click for
printable version
Karlijn
Navest (contact)
(August 2006. HSL/SHL 6)
[click
to go to the index directly]
Introduction
by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
and
Karlijn Navest
This
index of names to Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) has been
compiled by Karlijn Navest. It is based on the index to the first edition of
the grammar published previously by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (1997), and
has been extended with additional references from the 1763 and 1764 editions.
Lowth’s grammar was originally published in 1762, apparently as a kind of pilot edition.
As Lowth wrote himself in a letter to his friend and
fellow scholar, James Merrick
(1720–1769), around the time of the publication of the grammar,
The history of it is this: I
drew it up for the use of my little Boy, for the reasons mentioned in the
Preface. Mr. Legge desired to have it for his Son; wch.
purpose it could not well serve without being printed. I therefore finish’d it,
as well as I could for the present; & have printed an Edition of no great
number, in order to have the judgement of the Learned upon it. It is capable of
considerable improvements, if it shall be thought worth the while. You in
particular are desired to comply with ye. Request at ye.
end of the Preface (Lowth to James Merrick; ca. 8 February 1762. Brit. Lib. MS.
Eng. Lett. C. 573, f. 10).
At the
end of the preface of his grammar he had written:
The following short System is
proposed only as an Essay, upon a Subject, tho’ of little esteem, yet of no
small importance; and in which the want of something better adapted to real
use and practice, than what we have at present, seems to be generally
acknowledged. If those, who are qualified to judge of such matters, and do
not look upon them as beneath their notice, shall so far approve of it, as
to think it worth a revisal, and capable of being approved into something
really useful; their remarks and assistance, communicated through the hands
of the Bookseller, shall be received with all proper deference and
acknowledgement (Lowth 1762:xv).
And
comments and suggestions he did receive, for the second edition is a much
expanded version, in any case as far as the quotations in the footnotes are
concerned.
There is
a copy in Winchester College Library which is filled with annotations and, as
Alston calls them in the introductory note to his facsimile reprint of the
grammar, corrections. The
relevant pages are included in Alston’s reprint (Alston 1967, EL 18). Though all additions do indeed occur in
the second edition of the grammar, it is unlikely that they were corrections to
the first edition as such, as will be shown by Navest (forthc.).
The second
edition of the grammar came out within fifteen months of the publication of the
first edition, though Lowth would have preferred to wait a little longer, in
order to give his
reading public the opportunity of providing criticism (Tieken-Boon van Ostade
2000:24). It would thus seem that
in Lowth’s own view the second edition was the grammar’s first
edition proper, and it is for this reason that Reibel’s facsimile reprint of the
grammar is based on the second rather than the first edition (Reibel 1995). In
the second edition, Lowth acknowledged the comments received:
The
Author is greatly obliged to several Learned Gentlemen, who have favoured
him with their remarks upon the former Edition; which was indeed principally
designed to procure their assistance, and to try the judgement of the
public. He hath endeavoured to weigh their observations without prejudice or
partiality, and to make the best use of the lights which they have afforded
him. He hath been enabled to correct several mistakes, and encouraged
carefully to revise the whole, and to give it all the improvement which his
present materials can furnish. He hopes for the continuance of their favour,
as he is sensible there will still be abundant occasion for it (Lowth 1763:xviii).
Thus far,
it has unfortunately been impossible to identify any of the
“Learned
Gentlemen”
Lowth refers to here, but they did indeed continue to send him their
“observations”
as requested, for the 1764 edition is extended yet further (see below). The
preface to this edition ends similarly as the one to the 1763 edition, and so do
all the other regular editions and reprints of the grammar included in ECCO (Eighteenth-Century
Collections Online), including the ones that came out after his death in 1787.
It would be interesting to see whether new references continued to come in after
the 1764 edition; on the basis of our present knowledge, it would seem that
after the second edition, the contents of the grammar itself changed little (Auer
and Tieken-Boon van Ostade forthc.; Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2006).
The quotations in Lowth’s grammar mostly occur in the footnotes. Their function is to identify grammatical
errors committed by even the best writers, as Lowth elucidates in his preface:
It will evidently
appear from these Notes, that our best Authors, for want of some rudiments
of this kind have sometimes fallen into mistakes, and been guilty of
palpable errors in point of Grammar. The examples there given are such as
occurred in reading, without any very curious or methodical examination: and
they might easily have been much increased in number by any one, who had
leisure or phlegm enough to have gone through a regular course of reading
with this particular view. However, I believe, they may be sufficient to
answer the purpose intended; to evince the necessity of the Study of Grammar
in our own Language, and to admonish those, who set up for Authors among us,
that they would do well to consider this part of Learning as an object not
altogether beneath their regard (Lowth 1762:9-10).
Lowth, in other words, wanted to encourage the
study of English grammar in order for writers to avoid making grammatical errors.
To this end, he had collected in the course of his general reading what he calls
“palpable errors in point of Grammar”,
all of them committed by authors who were no longer alive (Percy 1997:134).
Similar to Johnson in his Dictionary published some ten years previously,
Lowth had adopted the principle by which he would “admit
no testimony of living authours” (Johnson 1755:Preface),
but his reasons for doing so must have been completely different. While Johnson
explains that he did so to avoid being “misled by
partiality, and that none of my cotemporaries might have reason to complain”,
Lowth would have been motivated by the risk of avoiding censure if he quoted the
mistake of a fellow writer. His approach is critical, and he “invoked
his authors”, as Percy (1997:141) puts it, “as
negative examples”. Even though his quotations
inevitably date from the past, he thus shows what is incorrect
and therefore must be avoided in present-day usage. See for instance the following examples:
| “The
burning lever not deludes his pains.” |
|
Dryden, Ovid. Metam. B. xii. |
| “I hope,
my Lord, said he, I not offend.” |
|
Dryden, Fables. |
| These examples make the
impropriety of placing |
| the Adverb not before the
Verb very evident |
|
(Lowth 1762:116n) |
| |
| “For
ever in this humble cell |
| Let Thee and I, my
fair one, dwell.” Prior. |
| It ought to be Me. |
|
(Lowth 1762:117n). |
Though Lowth is usually regarded as a
prescriptivist, it is evident from these examples that he took a proscriptive
rather than a prescriptive approach, offering corrections of the grammatical
errors discussed.
The following index thus forms a collation of
three editions, i.e. the first edition proper (Lowth 1762), the second edition
(1763) and “a new edition, corrected”
(1764), which is a different publication of the grammar than the third edition
proper, which had been published in the same year (Alston 1965:43). The reason for
selecting the latter copies of the grammar was that they happened to be present
in the University of Leiden at the time the index was compiled, and before ECCO
became available. To give some indication of the extent of the differences
between the three editions of the grammar:
- there are 272 quotations in the first
edition of the grammar[1]
- the second edition contains 149 new
quotations (i.e. an additional
55%), including 38 from Shakespeare, 25 from the Bible (11
from the Old and 14 from the New Testament), 14 from Milton,
11 from Addison and 8 from Pope
-
the large number of new instances from Shakespeare is partciularly striking,
as is the fact that Shakespeare's language comes in for criticsm in 23 of
the 38 new instances; Shakespeare comes eighth in the list of authors and
works most criticised in eighteenth-century normative grammars, after Swift,
the New Testament, Hume, Addison, Pope, the Spectator, and the Old
Testament (Sundby et al 1991:35)
- the 1764 edition contains a further 21
quotations (i.e. 5% more), among which there are 6 from Swift, 5 from Addison, 2 from the
Bible (New Testament only), 2 from Dryden and 1 from Pope
- both editions contain quotations from
authors who did not occur in the first edition, such as Wentworth Dillon,
Earl of Roscommon in the second edition and Thomas Sprat in the 1764 edition.
As in the case of Lowth’s other authors, none of them were alive any longer.
The addition of quotations from authors from
the past demonstrates that Lowth’s
selection criteria remained unchanged in later editions,
though he appears to have become more critical of Shakespeare's language in the
course of time.As Lowth continued to call for comments on the
grammar in the preface to later editions, it is not unlikely that further
additions were made as new editions and reprints came out.
References in Percy (1997) suggest that they did.
However, given the
substantial decrease between those added to the second edition (149) and those
of the 1764 edition (21), it seems unlikely that there would still be very many
of them. We welcome the extension of the present index with additional
quotations to later editions and reprints of the grammar on the basis of
systematic collation with the editions already analysed.
For the sake of easy reference, different
colouring has been used to refer to the different editions studied, i.e. green for the
second edition, and blue for the 1764 edition. Quotations lacking a source in
the text have been identified as much as possible with the help of Google. The classification of the
instances into “criticism”, “source”, “older use” and
“some of our best writers” is the same as that in Tieken-Boon
van Ostade (1997).
References
Alston, R.C. 1965.
A
Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year
1800.
Vol. 1. Leeds: Arnold and Son.
Alston, R.C.
(ed.). 1967. Facs. ed. of Robert Lowth, A short introduction to the English
Language (1762). Menston: The Scolar Press. EL 18.
Auer,
Anita and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (forthc.). “Robert
Lowth and the use of the inflectional subjunctive in eighteenth-century
English”.
ECCO:
Eighteenth-Century Collections
Online. Thomson Gale.
Johnson, Samuel. 1755. A
Dictionary of the English Language. Repr. in facs. 1968. Hildesheim: Georg
Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Preface to the
Dictionary.
Lowth, Robert. 1762. A short
introduction of the English language. London: A. Millar, R. and J. Dodsley.
1763. 2nd edition, London: A. Millar, R. and J. Dodsley. 1764. A new edition,
corrected. London: A. Millar, R. and J. Dodsley.
Navest, Karlijn (forthc.).
“The unidentified
hands: annotating Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar”.
Percy, Carol.
1997. “Paradigms lost: Bishop Lowth and the ‘poetic dialect’ in his English
Grammar”. Neophilologus 81. 129-144.
Reibel, David.
1995.
“Introduction”
to Robert Lowth, A short introduction to the English language.
vii-xxxvii. London: Routledge/Theommes Press.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid.
1997. “Lowth’s corpus of prescriptivism”. In: Terttu Nevalainen and Leena
Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.). To Explain the Present.
Helsinki: Société
Néophilologique.
451–463.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid.
2000. “Robert Dodsley and the genesis of Lowth’s Short introduction to
English Grammar”.
Historiographia Linguistica
27. 21–36.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade,
Ingrid. 2006.“The codifiers and the history of multiple negation in English”,
paper presented at the colloquium Perspectives on Prescriptivism, Ragusa
(Sicily), 20 – 22 April 2006.
Notes
[*] The
research for this paper was carried out as part of a research assistantship in
the Spring of 2004 at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Leiden. The joint
introduction was written in the context of the NWO sponsored research project
“The
Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English”.
[1] This figure is a correction to the
total number of quotations mentioned in Tieken-Boon van Ostade (1997:452), which
erroneously omitted a quotation from Shakespeare on page 57 of the grammar.
The Index
| Note: |
| *= criticism
|
| (s)= source
|
| (o)=older use
|
| b = “some of our best writers”
|
| Page numbers in italics refer to the main text, those in
ordinary font to the footnotes.
|
bAddison, Joseph (1672–1719) (22), (11),
(5): *38, *43, *52, *126
Guardian 9: *146; Gua. 98:
*26; Gua.
167: *166;
Spectator 57:
*99; Sp. 73: 162, 168 (“ibid.”), 169
(“ibid.”), 181;Sp. 81: *130; Sp.
122: *77; Sp.
124: 170; Sp. 135: 26–27 (s);Sp. 164: *87; Sp.
285: *132; Sp.
287: *156; Sp.
290: *116; Sp. 434:*87; Sp.
464: 114; Sp. 517: *48; Sp. 530:
*126; Sp. 535:*151; Sp. 549: *137
Travels: *130, *42
Preface
to his Travels: *130
Tatler
133: *145
Whig
Exam 1; *143
On
Medals: *19, *138
Hymn: *53
Freeholder
31: *65; Freeh. 38: *162; Freeh.
49: *147
Freeholder.
Contents of No 38: *129
Anon. (1):
Stat. 2 and 3 Ed. VI. ch. 21:
37 (o)
bAtterbury, Francis (1662–1732) (6), (6),
(1)
Sermons:
*19, *41 (2x), 53–54,
*63, *86, *105, *111,
*120, *124, *152, 155, *159
Bacon, Sir Francis (“Lord”) (1561–1626) (11), (1),
(1)
Essay
6:
*151; Essay 14: *147; Essay
20: *140; Essay
22: 134 (o); Essay 23: *151; Essay
25: 94 (o); Essay 29: 81 (o); Essay
34: *150; Essay 35: 94 (o); Essay 39:
*150, Essay 58:34–35 (o)Natural
History: *151
The
New Atlantis:
133
Bentley, Richard (1662–1742) (“Dr.”) (3), (1):
On Milton’s Paradise
Lost: 34 (s), 107–108 (s), 146 (s)
Sermons;
*82
Bible (Authorised
Version) (44), (25), (2):
Old
Testament (19),
(9):
|
Genesis: 142–143
|
|
Leviticus: 142, *132
|
|
2 Kings: 132–133,
*132
|
|
1 Samuel: 58
|
|
2 Samuel: *132
|
|
Ezra: *120
|
|
Job: 142
|
|
Psalms: *20, 75, 112,
132, 135–136, 143,
156
|
|
Proverbs: *159
|
|
Isaiah: 135,
*136
|
|
Jeremiah: *117, 112
|
|
Ezekiel: 132 (o)
|
|
Daniel: *18, 18
|
Apocrypha
(4),
(2):
|
Ecclesiasticus: *35, 132 (2x), *132, 113
|
|
1
Maccabees: *20
|
New
Testament
(25), (14), (2):
|
Matthew: 17, *75, 94 (o), *106 (2x), *117, *126,
*130, 141–142
|
|
Mark: 17, *41, *106 (2x),
*125
|
|
Luke: 18, *20 (o), *106 (2x), *110 (2x), 133,
*163
|
|
John: 17, *133, 134 (o), 142
|
|
Acts: *16, *41, *106
|
|
1 Corinthians: 142
(2)
|
|
2 Corinthians: 155–156 |
|
Philippians: *125–126
|
|
Philippians:
*132
|
|
1 Timothy:
138
(o) |
|
Titus: *126
|
|
Hebrews: 155 |
|
James: *163
|
|
Jude: *137
|
|
Revelation: *133 *164
|
Other religious quotations (5), (1):
Collect,
Whitsunday: 113; St John Baptist: *113
Liturgy: *26, *121, *122,
133
bBolingbroke, Henry St John (“Lord”) (1678–1751) (6):
Letters to Swift, Letter 46: *48–49; Letter 47: *49
Letters to Wyndham: *88, *129–130
A Dissertation upon Parties: *145
Patriot King: *88
Burnet, Thomas (1635?–1715) (2):
Theory
of the Earth: *78 (2x)
Chaucer, Geoffrey (ca. 1345–1400) (3), (1):
80 (o), 81 (o), 132 (o)
The Canterbury
Tales: 140 (o)
bClarendon, Edward Hyde, earl of (1609–1674) (17):
History:
*76, *97, *99, *123, *134, *149–150, *150, *151 (3x), *152
Continuation
of the History: *87, *88, *140, *140–141
Life:
*123, *125
Congreve, William (1670–1729) (1), (1),
(1):
Preface to Homer’s Hymn
to Venus: *117, *145
Old Bachelor: *165
Donne, John (1572–1631)
(1):
An Anatomy of the World:
*26
bDryden, John (1631–1700) (20), (7), (2):
21 (2x), *38, 39,
*43, *52, 105,
*120, *124, *149
Fables: *86, *97, *116, *120
Preface to
Fables: *166
Fables Dedication: *132
Prologue:
*112
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses: *116
Poems:*86, *97
On Oliver Cromwell: *87
Juvenal, Satires:*99, *118
Essay on Dramatic Poesy: *125, *129
Preface to
State of Innocence: *138
Preface to
Aureng-Zebe: *143
Cymon
and Iphig: *139
Alexander’s Feast; Or, The Power of Musique. An Ode in Honour of St.
Cecilia’s Day: 114
Dunelm, Simeon (1)
Apud X Scriptores: 145
bGay, John (1685–1732) (1)
Fables: *88
Harris, James (“Mr.”) (1709–1780) (2)
Hermes: 30 (s), 62 (s)
Hickes, George (1642–1715) (3)
Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium: 25 (s), 132 (o)
Grammatica Anglo-Saxonica: 69 (s)
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679) (2), (6)
History of Civil Wars: 75 (o), *145
Human Nature: *16, *166
Elements of Law: *18, 148 (o)
Life of Thucydides: *96
Leviathan, Conclusion: 147–148 (o)
Hooker, Richard (1554?–1600) (1), (4):
120, 37
(o)
Laws of Ecclestiastical Polity.
Book i: 29
B. V 2: 95–96 (o)
B. I. 4: 113
Johnson, Samuel (“Mr.”) (1709–1784) (2), (1):
43 (s), 147 (s)
Dictionary: 138
(s)
Locke, John (1632–1704) (2), (3):
*127, *140
Essay: *138–139
Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money
Wherein Mr. Lowndes’s Argument for it in his late Report concerning an
Amendment of Silver Coins are particularly Examined:
*124
Two Treatises of Government: *166
Mandeville, Sir John
(1): 145 (1)
Middleton, Conyers (1683–1750) (“Dr.”) (3): 75
Works: 75, *151–152
bMilton, John (1608–1674) (16/22), (14):
*52, 167 (2x)
Comus: 29, *86, *88
Paradise Lost: 29, *34, *37, 49
(2x), *75,*86 (2x), 96, 107(+ 6 references in note), *108, *119,
*131, 140,
146, *156, 160
Paradise Regained: *86 (2x)
Samson Agonistes: *86, *165
Il
Penseroso: *42
[Milton’s] Poems:
*76
Light:
49
Philips, John (1676–1709) (2):
Cyder:
*15, *131
bPope, Alexander (1688–1744) (18), (8),
(1): 16, *52, *52,
*121, 168
Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot:
*137, *17
Essay on Criticism: *87, *79
Essay on Man:
150 (2x), *106
Epitaph: *49
Note on the Iliad:
*126
Translation Homer’s Iliad:
*128
Translation Homer’s Odyssey:
*26, *91
Letter to Steele: 153
Letters to Swift, Letter 56: *49; Letter 80: *152–153
Messiah: *87
Moral Epistles: *119
Dissertation prefixed to the Odyssey:
*104
Postscriptum to the Odyssey:
*97
Preface to the Poems:
127
Universal
Prayer:
*136
Works: *123
bPrior, Matthew (1664–1721) (14), (1):
*33, *34,
*52, *87 (2x), *97, *106,
*117, *119, *121, *143, *145, *146
Alma:
*88
Solomon:
*88
Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552?–1618) (2), (1):
75 (o), *91, 96 (o)
Roscommon, Earl of (Wentworth Dillon) (1633–1685)
(1):
An
Essay on Translated Verse: *82
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of
(“Lord”) (1671–1713) (2), (2):
Letter to Lord Molesworth: *91, *96
Miscel.: 131 (o)
An
Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour:
*96
Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) (6), (38):
120
King John: 20
King
Richard III:
20,
*141
Hamlet: 49,
54–55 (o), 57,
114,
*136
Othello:
49, 57,
114
Coriolanus: 17
Henry
IV, part 1: *33, *102
Henry
IV, part 2: 20
Henry
VI, part 1: *43
Henry VI, part
2: *35
Henry
VIII: *32, *104
The
Tempest: *41
Julius
Caesar:
62, *103, 114, *118
Henry
V:
72 (o), *74, *140
Antony
and Cleopatra:
72
(o)
Cymbeline:
*76
As
You Like It:
*91, *140 (2x)
Measure
for Measure:
*92, *129
Timon:
*116
Much
Ado About Nothing:
*119, 126 (2x) (o), 139
The
Merchant of Venice:
*104
Twelfth
Night:
*104
Macbeth:
*130
Romeo
and Juliet:
*157
Sherlock, Thomas (“Bishop”) (1678–1761) (3):
29–30, 57
Disc.: *120
Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–1586) (1), (3):
38 (o), 120, *124,
138
(o)
Spenser, Edmund (1552?–1599) (1): 111
Sprat, Thomas (1635–1713)
(1)
Sermons: *133
[Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729] (1): Spectator 32: *99
Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745) (39), (4),
(6): *116, *82
Battle of the Books: *88, *121, *125–126
The
Conduct of the Allies:
*123, *141, *145 *150 (2x)
Contests
and Dissentions:
*63, *129 (3x)
Examiner
21: *133;
Ex. 23: *130; Ex. 24: *152
(2x)
Four
last years of the Queen:
*151
Gulliver’s
Travels:
*123–124, *124 (2x), *137
A
Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English
Tongue:
*119, *129 (2x)
Letter
to Pope: *144
Letter
to Stella: *145
Mechanical
operation of the spirit: *124
A Tale of a
Tub: *88 (3x), *99, *120–121, *125–126, *131 (2x),
*140–141,
*143, *152
Preface
to A Tale of A Tub: *104, *111, *120–121
Preface
to Temple’s Memoirs: *130
The Drapier’s Letters: *166
To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems:
*54
The Public Spirit of the Whigs:
*133
On Cutting down the Old Thorn at Market Hill:
*146
An Elegy on the supposed Death of Partridge, the Almanack-Maker:
*89
Temple, Sir William (1628–1699) (1): *150
Tillotson, John (1630–1694) (“Archbishop”) (12), (1)
Sermon
18: *135; Serm. 22: *109; Serm. 27: *63, *97; Serm.
35: *153; Serm. 42: *139–140; Serm.
49: *104; Serm. 52: *63, *108, *126; Serm.
54: *109
Preface
to Sermon 49: *126–127, *138
Waller, Edmund
(1606–1687) (1): *52
Ward, John (1679–1758) (1):
Four Essays on the English Language: 83 (s)
Wilkins, John (1614–1672) (1):
An Essay towards a Real Character: 59–62 (s)
|