chondria, mob for mobile, poz for positive, and rep for reputation. Incog for incognito and plenipo for plenipotentiary he expected to see still further docked into inc and plen. Swift was of opinion that the abundance of monosyllables is the disgrace of our language. Accordingly it might be supposed that he would look with favor upon the polysyllables which, according to his account, the war then going on—that of the Spanish Succession—was bringing into the tongue. But no one who has once taken the language under his care can ever again be really happy. That way misery lies. To these long words Swift exhibited the same hostile front which he did to the short ones. Among them he specifically mentioned speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communications, circumvallations, battalions. These, he thought, would never be able to live many more campaigns; though even in the special sense of them which he had in mind most of them had been in existence before he was born.
Swift's third class embraced a number of words "invented," he said, "by certain pretty fellows, such as banter, bamboozle, country put, and kidney." Some of these were struggling for the vogue; others were now in possession of it. "I have done my utmost," he added, "for some years past to stop the progress of mobb and banter, but have been plainly borne down by numbers and betrayed by those who promised to assist me." It is somewhat surprising to find kidney included in this list. In the sense of it objected to—that of "constitution," "class"—it had then been employed for about two hundred years. Falstaff's use of it had further established its title to everlasting remembrance. Sham, bully, shuffling, and palming are also other terms of modern art, to use Swift's phrase, which fell under his condemnation.
Swift followed up this attack in 1712 by a public Letter addressed to the Earl of Oxford, the Lord High Treasurer. In it was embodied a proposition for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue. It is a treatise which ought to be read by the whole generation of those of our time who spend anxious days and sit up nights in order to preserve the purity of the speech. Nowhere can a greater discrepancy be found between predictions of what is going to take place and what has actually taken place. In this Letter we are told that the English language is extremely imperfect. The improvements made in it are by no means in proportion to its daily corruptions. The period which Swift selected as the one in which English received most refinement was that dating from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and ending with the breaking out of the civil war in 1642. With that year began degeneracy. Corruption came in from the fanatics of the commonwealth, and this had been succeeded by corruption from the fine gentlemen of the court. From both quarters it had made its way into the writings of the best authors. Affected phrases, new conceited terms, had been transferred from the language of high life into the language of plays, and from them had been taken up by men of wit and learning. The poets also had introduced the barbarous custom of abbreviating words, thereby forming harsh, inharmonious sounds that nothing but a Northern ear could endure. These had passed from verse into prose. "What does your Lordship think," Swift asked with pain, "of the words drudg'd, disturb'd, rebuk't, fledg'd, and a thousand others everywhere to be met? . . . Where by leaving out a vowel to save a syllable, we form so jarring a sound and so difficult to utter that I have often wondered how it could ever obtain."
Like other men before and since, Swift had his method of dealing with the evils he had discovered. This was essentially the project of an academy, though in his Letter he did not put it forth under that name. His idea was that a choice should be made of the persons best qualified to deal with the language. These should meet together and proceed to make such alterations in the speech as they thought requisite. They should then devise a method of ascertaining and fixing it forever. If this were not done, if things went on at the rate they had been going, nobody would be read with pleasure much longer than a few years, and in course of time could hardly be understood without an interpreter. He could
