Note 129 — No. 234. [Steele. From Thursday, Oct. 5, to Saturday, Oct. 7, 1710.

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.

In Nos. 254 and 255 of the Tatler there was advertised, as shortly to be published, "An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, by James Greenwood.... Particular care has been taken to render this book useful and agreeable to the Fair Sex." This book is dated 1711, and is noticed in the Works of the Learned for July. The Preface gives "part of a letter which I wrote about a twelvemonth ago to the ingenious author of the Tatler upon this head" (i.e. knowledge of grammar among the fair sex). Greenwood's remarks on female education were not printed in the Tatler; but they may have formed part of the letter in this number (234), if this letter is by Greenwood. The third edition, enlarged, of Greenwood's "Essay" appeared on May 24, 1729. Greenwood was sub-master at St. Paul's School, and afterwards kept a boarding-school at Woodford, in Essex. He published "The London Vocabulary, English and Latin," of which there was a third edition in 1713, with curious illustrations. By 1817 this book had passed through twenty six-editions in England, besides several in America. Greenwood also published in 1713 "The Virgin Muse," a collection of poetry for "young gentlemen and ladies at school." Second and third editions appeared in 1722 and 1731.

Michael Maittaire also issued, in 1712, "An English Grammar; or, an Essay on the Art of Grammar, applied to and exemplified in the English Tongue." In the same year a pamphlet appeared with the title, "Bellum Grammatical, or the Grammatical Battle-Royal. In Reflections on the three English Grammars published in about a year last past." It consists chiefly of an attack on Greenwood's "Essay," and praise of Brightland's "Grammar," which "merits what the Censor said of it." In a postscript Maittaire's "Grammar" is described as the worst of all. Brightland and Greenwood deserve to be remembered for their efforts to spread abroad a knowledge of "the genius and nature of the English tongue." (The facts in this note are taken from a paper by the present writer in Watford's Antiquarian for October 1885.)