One might think that English grammar, even more than its lexicon, would be something that would have long been intrinsically understood, and little in need of explication or improvement. And yet, the services of a dictionary having proven valuable, that of a printed grammar seemed a logical step -- after all, Latin Grammars were vital school textbooks, and the idea that English should be more like Latin, or at least described in Latin terms, caught on widely. We owe most of our grammatical terminology -- adjective (from adiectus, "to annex a territory"), to preposition (from præ-positiones, to place before), to conjunction (con iunctivo, to link together) -- to this idea.
Many different authors, mostly schoolmasters writing books for their own students's use, tried their hand at it, but two in particular proved to have long-lasting influence. Robert Lowth, who enjoyed a sinecure as Bishop of Oxford, was perhaps the most notable. Among his many contributions was the notion -- by false analogy -- that a "double negative" was an error because, in mathematics, two negatives equalled a positive. Math, alas, is not grammar, but the idea stuck and double negation is almost universally regarded as an error, never mind its long history (Chaucer, among others, even enjoyed double triple negation wihout any doubt as to its import). He also originated the idea that a sentence should not end with a preposition (since its name indicates that it must "come before" something else) -- which, although a reasonable guideline for written texts, is common and perfectly sensible in everyday speech.
Lowth is also often blamed (though in fact it came much later) for the "rule" that to place an adverb between "to" and the main verb (as in "to boldly go") was to "split the infinitive" -- again, on the mistaken analogy with Latin. Latin, like most ancient languages, has an infinitive (or non-finite) form that is actually a distinct one for every verb -- e.g. amare, "to love" -- so it would never be "split"; although Engish uses the preposition "to" to indicate a non-finite verb, the "to" is not actually part of the verb. In the example above, the non-finite form of the verb is in fact just "go" (which in English, confusingly, is identical to the first and second person present indicative form). George Bernard Shaw, among others, has minced few words in decrying this foolish supposed "rule."
Lowth's successor, Lindley Murray, was actually an American ex-pat, born in the woods of Pennsylvania, who moved to York at the age of 39 and spent the rest of his life in England. He kept most of Lowth's prescriptive rules, though his method of instruction was somewhat gentler, and adapted -- as the title-page puts it -- "for the different classes of readers." Among his innovations was a rule that one could not apply "more" to an adjective already in the superlative form (e.g. "more worst") -- and yet he extended this to adjectives which he regarded as "innately superlative" (chief, unique, extreme, etc.), so the would be no "more perfect union" for him!
Like dictionary-writers, grammarians saw themselves as arbiters, refiners, and polishers of the language -- the more so since, as their books were used for actual instruction on a daily basis -- and in that they surely succeeded. And yet, at the same time, they have given all of us a vague sene of guilt about the possible errors of our usage, and the sense -- entirely unjustified! -- that "bad grammar" is almost a sort of sin.
In one particularly memorable episode of Blackadder," Ink and Incapability," when the Prince Regent (played by Hugh Laurie) asks Dr. Johnson (played by Robbie Coltrane) what his new Dictionary is good for, the learned Doctor declares that "It is a book that tells you what English words mean." "I know what English words mean," replies the prince, "I speak English! You must be a bit of a thicko!"
And indeed, one may well ask, why do we need a Dictionary of our own language? After all, numerous English writers, from Chaucer to Spencer to Shakespeare, got along quite well without one, as did their readers -- not to mention the great throng of ordinary speakers of English, whose talk continued unabated, with no need for works of reference to understand it, for centuries. And yet English, by the eighteenth century now well-established in print and manuscript, was rapidly expanding its vocabulary, variety of styles, and usage -- becoming in a sense as much as textual presence as a spoken one. Furthermore, since it had acquired so many words from other classical and modern languages, the search for the right word -- le mot juste, as the French say -- might well involve choosing between several near-synonyms with slightly varied shades of meaning. Finally, since English had been around for a while, there were now a fair number of uncommon or archaic words with which not every reader would necessarily be familiar.
And yet, as the television skit suggests, the idea of an English dictionary took some getting used to; not everyone was sure that the enterprise was worthwhile, or even possible. It would take a man of prodigious talents, hard-working, stubborn, and bottomlessly erudite, to manage such a thing -- and Samuel Johnson was the man to do it. He was widely regarded as one of the most intelligent men of his era -- and he was also brusque, opinionated, and so rude on occasion that some latter-day diagnosticians believe he suffered from Tourette's Syndrome. He did not so much speak as blurt, and many of his exclamations have joined the list of immortal quotes: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a Scoundrel," "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," and "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life," to name but a few.
The learned Doctor is portrayed by Robbie Coltrane, with every bit of bluster the role demands. Dr. Johnson's rising irritation as Blackadder peppers him with a plethora of portmanteau words -- "interphrastrically," "pericombobulations," and "extramuralisation" -- is priceless. And yet it may surprise many to learn that Johnson's own accent was anything but the posh pretentiousness of Coltrane's memorable performance; he had, in fact, a very thick and distinctive Staffordshire accent; according to Jeffrey Meyers' Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, he said "shuperior" for superior, "woonse" for once, and "poonsh" for "punch."
I hadn't realized this myself, until on listening to the audiobook version of my novel PYG -- in which the learned Doctor meets the Learned Pig (this is based on contemporary accounts) -- that I heard Simon Callow's marvellous personation of Johnson's voice, which perfectly and richly evokes both the accent and the man.
So have a browse at his Dictionary, and some of his remarks on men and letters as transcribed by his longtime sidekick and eventual biographer, James Boswell, and (if you wish), leave a few words of your own here in comment or reply.
From a linguistic standpoint, it was a dramatic reversal: having banned any translation of the Bible for nearly 140 years, the Church in England -- soon to be the Church of England -- in 1539 approved an English Bible, which Henry VIII ordered placed in every pulpit in the nation. To add irony, this translation -- though credited to Miles Coverdale -- was, in large part, identical to that made by William Tyndale a decade before. Tyndale was not on hand to celebrate this achievement, however, as he had been burned at the stake for heresy three years previous. He lives on, though as most of the Authorized version of 1611 preserved his language; it has been rightly observed that, with the possible exception of Shakespeare, Tyndale has had the greatest influence on the development of the English language of any one person.
The change did not come easily, nor did it prevail completely, at least until the reign of Elizabeth I. Throughout the 1520's and 30's, a relentless campaign against those in England who, following the example of Martin Luther, clamored for the scriptures in their own language, along with other tracts favorable to their cause (Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man among them). Thomas More, Henry VIII's most influential chancellor and a champion of Renaissance humanism, was charged with maintaining a list of banned books, and doing everything he could to prevent their spread. Unfortunately for his task, the invention of the printing press enabled books to be printed faster than they could be burned -- and unfortunately for him, his involvement in the party of Anne Boleyn led to his own execution in the Tower of London in 1535. Via this link, you can see the license More had to possess heretical books, as well as the text of the Statutes of the Realm that attempted -- vainly -- to limit the reading and interpretation of the new English Bible.
Its immediate legacy was for a time dimmed; on the death of Henry VIII's son Edward, Mary rose to the throne, and plunged England back into Catholicism. For this reason, the compendious Book of Martyrs prepared by John Foxe does not end with Tyndale, but carries on for an additional five volumes, volumes that catalog those put to death under Mary's rule. Eventually, under Elizabeth I, the Church of England and its reforms were solidly and permanently put in place, and indeed remain to this day; though attendance has dropped off steadily at COE churches in England, the worldwide Anglican Communion has held fast. Anyone curious to see a traditional Anglican "high church" mass -- which still uses the exact language of Queen Elizabeth's Book of Common Prayer -- can visit the Sunday services at St. Stephen's here in Providence (they also use plainchant, which is something to hear!).
The traditional tale of the ascendance of English into all its national glory in the wake of Chaucer's great work is -- alas -- far from the whole story. Not only did the substance and structure of English change after his death, but the language itself came under attack from the authorities of both Church and State. With the 1401 act De Hæretico Comburendo ("on the burning of Heretics"), the new King Henry IV, who had grown up hearing Chaucer himself declaim his verse, and whose personal copy of Troylus and Criseyde survives to this day, signed a bill which made the possession of heretical books -- and, by implication, any and all books written in English -- a crime punishable by burning at the stake, a practice heitherto unknown in England. Indeed, the reach of this new law was so broad that the eminent theologian John Wycliffe, whose advocacy of an English version of the Bible gave his name to its earliest translations, was himself burned at the stake -- even though he had, by that time, been dead for many years; the authorities simply had him exhumed and burned his bones, tossing the ashes in the river Swift (see illustration above).
That Chaucer's own books could be, by this statute, made suspect, is confirmed by the arrest of one John Baron of Agmondesham for the possession of English texts, including a "boke of the Tales of Caunterburie," in 1464. But it was not only him; in the early years of the fifteenth century, nearly a hundred people across Britain were burned at the stake as "relapsed" heretics (it was a two-strikes-you're-out system). Many were women who had taken up the cause of the English scriptures, only to be arrested and forced to confess, among them Hawisia Moone and John Baron. The Lollards believed that women, too, could be preachers of the Gospel, another strike against them in the eyes of the Church. But there were also men of strong views, including a Buckimghamshire blacksmith who swore he could "make as good a sacrament with my tongs upon my anvil as any priest upon his altar." The blacksmith was among those executed.
The ban on any translation of the Bible into English was extended by the Constitutions of Archbishop Arundel, and lasted until Henry VIII finally permitted -- indeed commanded -- the use of the English Bible in 1539. Ironically, much of the New Testament in this volume was based on the translation of William Tyndale -- a man burnt at the stake on orders from Henry himself. And despite the hope that the availability of Scripture would ease the tensions of the theological debate, they continued unabated; in 1542 Parliament passed a statute attempting to restrict who could read, and who could interpret, the English Bible -- and women (except noblewomen) were specifically excluded.
