WE have in England fewer of these than in any part of the world, at least
where learning is in so much esteem. But to make amends, the two great
seminaries we have are, without comparison, the greatest, I won’t say the
best, in the world; and though much might be said here concerning
universities in general, and foreign academies in particular, I content
myself with noting that part in which we seem defective. The French, who
justly value themselves upon erecting the most celebrated academy of
Europe, owe the lustre of it very much to the great encouragement the
kings of France have given to it. And one of the members making a speech
at his entrance tells you that it is not the least of the glories of
their invincible monarch to have engrossed all the learning of the world
in that sublime body.
The peculiar study of the academy of Paris has been to refine and correct
their own language, which they have done to that happy degree that we see
it now spoken in all the courts of Christendom, as the language allowed
to be most universal.
I had the honour once to be a member of a small society, who seemed to
offer at this noble design in England. But the greatness of the work,
and the modesty of the gentlemen concerned, prevailed with them to desist
an enterprise which appeared too great for private hands to undertake.
We want, indeed, a Richelieu to commence such a work. For I am persuaded
were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there would not
want capacities who could carry on the work to a glory equal to all that
has gone before them. The English tongue is a subject not at all less
worthy the labour of such a society than the French, and capable of a
much greater perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English tongue
not only equals but excels its neighbours; Rapin, St. Evremont, and the
most eminent French authors have acknowledged it. And my lord Roscommon,
who is allowed to be a good judge of English, because he wrote it as
exactly as any ever did, expresses what I mean in these lines:—
“For who did ever in French authors see
The comprehensive English energy?
The weighty bullion of one sterling line,
Drawn to French wire would through whole pages shine.”
“And if our neighbours will yield us, as their greatest critic has done,
the preference for sublimity and nobleness of style, we will willingly
quit all pretensions to their insignificant gaiety.”
It is great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble to
attempt it. And for a method, what greater can be set before us than the
academy of Paris? Which, to give the French their due, stands foremost
among all the great attempts in the learned part of the world.
The present King of England, of whom we have seen the whole world writing
panegyrics and encomiums, and whom his enemies, when their interest does
not silence them, are apt to say more of than ourselves; as in the war he
has given surprising instances of a greatness of spirit more than common:
so in peace, I daresay, with submission, he shall never have an
opportunity to illustrate his memory more than by such a foundation. By
which he shall have opportunity to darken the glory of the French king in
peace, as he has by his daring attempts in the war.
Nothing but pride loves to be flattered, and that only as it is a vice
which blinds us to our own imperfections. I think princes as
particularly unhappy in having their good actions magnified as their evil
actions covered. But King William, who has already won praise by the
steps of dangerous virtue, seems reserved for some actions which are
above the touch of flattery, whose praise is in themselves.
And such would this be. And because I am speaking of a work which seems
to be proper only for the hand of the king himself, I shall not presume
to carry on this chapter to the model, as I have done in other subjects.
Only thus far:
That a society be erected by the king himself, if his Majesty thought
fit, and composed of none but persons of the first figure in learning;
and it were to be wished our gentry were so much lovers of learning that
birth might always be joined with capacity.
The work of this society should be to encourage polite learning, to
polish and refine the English tongue, and advance the so much neglected
faculty of correct language, to establish purity and propriety of style,
and to purge it from all the irregular additions that ignorance and
affectation have introduced; and all those innovations in speech, if I
may call them such, which some dogmatic writers have the confidence to
foster upon their native language, as if their authority were sufficient
to make their own fancy legitimate.
By such a society I daresay the true glory of our English style would
appear; and among all the learned part of the world be esteemed, as it
really is, the noblest and most comprehensive of all the vulgar languages
in the world.
Into this society should be admitted none but persons eminent for
learning, and yet none, or but very few, whose business or trade was
learning. For I may be allowed, I suppose, to say we have seen many
great scholars mere learned men, and graduates in the last degree of
study, whose English has been far from polite, full of stiffness and
affectation, hard words, and long unusual coupling of syllables and
sentences, which sound harsh and untuneable to the ear, and shock the
reader both in expression and understanding.
In short, there should be room in this society for neither clergyman,
physician, nor lawyer. Not that I would put an affront upon the learning
of any of those honourable employments, much less upon their persons.
But if I do think that their several professions do naturally and
severally prescribe habits of speech to them peculiar to their practice,
and prejudicial to the study I speak of, I believe I do them no wrong.
Nor do I deny but there may be, and now are, among some of all those
professions men of style and language, great masters of English, whom few
men will undertake to correct; and where such do at any time appear,
their extraordinary merit should find them a place in this society; but
it should be rare, and upon very extraordinary occasions that such be
admitted.
I would therefore have this society wholly composed of gentlemen; whereof
twelve to be of the nobility, if possible, and twelve private gentlemen,
and a class of twelve to be left open for mere merit, let it be found in
who or what sort it would, which should lie as the crown of their study,
who have done something eminent to deserve it. The voice of this society
should be sufficient authority for the usage of words, and sufficient
also to expose the innovations of other men’s fancies; they should
preside with a sort of judicature over the learning of the age, and have
liberty to correct and censure the exorbitance of writers, especially of
translators. The reputation of this society would be enough to make them
the allowed judges of style and language, and no author would have the
impudence to coin without their authority. Custom, which is now our best
authority for words, would always have its original here, and not be
allowed without it. There should be no more occasion to search for
derivations and constructions, and ’twould be as criminal then to coin
words as money.
The exercises of this society would be lectures on the English tongue,
essays on the nature, original, usage, authorities, and differences of
words, or the propriety, parity, and cadence of style, and of the
politeness and manner in writing; reflections upon irregular usages, and
corrections of erroneous customs in words; and, in short, everything that
would appear necessary to the bringing our English tongue to a due
perfection, and our gentlemen to a capacity of writing like themselves;
to banish pride and pedantry, and silence the impudence and impertinence
of young authors, whose ambition is to be known, though it be by their
folly.
I ask leave here for a thought or two about that inundation custom has
made upon our language and discourse by familiar swearing; and I place it
here, because custom has so far prevailed in this foolish vice that a
man’s discourse is hardly agreeable without it; and some have taken upon
them to say it is pity it should not be lawful, it is such a grace in a
man’s speech, and adds so much vigour to his language.
I desire to be understood right, and that by swearing I mean all those
cursory oaths, curses, execrations, imprecations, asseverations, and by
whatsoever other names they are distinguished, which are used in
vehemence of discourse, in the mouths almost of all men more or less, of
what sort soever.
I am not about to argue anything of their being sinful and unlawful, as
forbid by divine rules; let the parson alone to tell you that, who has,
no question, said as much to as little purpose in this case as in any
other. But I am of the opinion that there is nothing so impertinent, so
insignificant, so senseless, and foolish as our vulgar way of discourse
when mixed with oaths and curses, and I would only recommend a little
consideration to our gentlemen, who have sense and wit enough, and would
be ashamed to speak nonsense in other things, but value themselves upon
their parts, I would but ask them to put into writing the commonplaces of
their discourse, and read them over again, and examine the English, the
cadence, the grammar of them; then let then turn them into Latin, or
translate them into any other language, and but see what a jargon and
confusion of speech they make together.
Swearing, that lewdness of the tongue, that scum and excrement of the
mouth, is of all vices the most foolish and senseless. It makes a man’s
conversation unpleasant, his discourse fruitless, and his language
nonsense.
It makes conversation unpleasant, at least to those who do not use the
same foolish way of discourse, and, indeed, is an affront to all the
company who swear not as he does; for if I swear and curse in company I
either presume all the company likes it or affront them who do not.
Then it is fruitless; for no man is believed a jot the more for all the
asseverations, damnings, and swearings he makes. Those who are used to
it themselves do not believe a man the more because they know they are so
customary that they signify little to bind a man’s intention, and they
who practise them not have so mean an opinion of those that do as makes
them think they deserve no belief.
Then, they are the spoilers and destroyers of a man’s discourse, and turn
it into perfect nonsense; and to make it out I must descend a little to
particulars, and desire the reader a little to foul his mouth with the
brutish, sordid, senseless expressions which some gentlemen call polite
English, and speaking with a grace.
Some part of them indeed, though they are foolish enough, as effects of a
mad, inconsiderate rage, are yet English; as when a man swears he will do
this or, that, and it may be adds, “God damn him he will;” that is, “God
damn him if he don’t.” This, though it be horrid in another sense, yet
may be read in writing, and is English: but what language is this?
“Jack, God damn me, Jack, how dost do? How hast thou done this long
time, by God?” And then they kiss; and the other, as lewd as himself,
goes on:—
“Dear Tom, I am glad to see thee with all my heart, let me die. Come,
let us go take a bottle, we must not part so; pr’ythee let’s go and be
drunk by God.”
This is some of our new florid language, and the graces and delicacies of
style, which if it were put into Latin, I would fain know which is the
principal verb.
But for a little further remembrance of this impertinence, go among the
gamesters, and there nothing is more frequent than, “God damn the dice,”
or “God damn the bowls.”
Among the sportsmen it is, “God damn the hounds,” when they are at a
fault; or, “God damn the horse,” if he baulks a leap. They call men
“sons of —,” and “dogs,” and innumerable instances may be given of the
like gallantry of language, grown now so much a custom.
It is true, custom is allowed to be our best authority for words, and it
is fit it should be so; but reason must be the judge of sense in
language, and custom can never prevail over it. Words, indeed, like
ceremonies in religion, may be submitted to the magistrate; but sense,
like the essentials, is positive, unalterable, and cannot be submitted to
any jurisdiction; it is a law to itself; it is ever the same; even an Act
of Parliament cannot alter it.
Words, and even usages in style, may be altered by custom, and
proprieties in speech differ according to the several dialects of the
country, and according to the different manner in which several languages
do severally express themselves.
But there is a direct signification of words, or a cadence in expression,
which we call speaking sense; this, like truth, is sullen and the same,
ever was and will be so, in what manner, and in what language soever it
is expressed. Words without it are only noise, which any brute can make
as well as we, and birds much better; for words without sense make but
dull music. Thus a man may speak in words, but perfectly unintelligible
as to meaning; he may talk a great deal, but say nothing. But it is the
proper position of words, adapted to their significations, which makes
them intelligible, and conveys the meaning of the speaker to the
understanding of the hearer; the contrary to which we call nonsense; and
there is a superfluous crowding in of insignificant words, more than are
needful to express the thing intended, and this is impertinence; and that
again, carried to an extreme, is ridiculous.
Thus when our discourse is interlined with needless oaths, curses, and
long parentheses of imprecations, and with some of very indirect
signification, they become very impertinent; and these being run to the
extravagant degree instanced in before, become perfectly ridiculous and
nonsense, and without forming it into an argument, it appears to be
nonsense by the contradictoriness; and it appears impertinent by the
insignificancy of the expression.
After all, how little it becomes a gentleman to debauch his mouth with
foul language, I refer to themselves in a few particulars.
This vicious custom has prevailed upon good manners too far; but yet
there are some degrees to which it has not yet arrived.
As, first, the worst slaves to this folly will neither teach it to nor
approve of it in their children. Some of the most careless will indeed
negatively teach it by not reproving them for it; but sure no man ever
ordered his children to be taught to curse or swear.
2. The grace of swearing has not obtained to be a mode yet among the
women: “God damn ye” does not fit well upon a female tongue; it seems to
be a masculine vice, which the women are not arrived to yet; and I would
only desire those gentlemen who practice it themselves to hear a woman
swear: it has no music at all there, I am sure; and just as little does
it become any gentleman, if he would suffer himself to be judged by all
the laws of sense or good manners in the world.
It is a senseless, foolish, ridiculous practice; it is a mean to no
manner of end; it is words spoken which signify nothing; it is folly
acted for the sake of folly, which is a thing even the devil himself
don’t practice. The devil does evil, we say, but it is for some design,
either to seduce others, or, as some divines say, from a principle of
enmity to his Maker. Men steal for gain, and murder to gratify their
avarice or revenge; whoredoms and ravishments, adulteries and sodomy, are
committed to please a vicious appetite, and have always alluring objects;
and generally all vices have some previous cause, and some visible
tendency. But this, of all vicious practices, seems the most nonsensical
and ridiculous; there is neither pleasure nor profit, no design pursued,
no lust gratified, but is a mere frenzy of the tongue, a vomit of the
brain, which works by putting a contrary upon the course of nature.
Again, other vices men find some reason or other to give for, or excuses
to palliate. Men plead want to extenuate theft, and strong provocations
to excuse murders, and many a lame excuse they will bring for whoring;
but this sordid habit even those that practise it will own to be a crime,
and make no excuse for it; and the most I could ever hear a man say for
it was that he could not help it.
Besides, as it is an inexcusable impertinence, so it is a breach upon
good manners and conversation, for a man to impose the clamour of his
oaths upon the company he converses with; if there be any one person in
the company that does not approve the way, it is an imposing upon him
with a freedom beyond civility.
To suppress this, laws, Acts of Parliament, and proclamations are baubles
and banters, the laughter of the lewd party, and never had, as I could
perceive, any influence upon the practice; nor are any of our magistrates
fond or forward of putting them in execution.
It must be example, not penalties, must sink this crime; and if the
gentlemen of England would once drop it as a mode, the vice is so foolish
and ridiculous in itself, it would soon grow odious and out of fashion.
This work such an academy might begin, and I believe nothing would so
soon explode the practice as the public discouragement of it by such a
society; where all our customs and habits, both in speech and behaviour,
should receive an authority. All the disputes about precedency of wit,
with the manners, customs, and usages of the theatre, would be decided
here; plays should pass here before they were acted, and the critics
might give their censures and damn at their pleasure; nothing would ever
die which once received life at this original. The two theatres might
end their jangle, and dispute for priority no more; wit and real worth
should decide the controversy, and here should be the infallible judge.
The strife would then be only to do well,
And he alone be crowned who did excel.
Ye call them Whigs, who from the church withdrew,
But now we have our stage dissenters too,
Who scruple ceremonies of pit and box,
And very few are sound and orthodox,
But love disorder so, and are so nice,
They hate conformity, though ’tis in vice.
Some are for patent hierarchy; and some,
Like the old Gauls, seek out for elbow room;
Their arbitrary governors disown,
And build a conventicle stage of their own.
Fanatic beaux make up the gaudy show,
And wit alone appears incognito.
Wit and religion suffer equal fate;
Neglect of both attends the warm debate.
For while the parties strive and countermine,
Wit will as well as piety decline.
Next to this, which I esteem as the most noble and most useful proposal
in this book, I proceed to academies for military studies, and because I
design rather to express my meaning than make a large book, I bring them
all into one chapter.
I allow the war is the best academy in the world, where men study by
necessity and practice by force, and both to some purpose, with duty in
the action, and a reward in the end; and it is evident to any man who
knows the world, or has made any observations on things, what an
improvement the English nation has made during this seven years’ war.
But should you ask how clear it first cost, and what a condition England
was in for a war at first on this account—how almost all our engineers
and great officers were foreigners, it may put us in mind how necessary
it is to have our people so practised in the arts of war that they may
not be novices when they come to the experiment.
I have heard some who were no great friends to the Government take
advantage to reflect upon the king, in the beginning of his wars in
Ireland, that he did not care to trust the English, but all his great
officers, his generals, and engineers were foreigners. And though the
case was so plain as to need no answer, and the persons such as deserved
none, yet this must be observed, though it was very strange: that when
the present king took possession of this kingdom, and, seeing himself
entering upon the bloodiest war this age has known, began to regulate his
army, he found but very few among the whole martial part of the nation
fit to make use of for general officers, and was forced to employ
strangers, and make them Englishmen (as the Counts Schomberg, Ginkel,
Solms, Ruvigny, and others); and yet it is to be observed also that all
the encouragement imaginable was given to the English gentlemen to
qualify themselves, by giving no less than sixteen regiments to gentlemen
of good families who had never been in any service and knew but very
little how to command them. Of these, several are now in the army, and
have the rewards suitable to their merit, being major-generals,
brigadiers, and the like.
If, then, a long peace had so reduced us to a degree of ignorance that
might have been dangerous to us, had we not a king who is always followed
by the greatest masters in the world, who knows what peace and different
governors may bring us to again?
The manner of making war differs perhaps as much as anything in the
world; and if we look no further back than our civil wars, it is plain a
general then would hardly be fit to be a colonel now, saving his capacity
of improvement. The defensive art always follows the offensive; and
though the latter has extremely got the start of the former in this age,
yet the other is mightily improving also.
We saw in England a bloody civil war, where, according to the old temper
of the English, fighting was the business. To have an army lying in such
a post as not to be able to come at them was a thing never heard of in
that war; even the weakest party would always come out and fight (Dunbar
fight, for instance); and they that were beaten to-day would fight again
to-morrow, and seek one another out with such eagerness, as if they had
been in haste to have their brains knocked out. Encampments,
intrenchments, batteries, counter-marchings, fortifying of camps, and
cannonadings were strange and almost unknown things; and whole campaigns
were passed over, and hardly any tents made use of. Battles, surprises,
storming of towns, skirmishes, sieges, ambuscades, and beating up
quarters was the news of every day. Now it is frequent to have armies of
fifty thousand men of a side stand at bay within view of one another, and
spend a whole campaign in dodging (or, as it is genteelly called,
observing) one another, and then march off into winter quarters. The
difference is in the maxims of war, which now differ as much from what
they were formerly as long perukes do from piqued beards, or as the
habits of the people do now from what they then were. The present maxims
of the war are:
“Never fight without a manifest advantage.”
“And always encamp so as not to be forced to it.”
And if two opposite generals nicely observe both these rules, it is
impossible they should ever come to fight.
I grant that this way of making war spends generally more money and less
blood than former wars did; but then it spins wars out to a greater
length; and I almost question whether, if this had been the way of
fighting of old, our civil war had not lasted till this day. Their maxim
was:
“Wherever you meet your enemy, fight him.”
But the case is quite different now; and I think it is plain in the
present war that it is not he who has the longest sword, so much as he
who has the longest purse, will hold the war out best. Europe is all
engaged in the war, and the men will never be exhausted while either
party can find money; but he who finds himself poorest must give out
first; and this is evident in the French king, who now inclines to peace,
and owns it, while at the same time his armies are numerous and whole.
But the sinews fail; he finds his exchequer fail, his kingdom drained,
and money hard to come at: not that I believe half the reports we have
had of the misery and poverty of the French are true; but it is manifest
the King of France finds, whatever his armies may do, his money won’t
hold out so long as the Confederates, and therefore he uses all the means
possible to procure a peace, while he may do it with the most advantage.
There is no question but the French may hold the war out several years
longer; but their king is too wise to let things run to extremity. He
will rather condescend to peace upon hard terms now than stay longer, if
he finds himself in danger to be forced to worse.
This being the only digression I design to be guilty of, I hope I shall
be excused it.
The sum of all is this: that, since it is so necessary to be in a
condition for war in a time of peace, our people should be inured to it.
It is strange that everything should be ready but the soldier: ships are
ready, and our trade keeps the seamen always taught, and breeds up more;
but soldiers, horsemen, engineers, gunners, and the like must be bred and
taught; men are not born with muskets on their shoulders, nor
fortifications in their heads; it is not natural to shoot bombs and
undermine towns: for which purpose I propose a
_Royal Academy for Military Exercises_.
The founder the king himself; the charge to be paid by the public, and
settled by a revenue from the Crown, to be paid yearly.